Kitabı oku: «Solace of Lovers. Trost der Liebenden», sayfa 4

FIVE REALMS OF BEING¹ A discourse on the Persian poetical world
Dariush Shayegan

Of the hundreds of poets in the history of Persian literature, Iranians consider five (by some counts six) poets to be the ideal representatives of Persian poeticness. These five poets are not merely distinguished by their unique characteristics, but also because, in their own way, each of them is a manifestation of an intellectual genealogy that expresses a particular cosmology in a distinct style.

Ferdowsi is the embodiment of epic poetry manifested in the “Shahnameh”, which was influenced by myths from the “Avesta” as well as Parthian and Sasanid tales revitalised after the Arab conquest of Persia led to a reawakening of Persian national identity.

Omar Khayyam – even though some questions remain about the true authorship of the Rubaiyat (quatrains) attributed to him – represents a type of disparity in Persian creativity where opposing concepts such as faith and doubt, submission and defiance, moment and eternity, etc. are brought together. He is the embodiment of an irreducible individual soul that is neither completely faithful nor faithless, believes neither in this world nor the next, obeys neither forced convictions nor prescribed agnosticism; a soul that sees this world as a series of images that appear in the light of the illusional “Magic Lantern”² and disappear into a “Grave of Nothingness”³. With his unique intellect, which is capable of demythologising, he is a symbol of an aspect of a Persian worldview.

Mowlana Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi is the apex of a mystical tradition whose genealogy can be traced back to Al-Hallaj, Bayazid Bastami, Sanai and Attar. It is not surprising that Iranians consider his masterpiece, “Masnavi-ye Ma’navi”, to be almost holy. Mowlana is a poet of love. His other masterpiece, “Diwan-e Shams-e Tabrizi”, speaks of the soul’s internal journey in search of the beloved. In this work Mowlana abandons himself with a maddening, internal rhythm, sometimes going to such extremes that, like fireworks in the sky, the concepts lose clarity and become unfathomable. Diwan-e Shams is a separation from one’s self in an ecstatic trance of whirling and dancing to the magical rhythm of words and images; it creates such a sense of joyful ecstasy that it can only speak of the poet’s deeply emotional spirit or his holy madness. For Mowlana the place for love is a “placeless place”, because the beloved is everywhere and nowhere at once:

“I am not made of earth, nor water, nor of wind, nor fire;

nor of the Divine Throne, nor the carpet,

nor the cosmos, nor mineral.”⁴

Saadi may be considered an Iranian version of what ancient Greek culture termed “paideia”, the ideal representative of social norms. He is not just a prime example of humanitas, or Persian customs and culture; his logical thought process and sense of balance has turned his poems into golden rules for social interaction. In other words, Saadi represents a type of practical ethics that is rooted in the Sassanid era as well as in proverbs, aphorisms and political manifestos. However, it is unfair to reduce this great poet to his practical propositions, since he is also a master of lyric poetry. The clarity, lucidity, coherence and deceptive effortlessness of Saadi’s words make him deserving of the title of “master of speech”. He “creates” a type of speech that has turned his ethical teachings into timeless models for every Iranian with a taste for literature. There are also important aesthetic and cultural aspects to Saadi’s works. Even when he provides advice, he manages to avoid the bitter tone of an advisor, presenting his views in a most beautiful manner:

“[...] it is however, not concealed from enlightened men, who are able to discern the tendency of words, that pearls of curative admonition are strung upon the thread of explanation, and that the bitter medicine of advice is co-mingled with the honey of wit, in order that the reader’s mind should not be fatigued, and thereby excluded from the benefit of acceptance [...].”⁵

Hafez is known as “the revealer of secrets” in Persian literature. He is a unique poet whose poetry inextricably combines form and content. The lines of Hafez’s poetry are symmetrical in nature but lacking in chronology or a logical connection to one another. Instead, they act like intertwined, concentric circles, vibrating and communicating different layers of meaning, just like the vibrating waves on the surface of a pond in which a stone has been thrown. The foundations of mysticism combine with the miracle of speech and a magnificent aesthetic in Hafez’s poetry to create some of the most invaluable gems of the Iranian spirit. Perhaps influenced by a remonstrative point of view, Hafez uses powerful words even in his seemingly blasphemous utterings, and his poetry is filled with instances in which the devout and the heretic are brought face to face. With great audacity, he tears the “mask of hypocrisy” away from the devout, taking this conflict, which is as old as history itself, to its extremes. For him, the truth is too contradictory to be able to fit into the simplistic, super ficial sermons of preachers, its spirit too wild to be tamed by the dry proscriptions of the close-minded pious. In other words, Hafez is the revealer of the tirelessness of Persian literature.

