NOTE II

A few words concerning the Kasîdah itself. Our Hâjî begins with a

_mise-en-scène_; and takes leave of the Caravan setting out for

Mecca. He sees the “Wolf’s tail” (_Dum-i-gurg_), the {Greek:

lykaugés}, or wolf-gleam, the Diluculum, the Zodiacal dawn-light,

the first faint brushes of white radiating from below the Eastern

horizon. It is accompanied by the morning-breath (_Dam-i-Subh_),

the current of air, almost imperceptible except by the increase

of cold, which Moslem physiologists suppose to be the early

prayer offered by Nature to the First Cause. The Ghoul-i-Biyâbân

(Desert-Demon) is evidently the personification of man’s fears

and of the dangers that surround travelling in the wilds. The

“wold-where-none-save-He (Allah)-can-dwell” is a great and

terrible wilderness (_Dasht-i-lâ-siwâ Hu_); and Allah’s Holy Hill

is Arafât, near Mecca, which the Caravan reaches after passing

through Medina. The first section ends with a sore lament that

the “meetings of this world take place upon the highway of

Separation”; and the original also has:—

The chill of sorrow numbs my thought:

methinks I hear the passing knell;

As dies across yon thin blue line

the tinkling of the Camel-bell.

The next section quotes the various aspects under which Life

appeared to the wise and foolish teachers of humanity. First

comes Hafiz, whose well-known lines are quoted beginning with

Shab-i-târîk o bîm-i-mauj, etc. Hûr is the plural of Ahwar, in

full Ahwar el-Ayn, a maid whose eyes are intensely white where

they should be white, and black elsewhere: hence our silly

“Houries.” Follows Umar-i-Khayyâm, who spiritualized Tasawwof, or

Sooffeism, even as the Soofis (Gnostics) spiritualized Moslem

Puritanism. The verses alluded to are:—

You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse

I made a second marriage in my house,

Divorced old barren Reason from my bed

And took the Daughter of the Vine to spouse.

(St. 60, Mr. Fitzgerald’s translation.)

Here “Wine” is used in its mystic sense of entranced Love for the

Soul of Souls. Umar was hated and feared because he spoke boldly

when his brethren the Soofis dealt in innuendoes. A third

quotation has been trained into a likeness of the “Hymn of Life,”

despite the commonplace and the _navrante vulgarité_ which

characterize the pseudo-Schiller-Anglo-American School. The same

has been done to the words of Isâ (Jesus); for the author, who is

well-read in the Ingîl (Evangel), evidently intended the

allusion. Mansur el-Hallâj (the Cotton-Cleaner) was stoned for

crudely uttering the Pantheistic dogma _Ana ’l Hakk_ (I am the

Truth, _i.e._, God), _wa laysa fi-jubbatî il’ Allah_ (and within

my coat is nought but God). His blood traced on the ground the

first-quoted sentence. Lastly, there is a quotation from

“Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes,” etc.: here {Greek: paîze}

may mean sport; but the context determines the kind of sport

intended. The Zâhid is the literal believer in the letter of the

Law, opposed to the Soofi, who believes in its spirit: hence the

former is called a Zâhiri (outsider), and the latter a Bâtini, an

insider. Moses is quoted because he ignored future rewards and

punishments. As regards the “two Eternities,” Persian and Arab

metaphysicians split Eternity, _i.e._, the negation of Time, into

two halves, _Azal_ (beginninglessness) and _Abad_ (endlessness);

both being mere words, gatherings of letters with a subjective

significance. In English we use “Eternal” (_Æviternus_, age-long,

life-long) as loosely, by applying it to three distinct ideas;

(1) the habitual, in popular parlance; (2) the exempt from

duration; and (3) the everlasting, which embraces all duration.

“Omniscience-Maker” is the old Roman sceptic’s _Homo fecit Deos_.

The next section is one long wail over the contradictions, the

mysteries, the dark end, the infinite sorrowfulness of all

existence, and the arcanum of grief which, Luther said, underlies

all life. As with Euripides “to live is to die, to die is to

live.” Hâjî Abdû borrows the Hindu idea of the human body. “It is

a mansion,” says Menu, “with bones for its beams and rafters;

with nerves and tendons for cords; with muscles and blood for

cement; with skin for its outer covering; filled with no sweet

perfume, but loaded with impurities; a mansion infested by age

and sorrow; the seat of malady; harassed with pains; haunted with

the quality of darkness (Tama-guna), and incapable of standing.”

