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The Festival of Spring
PUBLISHED BY
JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW,
Publishers to the University.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON.
_New York_, _The Macmillan Co._
_London_, _Simpkin, Hamilton and Co._
_Cambridge_, _Macmillan and Bowes_.
_Edinburgh_, _Douglas and Foulis_.
MCMIII.
The Festival of Spring
from
The Díván of Jeláleddín
Rendered in English Gazels after Rückert's Versions
_With an Introduction
And a Criticism of the Rubáiyát of
Omar Khayyám_
By
William Hastie, D.D.
Professor of Divinity, University of Glasgow
Glasgow
James MacLehose and Sons
Publishers to the University
1903
'In Depth of Conception, as well as in Loftiness
of Flight and Sublimity of Language, JELÁLEDDÍN
surpasses all the Poets of the East.'
PROFESSOR HERMANN ETHÉ.
'The greatest Mystical Poet of any Age.'
REYNOLD A. NICHOLSON.
'And all the Breeze of Fancy blows,
And every Dew-drop paints a bow,
The wizard Lightnings deeply glow,
And every Thought breaks out a Rose.'
TENNYSON.
This Book with its Sincere
Utterances of Love and Friendship
towards the Highest
is dedicated to
William A. Sanderson, Esq.
Byethorne, Galashiels
My ever faithful Friend
in Adversity, as in Prosperity
Old Songs are sweetest
Old Friends are best
Note
The current, popular spelling of Persian Names and Words has been
generally adopted in the following pages, in order to avoid any
appearance of pedantry. The _Turkish_ forms have occasionally been
preferred when in place, _e.g._ _Devlet_ for _Daulat_, and _Mevlānā_ for
_Maulānā_. The exact transliteration of the Persian—such as
Jalálu-'d-Din, Shams-ud-Din, Umar, G̲h̲asal, Díwán—will be found in the
foot-note references to more learned Works.
Contents
Introduction
Jeláleddín as a Persian Poet—Judgments of Scholars and Experts in
Persian Literature since Sir W. Jones—The Philosophical and
Theological Interest—Hegel—Tholuck—The Poetical Form—The
Gazel—The Divan—Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyám—Burns—Browning—Keats's
Nightingale—Coleridge echoes the Faith of Jeláleddín.
Fifty Gazels of Jeláleddín
PAGE
I. Light, 1
II. Death and Life, 2
III. Invocation, 3
IV. Faith, 4
V. Dawn, 5
VI. Allah Hu, 6
VII. Spring, 7
VIII. Spring's Festival, 8
IX. Dependence, 9
X. Mystical Union, 10
XI. Identity, 12
XII. Confession, 13
XIII. Discordia Concors, 14
XIV. Renovation, 15
XV. Revolving in Mystic Dance, 16
XVI. The Soul in All, 17
XVII. Responsibility, 18
XVIII. Action, 19
XIX. Bondage, 20
XX. Love's Freedom, 21
XXI. In My Heart, 22
XXII. Not Deaf to Love, 23
XXIII. Assimilation, 24
XXIV. Cleanliness, 25
XXV. Where is He? 26
XXVI. Love's Slavery, 27
XXVII. Psyche in Tears, 28
XXVIII. Substitutional, 29
XXIX. God's Throne, 30
XXX. The Lion of God, 31
XXXI. Self-Realisation, 33
XXXII. Thy Hand, 34
XXXIII. The Priests, 35
XXXIV. The Pilgrims, 36
XXXV. Many Faiths, One Lord, 37
XXXVI. Love Absolute, 38
XXXVII. Renunciation, 39
XXXVIII. All Fulness, 40
XXXIX. Friendship, 41
XL. The Friend Supreme, 42
XLI. Immortality, 44
XLII. The First and Last, 45
XLIII. Mystic Love Dance, 46
XLIV. Dream Fear, 47
XLV. The Cry of Love, 48
XLVI. Night Thought, 49
XLVII. Up out of Night, 50
XLVIII. All One, 52
XLIX. O Wake in Me, 53
L. Jeláleddín, 55
Notes
A. Sir William Jones on the Mystical Poetry of the Persians. 57
B. Hegel on the Character of the Persian Lyrical Poetry. 59
C. Von Hammer's Account of Omar Khayyám. 61
Introduction
I.
Jeláleddín Rúmí (A.D. 1207-1273) is now universally recognised by 'those
who know,' as the greatest of the Persian Mystical Poets. This
supremacy, in his own sphere, has been unanimously accorded to him for
more than six centuries, by unnumbered myriads of his own disciples and
followers in the Oriental World, who have been wrapt in devoutest
admiration of the great Master to whom they have owed the highest joy
and inspiration of their spiritual life. And at last, in our own Western
World, the great Persian scholars of Europe, looking at him without
personal or national bias, and through the clear, cold light of the new
time, have come more and more, as with one voice, to join in this chorus
of praise. His most appreciative recent editor and interpreter in
England, in presenting a few leaves plucked with reverent hand from what
he calls Jeláleddín's 'wreath of imperishable Lyric Song,' offers his
own careful and conscientious work to us, as a contribution 'to a better
appreciation of _the greatest mystical poet of any age_.' And with this
designation, as summing up the judgment of a capable expert and
critic—strange as it may sound—we venture, in all deference and
sincerity, to agree. Jeláleddín is now rising upon our literary horizon
in all his native Splendour—his name appropriately signifying 'The
Splendour of the Faith'—as at once the Dante, the St. Bernard, the
Spenser, the Milton, the Angelus Silesius, and the Novalis of the
Orient. As a religious Lyrical Poet his mellifluous music, his variety
of strain, his captivating charm of words, his purity of feeling, his
joyous faith, and his elevation of thought, have never been surpassed in
their own kind. Taking what Matthew Arnold has called 'the lyrical cry'
even in its widest range, it would be doing no one wrong—although it
dare hardly be done as yet—to rank Jeláleddín, when he comes fully
before us 'with all his singing robes about him,' with the very
highest—with Shakespeare, with Wordsworth and Keats and Shelley, and
with Goethe and Heine! He is certainly one of the most fertile poets of
Nature among the Lyrical Singers of all time, and the most exuberant, if
not also the most spiritual, Hymnist the world outside of Christendom
has yet produced.
