The cup’s a mirror, in which, crystal-clear
you may gaze, oh Sufi, and see therein
The glow and sheen of the ruby wine.38
As he gazes at the glow glimmering off the sparkling surface of the wine, a hidden mystery is revealed to the Sufi, which is the jewel buried deep within each man.39 Formerly, the Sufi used to shatter and smash his cup and wine-glass. Now, having imbibed the first draught of this wine, he has become initiated into the sapiential lore of Eros – Love’s knowledge.40
Up until that point, a kind of fake virtue – phony sobriety and smug self-consciousness (hushyārī) – had prevented the Sufi from progressing. The Sufi was concerned about purity, but in fact, only love, which is ‘the secret of his inebriation’,41 found when the lover has lost all care for and sense of self, is pure. Thus the poet invites his reader to ‘Come see the purity of the ruby wine!’42 Just as Sufi sets forth for his pious oratory of prayer (ṣūma‘a) in pursuit of purity of self (ṣafā), Ḥāfiẓ makes his way to the Tavern in utter sincerity (ṣidq).43
If the ascetics can’t understand anything about the secrets of inebriation, there are Sufis who are prepared to enter into this mystery. Though decked out in tattered robes and multi-coloured cloaks, they seek to relish the taste of the divine presence, yet crave knowledge of esoteric mysteries from those who are themselves benighted.44 The Sufi who discovers the door of the Tavern at once renounces his backward asceticism,45 and once having burned up his Sufi frock (khirqa) becomes converted into a sage mystic wayfarer (‘ārif-i sālik).46
A Language of Mystery
Ḥāfiẓ, like so many poets before him, found an incomparably rich gamut of expressions in the metaphors of the cup, wine and drunkenness. In lyric poetry, wine offers a simple register whereby the bare outer purport of the metaphor relating to the meaning of prohibition and transgression can be transcended, and ecstasy and erotic union entered into. In terms of spirituality, however, this metaphor alludes to something experienced as a reality that is not only impossible to name and define, but also, paradoxically, something unthinkable rationally.
In the particular literary milieu in which Ḥāfiẓ lived, it had been well understood – ever since a generation earlier, when in 717/1317 Maḥmūd Shabistarī had composed his famous Garden of Mystery (Gulshan-i rāz) – how profane poetic imagery could be used to vividly convey ideas of a spiritual order. In this manner, court poetry and mystical poetry were united together. This is precisely what one finds in Ḥāfiẓ’s Dīvān. In the fifteenth century AD, the grand commentator on Shabistarī’s poem, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad Lāhījī, in his Mafātīḥ al-i‘jāz fī sharḥ-i Gulshan-i rāz (written c. 877/1472), showed just what was at stake. Thus, commenting on two couplets of the Gulshan-i rāz, he appealed to the important notion – of Akbarian inspiration – of the innermost mystery of theophany (sirr al-tajalliyyāt).47 According to masters such as Shabistarī and Lāhījī, the mystical seer and knower (‘ārif) could comprehend the totality of spiritual realities manifested within each particular reality of creation. Seen from this perspective, the entire world in its totality was viewed as a mirror in which God had reflected various facets of His divine Names in their totality. Each atom of creation was thus understood to be but another form and facet of the infinite number of the divine Names. Put another way, each Name refers to the totality of divine Names, all of which are collected and combined within God’s Unicity. And that is what is meant by ‘the innermost mystery of theophany’. In this fashion, a beautiful human face, along with each of its component features (eye, eyebrow, lip, etc.), as well as the cup, wine and drunkenness – each refers, in its own different way, to transcendent spiritual realities of which it is merely the outward form. The Cup is thus a mirror wherein the reflection of the Cup-bearer shines when He pours the pure Wine that inebriates the drinker and fills him with love if he be a true lover. The condition of this transfiguration had been expressed in Persian verse for a long time, and was well described by Sa‘dī, for instance, in his Būstān, where he states: ‘You shall never enter into yourself as long as you are with yourself, and yet no one knows this except by being outside oneself.’48
Such is the ‘mystery of theophany’, wherein the ineffable and paradoxical realities of the world of love are revealed to the intoxicated, who have been transported outside their personal ‘selves’. Everything began at that primordial moment of the Eternal Covenant (see Qur’ān, 7:172), to which both Shabistarī49 and Ḥāfiẓ50 in their poetry refer. To express what can be understood of this mystery or secret, Ḥāfiẓ employs no other word but the Arabic sirr, or its Persian equivalent rāz. This term refers to the knowledge of a reality that can be communicated only by the ‘keeper’ of this secret, who is then at liberty to reveal it – or not – to one or another of its confidants. This ‘mystery’ relates to a reality beyond the bounds of normal sensory perception that is then ‘translated’ by the perceiving subject into what can only be an approximate language expressible in paradoxical terms, or voiced poetically through a language of analogy. Such a ‘mystery’ can be a ‘secret’ for the one who perceives it. At any rate it is kept a secret, revealed only to the initiates of the world of experience to which it belongs, or to one who has prepared himself for such an initiation.