Together, these five poets compose a system that remains alive and present for every Iranian critical thinker. For Iranians, these poets do not belong to a forgone era; they are ever-present. They each reflect an aspect of the Persian soul, and together they cover the entirety of Persian life and cosmology, creating a mysterious connection between individual Iranians and the realms of being created by each poet.

For instance, one can be absorbed in the gallantry and heroic epic of Ferdowsi, reach an ecstatic trance with Mowlana, refer to the wise advice of Saadi in day-to-day life, traverse the delicate mysticism of Hafez to see the universe at the Cup of Jamshid in a thousand shades and contemplate the dizzying dance of particles in the universe through Khayyam’s demystified lens. Passing from one phase to the next, from one realm to another makes every strand of one’s being vibrate, bringing it to life; sometimes it is in harmony with all the other voices; sometimes the voices merge and drown as one. Occasionally the tone turns heroic, sometimes the poet loses himself and other times he becomes intensely aware to the point of intoxication. But never does he become alienated from himself like contemporary men. These poets are like the multifaceted surfaces of Iranian art. Just like the Ardebil carpets from the Safavid era, where each section has its own particular order and geometric and floral patterns, giving it a unique sense of movement and focal point; or like unparalleled Iranian miniatures, where the viewer can experience a variety of different events and spatial qualities in a single work of art; here in the world of poetry, each of these five poets also narrates a particular emotional focal point, and together they create a chorus of the Iranian soul, a soul that is intimate with these different dimensions. In other words, different states of being, from total stillness to moments of amazement, as well as the rhythm of different seasons are simultaneously present here, in a single garden which is composed of the works of these poets.

Floating in the fleeting moment of one of Khayyam’s quatrains, picking a flower from Saadi’s “Gulistan” and “Bustan”, getting drunk on the variable rhythms of Mowlana and following the ups and downs of the heroes in the “Shahnameh”: these are like voyages that an Iranian can partake in based on his interests and capacities. Each of these poets is in tune with the existential dimensions of his own particular point in time, whether that be a time of epic narratives, a mystical time of returning to one’s self, a time of losing one’s self in ecstasy and joy or a kind of presence in the moment, as in the work of Khayyam.

For Iranians, it does not matter how many centuries Khayyam predated Hafez by, or that Hafez came before Saadi, and Ferdowsi before them all. These poets are not categorised chronologically as they are in the West, where Classic poets precede Romantic poets, who are then followed by the Symbolists and later still by the Surrealists. For Iranians, these poets are part of their eternal wisdom, giving them a sense of holiness, as if they are the rays of a central sun within the Persian spirit. Since each of these poets defines a particular realm that leads to the poeticness of Iranians, one can think of them as a kind of planetary system in which each poet is a moon traversing the Persian cosmos. This is why Iranians understand everything based on an internal image and rhythm; it is the reason why they think through poetry. This interconnectedness of thought and poetry is a characteristic that, in my opinion, is unparalleled in other cultures.

