delightful. Dumas writes: “In addition to other interesting things
about the Georgians, there is one thing of which I have not spoken,
and not to do so would be to do them wrong. They have noses such as
no other race in the world have. Bestushev-Marlinski, the romancer,
made an ode about the Georgian nose, which I quote since I can not
hope to do better than he.”
“Have you reflected, dear readers, about what an admirable thing a
nose is?
A nose? Yes, a nose!
And how useful to every individual, who, as Ovid says, lifts his face
to heaven!
It is indeed a strange and unheard of ingratitude; not a poet has had
the idea of making an ode to a nose.
It has remained for me, who am not poet at all, or who at least make
no pretensions except to follow humbly the footsteps of great poets,
to have originated the idea.
In truth the nose has had that misfortune!
Man had invented many things for pleasure of the eyes. They have made
songs, compliments, kaleidoscopes, pictures, decorations, glasses,
And for the ears!
First in order, come earrings, _Robert le Diable_, _William Tell_,
_Fra Diavolo_, the violins of Stradivarius, the pianos of Erard, the
trumpets of Sax.
And for the mouth!
Carême, _la cuisinière bourgeoise_, the Almanach of the
Gastronomists. They have made soups of all kinds, from Russian
_batwigne_ to the cabbage soup of France. The mouth feeds upon the
reputation of the greatest men, from cutlets _à la Soubise_ to black
pudding _à la Richelieu_. Its lips have been compared to coral, its
teeth to pearls, its breath to benzoin. It has been served with
pheasants in plumage, and wood-cocks served whole. It has even been
promised roasted skylarks.
What on the other hand has been invented for the nose?
Oil of roses. And tobacco.
_Ah!_ ... what ingratitude, Philosophers my Masters, and Poets my
Brothers!
And yet how faithful is this member.... It is not a member, the
savants cry at me. Pardon, gentlemen, I make good the mistake. And
yet how faithful is this appendix, _Ah!_... Moreover, I insist that
this appendix serves us faithfully.
The eyes sleep; the mouth closes; the ears become deaf.
The nose alone is always busy and on guard.
It watches over our sleep. It contributes to our health. The other
parts of the body do stupid things; the hands, the feet. The hands
permit themselves to be caught in a sack like fools they are. The
feet stumble, make the body fall, by their awkwardness. And in this
last instance who suffers most? The feet do the wrong. It is the nose
that suffers.
How common is this expression: such and such a man has broken his
nose. Many noses have been broken since beginning of the world. But
be so kind as to mention one nose broken by its own fault! No, you
can not! All things fall upon the poor nose. Let it be so. It bears
everything with saintly patience. Sometimes, to be sure, it makes
bold to snore. But, when did you hear it complain? Let us forget that
nature created it an instrument of admiration, a speaking trumpet to
increase or diminish the voice. Let us say nothing of the service it
has rendered in making itself the intermediary between our souls and
the souls of flowers. Let us suppress the fame of its utility and
consider only its æsthetic claims, its beauty.
Cedar of Lebanon, it tramples beneath its feet the hyssop of the
mustache. Central column, it serves as base for the double arch of
the brows. Upon its capital rests the eagle which is thought; round
about it smiles flourish. With what pride the nose of Ajax was lifted
against the storm when he declared: _I will escape despite the gods!_
With what bravery the nose of the Great Condé (who was really great
only because of his nose) with what bravery the nose of the Great
Condé preceded every one, even the Great Condé himself, in the
intrenchments of the Spaniards! With what assurance the nose of
Dugazon, which had forty-two different movements, each more amusing
than the other, presented itself to the public!
No indeed, I do not believe the nose will remain in the obscurity in
which up to now, the ingratitude of man has left it.
But what are you thinking of! These are all noses of the occident.
There are oriental noses—And they are handsome ones.
Gentlemen of Vienna, of Paris, of Saint Petersburg, do you doubt the
superiority of the nose of the East, over your own?
In that case, Viennese, take the Danube! Parisians, take the
steamboat, and people of Petersburg, the _pericladnoi_, and say these
simple words: To Georgia!
_Ah!_ ... but I must announce to you in advance a deep humiliation.
If you should take to Georgia one of the largest noses in Europe, the
nose of Alcide Tousez, of Schiller, at the boundary of Tiflis, they
would look at you in surprise and say: “_Poor man_ ... he lost his
nose on the way! What a pity!”