In a study which is in every sense remarkable, ‘Alī Sharī‘at Kāshānī has recently demonstrated that in Persian mystical literature ‘the term “secret” designates the heart or the soul’s interior foundation. It is considered to be an infinitely subtle entity [laṭīfa], situated in the heart of the mystic as a kind of divine “deposit” [vadī‘a].’51 Such a heart is ‘contemplative’, and its ‘secret’ comprises the innermost chamber of the heart, which is a mystery, the reality of which can be directly experienced, but not comprehended.52 Within his heart, then, lies the supreme secret – ‘the secret of the secret’ – which the gnostic himself cannot perceive, being known only to the ‘Unique One’.53 In Ḥāfiẓ, one comes across a different term which no doubt indicates the same reality – he speaks, for instance, of the existence of the ‘gem [gawhar] of the secrets of beauty and love’ in his heart,54 or elsewhere describes the ‘jewel’ in his possession, stating he is in search of someone worthy of viewing and understanding it.55 His very first interpreter, Shujā-yi Shīrāzī, was by no means mistaken: the chapter of his book entitled ‘The Convivial Comrade’,56 written in 1426/830, which he devoted to ‘eye-games’ (naẓar-bāzī), was composed with Ḥāfiẓ’s monument still in mind. In this work he explains that ‘there exists in man a simple divine substance [jawharī basīṭ ilāhī]’ integral to his being, and which constitutes ‘a kind of power which other creatures do not possess’.57 Ḥāfiẓ once confessed that:
I don’t know who the troubled being is who stamps
About in my overworked heart. I am quiet and silent,
And that person is always complaining and crying out.58
‘That person’, the ‘he’ (ū) referred to above, is so often the Nameless One, somebody (fulānī) in his verse. It seems to me that Ḥāfiẓ’s use of the words sirr and rāz (secret and mystery) is different from what was transmitted by the tradition before him. This is what I will try to demonstrate.
Ḥāfiẓ was both a lyric poet and a man of high spirituality. As we know, he rejected all resort to expressions of paradox and nonsensical mystic transport (shaṭḥ va ṭāmāt),59 which seemed to him to be only bombastic, grandiose and senseless utterances.60 On the other hand, ‘there is no pen with a tongue capable of expressing the mystery of love’, he says.61 Powerful inner and ineffable states of consciousness can solely be conveyed by means of musical instruments. Such states can only be expressed inwardly by instruments such as the harp or rebab, while the tambourine and the flute furnish them with an appropriate outward public expression.62 As for the poet himself, just as one should ‘Go to the garden to learn from the nightingale the secrets of love’, so one must ‘come to the banquet to gain from Ḥāfiẓ the a
rt of the ghazal’.63 Indeed, the flame of the candle speaks eloquently about the ‘secret’ of this subject, whereas the butterfly or moth – a symbol for the poet himself – ‘is incapable of speaking about it’.64 Holding in his deep heart the secret mystery of love, Ḥāfiẓ understood the paradox of wishing to hide it from everyone and yet seeking a confidant to whom he might reveal it. His poetry thus lies somewhere between verbal concealment and revelation. As he says: ‘Last night with my own ears I heard from his lips such words as one should not ask.’65
The Cup, Wine and Drunkenness
Since the Cup of Wine (i.e., terms such as jām and its synonyms) symbolize the inverted dome of Heaven or the overturned celestial bowl of the firmament, it also ultimately alludes to the world of mystery concealed beneath the veil of heaven. The Cup is thus the mirror of heaven and what is inscribed thereupon. Yet it is something even more – for the world of heavenly mystery has left its trace in the mirror of the Cup.66 For one who gazes within the Cup, it is thus possible to contemplate this mystery as well, to decipher the lines traced therein like it were a sort of spiritual astrolabe. Jamshīd, the Initiator of Kings, was the first to contemplate the mysteries of the heavenly world reflected in the Cup, or, to put it more precisely, he was the first to see the Cup itself divulging the mystery of the mundus invisibilis to him.67 This is the condition of being intimate with, or a ‘confidant’ of the Cup. The Cup of wine thus initiates one into the mystery of ‘both the worlds’ (this world and the hereafter, earth and heaven) by grace of that ray of light, whose reflection it catches and which it then reflects back again.68 Through the intoxication bestowed by its wine, the Cup also grants one access to the secret of the world marked out in the stars.69 In fact, the mystery of each and every thing constitutes its very raison d’être.70 The underlying cause behind creation of the world had been articulated at the very origin of all humanity, but to give voice to it again one must ‘drink two cups’71 – that is to say, redouble the intoxication to perform an act of anamnesis. The Cup also initiates one into the secret of Time, which may be disagreeable to man,72 and yet the initiation into this secret is by grace of that pure wine that one quaffs from the Cup.73