This estimate, however shaded or qualified, cannot but appear at first
strangely exaggerated, and out of all just proportion, to those who
mayhap read the name of Jeláleddín now for the first time. Let us
listen, then, to the greatest students of Persian Poetry in the critical
Nineteenth Century, the judges who have highest authority on the
subject, and who have the best right to pronounce judgment on
Jeláleddín. And let us hear in the first place, as is his due, the most
learned Historian of Persian Poetry in the Nineteenth Century, who with
indefatigable industry and completest knowledge has adorned his pages
with Extracts from no less than Two Hundred of Persia's greatest Poets.
Joseph von Hammer, the great Austrian Orientalist (known later as Baron
Von Hammer-Purgstall and as the Historian of Arabic Literature in seven
immense volumes, containing Accounts of nearly ten thousand Authors)
says:—
'Jeláleddín Rumi is the greatest Mystical Poet of the East, the Oracle
of the Sofis, the Nightingale of the contemplative life, the Author of
the Mesnevi (a celebrated double-rhymed ascetic poem), and the Founder
of the Mevlevi, the most famous Order of Mystical Dervishes. As Founder
of this Order, as the Legislator of the Contemplative Life, and as the
Interpreter of Heavenly Mysteries, he is highly revered. And as such he
has to be estimated by quite a different standard from that which
applies to those Poets whose inspiration has not soared, like his, to
the Vision of Divine things, to the primal Fountain of Love and Light.
He cannot properly be compared either with Firdusi, the greatest of the
Persian Epic Poets, nor with Nizami, the greatest of the Romantic
Poets, nor with Saadi, the first of the moral Didactic Poets, nor with
Hafiz, the chiefest of the erotic Lyrical Poets; for all these won the
Palm of Poetry in entirely different fields from his. The only two
great Poets of his kind, with whom a comparison can be in place,
Senayi, the Author of the Mystical 'Flower Garden,' and Attar, the
Author of the Mystical 'Bird Dialogues.' But both these works stand, as
regards poetic merit, far below the Mesnevi, which is the Text Book of
all The Sofis, from the banks of the Ganges to the shores of the
Bosphorus. The Collection of Jeláleddín's 'Lyrical Poems'—his DIVAN,
properly so called—'is regarded by them as of still higher value; it is
practically the Law Book and the Ritual of all these Mystics. These
outbursts of the highest inspiration of its kind deserve to be more
closely considered, as it is from them that we see shining forth as in
clear splendour the essence of the Oriental Mysticism, the cardinal
Doctrine that All is One—the view of the ultimate Unity of all
Being—and giving with it Direction and Guidance to the highest goal of
Perfection by the contemplative Way of Divine Love. On the wings of the
highest religious enthusiasm, the Sofi, rising above all the outward
forms of positive Religions, adores the Eternal Being, in the
completest abstraction from all that is sensuous and earthly, as the
purest Source of Eternal Light. Mevláná Jeláleddín thus soars, not only
like other Lyrical Poets, such as Hafiz, over Suns and Moons, but even
above Space and Time, above the world of Creation and Fate, above the
Original Contract of Predestination, and beyond the Last Judgment, into
the Infinite, where in Eternal Adoration he melts into One with the
Eternal Being, and infinitely loving, becomes One with the Infinite
Love—ever forgetting himself and having only the great All in his
view.'[1]
Thus far the learned Von Hammer. But let us also hear the
judgment of the East itself, of which this is only a Western
echo, as it may be gathered from Devletshah, the greatest
native biographer—the Dr. Johnson we may appropriately say—of
the Persian Poets. Of Jeláleddín, he says:—
'His pure Heart is filled with Divine Mysteries, and through his
eradiating Soul streams the Infinite Light. His View of the World leads
the thirsty in the Vale of the Contemplative Life to the refreshing
Fountain of Knowledge; and his Guidance leads those who have wandered
in the Wilderness of Ignorance into the Gardens where Truth is really
known. He makes plain to the Pilgrim the Secrets of the Way of Unity,
and unveils the Mysteries of the Path of Eternal Truth:
As when the foaming Sea high swells in Wave upon Wave,
It casts out Pearls upon Pearls on every Shore they lave.'
And to cite only one Turkish Authority—for the Turks claim Jeláleddín as
their own, although a Persian of royal race, born at Balkh, old Bactra,
on the ground of his having sung and died at Qoniya, in Asia Minor (the
Iconium of Paul and Barnabas and Timothy and St. Thecla), whence he was
called Rumi 'the Roman,' usually rendered 'the Greek,' as wonning within
the confines of old Oriental Rome. This is how Fehîm Efendi, the Turkish
Historian of the Persian Literature, himself a Poet, begins his Sketch
of the Life of the great poetic Mystagogue:—
'As the ideal of Searchers after Truth here below, as the pattern of
the Pure, the Mevlana is honoured by great and small among the people,
by the aristocrat and the common man. In all circles his words are held
in high honour; among all the wise his knowledge is greatly esteemed;
and no pen has had the power to praise him, and to celebrate his
excellence worthily, or to describe it in fitting terms.