When you entered the first street.... (What am I saying!) ... when
you passed the first house of the suburbs, you would be convinced
that all the Greek, Roman, German, French, Spanish, and even
Neapolitan noses, would wish to hide in shame, in the depths of the
earth, at sight of the nose of Georgia.
_Ah!_... _Good Heavens_ ... the beautiful noses of Georgia! The
robust noses, the magnificent noses! And there are noses of all
shapes; round, large, long, wide. There are noses of all colors:
White, rose, red, and violet. There are noses mounted with rubies,
others mounted with pearls. I even saw one mounted with turquoises.
You have only to press them between your fingers and the little one
will spout a pint of wine of Kaketie.
In Georgia a law of Vacktang IV had abolished the unit measure; it
has kept only the nose. Rich weaves are measured by the nose. They
say: “I brought seventeen noses of _tarmalama_ to make a dressing
gown, seven noses of _Kanaos_ for making trousers, one nose and a
half of sateen for a cravat.”
And they say that the women of Georgia consider this measure superior
to all others, especially the measures of Europe.”
Supreme lyric poetry (despite Robbie Burns) belongs to the Orient.
It can be produced only by a race with a long past, a race that has
warred much, enjoyed much, suffered much, loved much, made and unmade
gods. Such mighty things go to weaving of the tissue-thin lyric.
Lord Byron’s poetic ancestry goes far back to the sagamakers of
Iceland. He is child of the Nibelungs. Byron was the last fine
flowering of that which was England, for Great England now is of the
past. Slowly she has been drifting with the rest of the world toward
the piled up civilizations of yester year.
The slow, ripening of time must go to making of lyric poetry. I do
not believe many will contradict me when I state that Heine, Hafiz,
Anacreon, and Tu Fu, are the supreme lyric poets of the world—the
Jew, the Persian, the Greek, and the Man of China.
It is said that the best champagne is made from grapes grown upon
land that has been cultivated for ages. A similar statement might
be made in regard to lyric poetry. The greatest lyric poets of the
world, they who represent it at its purest and best, Heine, Hafiz, Tu
Fu, and Anacreon, represent the oldest races of Asia. Each is rich
with the memory of a past that is glorious in achievement as history
tells us, and remains among great traditions today. Not one was of
the Christian race. In their veins there was either the blood of
oriental Asia, or, as in the case of Anacreon, its tradition, having
been born in Teos, one of the voluptuous Ionian cities of Asia Minor.
Time was needed for ripening and perfecting of the races that bore
them, because great poets are not born of unripe races. Their blood
must be tempered by time. Slow centuries intervened between them.
Anacreon lived somewhere in the neighborhood of five hundred years
before Christ; Hafiz about thirteen hundred years after Christ. The
exact date is uncertain. It is known, however, that in the year 1389,
according to our reckoning of time, he was living in his beloved
Shiraz, where he died and that at that time he was very old. Tu Fu
lived in Eighth Century China, under Emperors of Tang. And Heine
lived well on into the nineteenth century of our own day.
The age of each was made turbulent and restless by great conquerors.
Each knew the domination of warriors whose armies shook the earth.
Anacreon knew the devastating wars of Cyrus the Great; Hafiz, the
brutal Tamerlane who was the scourge of God, and who made towers of
human heads to rival in height the tower of Babel; Tu Fu saw Turkish
rebels destroy Ch’ang-an, one of earth’s loveliest dream-cities; and
Heine was born on the very day that Napoleon was made First Consul of
France.
The best source of information concerning them is their words,
although the outward facts of Heine’s life are told accurately enough
by history, and a literature has grown up about his art. Few definite
facts remain of Anacreon or Hafiz. Old Chinese writers tell us of
Tu Fu with eloquence, with emotion. We do know, however, that each
saw the splendid historical panorama of a world in transition unroll
before his eyes; and that each saw the dominant forces in action that
resulted in making the world of today. None has been circumscribed by
the age in which he lived because his appeal has been universal, to
humanity, whose heart beats responsively under chlamys of caftan. The
lyrics of Tu Fu are as fresh and readable as if they had been written
yesterday.
