It is important to underline the extent to which multiple interpretations of the verse of Ḥāfiẓ are assumed to be normal. Davānī’s procedure in this particular text is, on the surface at least, systematic. He undertakes to explore the verse from three different perspectives: first, the unitarians; second, the Sufis; and third, the Peripatetic and Illuminationist sages (ḥukamā). Davānī does not precisely indicate who these groups are or how they differ from one another – there is certainly at this time a fair amount of overlap between the concerns of philosophers and Sufis, for example. His category of unitarians is similar to the use of that term by ‘Azīz al-Dīn Nasafī, to describe a kind of philosophical mystic.7 In any case, for Davānī it seems to be an important methodological principle to acknowledge these different perspectives, which he likens to the different ‘drinking places’ found by each of the 12 Israelite tribes in the Qur’ānic text, playing upon the alternate meaning of this word (mashrab) as a school or teaching. It is also noteworthy that Davānī applies an oracular epithet to Ḥāfiẓ, calling him ‘the tongue of the moment’ (lisān al-waqt). His approach is not literary in the ordinary sense, but exegetical, even as it acknowledges that all readers are likely to find their own perspectives confirmed by the poetry of Ḥāfiẓ.
The discussion of the unitarians is the longest, and it is divided into six separate sections or ‘observations’ (entitled mashhad), each devoted to the interpretation of a particular symbol or aspect of the verse: 1) last night; 2) the speaker of the verse; 3) the angels; 4) the tavern; 5) the clay of Adam; 6) the meaning of throwing the clay of Adam in the form of a cup. Davānī defends this focus on individual images with the following justification:
The subtle qalandars and realized great ones are of the view that, in order that the brides of meaning should remain hidden from the unworthy and should not be pawed by the worldly, the realities of gnosis have been displayed in the cloak of similitudes, and spiritual meanings in the forms of perceptible things. They have taken their inspiration from this verse: ‘These are the similitudes that We coin for the people, and none understands except the wise’ (Q 29:43). Verse: ‘When you hear the name spoken, run towards the thing that is named; / otherwise the speech of ecstatics remains a riddle.’ Necessarily, whenever the people of the heart tell a secret, they reveal their aims by the method of metonymy [kināyat], so that the people of interpretation [ta’wīl] may understand the goals of those melodies through experiential proofs.8
So Davānī’s method depends upon reading individual words and coded symbols that metaphorically represent unstated realities.9 This is a robust hermeneutic that he applies without hesitation, while still locating the exercise aesthetically in the realm of poetry framed in performance with musical melody (tarāna).
When Davānī implements his interpretation of the symbols employed by Ḥāfiẓ, he does so in this section with a highly technical philosophical vocabulary that is presumed to furnish a categorical explanation. It is, moreover, framed in a very ornate style, drawing on arcane vocabulary and expressed with the artifices of rhyming prose. There are frequent citations of anonymous lines of Persian poetry (which I will skip for reasons of brevity), as well as Arabic verses from the Qur’ān, and the occasional deployment of ḥadīth. This may be seen in his exploration of the meaning of ‘last night’ according to the unitarians:
Know that existence has a substance and a determination. From the perspective of substance, this demands that in a purely absolute fashion it should be freed from every limitation and denuded of all relationships. Pure being, which does not set foot in manifestation, and transcendence, which is no companion to relationship, they call the absolutely hidden presence and the reality in truth ... Necessarily, from this degree, by a path that is absolutely required and by necessary volition, the nightingales of that garden [i.e., the unitarians] express the absolute substance with the phrase ‘clear day’. ... Likewise, the determination of existence, which is the source of the emanation of providence, from the perspective of the understanding of those who are near perceptible things, is expressed by the phrase ‘dark day’, because the degrees of determination have hidden the beauty of reality. The people of spiritual meaning have called that the veil of the two worlds. And the tress is the allusion, and the lock of hair and the mole are the expression, for the same thing ... Thus according to those who are perfumed by this fresh breeze, the metonyms for the divine reality and the degree of determination are morning and night ... The first they call the hidden divine identity, and the second they say is the degree of unity; this is an example of the melody of the unitarians.