And should the fancy hold it can
His praise completely reach;
Mevlana's praise it ne'er shall scan—
How say it then in speech?'
Rosen, who gives this quotation, and an excellent rhymed German
translation of part of the Mesnevi, refers to that poem as not only 'one
of the most celebrated productions of the Persian Mysticism, but as
being regarded by many Mohammedans as almost equal in holiness to the
Koran and the Sunna.' Being attached, at the time he wrote, to the
German Embassy at Constantinople, Rosen also mentions that not only did
the educated Oriental regard the Mesnevi as the most perfect Book of
Edification, which when its contents were received into his mind and
heart, made him certain of Salvation; but that even the poor Persian
retailers of the products of their home industries, on the streets,
could recite with enthusiasm long passages from the poems of Jeláleddín.
We believe that this holds true to-day, more or less, of the whole
Mohammedan world.[2]
But coming to more familiar names, we might gather a whole cloud of the
most approved witnesses in this connection. Thus Sir William Jones, the
first great Anglo-Indian Scholar, the Columbus of the new Old World of
Sanskrit and Persian Literature, enters with wonderful sympathy and
insight into possession of the Persian and Hindu Mystical Poetry; he
refers to their great Maulavi, and his astonishing work, _The Mesnevi_;
and he translates the celebrated opening passage in rhyming couplets
which would not have been unworthy of Pope himself.[3] Sir William Jones
did not, indeed, touch Jeláleddín's Lyrics, but he rendered some
precious morsels of Hafiz, 'Odes,' as they are called, both in English
and French, in a way that made young European students and poets, like
Herder and Goethe, turn again to the East with yearning expectant eyes.
Similar testimony might be adduced from Henry Thomas Colebrooke, one of
the very greatest of the successors of Sir W. Jones. The chief Historian
of Persia, and the best informed Persian scholar of his day, Sir John
Malcolm (of Langholm), if less sympathetic than Sir W. Jones in his
painstaking account of the Persian Mystics, gives likewise the first
place to Jeláleddín.[4] And then much more definitely Sir Gore Ouseley,
the first English Biographer of the Persian Poets, gives Jeláleddín due
recognition in connection with the unrivalled Mesnevi.[5] The Journal of
the Asiatic Society, an ever valuable Magazine of Oriental learning, and
the parent of many others of its kind, has been enriched by the
contributions of many enthusiastic English scholars following in the
footsteps of Sir W. Jones, and it contains the earliest fragments of
English translations of Jeláleddín.[6] Robert Alfred Vaughan, in his
_Hours with the Mystics_, 1856, a popular, sympathetic, and still
attractive work, appreciates Jeláleddín, and compares him with Angelus
Silesius and Emerson, but all his knowledge of the Persian Mystic was
derived from Tholuck and Sir W. Jones. At last competent scholars began
to deal worthily with Jelál's poetry in English. Sir James W. Redhouse
has translated the First Book of the Mesnevi in rhyming couplets, with
the utmost fidelity and care; and another distinguished Persian scholar,
Mr. Whinfield, the most faithful English translator of Omar Khayyám, has
given an abridged version of the whole immense work, which in the
Persian original contains about 70,000 lines.[7] The Mesnevi has thus
come now to be pretty well known by English readers interested in the
subject; and in the last edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_,
Professor Hermann Ethé, an unquestionable authority, in his valuable
Articles on Persian Literature and Jeláleddín Rumi, sums him up as 'the
_greatest_ Pantheistic Writer of _all_ ages,' and speaks of 'his
_matchless_ Odes in which he soars on the wings of a genuine enthusiasm,
high over Earth and Heaven, up to the Throne of Almighty God.' Be it
noted, in passing, that it is at least remarkable how two such different
writers as the Turkish Devlet Shah and the learned German Orientalist
should both write of Jeláleddín in terms that undesignedly, but
irresistibly, recall by their very superlativeness, the famous lines of
Dr. Johnson on Shakespeare:—
'Each change of many-coloured Life he drew,
Exhausted Worlds and then imagin'd new;
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.'
All this makes it now intelligible that the late lamented Editor of the
_Encyclopædia Britannica_, Dr. W. Robertson Smith, when Professor of
Arabic at Cambridge, with the fine insight of the far-seeing scholar,
should have directed the attention of a young, enthusiastic student to
the 'Lyrical Poetry of Jeláleddín Rumi'; and it is to the loyal devotion
of this young scholar that we owe the first appearance from an English
Press of a Volume of forty-eight 'Selected Poems' of Jeláleddín, in a
critical Persian Text and with accurate and elegant prose renderings.[8]
Mr. Reynold A. Nicholson has thus established a right to pronounce
judgment on the merits of Jeláleddín, and we now listen to him with
deference, and no longer with astonishment, when he deliberately
characterises him as 'the _greatest_ Mystical Poet of _any_ Age.'