Perhaps the preservation of the elder writers is somewhat worthy
of remark when we consider the periods in which they lived and
the centuries that have intervened, since lyric poets have not
been beloved of their contemporaries, nor indeed of conventional
scholars of the ages, because of unrestraint of utterance, and their
untamable fire. Their souls are revolutionary. They do not follow
the established order. Too frequently they utter the naked thought.
Someone has said that degeneracy and prudery go together. The history
of creative ages seems to prove it.
In addition, lyric poets have always loved life for its own sake,
unenlivened of faith and unsanctified of the spirit. Their sense and
appreciation of the present has been so real, vivid, that there was
left neither room nor desire to ask for anything beyond. Upon earth,
in their brains, they were given the vision of a heaven.
Anacreon was the blithe Greek; Heine the bitter Hebrew; and Hafiz the
fiery-hearted Persian. Tu Fu was the sensitive, sumptuous souled,
supercivilized oriental, haunted with the richness of a past that was
too great. Anacreon was the Greek whom thought of death could not
terrify, who was ready to meet it with a smile. To him the beautiful
present was so satisfying, sufficient, that it was anodyne of ill.
And he loved the beautiful present blithely, without regret or anger
that it could not last. He gave his heart to it and was happy. He
asked no more.
To be sure he has no fiery strain of passion. This, critics have
counted to his discredit. And he gave us the light side of Greek
nature. His enthusiasms were no more permanent than his roses.
But they were as lovely, and inimitable. He was an intellectual
sensualist.
He praised love, wine, for the Tyrant of Samos. Despite it all he
was a great artist in surity of modeling and lightness of touch. A
graceful fancy was his, a courtier’s polished wit. He has kept the
favor of the ages. The world has loved him. _What Anacreon sang in
wanton splendor long ago, time has not destroyed_, says Horace.
_Nec ... quid olim lusit Anacreon delevit ætas._ And both Plato and
Ovid have praised him.
The fastidious, the scholarly Bodenstedt imitated him as well as
Hafiz, in his _Songs of Mirza Schaffy_. A book could be written of
them who loved him, who attempted to make his charm their own. A
fluent ease was his. He is a bird in careless singing. What grace! He
gives closely the sensation of natural things. His effect is indeed
nature’s, that of something without a soul, irresponsible. With him
intellect had not become the two-edged sword that cuts the hand. His
note of joy is pure, unmixed of care, as that of a boy. He was of the
fine free ages when the spirit was unfettered. Coming to him fresh
from reading writers of today, is like stepping from a heated yellow
ball room, filled with dizzy whirling figures, out into the fresh,
pure air of dawn.
Heine worshipped with his soul the divinity of Anacreon, the pagan
Venus, but the fear of the Hebrew God of Wrath was in his heart, and
that consuming modern quality called _grief_ had set its seal upon
him. What unfortunate combination of gifts for a lyric genius!
All his life he fled them, until his strength was gone, he fell ill,
and died, fled them wildly in pitiful attempt to reach just once
the shelter of Anacreon’s Greek Garden of Pleasure, there to chase
butterflies among the roses. Centuries had passed since the serene
day of Anacreon. Heine’s frail body tried to bridge the ages. It was
impossible. He could not right the wrong of having been born out of
time. Death was the result.
To be sure he created a miniature world of grace, of beauty, but
into it he put a tragic heart. Tu Fu was both beloved vagabond and
eloquent minstrel, under the dying moons of Cathay.
Each of these lyrists at periods of their lives gave themselves
to dissipation in futile attempt to catch, to hold the fleeting
joy-world. It embittered the heart of the Hebrew, burnt up his life
and hastened his death. It saddened deeply the Persian. It saddened
Tu Fu and killed him. But the Greek it could not touch. He was of the
Brotherhood of Pan who may not grieve.
The day of each was a day when old things were changing, giving place
to new. It was a period indeed that has no little in common with
today with which important parallels might be drawn. The Persians
under Cyrus were devastating the seductive Ionian cities of Asia.
Anacreon, who was about eighteen at this time, fled with his parents
to Thrace, thence to Samos, part of the way, it is pleasant to fancy,
along the beautiful road that bordered the shore of Asia Minor,
between white-walled cities and the sea. The Greek world was being
remodeled. Decisive battles were recorded, and Tu Fu fought long
years in the wars which destroyed a proud civilization.
Heine’s day was one of popular upheaval, revolution. It knew the
eloquent speech of La Salle, the denunciative writing of Börne. A
change of spirit was coming over Europe. Class prejudice was dying a
hard death. The right of the individual was being born.