Gnostic Cognition
By providing an initiation into the mysteries of heaven and earth, the Cup also initiates one into their primordial raison d’être. That primordial cause had been revealed in its entirety for the first time at the origin of the world, when the Beloved’s beauty flashed forth in a ray of theophany, which in turn provoked the apparition of love.74 In this primordial pact of fidelity, humanity’s love for the Beloved had been signed and sealed.75 Insofar as one apprehends it as it actually is, the Cup therefore simply serves to perpetuate what had always existed from the very beginning. We find ourselves here in another order of reality, for which the common Cup, Wine and Intoxication are but poor representations or figures of speech. Books cannot provide access to this kind of knowledge; reason here is but a pretentious impostor.76 In truth, ‘no one knows the mysteries of the invisible world’.77 But the motes of dust dancing in the dazzling light of the Beloved’s beauty reflected in the mirror of the real Cup may give access to this knowledge. That very Cup–mirror is the heart of man. The sorrows of love have the task of purifying the heart – which is the Cup and the mirror – for only through experiencing that grief and sorrow can the heart be cleansed of all regard and concern for the self. That purification causes the wine within the heart’s Cup-mirror – the wine that is also the ‘love’ that the heart is enamoured of – to become pure and strained clear.78 It is this wine that intoxicates the heart, which puts it in a state commensurate to its real nature. The nature of the heart is to be a mirror, to contemplate the mysteries which it reflects and which, in turn, it reflects back to their original author – its Beloved. For Beloved wished to contemplate Himself within an infinite variety of mirrors.
But who is really an initiate? ‘Where’, he asks – since it is impossible to discourse about these mysteries – ‘is an adept in the mysteries?’79 The ‘secret of solitude’ (rāz-i khalwat) experienced by one who is intimate with the Beloved, fire alone reveals. The candle here is the model: silent, it illuminates by its flame the assembly.80 Similarly, the fiery conflagration caused by the poet–lover’s words reveals well enough ‘the burning condition of his heart’.81 Besides, his visage itself bears testimony to the mark of love and is sufficient to betray him.82 Above all, his tears reveal his experience of love’s grief.83 By concealing his secret he knows that he is working towards salvation,84 and yet, already having lost his heart, the secret shall in the end come out!85 What is ultimately revealed by the ‘secret’ on which the poet stakes his life becomes exposed through his own conduct; that is to say, Ḥāfiẓ’s combat with the hypocrisy of the fake Sufi. When his adversary, a meddling busybody, reproaches him for being a libertine lover, Ḥāfiẓ in turn accuses him of ‘acting in opposition to the mysteries of the mundus invisibilis’.86
And yet it is well known that there is nothing more conducive to speech than conversing about secrets, so Ḥāfiẓ entreats God to give him a confidant with whom he may share his thoughts.87 However, since that confidant after whom he hankers is always one who is supremely absent – the Beloved88 – he ends up becoming his own personal confidant.89 In fact, Ḥāfiẓ acknowledges himself to possess no true confidant save the wind,90 for a human confidant for his secret does not actually exist.91 In love’s sanctuary, one cannot express oneself through conversation92 since ‘There all the organs of one’s body must be transformed into eyes and ears’,93 which is what he refers to as the ‘ear of the heart’ (gūsh-i dil).94 Nonetheless, a kind of community in which spiritual exchanges and conversation (ṣuḥbat) could take place did exist for Ḥāfiẓ. This community consisted of those intimately familiar with the realities of the heart, who were the heart’s adepts (ahl-i dil) and ‘votaries of wine’.95 Among this community of lovers a Cup was passed round, each handing it to his fellow in the turn of their circle, their bouts forming an endless round of drinks.96 These lovers are the wise mystical wayfarers, and it is they alone, along with the Vintner or Wineseller, who have cognizance of the secret.97
Amongst this community, at a certain point in his life, Ḥāfiẓ testified to his own experience that he was ‘a guardian of my own secret and cognizant of my own moment of mystical consciousness [Ḥāfiẓ-i rāz-i khwud u ‘ārif-i vaqt-i khwīsham]’.98 We must therefore assess the importance that he himself attached to his own literary monument: this short Dīvān of some 500 poems that took him some 50 years to compose:
Each verse that Ḥāfiẓ pens is a masterpiece
of gnostic lore and sapience.
