The Festival of Spring from the Díván of Jeláleddín by William Hastie

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, Ghasal, Díwán—will be found in the foot-note references to more learned Works.

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:—

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:—

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:—

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:—

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]

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—

But let us hear Hegel's own grave, well-weighed judgment, as he spoke it in those days to his own Students at Berlin:

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.

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.

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.

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:—

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.

It is beautifully related in 'Attar's Biographies of the Sufi Mystics and Saints,' that the sweet-soul'd, God-absorb'd Rábia—the Saint Teresa and Madame Guyon of Persia—was once asked: 'Dost thou hate the Devil?' 'No!' she replied. And they asked: 'Why not?' 'Because,' said she, 'my love to God leaves me no time to hate him.'[22] We confess, however, that we have hated this new-patch'd Omar Khayyám of Mr. Fitzgerald, and have even at times been tempted to scorn the miserable, self-deluded, unhealthy fanatics of his Cult. But when we have looked again into the shining face and the glad eyes of Jeláleddín, 'the Glory of Religion,' our hate has passed into pity and our scorn into compassion. In the light of that bright Vision we cannot pause—we have 'no time' nor inclination for it—to deal, as it deserves, with this latest literary craze and delusion. The Persian Scholars have been amazed, and earnest Critics who still believe in the spiritual purpose of Poetry, have been distressed by this infatuation of the young free English mind, whose issue can only be the humiliation of convicted ignorance, spurious idolatry, and vain remorseful regret after the mad midnight debauch. All that is highest and noblest and truest in manhood is not to be thus wilfully flung away for nothing, or to be foolishly bartered for the smart Epigrams of the rudest wit and shallowest reflection. Mr. Fitzgerald by clever tailoring has indeed clothed his Satan in the well-fitting robes of an Angel of Light so that he might 'seduce, if it were possible, the very Elect,'—but for them all in vain do such 'lean and flashy songs, grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.' He has not hesitated even to eke out his vapid pessimistic song with verses of his own, and to make his poor old Omar's voice more cracked, querulous and quavering than it ever really was. And he has therefore rightly enough separated his Bacchanalian Rhymster from the holy Choir of the sweet-voiced Persian Songsters who ever made all the grove vocal with devout praise of God. Mr. Fitzgerald's Omar—he himself declares—is not a Sufi poet at all; he is but an old tipsy toper, whose drink is literally and really that of Bacchus; and he drinks—and drinks!—and drinks! till we hear him snore even in broad day, and till his dimm'd eyes and fuddled brain cannot distinguish the plainest things even in the clearest light. With Fitzgerald's hero it is the old, sad story over again; it is drinking—not deep thinking at all!—that has brought him to this. Surely we know the 'Astronomer Poet' quite well now. M. Nicolas, and still better, Mr. Whinfield, have given us his own Persian Quatrains, and Mr. Payne has translated them best of all; but Edward Fitzgerald has turned them into a strange haunting music of his own, and in his hands the Astronomer Poet becomes really what our gifted friend Mr. Coulson Kernahan has so graphically and terribly depicted: A Literary Gent, A Study in Vanity and Dipsomania! Who cares now for his senile scepticism, his pessimistic whine, his withered cynicism, his agnostic blindness and despair, his insolent misanthropy, his impotent blasphemies? We know it all too well; it is only the work of shattered nerves, a muddled brain, and irreligious self-dissipation. See how the Astronomer Poet staggers along to his watch-tower, with that tell-tale nose and flushed brow! How his trembling hands fumble as he vainly tries to focus the stars! How his bleared eyes can find neither Zenith nor Azimuth, Algol nor Aldeboran, nor the Pointers, nor the Pole Star; and how impudently he swears in his blindness, that he too has swept through the Heavens and found no God! that man is but a 'Pot of Clay,' without freedom and without hope! and that all the World is bitter and hollow and bad! Great Thinker, forsooth! Well and truly does he himself say that he was 'never deep in anything but—Wine'!

But Mr. Fitzgerald protests that while Omar was not a Mystic, but only a Bacchanalian Poet, and 'that while the Wine Omar celebrates is simply the Juice of the Grape, he bragged more than he drank of it.' But this surely is to make him worse morally than the poor will-broken, self-abandoned drunkard! Yet after all, the excuse of 'the moderate drinker' is never quite to be trusted, as Mr. Fitzgerald himself in this case only too fully proves. The 'Tavern' too is a literal Tavern, and his very first presentation of his Hero introduces him to us crying for fresh air at cock-crow, after the night's carouse, and his kindred thirsty votaries shouting from the outside to get in:

We soon find that he has only one fixed Article in his Creed—the certainty of Annihilation:

The only thing here certain however, is that this, according to all Persian Prosody, is a bad, illegitimate Quatrain, and Omar himself would never have rhymed it thus! And notwithstanding these 'brave words,' it seems almost certain that the poor soul of the 'Astronomer Poet' did not entirely die out with his last unsavoury breath; for is there not the strongest internal evidence—and pray, mark it well, in these days of the Higher Criticism—that it was Omar Redivivus, in an ill-starred, yet most sincere and loveable Rustic Bard of our own, who sang gloriously at the same psychological moment, with his own boon-companions, after seven centuries of world-wide drinking, again:

We are sorry to believe, notwithstanding Mr. Fitzgerald's rather lame and halting Apology, that it became, more and more, a confirmed habit; and that 'willy-nilly' the old Nature-tyrant had it out with him too. Alas! that it should so often be so with these genial poetic souls-poets, who in their youth 'begin in gladness, and thereof in the end doth come Despondency and Madness'! In vain does the much-admired Translator protest; for again he shows poor parched old Khayyám 'by the Tavern Door agape'!; the Nightingale only pipes to him 'Wine! Wine! Wine!'; his burden of Clay 'with long Oblivion is gone dry'!; his last hope and only prayer is: 'Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide, And wash the Body whence the Life has died'; and his last word and the final horror is—'an empty Glass!' But he is much more candid in his 'cups' than his ingenious Translator, as all such are wont at a certain stage to be; for he quite frankly tells us his Rule of Life: 'Drink!—for once dead you never shall return!' Nay, he takes us, in the most friendly way and with irresistible candour, into his most intimate confidence, and informs us how and when, and how deliberately, when he found out 'the sorry Scheme of Things,' his glorified new Creed and boasted new Life came about:—

And what possibly could come of it, but what did come? When it could no longer be disputed that the Day was dawning, then the Reckoning must be settled, and his last leering grin is for his drunken boon-companions, now alas! ignominiously low:—

O ye self-blinded, neurotic Votaries of the Omar Khayyám Cult, be warned in time: for be sincerely assured that on counting 'the lawin', Paying the Reckoning will be all that you will ever get, even at your drunkest, out of this bankrupt, blustering, purblind Braggart!

To crown all his fatal Candour, Omar insists, as with a sigh of vain regret, on most truly telling us his own callous judgment of it all, seeing some faint inextinguishable spark of Conscience still remained in him, as in the Ancient Mariner:—

So, too, with Edward Fitzgerald, who, with consummate skill, has here played the part of 'Mr. Sludge, the Medium' to perfection. And we only wish that Robert Browning, in his Berserker rage over the painful betrayal of what was dearest to him in life, had 'spit' this, and not what he frantically did, 'in his face' as it burst from him in scorn of one who confessed:—

But no! we have 'no time' to waste in hating even this dram-drinking, drivelling, droning Dotard. For hark!—'That strain I heard was of a higher mood'! Its very first note 'laps us in Elysium,' and we at once forget man's self-inflicted misery and all his morbid diseases and cares—'Do I wake or sleep?'...

Yes; that is surely the sweetest, the tenderest, the heavenliest of all the Persian Nightingales, come back to us in our sorest need, and singing to us amid the glory of the Resurrection of Life, in the Festival of another Spring, as he never sang in the English air before. It is a Western youthful Poet's Dream of Jeláleddín renewing the first notes of his immortal song, and chanting again the Hymn of Eternal Life, solemn yet joyous, mystic yet clear: stirring what is deepest in our heart and driving away our sorrow, till 'all the pulses of our being, reanimated, beat anew!'

Thus does our own deep, mystic Singer, Coleridge, echo, in kindred strains, the deepest Faith of Jeláleddín.

Done into English

1. Epitome of the Mystical System.—The Persian (and Hindu) mystical Poets 'concur in believing that the souls of men differ infinitely in degree, but not at all in kind, from the divine Spirit, of which they are particles, and in which they will ultimately be absorbed; that the spirit of God pervades the universe, always immediately present to his work, and consequently always in substance; that he alone is perfect benevolence, perfect truth, perfect beauty; that the love of him alone is real and genuine love, while that of all other objects is absurd and illusory; that the beauties of Nature are faint resemblances, like images in a mirror, of the divine charms; that, from eternity without beginning to eternity without end, the supreme benevolence is occupied in bestowing happiness or the means of attaining it; that men can only attain it by performing their part of the primal covenant between them and the Creator; that nothing has a pure absolute existence, but mind or spirit; that material substances, as the ignorant call them, are no more than gay pictures presented continually to our minds by the Sempiternal Artist; that we must beware of attachment to such phantoms, and attach ourselves exclusively to God, who truly exists in us, as we exist solely in him; that we retain, even in this forlorn state of separation from our beloved, the idea of heavenly beauty, and the remembrance of our primeval vows; that sweet music, gentle breezes, fragrant flowers, perpetually renew the primary idea, refresh our fading memory, and melt us with tender affections; that we must cherish those affections, and by abstracting our souls from vanity, that is, from all but God, approximate to his essence, in our final union with which will consist our supreme beatitude. From these principles flow a thousand metaphors and poetical figures, which abound in the sacred poems of the Persians and Hindus.'

