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.
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'!