Let’s praise his fetching turn of phrase
and his stunning power of speech.99
Aware that evidence existed that there was within himself a certain ‘substance’ (gawharī) – a ‘somebody’ (fulānī) who was in reality more ‘himself’ than he was himself – Ḥāfiẓ experienced his ‘self’ as a wandering pilgrim. Standing outside the centre that he sought to attain, he spins upon himself in a circle like a compass.100 Passion for the Beloved causes him to twirl in a dance like a mote of dust as he strives to reach the verge of the fountain-head of the dazzlingly bright sun.101 At this point the swirling revolution of Time comes along, lays hold of and pulls him within that centre, which, as was explained above, is the ‘Cup’.102 Henceforth, talking to us ‘from beyond the grave’ – within his tomb – Ḥāfiẓ envisages himself as a lover awaiting the Beloved’s visitation, and bids us farewell, leaving us with this verse to meditate on:
Should you pass by my shrine when I am gone
Ask for soul-power, spirit-force and esprit,
For all the world’s pious rakes and holy reprobates
Will be pilgrims to my tomb.103
Notes
1 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 264: 7.
2 Ibid., ghazal 190: 6.
3 Hafiz de Chiraz: Le Divān
: OEuvre lyrique d’un spirituel en Perse au XIVe siècle, introduction, commentary and translation by Charles-Henri de Fouchécour.
4 Ṣafā, Tārīkh-i Adabiyāt-i Īrān, III/1–2, pp. 623–1320.
5 ‘Imād Faqīh, Mathnawī-yi Ṣafā-nāma, 66,16, in ‘Imād Faqīh, Panj ganj, ed./intro. Humāyūn-Farrukh, CIV–431; see Ganj-i duvvum, Ṣafā-nāma, pp. 17–91.
6 See, e.g., his Suḥbat-nāma (in Panj ganj, pp. 93–148), 124, 7.
7 ‘Imād Faqīh, Ṭarīqat-nāma, ed. Humāyūn-Farrukh, 241pp., section 2, h. 10, pp. 95–100.
8 See Kāshānī, Miṣbāḥ al-ḥidāyat, ed. Humā’ī, 10, section 3, pp. 114–16.
9 Miṣbāḥ al-ḥidāyat, p. 114.
10 Ibid., p. 114.
11 Ibid., p. 115.
12 Ibid., p. 116.
13 Chittick, ‘Taṣawwuf. 2. Ibn al-‘Arabī and after in the Arabic and Persian lands, and beyond’, EI2, X, p. 317.
14 Miṣbāḥ al-ḥidāyat, pp. 116ff.
15 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 272: 7.
16 Ibid., ghazal 272: 3.
17 Ibid., ghazal 168: 1.
18 Ibid., ghazal 289: 6.
19 Ibid., ghazal 20: 6.
20 Ibid., ghazal 199: 8.
21 Ibid., ghazal 426: 10.
22 Ibid., ghazal 129: 8.
23 Ibid., ghazal 446: 2.
24 Ibid., ghazal 237: 6.
25 Ibid., ghazal 366: 1.
26 Ibid., ghazal 129: 1–2.
27 Ibid., ghazal 155: 2.
28 Ibid., ghazal 426: 10. [The English term ‘carboy’ is taken from the Persian-Arabic word qarrabā used by the poet here, referring to a large big-bellied bottle used to store wine or medicinal liquids. Ed./trans.]
Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry Page 28