The aim of this essay is to present a phenomenological analysis of the poetic awareness of Iranians in relation to these five poets. Philosophical references, be they Greek (Peripatetic) or Islamic, go beyond the limits of this paper, although there is no doubt that both of these schools influenced these great poets, all of whom were learned men of their times. As Shafiei Kadkani writes: “No one can doubt that Saadi was well-versed in philosophy, Islamic jurisprudence, the Prophet’s sayings, analysis, mysticism and Sufism, history and other aspects of this culture.”⁶

We must also remember that, historically speaking, philosophy is an area that was pursued alongside literature in Iran. Although there is no doubt that the essence of philosophy has influenced the poetic memory of Iranians, it was never an integral part of classical education. Except for scholars who were specifically concerned with philosophy, most well-learned individuals became acquainted with the subject through poetry. The point here is that the poetic perspective of Iranians was shaped by these five poets (or by some counts six – if we include Nezami), great men whom Nader Naderpour calls “six peaks of Iranian literature”.⁷

Based on their own particular way of being and perspective on life, Iranian literati can take advantage of these five realms of being: in what I refer to as “a period of presence”. In this essay, by referring to these “periods of presence” and focusing on the point that each of these poets (as mentioned above) represents the apex of a spiritual genealogy in Persian thought, I will show how by opening themselves to these different realms of being and remembering their heritage, Iranians absorb the previous levels of each of these ideological movements. By spending time with the “Masnavi”, for instance, they are joined to poets who came before this work, like Sanai and Attar. My intention here is not to ignore the many other Iranian poets, some of whom are quite important; instead it is to emphasise that the essence of these poets has become manifest in these peaks of Persian poetry, just like many mountain passages lead to the cliff.

Let us begin by looking at Ferdowsi, a prime example at the time of epic narratives, a time where the hero is raised to a level of enlightenment through mythopoesis. In Ferdowsi’s poetry, a hero like Kay-Khosrow disappears from this world to become an otherworldly hero. In the story of Jamshid, Ferdowsi shows how wealth and power can be so intoxicating and seductive that it can make someone like Jamshid turn his back on the creator and speak of his own “greatness and kingly power”, going so far as to state, “in this world nothing matters but I”, so that ultimately he ends up losing his throne due to his ego and arrogance. Then Kay-Khosrow, a wise and just king, abdicates from the throne, turns his back on the earthly life and seeks paradise instead because he knows that power can turn evil and he fears that he will share Jamshid’s fate:

“For now I have found all that I sought

And my desire for the throne is naught.”⁸

This message from the “Shahnameh” later appears in the mystical tales of philosophers like Suhrawardi, turning a heroic epic into a mystical epic, essentially transforming the timeless version of the wise-king (Kay-Khosrow) into an eternal version of the complete (enlightened) man.

Every period of presence is a progression to another level of being, each level a passage from the outer to an inner dimension. While in the case of Ferdowsi, the epic describes a different form of being for the hero with a focus on eternal life, the mystical path of love in Mowlana and Hafez describes a transition from human to holy love. This passage has an aspect of ecstasy and joyous wonder with Mowlana, whereas in Hafez the progression is much more delicate because, due to his aesthetics and delicate taste, Hafez avoids expressing anything with full conviction and prefers to cover everything in an intricate shroud of ambiguity (except when it comes to revealing the hypocrisy of the devout and the pious, where he is incessantly direct). The ascents, descents and numerous pauses in Hafez’s delicate mystical journey make one think that nothing is absolutely positive or negative. Every forward movement toward a point is simultaneously an evasion of that point, and the progression of love appears through this endless tension of back and forth. To keep the soul constantly moving forth, Hafez never completes the circle of being. He maintains a distance between an eternity without beginning and an eternity without end. Hafez is well aware of the limitations of man as long as he is trapped in this “ruinous earthly world”, and this is exactly why his mysticism and spirituality are combined with a type of rebellion and impertinence against sanctimonious pretenders; it is also the reason behind his impetuous opposition to close-minded fanatics. Hafez praises the outlook of the libertine while condemning the self-righteousness of the ignorant. For Hafez, the Muhtasib⁹ and the devout (which he uses synonymously) are symbols of disingenuousness, and for Mowlana “the leg of syllogisers is of wood; a wooden leg is very infirm”. Hafez speaks of the archetypes of mysticism and tradition in his poem on the night of separation; he describes man as a pilgrim in exile and recounts his progression in love, the long path he takes to reach the creator and the “realm of being”, which is a path filled with obstacles and pain. Where he speaks of the pain and anxiety of awareness, the modern tone of the poetry is very engaging:

“Lost is the grail in the dark of the night

Appear in the corner of the sky oh leading light