Then, observing that, in reality, there is no night and day for God, Davānī reverses the symbolism:
Yes, but the times of pre-Eternity and post-Eternity are joined in the point of now, even if the intellect says that that situation is impossible. In short, the Muḥammadan faqirs call the period of the extension of reality ‘perpetual time’ [waqt-i sarmadī] and by way of deceiving the unworthy and clouding the sight of those lost in the desert of ignorance, they call that ‘last night’. ... And the period of the extension of determination and existence, which requires manifestation and disclosure, in their parlance is called duration [dahr]. By metonymy, they call that ‘today’.10
The method employed in this interpretation is notable both for its assumption of the Neoplatonic–Avicennan cosmology and metaphysics typical of Davānī’s age, and for the characteristic equivalency that he posits between philosophical concepts and poetic images. A notable expression of this way of reading symbols in Persian literature from a Sufi perspective was the Gulshan-i rāz of Maḥmūd Shabistarī (d. after 740/1340), a work doubtless known to Ḥāfiẓ as well as Davānī.11 Moreover, the concept of an esoteric methodology is deeply rooted in Davānī’s approach to symbolism, both as an obstacle for the unworthy and a key for the initiate.
Skipping over the remainder of the section on the unitarians (which is the longest section in his treatise), we can contrast Davānī’s treatment of the way that the Sufis understand the symbolism of ‘last night’:
Know that the chivalrous Sufi youths have an eternity from annihilation in God, and a progression from the ascensions of sanctity. From the contents of this verse, they understand a different secret, by reason of the fact that they are the world-revealing cup ... First, one should know what ‘last night’ is in their parlance, and why the tress and mole are its likeness, since they are an expression for the grain and the trap. Yes, realizing that requires an introduction.12
Here too, Davānī provides a cosmology, but this time it is much more psychological and dramatic, as Sufi dervishes enact the cosmic unfoldment from divine latency to phenomenal reality in their response to the call of divine love. Sufi authorities, such as ‘Ayn al-Quḍāt, Ḥallāj, Ibn Khafīf and Rūzbihān, are invoked and quoted. On the symbolism of ‘last night’, Davānī explains, ‘altogether, the group of Sufis expresses the period of this travel from the realm of nonexistence [to] essential and compulsory possibility, with the help of spiritual love and the overpowering of spiritual longing, as “last night”. In that situation, sobriety was produced from intoxication and attainment [from] the root of existence.’13 Summarizing the sense of the first half of the verse, he writes: ‘In the period of the travel of existing things, I turned around the folds and orbits, and I saw the degrees of each attainment. In their midst, however much the angels were praising the sea of divine isolation, and had no impurity within the veil of chastity, they still did not have the adornment of being wounded by love.’14 In conclusion, he observes, ‘this was a sample of commentary on the verse by the experience of the Sufis, who annihilate multiplicity in unity, and at the time of intoxication speak in the manner of the people of sobriety.’15 So while there is some parallel between the views of the unitarians and the Sufis on this verse, insofar as both groups see it as symbolizing the cosmogonic process of God’s creation of the world, they nevertheless express it in very differen
t terms.
Davānī begins the section on the sages by commenting sarcastically that, while the philosophical sage is close to the Sufi, his sight has been darkened by the overturning of intellect mixed with imagination. Intellect and logic, as Rūmī points out, are poor supports. Davānī continues: ‘Altogether, “last night” in the technical language of the philosophical sages is the time of the release of the rational soul from the control of the body by contemplation of its superior origins, for the intellect, because of being veiled with the coverings of the body, has no portion either of the wine or of the cask, and it is excluded by the proximity of nature from witnessing the sources of emanation.’16 Davānī then goes into an explanation of the union of the rational soul with the Active Intellect according to the theories of the Illuminationist and Peripatetic schools of philosophy. He explains that Ḥāfiẓ wishes to portray the ascending soul as saying something like the following:
With the eye of realization I gazed upon the forms of existence from above and below, I saw the separate intellects, which transcend acceptance and rejection, who by contemplating their own perfection in the fields of possibility were knocking on the door of the tavern of universal creation and their own luminous perfection. This is an expression for the comprehensive Adamic presence.17
While the tone of this explanation has a mocking character, it is quite technical and thoroughly immersed in one of the chief academic discourses of premodern Islamic thought.
Finally, it may come as no surprise that some of the companions of Davānī had requested that he provide a very brief commentary on this verse; evidently, some of them had simply gotten lost in the intricate gyrations of the preceding three sections. Here is how he responded:
Know that the gist of the verse is that when burning love – may it be ever fortunate and victorious – with the aid of the momentary inspiration [waqt] went forth in the form of its own display and became the mirror of the pure condition of every beauty in the clear moment during that journey of a victorious king, it brought the degrees of its own perfection into view in the forms that are present. It witnessed its own essential and potential spiritual faculties, which went in search of the tavern and the wine-selling master with shouts and cries. If they were joined in presence with some of the active degrees which they call ‘immutable entities’ [a‘yān-i thābita] and were free from a general measure of spiritual suffering, yet since their power of longing was still in action, they searched for the most perfect of the lights of manifestation and the limit of adornment. Then with complete effort they knocked on the door of the tavern of love, for they had the remainder of creation on their heads. If they had a crown of stability on the head of ambition and sought that universal existence, these degrees have a limit: it is the master of the merciful breath [nafas-i raḥmānī], Isrāfīl18 and his trumpet. Necessarily from his mixed clay, which the dervishes say is the elemental human power and the upright body, they expressed it as a cup, and they trained him to the limits of all ways. Thus here they call the ‘immutable entities’ persons. There, the first love sees itself as the last, and it finds its own beauty to be exceedingly glorious in the completeness of its perfection. This is on the principle that for anything to see itself in itself is like seeing itself in a mirror, but the latter form of seeing is superior and more perfect; therefore the first seeing [gazing at oneself] is [only] a likeness, and the second seeing [in a mirror] is [true] reflections of beauty.19
Whether Davānī’s associates found any additional clarity in this concluding passage, with its dense language drawing upon the vocabulary of Ibn ‘Arabī, can best be imagined.
The second treatise on Ḥāfiẓ by Davānī has a much more literary bent than the first, focusing as it does upon an entire poem, the ghazal beginning dar hama dayr-i mughān nīst chū man shaydā’ī: ‘In all this temple of the Magi no one is as wild as me.’ The ostensibly literary character of this commentary is further enhanced by the quotation of numerous other verses by Ḥāfiẓ, cited to substantiate a consistent point of view ascribed to the author. Nevertheless, Davānī maintains here a consistent hermeneutic that assumes a deep structure of concealing and revealing the divine mysteries as the operative principle behind all serious literature. Once again, he confers oracular titles upon Ḥāfiẓ, calling him this time ‘the tongue of the moment and the interpreter of time’ (lisān al-waqt, tarjumān al-zamān). As before, Davānī is responding to the importunities of his friends who sought a solution to the mysteries of Ḥāfiẓ, and he apologizes for the delay in hopes that his work will be appreciated by connoisseurs. He begins the treatise with an introduction,20 in which he lays out his strategy of interpretation, drawing explicitly on images and figures associated with martyrdom for having revealed the secret, such as Ḥallāj and ‘Ayn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī:
The jealousy of love’s power demands that the subtle secrets of its effects should be hidden in the privacy of inner sanctums and the retreats of the hidden essence. The loveliness of that holy beauty should not have its veil polluted by the gaze of impure worldlings, who are by no means cleansed of the abandonment of poverty and the impurities of connections to existing things.
(Arabic verse): We, the men of the tribe, say the charms of Laylā should be seen when the stars arise, / for how should Laylā be seen with an eye that sees others and is not cleansed with tears?
(Persian verse): I performed ablutions with tears, as the men of the path say; / first be pure yourself, and then cast your eyes on the pure one. [Ḥāfiẓ]21
It is for this reason that the illustrious divine way [sunnat] has been ordered in this fashion, the fundamentals of the explanation of which are based upon the categorical principles of the sign that ‘you shall not find any change in the way [sunnah] of God’ (Qur’ān 33:62). This is because some of the people of realities are hidden from the eyes of ignorant formalists by the clothing of conventional forms, and they lose themselves in the midst of the generality of people by sharing their remaining customs. This is the path of the people of soundness.
(Persian verse): I am a rogue, and the people call me a Sufi; / see this nice name that I have discovered!
And some, having fled from the affairs of the ignorant mob to the cave of the abiding darkness of nonexistence, have wagered the cash of the two worlds in the dice house of isolation and asceticism with a single throw, and have cast themselves beyond the sight of men, on account of being uprooted from the forms of customary conventions. This is the style of the audacious ones of the corner of blame.
(Persian verse): My heart’s upset with the monastery and the stained cloak. / Where is the temple of the Magi, and where’s the pure wine? [Ḥāfiẓ]22
Even though in the path there may be a group between these two positions, the aim of both factions is the concealment of realities, for in the law of love, for the intoxicated lover revealing secrets is a crime. Even though gradually the wine-bearer of ecstasy gives them another swallow of the wine of realities in the goblet of time, and every moment from the arrival of the cups of satisfaction with the manifestations of majesty and glory they have another increase, continually the voice of divine power gives the cry that:
(Persian verse): It is the Sultan’s feast, so don’t get drunk; / have a cup of wine, and then shut up!
And if occasionally the hopeless lover gives off some smoke from the overwhelming flames of the fires of love, and like an incense-burner releases sighs from within, he keeps them concealed and imprisoned at the bottom of his skirt of infamy, for [as the ḥadīth states] ‘My friends are underneath my domes; no one knows them except me.’ And if from the overwhelming force of intoxication he utters a word of the secrets of love, they take him to the gallows of blame.
(Arabic verse): By the secret, if they are effaced, their blood is shed; / thus it is that the blood of lovers may be shed. [‘Ayn al-Quḍāt]
(Persian verse): For the helpless one who spills the secret of love, / tell him to scratch his face with the fingers of blam
e.
That friend by whom the gallows was ennobled – / his crime was this: he made the secrets public. [Ḥāfiẓ]23
It is for this reason that if any of the children of the path of longing has an appropriately delicate relationship with this group from his original nature, he may be worthy of the inheritance of those great ones by reason of that spiritual proximity, by reason of ‘We joined to them their seed’ (Qur’ān 52:21). Or they may fall under the suspicion of belonging to the group of the mob who are ‘like beasts’ (Qur’ān 7:179). This is because the lustful ones of delicate temperament, whose intended prayer direction is the acceptance of the masses, are rebuffed by those ferocious attacks from concentrating on the sacred target of love.
(Persian verse): Sufi, pass us by in safety, for this red wine / steals heart and religion from you in a manner that – don’t ask! [Ḥāfiẓ]24
My friends, haul back your reins from the tavern road; / because Ḥāfiẓ travelled by this path, and now he’s poor.25
And despite the fact that deceptive and fickle love demands the concealing of secrets from the perspective of God’s essential power, from the perspective of the perfection of the beloved it demands manifestation and revealing. Every moment in a visual and visionary location she is displayed in a different way to the heart and eye of the astonished lover. With glances mixed with elegance and looks most exciting, she places the words describing her own beauty on the tongue of that silent one, and then with the tongue of the assault of divine wrath, she begins to reproach and interrogate that unfortunate wretch. It is here that the cry arises from the lovers’ disposition.
Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry Page 36