As the object of this Introduction is only to determine, in some
measure, the literary interest of the Lyrical Poetry—the Díván, as it is
technically called—of Jeláleddín, space need not be taken up by
narrating again what is traditionally known of his Life, and it is the
less necessary as excellent accounts are now easily accessible. Sir
James W. Redhouse gives in somewhat abridged translation El Eflākī's
interesting narrative, with its romantic wreath of legend, and its
quaint anecdotes and racy sayings. Mr. Nicholson furnishes an excellent
summary. Professor Hermann Ethé's notice in the Encycl. Brit. has been
already referred to, and reference may also be made to his
_Morgenländische Studien_, and his popular Lecture in the
Virchow-Holtzendorff Series, 1888, on 'The Mystical, Didactic, and
Lyrical Poetry, and the later Literature of the Persians,' with its fine
characterization, which we would fain have quoted. Rosen translates into
German the Biographical Sketches of Devletshah and Jāmi. Professor E. G.
Browne's recent 'Literary History of Persia,' which carries the subject
down to A.D. 1000, and is undoubtedly so far the best History of Persian
Literature yet produced, contains appreciative references to Jeláleddín,
with a masterly account of the Sufi Mysticism; and we look forward with
much interest to a comprehensive and judicial summing up of the great
Mystic Poet, by this high authority upon the whole subject.[9]
II.
The interest of the writer in Jeláleddín has been from the first, and
all through, philosophical and theological rather than specially
historical or textual. This interest was awakened in him by Hegel. In
early student days, when to him as to so many then, the Hegelian
Philosophy was the all in all of his thought, he was startled by the
unwonted enthusiasm with which the great thinker at the climax of his
severest exposition, paused to pay a warm tribute to 'the _excellent_
Jeláleddín,' when he came into view in the light of the Supreme Idea of
his own System.[10] This passage in Hegel, seems always to have
impressed the students of his own writings, and it has been frequently
referred to both by his German and English expounders. The greatest
speculative Thinker of the Nineteenth Century, seems to have felt a deep
satisfaction in recognising the affinity of the greatest speculative
Poet of the East to his own deepest thought, while at the same time
carefully distinguishing the clearer and higher form of his own
conception. Nay more, although parsimonious to the utmost of his space
and words, in this, the most condensed and compacted Text Book of
Philosophy written in any European language since Aristotle, the stern
German Dialectician in a comparatively long Foot Note, says he 'cannot
refrain' from quoting several passages from the Poet, in order that the
reader may get a clearer knowledge of his ideas; and he quotes them from
Rückert's Versions, to give, at the same time, some specimens of 'the
marvellous Art of the translation.' The Reader who is not acquainted
with German will find Hegel's words accurately translated by the late
Dr. W. Wallace, who also gives an English version of the passages quoted
from Rückert, in which he says he was 'kindly helped by Miss May
Kendall'—although Dr. Wallace and Miss May, rhyming in utter ignorance
of Persian Prosody, and consequently, like so many more, in the dark,
have entirely failed to catch the delicate play of the Gazels, so
faithfully reproduced by the tuneful Rückert.[11]
In another of Hegel's works—his valuable posthumous 'Lectures on the
Philosophy of Art'—he takes up the same subject from the æsthetic point
of view, and he deals with it again in a more popular, but in an
essentially identical, way.[12] As the former passage has now obtained
currency in our philosophical literature, it may be more useful, as well
as more relevant to these pages, to reproduce the latter, the fuller and
more intelligible, but hitherto untranslated, exposition. Hegel is here
dealing with the Symbolical Forms of Art, and in particular with the
symbolism of Sublimity, historically characteristic of Oriental Art,
which thus gives expression to the consciousness of absolute
subordination and the dependence of all that is individual and finite on
the Universal and the Infinite. In his comprehensive historical survey
Hegel, at this stage, finds occasion to deal with what he calls
'Pantheism in Art.' The profound thinker, with a vigorous grasp and
original view of the historic evolution, is here singularly lucid and
suggestive, as he delineates the Pantheistic Poetic Idea exhibited in
the lyrical forms of 1. Indian Poetry; 2. Mohammedan Poetry; 3. Christian
Mysticism. Very refreshing and sane is his representation of
Indian Poetry, at a time when the uncritical enthusiasm of the Schlegels
and other young Sanskrit Students, was carrying an unrestrained
admiration beyond all reasonable bounds. Hegel castigates this juvenile
weakness with a firm hand. He, too, has read the startling translations
of the Sakuntala and the Bhagavad Gita, and he knows something of the
Ramayana; but he is not dazzled or carried away. He recognises the
marvellous exuberance and profusion of the Indian imagination, but it is
all too fantastic as yet. While it is boundless, it is also formless,
and just so far is it lacking in true Beauty. Its Sublimity is confused,
chaotic, helpless; it ever struggles for a harmonious unity, for
spiritual mastery of the manifold and the overwhelming, which it never
attains. All this is truest insight, soundest criticism.—But a higher
stage is reached in the _Persian_ Poetry. Here the form of the Poet
becomes more adequate, more masterful, more refined. Beauty springing up
with Sublimity, is harmoniously wedded with it, and in one great Poet
the victory of Love is freely consummated; for—to paraphrase with
Tennyson—
'For all the past of Time reveals
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals,
Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact.'