2. The poetical Imagery.—'Many zealous admirers of Hafiz insist, that by Wine he invariably means devotion; and they have gone so far as to compose a Dictionary of Words in the Language, as they call it, of the Súfis. In that vocabulary sleep is explained by meditation on the divine perfections, and perfume by hope of the divine favour; gales are illapses of grace; kisses and embraces, the raptures of piety; idolaters, infidels, and libertines are men of the purest religion, and their idol is the Creator Himself; the tavern is a retired Oratory, and its keeper a sage instructor; beauty denotes the perfection of the Supreme Being; tresses are the expansion of his glory; lips, the hidden mysteries of his essence; down on the cheek, the world of spirits, who encircle his throne; and a black mole, the point of indivisible unity; lastly, wantonness, mirth, and ebriety, mean religious ardour and abstraction from all terrestrial thoughts.'—Sir William Jones' Works, vol. iv. pp. 219, 227.

Continuing the exposition quoted on p. xxi., Hegel goes on to say:—

'In Sublimity proper, the best objects and the most splendid forms are used only as a mere ornament of God, and they serve to proclaim the magnificence and glory of the One, being brought before our eyes only to glorify Him as the Lord of all creatures. But in Pantheism, on the contrary, the Immanence of the Divine in the objects, raises the mundane, natural, and human existence itself, to a more substantial glory of its own. The actual Life of the Spiritual in the phenomena of Nature and in human relationships, animates and spiritualises them in themselves, and establishes in turn a special relation of the subjective feeling and soul of the Poet to the objects of which he sings. His soul, filled with this living glory, is in itself calm, independent, free, self-sufficient, spacious, large; and in this affirmative identity with itself, it expands its life in imagination till it attains to the same calm unity in the Soul of things. And so it coalesces with the objects of Nature and their magnificence, becomes one with the loved one, with the cup-bearer, etc.;—in a word, with all that is worthy of praise and of love, and this in the most blissful and joyous intimacy. The Occidental Romantic inwardness of Soul shews, indeed, a similar consciousness of Life in itself; but on the whole—especially in the North—it is more unhappy, is not free, is given to yearning; or it remains more subjectively shut up in itself, and thereby becomes selfish and sensitive. Such oppressed, disturbed inner states of mind are especially expressed in the National Songs of barbarous peoples. The state of free, joyous inwardness is, on the contrary, characteristic of the Orientals, especially of the Mohammedan Persians, who openly and gladly give up their whole Self to God, as well as to all that is praiseworthy, yet in this very surrender preserve their essential free being, which they can maintain even in relation to the surrounding world. Thus we see in their glow of passion the most expansive blissfulness and outpouring of feeling; and with their inexhaustible wealth of brilliant and magnificent images, through it all there sound the constant tones of happiness, of beauty, and of joy. When the Oriental suffers and is unhappy, he accepts it as the immutable decree of Fate, and in presence of it still remains certain in himself, without becoming depressed, or feeling sensitive, or despondent, or distressed. In the poems of Hafiz we find complaining and repining enough about the loved one, the wine-bringer, etc.; but even in his Pain he remains as free from care as in his Joy. Thus he sings:

'The taper teaches man to laugh and weep; it laughs in bright glances through the flame, although it is melting at the same time in hot tears; even in burning itself out, it sheds a bright glance around. This is the general character of the whole of this Poetry.

'To cite some of their more special images: the Persian Poets speak much of Flowers and Precious Stones, and especially of the Rose and the Nightingale. It is very common for them to represent the Nightingale as the "Bridegroom" of the Rose. This attributing of a Soul to the Rose and of Love to the Nightingale, occurs frequently in Hafiz. "O Rose," he says, "while grateful for being the Sultana of Beauty, vouchsafe not to be proud to the Love of the Nightingale." He speaks himself of the Nightingale of his own Heart. But when we speak in our Poetry of Roses, Nightingales, and Wine, it is done in a quite other and more prosaic sense: the Rose is regarded as for ornament; we are "crowned with Roses"; or we hear the Nightingale and sympathise with it; we drink Wine, and call it the Dispeller of Care. With the Persian Poets, however, the Rose is not an image, or a symbol, or a mere ornament; but it actually appears to the Poet as animated with a Soul, as a loving Bride; and he penetrates with his spirit deep into the Soul of the Rose.'

Von Hammer's Account of Omar Khayyám is at once so just, so discriminating, and so well-informed that it may prove interesting to our Readers, especially as the work in which it is contained has become rare; and it may help generally to dispel some of the hallucination still prevalent about the 'Astronomer-Poet of Persia':

'Omar Chiam'—as Von Hammer transliterates the name—'is one of the most remarkable Persian Poets; he is unique as regards the irreligious subject-matter of his Poems, so that, so far as we know, there is no other found like him in the whole History of Persian Poetry. He is the Poet of the Freethinkers and of the Jesters at Religion, and in this respect he may be appropriately called the Voltaire of Persian Poetry. It is remarkable too, that in Persia, as elsewhere, Freethinking was the precursor of Mysticism, and that the Age of the deepest Unbelief passed over into that of the greatest Superstition.

'Omar Chiam, born at Nishapur, was one of the greatest Astronomers of his time; he shared the fame of Nassireddin and Ulugbeg. But Astronomy led him not to the knowledge, but to the denial, of the Supreme Being; and he embodied the result of his sceptical meditations in Quatrains, which have become famous under the title: Rubayat Omar Chiam. In his youth he was at school with Nisamol-Mulk, who became afterwards the Grand Vizier of Melekshah, and with Hassan Sabbah, the Founder of the Order of the Assassins. In the bloody prescriptions of his Order, Hassan practically sealed the doctrinal Unbelief which Omar Chiam proclaimed in his Verses; and as its Grand master, he sacrificed his old schoolfellow, the Grand Vizier, to his revenge, because he continued to follow the path of Right and Virtue. Omar Chiam, as the friend of Hassan Sabbah, is supposed to have helped him to found his diabolical Doctrine and his diabolical Society.'

So far Von Hammer. We commend his last statement to the serious consideration of the amiable Devotees of the new Red-letter Cult of our fashionable Omar Khayyám Societies and Clubs! The remarks on this subject in our Introduction apply, of course, only to Fitzgerald's Omar, of whom he takes a low view—very pithily summed up by himself in this phrase: 'the burden of Omar's Song—if not "Let us eat"—is assuredly—"Let us drink, for To-morrow we die!"' As regards the real Omar, whom Mr. Fitzgerald did not rightly understand, our view agrees generally with that of Von Hammer and M. Nicolas, but it need not be discussed here. The phenomenal success of Mr. Fitzgerald's Version in recent years has been largely due to the witchery and glamour of his Versification. His lasting achievement—and it is not a small one—is to have thoroughly popularised the Quatrain. We now hear it echoed everywhere, and in all sorts of connections, even the most trivial. It has recently been applied, with amusing ingenuity, to the Game of Golf, and even to the translation of Homer by Mr. Mackail. But the most deliciously ridiculous thing of the kind in the connection, yet seen, is Baron Corvo's Translation of M. Nicolas—'Risum teneatis, Amici?'

These effusions are, after all, only amusing manifestations of the Omar Khayyám Distemper. It has, however, unhappily a deeper significance. Mr. Fitzgerald's success has arisen mainly from his playing into the pessimistic and cynical mood of the time, and here lies its moral danger, especially to young, unguarded and unthinking, readers. Let them be assured that all this is bad thought, bad taste, bad effort. The Byronic mood is not only unhealthy, but is critically antiquated, and cannot be permanently recalled in any relation whatever. Better—much better—than this is the healthy, if somewhat rabid, physical progression of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, even to 'ride with the reckless seraphim on the brim of a red-maned star'! If they will not take it from us, let them listen to the powerful and earnest words of a lofty, original, spiritual thinker with which he corrected the kindred morbid tendencies of his day, and which are again singularly relevant here. Says Professor Ferrier in a noble and indignant outburst: 'These aberrations betoken a perverse and prurient play of the abnormal fancy—groping for the very holy of holies in kennels running with the most senseless and God-abandoned abominations. Our natural superstitions are bad enough; but thus to make a systematic business of fatuity, imposture, and profanity, and to imagine, all the while, that we are touching on the precincts of God's Spiritual Kingdom, is unspeakably shocking. The horror and disgrace of such proceedings were never even approached in the darkest days of heathendom and idolatry. Ye who make shattered nerves and depraved sensations the interpreters of truth—ye who inaugurate disease as the prophet of all wisdom, thus making sin, death, and the devil, the lords paramount of the creation—have ye bethought yourselves of the backward and downward course which ye are running into the pit of the bestial and the abhorred? Oh, ye miserable mystics! when will ye know that all God's truths and all man's blessings lie in the broad health, in the trodden ways, and in the laughing sunshine of the universe, and that all intellect, all genius, is merely the power of seeing wonders in common things!'

With this impressive appeal we pause, for the present. The standpoint and genius of Jeláleddín could not possibly be better expressed than in Ferrier's closing words.

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