The Pot and Potter began with the ancient Egyptians. “Sitting as

a potter at the wheel, Cneph (at Philæ) moulds clay, and gives

the spirit of life to the nostrils of Osiris.” Hence the

Genesitic “breath.” Then we meet him in the Vedas, the Being “by

whom the fictile vase is formed; the clay out of which it is

fabricated.” We find him next in Jeremiah’s “Arise and go down

unto the Potter’s house,” etc. (xviii. 2), and lastly in Romans

(ix. 20), “Hath not the potter power over the clay?” No wonder

that the first Hand who moulded the man-mud is a _lieu commun_ in

Eastern thought. The “waste of agony” is Buddhism, or

Schopenhauerism pure and simple, I have moulded “Earth on Earth”

upon “Seint Ysidre”’s well-known rhymes (A.D. 1440):—

Erthe out of Erthe is wondirli wrouzt,

Erthe out of Erthe hath gete a dignity of nouzt,

Erthe upon Erthe hath sett all his thouzt

How that Erthe upon Erthe may be his brouzt, etc.

The “Camel-rider,” suggests Ossian, “yet a few years and the

blast of the desert comes.” The dromedary was chosen as Death’s

vehicle by the Arabs, probably because it bears the Bedouin’s

corpse to the distant burial-ground, where he will lie among his

kith and kin. The end of this section reminds us of:—

How poor, how rich; how abject, how august,

How complicate, how wonderful is Man!

The Hâjî now passes to the results of his long and anxious

thoughts: I have purposely twisted his exordium into an echo of

Milton:—

Till old experience doth attain

To something of prophetic strain.

He boldly declares that there is no God as man has created his

Creator. Here he is at one with modern thought:—“En général les

croyants font le Dieu comme ils sont eux-mêmes,” (says J. J.

Rousseau, “Confessions,” I. 6): “les bons le font bon: les

méchants le font méchant: les dévots haineux et bilieux, ne

voient que l’enfer, parce qu’ils voudraient damner tout le monde;

les âmes aimantes et douces n’y croient guère; et l’un des

étonnements dont je ne reviens pas est de voir le bon Fénélon en

parler dans son Télémaque comme s’il y croyoit tout de bon: mais

j’espère qu’il mentoit alors; car enfin quelque véridique qu’on

soit, il faut bien mentir quelquefois quand on est évêque.” “Man

depicts himself in his gods,” says Schiller. Hence the

_Naturgott_, the deity of all ancient peoples, and with which

every system began, allowed and approved of actions distinctly

immoral, often diabolical. Belief became moralized only when the

conscience of the community, and with it of the individual items,

began aspiring to its golden age,—Perfection. “Dieu est le

superlatif, dont le positif est l’homme,” says Carl Vogt;

meaning, that the popular idea of a _numen_ is that of a

magnified and non-natural man.

He then quotes his authorities. Buddha, whom the Catholic Church

converted to Saint Josaphat, refused to recognize Ishwara (the

deity), on account of the mystery of the “cruelty of things.”

Schopenhauer, Miss Cobbe’s model pessimist, who at the humblest

distance represents Buddha in the world of Western thought, found

the vision of man’s unhappiness, irrespective of his actions, so

overpowering that he concluded the Supreme Will to be malevolent,

“heartless, cowardly, and arrogant.” Confucius, the “Throneless

king, more powerful than all kings,” denied a personal deity. The

Epicurean idea rules the China of the present day. “God is great,

but he lives too far off,” say the Turanian Santâls in Aryan

India; and this is the general language of man in the Turanian

East.

Hâjî Abdû evidently holds that idolatry begins with a personal

deity. And let us note that the latter is deliberately denied by

the “Thirty-nine Articles.” With them God is “a Being without

Parts (personality) or Passions.” He professes a vague

Agnosticism, and attributes popular faith to the fact that Timor

fecit Deos; “every religion being, without exception, the child

of fear and ignorance” (Carl Vogt). He now speaks as the “Drawer

of the Wine,” the “Ancient Taverner,” the “Old Magus,” the

“Patron of the Mughân or Magians”; all titles applied to the

Soofi as opposed to the Zâhid. His “idols” are the eidola

(illusions) of Bacon, “having their foundations in the very

constitution of man,” and therefore appropriately called

_fabulæ_. That “Nature’s Common Course” is subject to various

interpretation, may be easily proved. Aristotle was as great a

subverter as Alexander; but the quasi-prophetical Stagyrite of

the Dark Ages, who ruled the world till the end of the thirteenth

century, became the “twice execrable” of Martin Luther; and was

finally abolished by Galileo and Newton. Here I have excised two

stanzas. The first is:—

Theories for truths, fable for fact;

system for science vex the thought

Life’s one great lesson you despise—

to know that all we know is nought.