But let us hear Hegel's own grave, well-weighed judgment, as he spoke it
in those days to his own Students at Berlin:
'In a higher and subjectively freer way, the Oriental Pantheism has
been developed in Mohammedanism, especially by the Persians. A special
relationship now comes in. The Poet longs to behold the Divine in all
things, and he actually does so behold it; but he also now surrenders
his own Self and gives himself up to it, while he at the same time in
the same degree grasps the Immanence of the Divine in his own inner
Being, when thus expanded and freed. And thereby there grows in him
that cheerful inwardness, that free joy, that abounding blessedness
which is peculiar to the Oriental, who in becoming liberated from his
own individual limitations, sinks forthwith into the Eternal and
Absolute, and recognises and feels in everything the Image and the
Presence of the Divine. Such a consciousness of being permeated by the
Divine and of a vivified, intoxicated life in God, borders on
Mysticism. Above all others JELÁLEDDÍN RUMI is to be celebrated in this
connection, of whose poetry Rückert has furnished us with some of the
finest specimens, in which, with his marvellous power of expression, he
even allows himself to play, in the most skilful and free manner, with
words and rhymes, as the Persians similarly do. Love to God, with whom
Man identifies his Self through the most unlimited self-surrender, and
Whom, as the One, he now beholds in all the realms of space, leads him
to refer and carry back all and everything to God; and this Love here
forms the centre which expands on all sides and into all regions.'[13]
Hegel thus deliberately gives Jeláleddín an eminent place not only among
the great Poets, but among the great Thinkers of the world. He is more
than satisfied with Rückert as a translator, and he is virtually at one
with Jeláleddín's principle of thought. His qualification is historical
rather than essential; the relation to Pantheism is the particular
limiting condition of Jeláleddín's stage of development and environment;
it is not a ground of reproach, nor of condemnation as more than
relatively untrue, or rather incomplete. And so Hegel is at pains to
vindicate the poet-thinker from the vulgar and unjust stigma commonly
implied in the ascription of Pantheism. This he does in his remarks on
the contributions to the subject by Dr. Tholuck, who became afterwards
the eminent evangelical theologian of Halle, but who was then just
entering on his distinguished career. Tholuck had quite a genius for
languages, and his first intention was to devote himself to Oriental
Philology. He prosecuted the study of Arabic, Persian and Turkish, with
great zeal and success under the distinguished Dietz; and in 1821, at
the age of twenty-two, he qualified as a University Teacher, by a
learned Latin Dissertation on 'Sufism, or the Pantheistic Theosophy of
the Persians.'[14] This remarkable exposition was at once recognised as
of real merit, and it is still valuable. Tholuck, who was a born poet
and had a rare breadth of literary appreciation, supplemented his work,
four years later, by a very interesting Anthology from the Persian
Mystical Poets in German verse, with an attractive introduction to the
whole subject.[15] With the profoundest admiration for Dr. Tholuck's
work as a theologian, and an unfading personal affection, kindled by
tender and memorable student contact with him in his old age, we yet
cannot dissent from Mr. Whinfield's critical judgment when he thus sums
up the value of these contributions: 'Tholuck was an indifferent Persian
Scholar, and many of his translations are wrong, but he grasped the
meaning of Sufism and its affinity to European mysticism much more
thoroughly than many who were far superior to him in mere verbal
scholarship.' Hegel, who was not a Persian scholar, is generous in his
recognition of Tholuck's Anthology, but he points out the weakness of
Tholuck's criticism, and shews in particular that the young theologian
is too perfunctory in his view of the subject generally, as merely
adopting the 'current chatter about Pantheism,' and hurling it as a
convenient term of reproach against the whole speculative thought of the
time. This shallow popular criticism, as Hegel puts it, quite
misunderstands the real principle of speculative Pantheism, confounds it
with a crude view of the world which immediately identifies the object
of sense with the Divine, but which no sane thinker ever really held,
and it is to be rejected emphatically when applied to Jeláleddín. For,
as he says, 'In the excellent Jeláleddín Rumi in particular we find the
unity of the soul with the One set forth, and that unity described as
Love; and this spiritual unity is an exaltation above the finite and
common, a transfiguration of the natural and spiritual in which the
externalism and transitoriness of nature is surmounted: in _this_
poetry, which soars over all that is external and sensuous, who would
recognise the prosaic ideas current about so-called Pantheism?' No;
Jelál is not to be tabooed, off-hand, and labelled merely as a Pantheist!
With Hegel's correction of Tholuck and his vindication of the
speculative standpoint of the Persian Poet, we are entirely agreed; but
Hegel is himself here not quite adequate. All students of philosophy
know that in this very relation has lain the chief ambiguity and
weakness of his own System, and it is reflected in his view of
Jeláleddín. With his dominating passion for systematising the evolution
of History and conforming it to a logical scheme of thought, he yet
fails to see—largely owing to the limitation of his material—how
practically modern and how spiritually personal Jelál really is. For,
after all, Jeláleddín is no mere idle dreamy mediaeval Mystic; he _is_
essentially a modern poet and thinker, and is _not_ to be pushed back
into the dim vagueness and impersonal materialism of ancient thought. He
has twelve centuries of Christian life and reflection behind him, with
all the dogmatic development of the ancient orthodox Church, on the one
hand; all the forms of Indian pantheistic and Greek freethought on the
other; and six centuries of austere restraining Mohammedan Monotheism as
his central curb and check—and well and clearly he knows them all. He is
at once universally eclectic and originally constructive, and he moves
freely and joyously with a larger insight all his own. The East and the
West meet in him again, more richly than they have done in any other for
centuries, and he binds them into a new, happy harmony, the 'heavenly
harmony' of poesy. He is a true Seer, like his own ancient Zarathustra,
like Lao-tse, like Buddha, and much more akin to Jesus, and Paul, and
John, than to the fierce, relentless, one-sided Prophet of Arabia, whose
barren religion he redeems from its mechanical inhumanity and quickens
with the breath of a purer and Diviner love. His intellectual kinship is
with Plato and the speculative Theologians of the Christian Church, and
with the deep dreamers who live in the highest vision and lose
themselves sweetly and gladly in God. He is the veritable Morning Star
of the new Day of the World, rising in pure brightness, afar in the
East—and after barbaric crusade and mad war, heralding, in a clearer and
sweeter Song of Divine Love, the triumph of the new time.
And the Nightingale thought, 'I have sung many songs,
But never a one so gay,
For he sings of what the world will be
When the years have died away'!
In the year of Jeláleddín's death Edward I. ascended the throne of
England, with the first faltering grasp of a mightier Empire; the boy
Dante was catching the gleam of strange Visions in the shining eyes of
the sweet-faced gentle maiden Beatrice; the mystic thrill that had run
through the Middle Age was pulsing in the youth of Meister Eckhart, and
preparing for Suso and Ruysbroek and Thomas à Kempis, through the
mellifluous Rhythm of St. Bernard which had been sung for a hundred
years; the Doctor Angelicus had all but summed up the system of
Christian Theology, the well-worn pen just trembling to its fall from
his wearied grasp; and the spirit of Martin Luther, whom of all
religious Reformers Jeláleddín most resembles, was already beginning to
breathe in William Occam and the free young thinkers of the time. Yes;
Jeláleddín has both a wider relationship and a more modern significance
than even Hegel has thought of.
And now we have surely cited Authorities enough to enable us to form at
least a preliminary judgment, fair, reasonably informed, and impartial,
concerning Jeláleddín's distinctive position and work as a Poet. We have
seen him thrice crowned—in the Realms of Poetry. Philosophy, and
Religion—by authoritative representatives, qualified kingmakers; and
hardly any one who now knows truly of him, will dispute his right to be
ranked as one of 'the great of old! The dead but sceptred sovrans who
still rule our spirits from their urns.' His royal Title was proclaimed
long ago in the musical name most aptly bestowed upon him when he lived
and sang, and by those who knew him best: JELÁLEDDÍN, which we have
already rendered literally as 'The Splendour of the Faith,' but which we
prefer now to reproduce in its proper English equivalent as 'The Glory
of Religion.' This designation at once strikingly expresses the Secret
of his Power, the Consecration of his Genius, and the essence and end of
his Humanity. To him Religion was all in all; it was the very
Life-breath of his Soul; the Home and Joy of his Heart; the be-all and
end-all of his Will. Of but very few others of the Sons of Men can this
be said; of only One can it be said in a higher degree than of
Jeláleddín, as he himself knew and confessed. He too 'sought for the
healing Hand of Jesus,' and it purged his inner sight and enabled him to
see all the world again, lying bright and beautiful, in the Light and
Love of God. And moved by that all-compelling Law whose 'seat is the
Bosom of God' and whose 'voice is the Harmony of the world,' he burst
spontaneously into song, and the keynote of all his singing—exultant,
jubilant, triumphant—was ever the living, loving God, 'Him first, Him
last, Him without end.' Religion was the golden Thread on which, all his
silvery poetic Pearls were strung, and he flung them around him in his
own generous, selfless joy, with the most lavish hand. They seem to have
cost him no effort of search or toil. Much more than Spinoza or Novalis
was he a 'God-intoxicated man'; the prophetic fire burned in his soul,
without consuming it and it must out in 'thoughts that breathe and words
that burn.' And this is still our precious inheritance from him to-day,
which we will do well to appreciate and cherish anew in this cold,
heartless, irreligious, prosaic time. Let his ringing voice then be
reverently heard even through these few, faint, far-off re-echoings of
his own soul-stirring elevating strains; for the burden of all he sings,
in endless variation of note and tune, his one theme as he himself
caught it direct from the melody of Nature and of Man, is THE GLORY OF
RELIGION!
This very general Introduction to the subject-matter of Jelál's Lyrics
must here suffice, as our immediate object is merely to present some
specimens of them in a form at once popular and generally intelligible.
But the detail of the subject in its historical, philosophical and
theological bearings, which would only be confusing here, is reserved
for some subsequent discussion. Sir William Jones gave a first popular
Epitome of the Mystical System of the Persian Poets, which in its own
way has never been surpassed (see Note A), although the subject has been
much more profoundly studied and elucidated since his time. A competent
discussion of the system of 'the greatest Sufic poet of Persia' (Ethé),
would be a valuable contribution to our contemporary Philosophy of
Religion. Mr. Nicholson has concisely sketched the parallelism between
the doctrines of Jeláleddín and Plotinus, but we must go further and
even deeper than Plotinus in order to reach the root of the whole
matter. Professor Browne is very helpful, and gives the best Literature,
as also does Hughes in his most interesting illustrated Articles; Kremer
is invaluable, as also are Professor Palmer on the one hand, and the
recent translators and expounders of the early Iranian and Hindu
Religion and Philosophy on the other; Whinfield gives an able, lucid
Sketch.
III.
Looking now at the _poetical form_ of Jelál's Lyrics, it goes without
saying that it is distinctively Persian, and always eminently so in its
kind. The Persian Poets were truly 'makers'; they not only created most
of the nature-imagery still current in all modern poetry, but they
constructed new forms of rhythm and rhyme, in which they finely echoed
the sweetest melodies of nature and gave a richer and more expressive
music to human speech. Their fluent and flexible language, with its
natural wealth of resonant cadences and rhymes, furnished them with a
facile medium of expression, and the still richer Arabic readily lent
its copious resources at need. And the Persians were always rhyming, in
public and private, on great themes or small; a poetic people, ever
ready to recognise and honour sweet songsters; the readiest and wittiest
of 'improvvisatori.' Even yet, as Richardson tells us; 'it is a common
entertainment for the great and learned men in Persia, to assemble
together, with the view to an exercise of genius, in the resolving of
enigmas ... and to rival one another in the facility of composing and
replying to extempore verses, in which, from practice and a natural
liveliness of fancy, many of them arrive at an astonishing proficiency.'
Hence, as Goethe says of himself, the Persian Poets 'sang as the birds
sing;' and taking that master-singer of Nature, the Nightingale, as
their model, they too trilled in strains of unrivalled sweetness, range
and depth of tone, and consummate florid beauty. Even the most careless
reader cannot fail to be impressed by the affluence of imagery in the
Persian Lyrical Poetry, and no one has dwelt more suggestively than
Hegel on the spiritual significance of its characteristic profusion of
metaphors, images, similes, and comparisons.[16] But while so lavishly
employing the decorative forms common to all lyrical poetry, the Persian
Poets, with singular constructive originality, also created new lyrical
forms of their own, and carried them to their highest perfection. Chief
of these are the _Gazel_ and the _Divan_, two terms which are only now
being naturalised in our language, and becoming generally understood.
Here, again, it may be more serviceable to quote one or two authorities,
rather than to give a mere abstract definition; and as we have generally
found the _older_ authorities in these matters to be the best, we start
with Richardson's summary of the definitions of D'Herbelot and Revizky.
'The Ghazel or Eastern Ode—says Richardson—is a species of poem, the
subject of which is in general _Love_ and _Wine_, interspersed with
moral sentiments, and reflections on the virtues and vices of mankind.
It ought never to consist of less than 5 _beits_ or distichs, nor
exceed 18, according to D'Herbelot; if the poem is less than five, it
is then called _rabat_ or quartain; if it is more than eighteen, it
then assumes the name of _kasside_ or elegy. Baron Revizky[17] says,
that all poems of this kind which exceed 13 _beits_ [couplets], rank
with the _kasside_; and, according to Meninski, the ghazel ought never
to have more than 11.—Every verse in the same _ghazel_ must rhyme with
the same letter; and when a poet has completed a _series_ of such poems
(the rhymes of the first class being in _alif_ [a], the second in _be_
[b], and so on through the whole alphabet), it is called a _Divan_, and
he obtains the title of _Hafez_, or as the Arabians pronounce it,
_Hafedh_.... The _ghazel_ is more irregular than the Greek or Latin
Ode, one verse having often no apparent connection either with the
foregoing or subsequent couplets. Ghazels were often, says Baron
Revizky, written or spoken _extempore_ at banquets or public
festivities, when the poet, after expressing his ideas in one distich,
impatient of confinement, roved through the regions of fancy, as wine
or a luxuriant imagination inspired.'[18]
This is excellent, and thoroughly intelligible. But let us take from
Rückert's most learned work, the more authoritative concise statement of
the 'Heft Kolzum': 'The Ghazel is a poem of several Beits, which have
all one measure and one rhyme. According to some, there should not be
more than 11 Beits, according to others 12; but some are found having as
many as 19.'[19]
The term Gazel has now secured its place in our great Dictionaries, and
none gives it better than Professor Whitney's New York 'Century
Dictionary': 'Gázel (also Ghazal, Pers. _ghazal_, Ar. _ghazel_,
_ghazal_, a Love Poem). In Persian Poetry, a form of verse in which the
two first lines rime, and for this rime a new one must be found in the
second line of each succeeding couplet, the alternate line being
free.'—Dr. Murray's Oxford New English Dictionary defines thus: 'A
species of Oriental lyric poetry, generally of an erotic nature,
distinguished from other forms of Eastern verse by having a limited
number of Stanzas, and by the recurrence of the same rhyme.' And most
concise of all, Funk's Standard Dictionary: 'A Persian lyric poem,
amatory ode, drinking song, or religious hymn, having alternate verses
riming with the first couplet.' 'The _ghazel_ consists usually of not
less than five, or more than fifteen Couplets, all with the same
rhyme.'—W. R. Alger, Poetry of the East, p. 66.—Before leaving the
Dictionaries, be it noted briefly, that the word _gházǎl_ (originally
Arabic, and to be distinguished from _gházāl_, a young Fawn, _our_
Gazelle, through the French), derived from a root signifying to _spin_,
means in Persian, a thing _spun_, _twined_, _twisted_, as out of a
thread; and so it designates an ode, a short poem, a sonnet'
(Steingass), 'never exceeding 18 distichs, nor less than 5, _the last
line of every couplet ending with the same Letter in which the first
distich rhymes_.' (Richardson's Persian, Arabic and English Dictionary,
_s.v._).
All this is surely enough to elucidate the form and structure of the
Persian _ghazel_, but we may further quote a completing phrase or two
from that conscientious and much lamented Oriental Scholar, Mr. E. J. W.
Gibb, who has treated it most fully and accurately in his valuable works
on Ottoman Poetry. The Ghazel, he says, is 'the most typically Oriental
of all the verse-forms alike in the careful elaboration of its detail
and in its characteristic want of homogeneity. It is a short poem of not
fewer than four and not more than fifteen couplets. Such at any rate is
the theoretical limit, but Ghazels containing a much larger number of
couplets may occasionally be met with; this, however, is exceptional,
from five to ten being the average number.... If we employ the
alphabetical notation usually adopted when dealing with rhyme sequences,
we get the following for a Ghazel of six couplets: A.A : B.A : C.A : D.A :
E.A : F.A.... In point of style the poem should be faultless; all
imperfect rhymes, uncouth words questionable expressions must be
carefully avoided, and the same rhyme-word ought not to be repeated. It
is the most elegant and highly finished of all the old poetic forms....
Hence perhaps the extraordinary popularity of the form.... What the
sonnet was to the Italian, the Ghazel was to the Persians and Turks.'[20]
This will surely suffice to explain the structure and laws of the Gazel.
The Shakesperian Sonnet comes nearest its form in our poetical
versification, and can by comparatively slight modification be adapted
to it. Imagine the final rhyming couplet of such a sonnet placed first,
and the same rhyme carried on through each of the succeeding couplets in
the alternate even-numbered lines, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, while the other odd
lines (3, 5, etc.) are left unrhymed, and we would have a regular Gazel
which, however, might extend to 18 couplets in all. Or, taking another
familiar instance: let the Quatrain, as in Fitzgerald's 'Omar Khayyám,'
be _extended_ by adding further couplets (within the limits laid down)
to the _second_ couplet, all corresponding to it in form and rhyme, and
the Quatrain passes into a regular Gazel. The Fifty examples here given
are all in regular form within legitimate variation, and the structure
and rhyme in any of them may be seen at a glance, even in those with an
added recurring refrain in such as were generally adapted to accompany
mystic dancing. Simple as the structure of the Gazel itself is, it is
practically more difficult to construct it in English than in Persian,
from its relative paucity of suitable rhymes.
To Rückert belongs the unfading distinction of having introduced the
original form of the Ghazel into European Literature. For this
achievement he was particularly qualified by his poetic gift and his
deft power of artistic adaptation. An enthusiastic and loyal pupil of
Von Hammer, he soon surpassed his master by the greater accuracy of his
scholarship, his finer and deeper insight, and his unrivalled power of
sympathetically reproducing in German the spirit of Oriental Poetry. His
renderings of certain Gazels of Jeláleddín in 1819 and 1822 are
masterpieces of their kind in the fineness and delicacy of their form,
and they have never been equalled by similar subsequent attempts. The
highest praise that Mr. Nicholson can bestow on the later excellent
contribution in German of other 75 of Jelál's Ghazels by Von Rosenzweig,
the accomplished translator of Hafiz, is 'that we are occasionally
reminded of Rückert'; and, strangely enough, Mr. Nicholson makes no
other allusion to Rückert. Rückert, whose many wonderful feats of this
kind not only from Persian, but from Arabic, Sanskrit, and even Chinese,
are beyond all praise, was quite conscious both of the success and
importance of his effort, as is evident from the four lines on 'The Form
of the Gasel' which he prefixed to his Versions of Jelál's Gasels, which
may be rendered thus:—
The new Form which I first, here in thy Garden plant,
May, Fatherland, enrich the Garland of thy clime;
And in my steps may Poets, of happy power ne'er scant,
Sing true in Persian Gazel, as erst in alien rhyme.
Rückert's example and encouragement have not been ineffective in German
Literature. Besides his own original Gazels addressed to his
distinguished teacher Von Hammer, Platen with a poetic versatility and
elegance of form scarcely inferior to his own, Paul Heyse, and others
have written excellent German Gazels, and the form is now quite
naturalised in German Literature. But it is still practically an exotic
in the domain of English verse. One of the first and best regular Gazels
in English known to the writer, was done into English rhyme by
Archbishop Trench, who represents it as by DSCHELALEDDIN (_sic_), but it
is really only an imitation of one of Rückert's Versions. Some of the
recent translators of Hafiz—especially Mr. H. Bicknell—have given
elegant translations of some of his Gazels, in proper form.[21] Mr.
Nicholson, notwithstanding his disbelief in the adequacy of English
verse-renderings, has given two exemplary specimens in an Appendix. The
Fifty Gazels here presented in English have been all done after
Rückert's versions, of which they are really renderings—as indicated on
the Title Page. Even when the translator felt tempted to conform more
literally in some minor details to the Persian original, or fancied he
could do so, he invariably returned to Rückert's form, his admiration
for Rückert's judgment and art having overcome all hesitation. To
Rückert, then, belongs any merit found in these free imitations of
Jeláleddín; to the translator must be attributed any defect in his
attempt to follow, always _longo intervallo_, the traces of the
footsteps of these two great Masters. Rückert alone has been able to do
justice to the poetic form and thought of Jeláleddín, and it may be
deemed as daring to try to imitate Rückert as to copy the Original
itself. But the attempt, even where it fails, will be most readily
forgiven by the Persian scholars who best know the difficulties that
have to be overcome on both sides. What is here presented is but a
slight endeavour to popularise, after a holiday excursion into
long-loved fields, their own much more important work, and mayhap to win
a wider, well-deserved interest for it. The child who strays through the
Flower Garden, will, as by irresistible impulse, pluck some of its
fairest blossoms here and there, and if twined together and offered to
the strong hand that cultivated and reared them, they will hardly fail
to be recognised as an offering of gratitude and affection, and to be
accepted with a kindly, indulgent smile.