Hafiz’ period was similar. And yet he paid as little attention to
it as did Goethe, in the days when the Revolution was sweeping on.
Dynasty after dynasty had succeeded each other in Persia whose
members made either Shiraz, the home of Hafiz, their place of
residence, or Ispahan, or Kirman, until at length Tamerlane came
along and beheaded them all. Hafiz’ political horizon was like to
Heine’s in its uncertainty, and in its change of outlook. Like Heine,
he saw world-conquerors sweep away the firm ground from beneath his
feet, and he glimpsed far vision of a world in which there should be
no inequality. He had the poet’s vision of the future’s justice. The
definite facts of Hafiz’ life are few, unsatisfactory.
One reason we know so little of him is that, with him, thought took
place of action. Verse was his way of leading an active life. An
idea was action. The eyes of his fellow men might not make this
interpretation. His real name was Schems-eddin-Muhammed. Hafiz is his
proud poet’s name of praise, meaning Mighty in Memory. It is fabled
indeed that he knew the Koran by heart.
He was born in Shiraz, which is situated in the fertile valley of
the Roknabad, a river he likens to the River of Paradise. Here life
was pleasant just as it was with Heine in the merry Rhineland, and
with Tu Fu in his youth, in the marvelous palaces of Ch’ang-an, amid
moonlight carven jade and gold. The time was the early fourteenth
century, making him for a little while a contemporary of Dante,
Hafiz’ youth and the Italian’s old age coinciding. In his youth, or
perhaps early manhood, (We are reasonably sure 1389 approximates the
date of his death.) there must have been a season of peace in the
valley of the river, even if it were breathing space in midst of wars.
The Mongolian power had fallen. Persia was coming to her own. Sultan
Sedscha, son of the conquering Mosaffer, was friend and companion
poet of Hafiz. During this lull in war’s alarms each gave himself to
the joy of living, and life in the blessed city of Shiraz was good
to remember. He says that nowhere did roses bloom so luxuriantly.
And we are glad to believe him. Sultan Sedscha was the man to value
Hafiz. He, too, liked better flower-faced, almond-eyed beauties of
the harem, dance, song, than fast, meditation or the swinging prayers
of the mystics. Religion was the worn-out side of pleasure. It was
the old clothes of men’s pleasures gone to rags. For a little while
there was general inclination among the people to turn to real life
and give over vain dreaming.
Of this healthful, sane impulse, Hafiz was poet, uniting as he did
the imaginative reach of Rûmi, with the firm grasp on material
things, the worldly wisdom of Saadi. But he was greater than either
in artistic sense of form, which in the quatrain attained grace and
distinction comparable with Anacreon. After the winter of war this
was fertile spring, when life blossomed, and with it, genius.
Genghis Khan preceded Hafiz. Tamerlane came along in his old age
and devastated the valley whose charm transferred to literature is
unique in history, which lay between the peaks of purple, monstrous
Persian mountains, and which he loved so greatly he never wished to
go elsewhere. After fall of the Mongolian power, founded by Genghis
Khan, the cities of Persia, Shiraz, Jesd, Ispahan, Bagdad, Hormus,
became independent cities after the manner of independent cities of
Italy, in the Middle Age. And like them, too, centers of art, of
dominant thought.
Hafiz belonged to religious order of the Sufis, which he is said to
have joined in youth. Later it is probable he became their head,
although we know his free, vigorous mind could not long be bound
by tenets of an order. The Vizier, Kiwam-eddin, founded a public
school for him that he might have an assured income. These duties
Hafiz discharged more faithfully than the founder who acquired the
disagreeable habit of forgetting pay day, and the fact that poets
share with the world the vulgar need of eating. The following is
Hafiz’ effective manner of reminding him of negligence:
Thou jingling rhyme with the kernel of wit
Away to the master! Make quick work of it!
When the place shall be right and with it the hour
From your eloquent lips let a gay jest flower.
In case it should please him, brighten his heart,
Within it conceal this question with art:
Does it seem to him right (Oh! light be your tone!)
That the slave who well serves him receive but a stone?
Here is another poetic remonstrance showing that the great in his day
had interesting peculiarities.
