To Baron von Hammer Purgstall, who died in Vienna during the last year,
we owe our best knowledge of the Persians. He has translated into
German, besides the "Divan" of Hafiz, specimens of two hundred poets,
who wrote during a period of five and a half centuries, from A.D. 1000
to 1550. The seven masters of the Persian Parnassus, Firdousi, Enweri,
Nisami, Dschelaleddin, Saadi, Hafiz, and Dschami, have ceased to be
empty names; and others, like Ferideddin Attar, and Omar Chiam, promise
to rise in Western estimation. That for which mainly books exist is
communicated in these rich extracts. Many qualities go to make a good
telescope,--as the largeness of the field, facility of sweeping the
meridian, achromatic purity of lenses, and so forth,--but the one
eminent value is the space-penetrating power; and there are many virtues
in books, but the essential value is the adding of knowledge to our
stock, by the record of new facts, and, better, by the record of
intuitions, which distribute facts, and are the formulas which supersede
all histories.
Oriental life and society, especially in the Southern nations, stand in
violent contrast with the multitudinous detail, the secular stability,
and the vast average of comfort of the Western nations. Life in the East
is fierce, short, hazardous, and in extremes. Its elements are few
and simple, not exhibiting the long range and undulation of European
existence, but rapidly reaching the best and the worst. The rich feed on
fruits and game,--the poor, on a watermelon's peel. All or nothing is
the genius of Oriental life. Favor of the Sultan, or his displeasure, is
a question of Fate. A war is undertaken for an epigram or a distich, as
in Europe for a duchy. The prolific sun, and the sudden and rank plenty
which his heat engenders, make subsistence easy. On the other side, the
desert, the simoom, the mirage, the lion, and the plague endanger it,
and life hangs on the contingency of a skin of water more or less.
The very geography of old Persia showed these contrasts. "My father's
empire," said Cyrus to Xenophon, "is so large, that people perish with
cold, at one extremity, whilst they are suffocated with heat, at the
other." The temperament of the people agrees with this life in extremes.
Religion and poetry are all their civilization. The religion teaches
an inexorable Destiny. It distinguishes only two days in each man's
history: his birthday, called _the Day of the Lot_, and the Day of
Judgment. Courage and absolute submission to what is appointed him are
his virtues.
The favor of the climate, making subsistence easy, and encouraging
an outdoor life, allows to the Eastern nations a highly intellectual
organization,--leaving out of view, at present, the genius of the
Hindoos, (more Oriental in every sense,) whom no people have surpassed
in the grandeur of their ethical statement. The Persians and the Arabs,
with great leisure and few books, are exquisitely sensible to the
pleasures of poetry. Layard has given some details of the effect which
the _improvvisatori_ produced on the children of the desert. "When the
bard improvised an amatory ditty, the young chief's excitement was
almost beyond control. The other Bedouins were scarcely less moved by
these rude measures, which have the same kind of effect on the wild
tribes of the Persian mountains. Such verses, chanted by their
self-taught poets, or by the girls of their encampment, will drive
warriors to the combat, fearless of death, or prove an ample reward,
on their return from the dangers of the _ghazon_, or the fight. The
excitement they produce exceeds that of the grape. He who would
understand the influence of the Homeric ballads in the heroic ages
should witness the effect which similar compositions have upon the wild
nomads of the East." Elsewhere he adds, "Poetry and flowers are the wine
and spirits of the Arab; a couplet is equal to a bottle, and a rose to a
dram, without the evil effect of either."
The Persian poetry rests on a mythology whose few legends are connected
with the Jewish history, and the anterior traditions of the Pentateuch.
The principal figure in the allusions of Eastern poetry is Solomon.
Solomon had three talismans: first, the signet ring, by which he
commanded the spirits, on the stone of which was engraven the name of
God; second, the glass, in which he saw the secrets of his enemies, and
the causes of all things, figured; the third, the east wind, which was
his horse. His counsellor was Simorg, king of birds, the all-wise fowl,
who had lived ever since the beginning of the world, and now lives alone
on the highest summit of Mount Kaf. No fowler has taken him, and none
now living has seen him. By him Solomon was taught the language of
birds, so that he heard secrets whenever he went into his gardens. When
Solomon travelled, his throne was placed on a carpet of green silk, of
a length and breadth sufficient for all his army to stand upon,--men
placing themselves on his right hand, and the spirits on his left. When
all were in order, the east wind, at his command, took up the carpet,
and transported it, with all that were upon it, whither he pleased,--the
army of birds at the same time flying overhead, and forming a canopy to
shade them from the sun. It is related, that, when the Queen of Sheba
came to visit Solomon, he had built, against her arrival, a palace, of
which the floor or pavement was of glass, laid over running water, in
which fish were swimming. The Queen of Sheba was deceived thereby, and
raised her robes, thinking she was to pass through the water. On the
occasion of Solomon's marriage, all the beasts, laden with presents,
appeared before his throne. Behind them all came the ant with a blade of
grass: Solomon did not despise the gift of the ant. Asaph, the vizier,
at a certain time, lost the seal of Solomon, which one of the Dews, or
evil spirits, found, and, governing in the name of Solomon, deceived the
people.
Firdousi, the Persian Homer, has written in the _Shah Nameh_ the annals
of the fabulous and heroic kings of the country: of Karun, (the Persian
Croesus.) the immeasurably rich gold-maker, who, with all his treasures,
lies buried not far from the Pyramids, in the sea which bears his name;
of Jamschid, the binder of demons, whose reign lasted seven hundred
years; of Kai Kaus, whose palace was built by demons on Alberz, in which
gold and silver and precious stones were used so lavishly, and such was
the brilliancy produced by their combined effect, that night and day
appeared the same; of Afrasiyab, strong as an elephant, whose shadow
extended for miles, whose heart was bounteous as the ocean, and his
hands like the clouds when rain falls to gladden the earth. The
crocodile in the rolling stream had no safety from Afrasiyab. Yet when
he came to fight against the generals of Kaus, he was but an insect in
the grasp of Rustem, who seized him by the girdle, and dragged him
from his horse. Rustem felt such anger at the arrogance of the King of
Mazinderan, that every hair on his body started up like a spear. The
gripe of his hand cracked the sinews of an enemy.
These legends,--with Chiser, the fountain of life, Tuba, the tree of
life,--the romances of the loves of Leila and Medschun, of Chosru and
Schirin, and those of the nightingale for the rose,--pearl-diving, and
the virtues of gems,--the cohol, a cosmetic by which pearls and eyebrows
are indelibly stained black,--the bladder in which musk is brought,--the
down of the lip, the mole on the cheek, the eyelash,--lilies, roses,
tulips, and jasmines,--make the staple imagery of Persian odes.
The Persians have epics and tales, but, for the most part, they affect
short poems and epigrams. Gnomic verses, rules of life, conveyed in a
lively image, especially in an image addressed to the eye, and contained
in a single stanza, were always current in the East; and if the poem
is long, it is only a string of unconnected verses. They use an
inconsecutiveness quite alarming to Western logic, and the connection
between the stanzas of their longer odes is much like that between the
refrain of our old English ballads,
"The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall,"
or
"The rain it raineth every day,"
and the main story.