Notes.
A.
SIR WILLIAM JONES ON THE MYSTICAL POETRY OF THE PERSIANS.
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.
B.
HEGEL ON THE CHARACTER OF THE PERSIAN LYRICAL POETRY.
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:
'"Because the Presence of thy Friend
Is bright, not sad;
Burn, like the Taper, out in Woe,
Burn, like the Taper, out in Woe,
'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.'
C.
VON HAMMER'S ACCOUNT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM.
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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