TO SULTAN MESSUD
(_On finding his ass in the sultan’s stable_)
Through spirit voices thou hast learned
How into night my day is turned,
All in three years thou gavest me,
Or that thy Vizier gave for thee
Was taken from me in a trice,
And vanished stealthily as mice.
I found myself but yesterday
In dreams, in thy broad stable way
And trusted not my eyes to see
An ass eating who thus to me
Up-looking from his manger there:
_Hast thou seen me, pray, anywhere?_
Now since I am not wise enough
To understand dream-written stuff,
And none in wisdom equal thee,
Great Sultan, explain, pray to me!
Not only the ruler of Shiraz, but rulers of other Persian cities
knew Hafiz, gave proofs of favor, and invited him to court. But the
traveling! No one ever had greater distaste for it. He did not even
make the pilgrimage to Mecca. The thought of leaving his beloved city
made him miserable. This attitude recalls Horace, and Keats, too,
with his love for the green English country. It is commonly written
that he went to Jesd once on the invitation of Shah Jehja, tempted
by hope and need of money. But money was not forthcoming. He writes
philosophically, glad to get home:
This is the way of a Shah, Hafiz;
Therefore be not grieved.
The historian Muhammed Kasim Firischteh disputes the story of his
never having left Shiraz, save on one occasion, for the fruitless
journey to Jesd. He relates how he went on ship board, on invitation
of some distant Sultan, and how a storm came up just as they were
ready to sail. Hafiz was in terror. He made hasty pretext of a
forgotten farewell in the city. He left the ship, and started post
haste back to Shiraz.
Of his family life we know one fact, that on December 23, 1362, he
lost a grown son. For this we have his words. He wrote a poem about
it. The story is current that in his old age Timur the Conqueror came
to Shiraz and destroyed the dynasty of the Muzaffer, then angrily
summoned Hafiz: “With my sword have I conquered the greater part
of the earth, put the inhabitants of cities, entire provinces to
death, in order that my two cities Bokhara and Samarcand might be
more splendid. Now how dare you say you would give them both for
the mole upon your sweetheart’s cheek!” Hafiz bent to the ground in
salutation, replying: “_Oh Lord of the World! It is because of such
generosity that you see me poor, my robe full of holes._”
Timur was so delighted with the witty answer he not only forgave him,
but sent him away with a gift.
The songs of Hafiz are illustrative of the fact that whatever comes
from the heart has independent life, regardless of friend or foe.
He did not collect his poems. He seems to have given no thought to
their preservation. He made them for joy of the making. He gave
them carelessly to his disciples, friends. Shortly after his death
Muhammed Sulandem, a friend, gathered seven hundred verses which he
named _The Divan_. But without this friendly intervention they would
have lived. They had become property of the people of Persia. They
were preserved by word of mouth. They were on all tongues. They could
have been suppressed no more than the wind which bloweth where it
listeth. Like the wind they, too, were a natural force and would have
their way.
He is the most widely read poet of the world. Hafiz is the favorite
of the Mohammedan Orient. He found the heart of the people. And he
kept it. He is sung by the tiller of the field, camel driver of the
desert, the boatmen upon the Red Sea. When the religious zealots
found it was impossible to suppress his poems, they set about making
them innocuous. They said they were allegories; that the writer
was a master of _double entendre_, that he wrote one thing and
meant another. With this object in view they called him _the mystic
tongue_, and the _translator of the unseen_. Indeed an attempt was
made in Turkey to suppress _The Divan_, in Constantinople, under
pretext of heresy. The Mufti Abu Su’ud rescued it by saying that when
it was read one should keep the good and throw away the evil. It was
a Turk who, in the sixteenth century, wrote the first intelligent
commentary, showing people its true, long forgotten meaning.
Hafiz lies buried, it is good to know, where he loved to be, Mosella,
the pleasure place by Shiraz. Loti, the eloquent, has told us about
it in _Ver Ispahan_. He made a journey there. He did some of his
most charming writing. In the year 1451, a conquering Sultan erected
a splendid tomb in his honor, which has since been neglected and
fallen to ruin. But the grave remains a place of pleasant pilgrimage
for Persians, just as it was for Loti, and especially for the people
of Shiraz. There is kept a holiday spirit in memory of the man who
loved, then glorified life.
When that accomplished linguist, Friedrich von Bodenstedt, was living
in Tiflis he learned Persian. He wrote of Hafiz: