And whenever you recite the Qur’ān, We place between you and between those who do not have faith [=spiritual certainty] in the spiritual world a veiled barrier (hijāb mastūr). And We place over their hearts shrouds, lest they should understand It, and deafness upon their ears. So whenever you mention your Lord, the One Himself, in the Qur’ān, they turn their backs in loathing ... (17:45–6).
Ḥāfiẓ’s intelligent readers – in his own time, as today – would immediately recognize here the dramatic (and, one suspects, quite intentional) parallels to the almost identical forms of spiritual incomprehension and misunderstanding that his own inspired verses have so frequently encountered throughout history.
Line 6: Discovering the Divine Secret
In this penultimate line, Ḥāfiẓ – or the enlightened persona who has spoken throughout most of the preceding lines – directly addresses the strident, previously unnamed ‘pretentious critic’ (mudda‘ī) whose voice we first encountered in the second half of the opening verse, who was looking there for the (humanly manipulable or knowable) this-worldly ‘cause’ (sabab) for all those reprehensible features of this world and creation, which such characters (within each of us!) unavoidably see as the signs of an inexplicable divine tardiness, absence or general failure to perfect the world according to the fantasies of their own imagination. The Mystery that lies beyond the veil of the celestial spheres (falak), of course, is the infinite divine domain of the spiritual and imaginal worlds of the Heart – a reality too often invisible and silent for such veiled and deafened characters, as the underlying Qur’ānic verse just cited so pointedly emphasizes.
But Ḥāfiẓ’s essential point here has nothing to do with the relative merits of particular philosophical or theological schemas of causality. Instead, the poet’s bold exhortation of ‘Silence!’ here – explicitly echoing one of Rumi’s favourite closing injunctions in so many of his celebrated ghazals – is not so much an expression of impatience, as it is the indispensable first practical step towards the Heart’s eventual spiritual opening and transformation. Even the slightest effort of attempted meditation and silence, as we can all only too easily verify, quickly reveals both the radical contrast between the inspirations and illuminations of the heart, on the one hand, and the endless chattering and quarrelling and plotting of the ego (nafs), of our recalcitrant ‘monkey-mind’ that is, indeed, so rarely truly silenced. Ḥāfiẓ’s final question, at the end of the second half-line here, pushes the ‘pretender-critic’ to pursue that process of meditation and introspection – of the constant Qur’ānic injunction of dhikr or spiritual recollection, in all its senses – even more deeply, until we begin to discover all the depths of pride, impulse, manipulation and grandiose self-divination lurking beneath this only too familiar hidden quarrel with God.
Now precisely to the extent that Ḥāfiẓ’s reader takes this injunction and question to heart, this penultimate verse will quickly begin to reveal another very different, entirely transformed meaning. For the complex cosmological associations of the key terms sabab and falak,12 as we have explained, inevitably suggest at first glance that the ‘Veil’ and ‘Veil-Keeper’ mentioned here must refer to God and to the apparently impenetrable metaphysical barrier – or so the thickly veiled critic imagines it! – between this visible world of matter, space and time, and that vast spiritual realm whose infinite realities he can only imagine (as does the pious ascetic/zāhid of the final line) in terms of more familiar fantasies and parallels drawn from his experience of this lower world. But once the attentive reader begins to realize that the truly problematic veils and their ‘keeper’ in question are none other than the barriers of his own ego-self (nafs), of its profound ‘compound ignorance’, confusions and chattering distractions, then every word of this line takes on a radically ironic meaning – and above all, profoundly different practical implications and consequences.
The source and nature of the critic/pretender’s perennial illusions is further defined and highlighted at this point by the key term nizā‘ (‘quarrelling’), whose many telling Qur’ānic usages repeatedly focus on the multiplicity of conflicting perspectives and futile stratagems and plotting that characterize those who rely on their own limited means and worldly understanding, without true spiritual insight and inspired guidance. The description of the panicked reaction of Pharaoh and his counsellors to the challenges of Moses (at 20:62), for example, also emphasizes the intrinsic secrecy and hiddenness of these murky psychic depths of the nafs: ‘So they quarrelled among themselves about this matter, and they kept secret their plotting.’ That inner psychic realm is indeed a ‘secret behind a veil’, unknown to the heavenly spheres – but potentially very familiar to those who undertake the Work-path of silence and spiritual purification.
Line 7: Balance, Surrender and the Divine Perspective
The true ḥāfiẓ – in each of those transforming and far-reaching senses that we explored at the beginning of this chapter – already knows that the theophanic, mirroring Heart is indeed always filled with the wine of Kawthar and the Spirit at every instant – as is, of course, the deeper heart of the critic and ascetic as well, ‘if they only knew’. And in the course of life each reader, each human being, has passed back and forth between those polar states of ‘veiling’ (with its concomitant resistance, dissipation and empty imagining) and of ecstatic union and surrender (mastī) enough to appreciate both perspectives, to at least recognize each of the contrasting voices and possibilities that are so beautifully articulated throughout the course of this ghazal. The apparent human choice, then, is as simple here at the end as it was in the first half-line of this verse: between wanting what is, the ever-renewed plenitude of created Being; and desiring an imagined illusion, while ignoring or even deprecating what actually is (and its Creator).
But to state the issue that bluntly in fact serves only to highlight our apparent existential helplessness and inability to influence or carry out that choice at all: neither the true ḥāfiẓ nor the veiled critic and ascetic seem to ‘choose’ what is actually gifted to each of them in every instant. Hence the paradox – and deeper existential challenge – of the poem’s final half-line, whose question likewise seems to be equally rhetorical: ‘So between them, what is the Wish of the Creator/Worker?’ – of the One Whose Will, as the Qur’ān insists countless times, is truly absolute and unimpeded. Again, the question itself seems at first a near truism: God’s creation always Wills exactly what is. But that Willing of what is means not only these two nearly caricatured extremes of human surrender and desire, or of veiling and understanding, that unfold and intertwine in the course of this enchanting ghazal. That Willing also includes the more familiar inner movement back and forth between those extremes that constitutes the constant actual turnings and unveilings of our Heart (inqilāb al-qalb).
So the simple recognition of these dramatic alternatives immediately provides its own ineluctable answer: Ḥāfiẓ the poet leaves us with the next, imperative stage of the divine Wish – with the appropriate action and intention of the true ḥāfiẓ (already so perfectly exemplified in each of these ghazals), whose silent, joyful surrender to that Wish means recognizing and upholding each of these covenants so deeply embedded in our being and creation.
Conclusion: Engagement, Participation and Communicating Ḥāfiẓ
Since the purpose of this chapter is simply to introduce certain basic rhetorical structures and presuppositions of Ḥāfiẓ’s poetry for students limited to working with translations, the best possible conclusion is to move on to explore how those distinguishing features are developed in other, often more complex poems throughout his Dīvān. At the same time, it may be helpful to point out that comparable spiritual intentions and correspondingly inventive literary structures (or their visual and aural equivalents) can be found in many other fields of the later Islamic humanities, including other visual and musical arts, in ways I have suggested in a number of related studies. In each of those fields, much work is still
needed in order to reveal and elaborate the still unappreciated role of such characteristic artistic devices – whether we are exploring them elsewhere in Ḥāfiẓ, in the Qur’ān, Rūmī’s Mathnawī, the unique language of Ibn ‘Arabī, or many other masterworks of the Islamic humanities – in ensuring the effective participation and engagement of each reader (or listener/viewer), a participation which is almost always at once spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic and certainly (in the comprehensive Platonic sense) erotic.
Engagement and Participation
My original discovery of the existence of these distinctive dialogical perspective shifts and their deeper functions in the ghazals of Ḥāfiẓ grew out of many years of experiencing and then reflecting on the extraordinary power and efficaciousness of his poems when consulted for spiritual guidance (the familiar process of divination known as fa’l or fa’lgīrī, tafa’ul) – a mysterious but demonstrable quality and influence of his writing which I had repeatedly witnessed in the experience of friends and colleagues from very different cultures, backgrounds and walks of life, and which I had only seen roughly paralleled in very similar uses of the Qur’ān and the I Ching. It was first in that long practical and therapeutic context of frequenting Ḥāfiẓ that I began to appreciate and explore the ways that the peculiar intense combination of this poet’s very different voices and perspectives perfectly mirrored – and so deeply engaged and revealed – different, often initially unconscious or inchoate dimensions of our soul (intellect, mind, desire, inner and outer conditioning, personality), which together shape and determine each individual’s unique perception of the world, of the depths and possibilities of each unique situation in which we find ourselves. Compared with the I Ching, however, with its relative emphasis on the archetypal regularities and patterns of the more visible human social and political worlds, the particular mastery (and mystery) of Ḥāfiẓ clearly lies in his extraordinary revelation of inner spiritual worlds and insights – in his long-acknowledged, but always mysterious, unique efficacy as the ‘voice of the Unseen’ (lisān al-ghayb). There is nothing like watching Ḥāfiẓ so fully and richly mirrored in the varying reactions of a classroom of committed students to realize how comprehensive and inclusive his cast of characters and archetypal dramas really are – and how powerfully even translations of his ghazals can continue to engage such new audiences today.
Communicating Ḥāfiẓ
Given the distinctive structural features of the two ghazals highlighted in this chapter, it should be obvious that students of Ḥāfiẓ interested in translations designed to more faithfully convey the forms and meanings of the original poetic text – a project which will always remain indispensable for any student or lover of poetry who is actually interested in learning to read and explore Ḥāfiẓ in something approaching the original Persian – must pay special attention to each of the key rhetorical and structural features illustrated above. Thus translators or teachers having that particular pedagogical aim in mind need to preserve, note or make visible in some way to their non-Persian readers at least the following basic information:
• The essential perspectival clues and signs – key pronouns, number (singular or plural), verb tenses, imperatives, questions, and so forth – embedded in each line and half-line of this poetry.
• The essential thematically unifying terms or themes, which are almost always deeply embedded in a bilingual, widely related semantic field drawn from the Qur’ān and subsequent literary and practical spiritual traditions (Sufism, philosophy, theology, and so on), which must be clearly and fully explained to modern, non-specialist audiences.
• Those intended key alternative meanings or potential levels of understanding (whether of whole lines or of key terms), which shift and transform kaleidoscopically as each reader’s own understanding and perspective is awakened.
Because of the shrinking number of contemporary readers and interpreters who are sufficiently familiar with even a few of the most essential fields of traditional Islamicate learning and artistic forms assumed by Ḥāfiẓ and his original audiences (Qur’ān, ḥadīth, Islamic philosophy, Kalām theology, a particularly immense and rich Sufi intellectual tradition, and so many earlier Persian and Arabic poets), the challenges of elucidating these complex rhetorical unities and their intellectual presuppositions are becoming increasingly demanding and difficult, both for scholarly specialists and especially for their wider potential audiences. Against that backdrop, one can only hope that scholars aware of these growing pedagogical needs will eventually take up the challenge of providing students and lovers of Ḥāfiẓ – especially those limited to English and languages other than Persian – with something like the spectrum of more literal, carefully annotated translations and essential interpretive tools and studies that are now so readily available at every level for students of Dante, Plato or the I Ching.
Finally, a more widespread appreciation of these distinctive structural features in Ḥāfiẓ should also help future editors, translators and other critics in their necessary editorial judgements regarding the often difficult and recurrent questions of alternative verse orders, choices of alternative readings and manuscript evidence, authenticity and the like. The usefulness of this awareness is particularly obvious with regard to the much-debated question of the unity of the ghazal form, as well as in encouraging a more adequate appreciation of the different structures and forms of the ghazal favoured by those later poets in various Islamicate languages, who were so widely influenced by the prestigious model of Ḥāfiẓ’s poetic work.
Notes
1 Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon, part 2, p. 602.
2 In particular, the underlying Qur’ānic roots and inspiration of these characteristic perspective shifts and other related rhetorical features are discussed in much greater detail in my forthcoming volume, Openings: From the Qur’ān to the Islamic Humanities.
3 See my study of a remarkable later Safavid illustration of Ḥāfiẓ and the ghazal in question in ‘Imaging Islam: Intellect and Imagination in Islamic Philosophy, Poetry and Painting’, Religion and the Arts, XII/1–3 (February 2008), special volume on ‘The Inter-Religious Imagination’, ed. R. Kearney, pp. 294–318 and 466.
4 For instance, in Sliding Doors (directed by P. Howitt, 1998) and K. Kieslowski’s Blind Chance (Przypadek, 1987); or the similar depiction of alternative destinies in Run, Lola, Run (Lola Rennt, directed by T. Tykwer, 1988).
5 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 27.
6 As throughout these ghazals, the yār (‘Friend’) evokes at once God as al-Walī (the Close, Protecting One), and also each of the protecting and guiding ‘Friends of God’ (walī Allāh) described in several key passages of the Qur’ān. This keynote term (yār) is repeated twice here in the last half-line of verse 7, and indicated as well in Ḥāfiẓ’s direct allusion at the end of line 5 to the famous verse 5:54 from the Qur’ān on the divine renewing/salvific function of these Friends of God as the malāmiyya: ‘... those who do not fear the blame of any blamer.’
7 According to the version in Ibn Māja’s Sunan (I, 44): ‘God has 70 [or 700/70,000] veils of light and darkness: if He were to remove them, the radiant splendours of His Face would burn up whoever was reached by His Gaze.’ Wensinck, Concordance (I, 464), also cites related versions of this same ḥadīth from the collections of both Muslim and Ibn Ḥanbal.
8 Or at least on the surface, at first reading, since in fact the simple, curiously dangling ‘but’ (valī) at the end of the first half-line here is itself also the Qur’ānic Arabic term for the divine ‘Friend’ (yār), whose presence (and apparent absences) are the subject of the entire ghazal.
9 Bukhārī’s Sahīh, chapter on tafsīr (of Sura 45); also found in the ḥadīth collections of Muslim and Ibn Hanbal.
10 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 66.
11 Kār: intentionally echoing the eternally ‘Working-Creator’, Kardagār, who appears at and as the conclusion of this journey, at the very end o
f line 7. See also line 5 of the preceding ghazal.
12 The heavenly ‘spheres’ whose motions together were assumed, in the accepted Ptolemaic–Aristotelean cosmology of Ḥāfiẓ’s time, to be the ultimate (visible) instruments of the chains of divine causality, or the ultimate ground of those apparent secondary causes (sabab) that are inquired about at the end of the opening verse.
The Semiotic Horizons of Dawn in the Poetry of Ḥāfiẓ
Franklin Lewis
For His anger is but for a moment,
His favor is for life;
Weeping may endure for a night,
But joy comes in the morning.
– Psalm 30:5 (New King James Version)
Es tagt, es wirft auf’s Meer den Streif die Sonne;
Aufflatternd sucht der junge Greif die Sonne;
Auch du lick’ auf und singe Morgenhymnen,
Als aller Wesen Bild begreif’ die Sonne...
– August von Platen, from ‘Ghaselen X’1
Au réveil, si douce la lumière – et ce bleu – Le mot ‘Pur’ ouvre mes lèvres.
Le jour qui jamais encore ne fut, les pensées, le tout en germe considéré sans obstacles – le Tout qui s’ébauche dans l’or et que nulle chose particulière ne corrompt encore.
Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry Page 43