Lyrics of Life: Sa'di on Love, Cosmopolitanism and Care of the Self 9780748696932

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Lyrics of Life

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Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture Series Editor: Carole Hillenbrand A particular feature of medieval Islamic civilization was its wide horizons. In this respect it differed profoundly from medieval Europe, which from the point of view of geography, ethnicity and population was much smaller and narrower in its scope and in its mindset. The Muslims fell heir not only to the Graeco-Roman world of the Mediterranean, but also to that of the ancient Near East, to the empires of Assyria, Babylon and the Persians—and beyond that, they were in frequent contact with India and China to the east and with black Africa to the south. This intellectual openness can be sensed in many interrelated fields of Muslim thought: philosophy and theology, medicine and pharmacology, algebra and geometry, astronomy and astrology, geography and the literature of marvels, ethnology and sociology. It also impacted powerfully on trade and on the networks that made it possible. Books in this series reflect this openness and cover a wide range of topics, periods and geographical areas. Titles in the series include: Arabic Materia Medica: Arabian Drugs in Medieval Mediterranean Medicine Zohar Amar and Efraim Lev The Popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt: State and Society, 1173–1325 Nathan Hofer Defining Anthropomorphism: The Challenge of Islamic Traditionalism Livnat Holtzman Lyrics of Life: Sa‘di on Love, Cosmopolitanism and Care of the Self Fatemeh Keshavarz A History of the True Balsam of Matarea Marcus Milwright Ruling from a Red Canopy: Political Authority in the Medieval Islamic World, from Anatolia to South Asia Colin P. Mitchell www.euppublishing.com/series/ESCIHC

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Lyrics of Life Sa‘di on Love, Cosmopolitanism and Care of the Self

Fatemeh Keshavarz

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For my parents who filled my childhood with Sa‘di’s enchanting songs

© Fatemeh Keshavarz, 2015 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun—Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 11/15 Adobe Garamond by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN  978 0 7486 9692 5 (hardback) ISBN  978 0 7486 9693 2 (webready PDF) The right of Fatemeh Keshavarz to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

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Contents

Acknowledgments vi 1 At the Brink of Writing: Which Doors to Open First? 1 2 Cosmopolitan Kinship: The Making of a Multi-world Subjectivity in the Poetry of Sa‘di 42 3 Sa‘di on Care of the Self: Ethical Games of Power in Practice of Freedom 79 4 “Every New Flower Arriving in the World”: Sa‘di and the Art of Ghazal Writing 108 5 Gazing at the Garden of Your Beauty: Love in the Garden 136 6 My Poor Heart Sometimes Runs, Sometimes Whirls: Meet Sa‘di the Comedian 166 7 Epilogue: Leaving the Garden Already? Here Are a Few Things I Hope You Take Along 195 Bibliography204 Index 211

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Acknowledgments

This book celebrates the lyrics of Sa‘di of Shiraz (d. 1291), one of the most influential and enchanting poets of the Persian language. In it, I suggest that classical Persian poetry was more than an elitist art form. Despite its exquisite artistry, it managed to touch its readers’ daily lives in meaningful ways. It pleased and entertained some, spiritually assisted others, praised and admonished kings, recorded history, and ethically educated all within its reach. The poems’ shared sounds, images, and adventures run like a golden thread through the many cultures that spoke the language. They did not cure all ignorance but enabled many readers to imagine the world to be large and wondrous. And yet, for every poetry lover, these poems remained intensely personal, a journey to find meaning in life. As I hope the book shows, Sa‘di’s diverse and delightful corpus is an excellent testing ground for these suggestions. All the translations are mine. Sa‘di’s language is unpretentious, uncluttered, and eminently suitable for translation. I have tried to keep my own language relatively free of theoretical jargon. The transliteration system I have devised is somewhat inventive and based heavily on pronunciation. My assumption is that those proficient in the language will be guided by the sound to the written form. Lyrics of Life developed over a number of years filled with many adventures including a major transition from Washington University in St. Louis to the University of Maryland, College Park where I have found new and delightful friends. However, the work would have been impossible without the unwavering love and support of my life companion Ahmet T. Karamustafa. Everything I have ever written is shaped by his presence in indescribable ways. vi

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ack nowledg men ts  | vii I also owe a debt of gratitude to my PhD student, now an upcoming scholar of Persian literature in his own right, Mathew Thomas Miller, who was the last person to comb through the text for many small but significant errors that had escaped my attention. If your venture into the lush landscape of Sa‘di’s poetry in this book is half as fulfilling as mine has been, my efforts to produce this volume will be amply rewarded.

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1 At the Brink of Writing: Which Doors to Open First?

Prelude

C

all it the information superhighway of the Persian-speaking world or, more romantically, the Silk Road of the imagination connecting premodern Persian speakers. Classical Persian poetry was that and more. Indeed there are not many metaphors that do justice to the range of functions that this traveling web of spiritual, artistic and intellectual ideas performed for its readers. These included: education, entertainment, propaganda, settling personal accounts, teaching ethical principles, guiding spiritual quests, nurturing aesthetic creativity and disseminating academic learning. Through its wide geographical and intercultural reach, this poetry enabled its readers to imagine themselves as members of a community much wider than the one that surrounded them. The world had to be larger than the one in which one was born. Why else would a poet and teacher as renowned as Sa‘di of Shiraz spend thirty years of his life traveling and telling his readers on different occasions, “The lands and seas are vast, and the peoples living in them numerous”?1 In short, for those living along this Silk Road, the readers of the poetry that acknowledged the existence of a complex world, the self was humbled in the presence of many others and subjectivity evolved naturally into intersubjectivity.2 I now realize how lucky it was that this road went right through the home of my childhood, turning it, frequently, into a gathering place for the many poets who found keen listeners awaiting their arrival. They visited daily, contemporaries from our hometown Shiraz as well as those traveling all 1

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2  |  lyri cs o f l if e the way from thirteenth-century Khorasan (northeastern Iran). The occasions for their visits were many and varied: a moment of nostalgia, a family game based on poetry, a homework assignment, even a parental reproach embellished, as it usually was, with poetic words of wisdom. Even before I was old enough to discuss poetry, I realized that good poetry frees itself from the page and becomes a part of one’s daily life. The most playful, least intimidating and funniest poets visited more often. Those who had traveled were desirable. They had stories to tell. Defenders of decency with their versified ethical edicts showed up in disagreements and debates among family members. In comparison, they did not get as much airtime, but managed to insert their words of warning into the daily discourse in various, at times indirect, ways. A shiny frame displayed on the wall of a fabric merchant in the bazaar or a calligraphy practice sheet handed out by the teacher in class was a typical example. The Sufi poets with their unstoppable longing for intimacy with God, which made God human, waited patiently until late night. By then the house was quiet, younger children were in bed, the serenity of the night reigned and laughter could mingle with tears. The safety and warmth emanating from those nocturnal words are hard to describe. Unforgettable is a good start. Sa‘di of Shiraz was a regular. He fitted into all of the above categories, not to mention the fact that he was a favorite of everyone. He had traveled, studied, taught, praised and admonished kings, teased everyone, and certainly made love. His poetry was an astonishing country, something of a global wonderland. In that country the elders’ authority softened and their desire for betterment lost its judgmental sharp edge. They listened attentively and wiped an occasional tear, humbled by the majesty of the bold lyrical expressions that celebrated us body and soul without apologizing for one or the other. I myself loved the unabashed, unapologetic persona of Sa‘di the lover. Even in his humblest moments, he was miles away from the pale-faced sickly lover who seemed better off dead. Yes, he could be as small and nameless as dust particles—but only after he had reminded one and all that dust particles covered the face of the earth. Or, he reminded the beloved, “I am brokenhearted for you; I will not go to others for a cure.” And just before the beloved receives the full credit for the poet’s state of dependency, a seemingly minor detail was added: “[A] broken gold vessel cannot be mended with glue.”3

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a t the bri nk of wr iting | 3 Most importantly, Sa‘di expressed this with a lyrical precision and a quiet confidence that disarmed the most skeptical of readers. I was particularly delighted when it penetrated my mother’s shield of reticence and reserve. She resisted overt expressions of emotions, which, in her view, robbed the feelings of their genuineness and depth. Hers were indirect acts of love and generosity. Weaving you a sweater or cooking your favorite dish was as close as she would come to “I love you.” With Sa‘di, things were different. It was all right to borrow his bold and expressive persona, his outgoing poetic voice. The magic was in the fact that, when she said them out loud, the emotions did not lose their validity, neither was the voice really a borrowed one. It was Sa‘di’s and hers at once. Protected by the alchemy of his poetry, emotions did not get overused through expression. They managed to hold on to their core value even though they took the shape of words. As long as mother and Sa‘di spoke with one voice, she could allow herself to say them. I would start a whole game of poetry exchange, known as moshaa’ereh, so mother would recite her favorite lines from Sa‘di’s celebrated ghazal: Ecstatic with love Someday, I’ll find my way to those lovely curls. Of your sweet lips alone I will tell a hundred savory tales. Do you wish to be unkind? Here, I have only one life, consider it yours! —or if you wish to stay— I’ll spread it like a carpet beneath your feet. Repentance and restraint are not the way to reckon with your love, From this moment on, I promise to never repent. My sad silvery heart went missing in your neighborhood, In vain I roam the earth searching every corner. You say, “Sit in sorrow till the end of your days! Or, rise, and give yourself to love!” Whatever you say my dear! I’ll sit and rise And sit, and rise … Without you, Paradise is a place I will not go near If in Hell you are with me, I do not mind its blazing fire4

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4  |  lyri cs o f l if e It should be easy to write about Sa‘di, the lyric maestro and the laughing master in one. After all, he seems totally at ease with all who inhabit the domain of his poetry. Furthermore, there are stylistic reasons that, at least on the surface, make him appear to be an easy subject. Compared to his medieval counterparts, his language is unaffected, flowing and non-convoluted. Many poets of his period enjoyed word play, not to mention the fact that they would think nothing of borrowing an obscure term from a medical or astronomical discussion, or a guide to falconry.5 Sa‘di, however, even when demonstrating his erudition, avoided infrequently used expressions or technical terms. It was as if he said to his fellow poets, “Anyone using those obscure words would sound profound and erudite. How about holding onto the pomp and circumstance while speaking with this kind of conversational ease?”: Oh, the fresh breeze of Saba! Greetings! You arrive from the abode of my love. Oh Caravan of the night! What did the morning say to you? Oh Solomon’s bird! What is the news of Sheba? Is my love still angry? Or is there hope she may be pleased [with me]? [Oh breeze of Saba]! Have you come in peace, or in enmity? Should I approach her in fear or in hope? (G. 2)

In a sense, this easy conversational style was emblematic of Sa‘di’s overall temperament—a joyful, carefree attitude that was reflected in the thematic focus of his poetry as well. Self-reflecting and philosophical, yes, but he was neither tormented nor unsure of his self-worth. Perhaps this sense of calm was rooted in the fact that, for Sa‘di, life was not a chaotic battle leading to unpredictable results. Rather, a human being could be at peace with himself and at home in the beautiful and orderly universe in which every detail had a purpose, an overseer and a designated place: The opening of every book is the name of God, the all-knowing The maker of existence, the nurturer, the almighty, the living The greatest, the most magnanimous, the Lord of the world and the people The one who made faces handsome and hearts kind and gentle

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a t the bri nk of wr iting | 5 To indulge His creation, He opened the door of generosity To birds he gave the sky and to fish the vast blue sea The rich and the poor receive their allotted share For the gnat, just as for the eagle, the sustenance is there He can see all our needs with his marvelous insight Even those of a tiny ant hiding under a rock, in a dark night Animal life he makes out of sperm, sugar from sugarcane Fresh leaves from dry wood, water from a stony fountain He makes sweet honey employing little bees And turns date pits into mighty palm trees He needs no one, yet he is kind to every soul Manifest everywhere, and hidden from all (G. 1)

“Sa‘di—Till-the-End of Time”: Our Poet’s Self-Image In fact, writing about mega figures like Sa‘di is not unlike entering a mesmerizing treasure house. It generates a question that begs to be answered periodically, namely, “Where to start?” The embarrassment of riches, and the poetic confidence with which they are presented to the reader, do not make the critic’s task easy. A hurdle, perhaps even a mistake, would be to invest in constructing “the” right approach to this extensive corpus. The bigger the ocean, the more openings there are on its shores. Seeking, and at times constructing, meaningful openings into his universe (rather multiverse, to play with new physics terminology) has to remain the central strategy. In this work, while trying to make room for multiple conversations, whenever possible I have started the discussion with Sa‘di himself. That has proven to be productive and rewarding. With regard to his reception, too, Sa‘di’s selfreferential remarks provide significant perspectives on the person, the poet and his legacy (crucial though it is to remember that a poet’s self-image is, of necessity, biased, fictive and limited). The beautifully crafted and orderly universe portrayed in the above qasideh had its majestic poetic voice as well: that of Sa‘di, itself the culmination of multiple other voices that had echoed in the tradition before him. Sa‘di was fully aware of the significance of his far-reaching poetic voice. Indeed, he showed little restraint in referring to the artistic renown he had accrued over time. Why not enjoy the sense of triumph? It was a part of the poetic

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6  |  lyri cs o f l if e tradition and was almost always balanced with a good dose of humility, particularly when God entered the picture (which was often).6 God was the alchemical presence that transformed all undue self-importance and came in particularly handy in addressing kings and rulers.7 Besides, there was always humor and the sense of poetic play that softened the self-praise, and Sa‘di knew how to put these to use. Thus, our poet allowed himself the luxury of celebrating his own poetic presence often. One example, typical of his humor and creativity, appeared in the closing line of a ghazal where the tradition of mentioning one’s pen name provided the poet with an opportunity for self-reference and reflection. Here, Sa‘di refrained from using a standard adjective, such as ‘eloquent’ or ‘adept’ in order to qualify the special nature of his artistic gift compared to those of his counterparts. Any such adjective would have downplayed the uniqueness of his voice. Instead, he employed his personal name as an adjective, assigning the reader the task of infusing it with personal meaning. “Everyone,” he said, “lives his allotted time period. [But] I am Sa‘di-till-the-end-of-Time” (“Man Sa‘di-e aakher ozzamaanam”) (G. 18). Elsewhere, in a qasideh focused on general ethical teachings, he was equally candid in self-praise. Addressing the reader/beloved/patron, Sa‘di wrote: Dar baargaah-e khaater-e Sa‘di kharaam agar Khaahi ze Padeshaah-e sokhan daad-e shaa’eri8 Walk through the palace of Sa‘di’s mind, if you wish to see the king of the poetic art perform

Utilizing the long “aa” sound in the words “baargaah”, “khaater”, “paadshaah” and “shaa’eri”, meaning “palace”, “the mind”, “the king” and “the poetic art,” he evoked the spaciousness, the elevated ceilings and the majesty of a royal palace. However, as usual, Sa‘di remained aware of the overall ethical goals of his poetry, in this case the opposite of the self-praise he started with, namely humility. Having given his reader a taste of the traditional poetic conceit, he moved from self-admiration to self-admonishment in the space of a few verses: A boastful thought goes through my head from time to time: “Here I am! The undisputed sovereign in the land of Persian poetry!”

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a t the bri nk of wr iting | 7 But then I feel breathless in awe of all the learned souls [thinking,] “How could the miracle of Moses be outdone by an imposter’s sorcery?” Humbled by the meagerness of what I have to offer, I remind myself, “Some stores sell simple glass beads; others offer fine jewelry”9

Even when God was not in the picture, humility was a necessary component of this complex subjectivity, which included self-appreciation and praise as well. In his pioneering new work, The World of Persian Literary Humanism, Hamid Dabashi (2012) describes this phenomenon as “the autonomous fragility” of the concept of aadami—“human being”—and its independence from the God/man binary that is central to Islamic metaphysics.10 Once in poetic space, Sa‘di was first and foremost the poet performing for those who “walked through the palace of his mind” fully aware of his mastery. Boastful in the above poem, is, therefore, a bit of an intended exaggeration and not quite the right adjective to describe this confident performer (certainly not in the fashion that many master qasideh writers of the period praised their own mastery).11 Rather, the fundamental emotion here is that of gratitude. The gift of writing such elegant poetry, the privilege of living in this orderly universe and the opportunity to tap into the existing social and literary traditions all made Sa‘di confident and, at the same time, grateful. Indeed, one of his remarkable poetic achievements is to blend the fiery emotion of love with this sense of composure and gratitude without extinguishing the fire. Later in this work, I will return to Sa‘di’s gratitude, and his ethics of living a fulfilled life rather than a life of renunciation or deprivation. The cosmopolitan citizen who enjoyed the fruits of the orderly universe portrayed in Sa‘di’s work needed to learn how to live, and how to be worthy of membership in this blessed gathering. That required the shaping of the self that remained central to Sa‘di’s poetic agenda. For now, let us use the notion of gratitude to turn to the question of Sa‘di’s compositions. In the area of creation, too, our poet displayed his gratitude for the literary culture that nurtured him. He did so by trying his hand in the widest spectrum of generic forms that the tradition had to offer. These ranged from the well-known ghazal, masnavi and qasideh forms to robaa’i, rhyming prose, and qet’eh. The resulting corpus was a diverse, deliberate

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8  |  lyri cs o f l if e and carefully crafted body of poetry and prose. The writings were as natural in their conformity to generic norms as they were polished in their naturalness.12 Given the popularity of Sa‘di’s works with the readership, scribes copied them in abundance and biographers and anthologists cited them in their numerous works. This is a good place to take a closer look at Sa‘di’s compositions, particularly those utilized frequently in this monograph. But, first, a few words about the metropolis whose name is inseparable from that of Sa‘di, the city of Shiraz. The Shiraz of Sa‘di The century in which Sa‘di was born was a time of uncertainty as well as possibility for the inhabitants of the region. While the threat of the Mongol invasion loomed on the horizon, the Salghurid Ataabaks of Fars were working to restore the province to its historical significance.13 Shiraz was at the heart of it all. As older cities go, Shiraz is among the relatively well documented.14 Part of the attention to the city is due to the special place it occupied in preIslamic Iran, and in the Islamic era after the Buyids in the tenth century CE. And part of its fame is owed to the major characters that called Shiraz home, including our poet Sa‘di. The Buyids, who viewed themselves as descendants of pre-Islamic kings, paid special attention to the city and made it their capital.15 In her meticulous study of Shiraz during the time of Sa‘di, Shirin Bayaani provides us with fascinating details regarding the architecture of the city, its culture and the range of urban amenities that the metropolis provided to its residents.16 While the Shiraz of lyric poetry stands out for its green meadows and fragrant rose gardens, not surprisingly the historic Shiraz experienced numerous political rivalries and military campaigns. These rivalries continued after the Buyids all through the Ghaznavid era and the Saljuqid era (tenth to thirteenth century CE), although Persian literature did begin to flourish during this time.17 The residents of Shiraz seem to have remembered the Buyid prosperity with great nostalgia and pride, visually present through Buyid monuments such as the mosque and the hospital, both built by Azod al-Dowleh.18 Although not returning Shiraz to its full prominence of the Buyid period, the Salghurids managed to bring about a period of peace and stability that

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a t the bri nk of wr iting | 9 provided the opportunity for the flourishing of the sciences, arts and culture. The most important political players in Sa‘di’s time were the Ataabaks of Fars. Descendants of the Saljuqids of Khorasan, they were at first appointed from Khorasan and later established themselves locally and ruled for more than a century.19 They built many significant monuments, some of which are still standing today. The Mozaffari School, built by Ataabak Mozaffar al-Din Zangi in the twelfth century CE, was probably the same school in which Sa‘di’s grandfather taught medicine.20 An Ataabak of Fars especially important in Sa‘di’s life, and the one from whom Sa‘di may have taken his pen name, was Mozaffar al-Din Abu Shojaa’ Sa‘d ibn Zangi. Although in the early years of his rule, that is, Sa‘di’s youth, Sa‘d ibn Zangi’s government went through conflicts with the Khaarazmshaahs (the dynasty ruling greater Iran in eleventh to thireenth century CE), the Ataabaks soon restored peace. The Ataabaks of Fars stayed in place even after the Mongol conquest of Fars and managed to keep the province in relative calm for some time. Sa‘di, as we shall shortly see, lived to see many Ataabak rulers and witness their demise with a great sense of loss. Indeed, when he returned to Shiraz from his three-decade-long journey, he dedicated his major composition Bustaan to Abu Bakr ibn Sa‘d ibn Zangi, the son of Abu Shojaa’, who had been ruling when our poet had left Shiraz thirty years earlier.21 Sa‘di’s Life and Works While there is no shortage of attention to Sa‘di and his works, his popularity has not translated into an abundance of biographical or bibliographical analysis. In fact, the latest monograph on Sa‘di in English—Sa‘di: The Poet of Life, Love and Compassion by Homa Katouzian (2006)—lists in its bibliography only four monographs dedicated exclusively to the poet’s life and work. These titles sum up the major works on Sa‘di in Persian, French and English.22 An in-depth documentation of Sa‘di’s life and work would require a separate volume. However, some reflection on the state of our current knowledge on these issues is in order here. Based on Sa‘di’s autobiographical remarks, his date of birth is assumed to be somewhere from 1210 to 1219 CE. We are certain that he was born in the city of Shiraz, in a family apparently known for its erudition in religious sciences. He lost his father at an early age, and continued his education,

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10  |  lyri cs o f l if e which had started in Shiraz, in another major polity and center of Muslim learning, Baghdad. In Baghdad, Sa‘di had the good fortune of studying with a wide range of influential thinkers and prominent Sufi practitioners. After a period of intense study, he embarked on a long journey that supposedly took him to the eastern and western frontiers of the Muslim world. During these journeys, which lasted almost thirty years, our poet “saw and experienced a great deal” and “invented even more,” as the literary historian, Jan Rypka, has rightly observed.23 Sa‘di’s complete body of works has been described as sixteen books and seven treatises according to ‘Ali ibn Ahmad Bistun, one of his earliest bibliographers. This collection supposedly comprised works of poetry and prose of varying thematic focus, and included Persian, Arabic and even some Turkish in terms of language. Zabih Allaah Safaa provides a relatively comprehensive account of Sa‘di’s compositions, revising some of the standard opinions on their origins, manner of collection and subsequent editions.24 I will in this study concentrate on the following four works, which have come to be recognized as Sa‘di’s definitive compositions: Bustaan, Golestaan, the ghazals, and a number of qasidehs. Furthermore, as I explain later in this chapter, I translate, and read, Sa‘di’s famous tarji’band, allowing the poem to be the guiding force and the momentum for the book’s penultimate chapter. This is an experiment in foregrounding the poetry rather than burying it under the weight of critical commentary.25 Let us start with Bustaan (“The Orchard”), which was completed in about 1257. Sa‘di had returned to Shiraz from his decades-long travels ready to translate his experiential learning into speculative discussions. Much of the work is supposed to have been conceived, even composed, during the travels. He opted for a metrical pattern usually, although not exclusively, dedicated to epic works and the generic form of rhyming couplets often used for lengthy frame tales. In fact, Bustaan is neither. It is a collection of short anecdotes and pointed pronouncements called Sa‘dinaameh in the earliest extant copies, underlining its singular place in the poet’s extensive literary corpus. Critics have, at times, approached it as more serious than Golestaan, which was written next and combined prose and poetry. This admiration could be a function of Bustaan’s generic construction and metrical elegance. My thoughts are more in line with those of Dabashi, who, in the work I

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a t the bri nk of wr itin g | 11 quoted earlier, refers to Bustaan and Golestaan in the same breath as “the twin summits of a literary imagination that could never excel beyond these two master texts.” He describes the two as advocating a “universal sense of morality beyond their age” and considers them to be rooted in the “vast imperial imagination of the Mongol Empire.”26 The composition of Golestaan (“The Rose Garden”) followed shortly after that of Bustaan. Yet the work was very different, not only in its generic makeup, a combination of rhyming prose and poetry, but in its more downto-earth approach and utilitarian analysis of ethical principles as reflected in human vices and virtues. Once again, I borrow Dabashi’s words describing Sa‘di’s persona in Golestaan as that of a social psychologist who “typifies, identifies, describes, diagnoses, prognosticates, and then concludes.” At the same time, as he observes, Golestaan is “full of people from different walks of life: kings, beggars, philosophers, mystics, poets, blacksmiths, sportsmen, ascetics, rich people, poor people, powerful people, prostitutes, police officers, merchants, thieves, highway bandits, good women, terrible women, young and handsome boys, frail and repentant old sinners.”27 Both Bustaan and Golestaan have remained an integral part of the Iranian educational curriculum since their composition. They survived the twentieth-century curricular changes when European-style modernity had an influence on the school system and weathered the 1979 Islamic Revolution that disfavored classical compositions not serving the ideals of what was understood to be a revolutionary Islam. More importantly, they have been preserved in the memories of generation after generation of Persian speakers, influencing the popular imaginary with their short, witty and memorable excerpts and anecdotes. The Persian qasidehs are relatively long poems, with segmented thematic and narrative coherence and a uniting rhyme pattern at the end of all lines.28 While they often contain sections on love and on celebrating the beauty in nature, qasidehs are mostly dedicated to panegyric or elegiac themes. Despite their being the least popular with contemporary critics of Sa‘di’s works, his qasidehs are a treasure trove in their own right. They contain his words of praise, admonishment and advice to kings and statesmen while making the most profound personal bond with the individual reader. In a sense, they become the vehicle for Sa‘di’s complex social theories and ethical pronouncements addressed to readers of all time and all backgrounds.29 Furthermore,

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12  |  lyri cs o f l if e they lend their generic capacity for melodic word play and formal artistry to what Sa‘di does best: making complicated craftsmanship seem easy and fun. Still, qasideh is a generic form dedicated most frequently to panegyrics. Although widespread in pre-modern Iran, there are indications that praising kings and power brokers was not entirely popular even then. Sanaa’i (d. 1131) repented from doing it, at least according to the popular version of his life story. Naaser Khosrow (d. 1088) and ‘Attaar (d. 1220) took pride in not having engaged in the practice ever.30 The contemporary Iranian scholar Naader Vazinpur dedicated an entire monograph to panegyrics, which he described as being “[t]he seal of shame on the face of Persian literature.” In it he devoted many pages to acquitting Sa‘di of the charge. Sifting through his panegyric work in search of words of wisdom and other poetic gems, Vazinpur found Sa‘di’s approach to the genre exceptional and acceptable.31 Despite such efforts on the part of this critic and others, there are no easy explanations for the dilemma of praising cruel conquerors. The literary historian Jan Rypka has observed: “What must one think of a moralist (Sa‘di) who glorifies Hulagu-Khan, the man who had executed the Salghurid Seljuq-Shah, the same man whose praise our poet had sung a few months previously?”32 The truth is, there is not much that one should think or do except place these poems into the complex social realities in which they were produced and consider the multiple purposes they served. These panegyrics never did praising alone. Furthermore, change is a permanent feature in the functional value of all literary genres as they go in and out of fashion. These same panegyrics, which do not appeal to our modern literary sensibilities, have fulfilled important artistic and practical purposes, not entirely self-serving, in the pre-­modern era. In Sa‘di’s case, too, it would be hasty to reduce these panegyrics to mere tools for guarding personal interest through flattery and appeasement. After all, Sa‘di could have done so by accepting an invitation to become an official court poet, a position offered to him more than once. Moving past condemnation or justification for the panegyric qasidehs, one can begin to see these complex poetic edifices in a new light, whether as vehicles for the poet’s worldly wisdom and social advice or as plain manifestations of his artistic skills, and poetic temperament. There are good reasons why these long poems were lovingly embraced by generation after generation of

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a t the bri nk of wr itin g | 13 readers over a long stretch of time. I hope my close reading of one of Sa‘di’s best known qasidehs, in Chapter 3, will provide a concrete example of the points I am here outlining.33 Last but not least, I will make great use in this book of Sa‘di’s fresh, sensuous and deeply spiritual lyrics, the ghazals. These are often viewed as our poet’s greatest literary achievements. Referred to, in part, as the Tayyebaat (“the blessed, the fragrant,” even “sumptuous”) the ghazals were composed over Sa‘di’s entire career. It is therefore difficult to date them individually— unless painstaking stylistic and historical analysis is carried out—apart from specific cases where events or personalities are readily named. While certain studies of the ghazals may call for such a chronological scrutiny, in general I do not invest in unraveling the chronological order purely for its own sake. In fact, the nature of the genre, and its defiance of ordinary time and space, would resist such classification attempts. Whatever the circumstances of their composition, traditionally, Sa‘di’s ghazals have attracted the readers through their simple elegance and natural flow. They have come to be known for the kind of subtle and exquisite artistry that does not make a display of itself. This is all enhanced with his signature humor, and poetic confidence, which are the hallmarks of all of his compositions. Here, a brief generic observation is in order. For a long time, Persian love poetry, known as taghazzol, had remained an integral part of the older and more dominant genre of qasideh. All through the tenth century to the twelfth, in a gradual and intricate process, the lyrical genre began to assert its autonomy as it blossomed into the independent and popular genre of ghazal.34 While no single poet, or historical event, is to be credited for this intricate evolutionary process, the Mongol period is the time when the evolution reached its pinnacle. And, beyond doubt, Sa‘di is among the writers who provide us with some of the richest, most fragrant and most sumptuous examples of the Persian ghazal. Zekr-e Jamil-e Sa‘di: The Reception Hagiographers, and those who have anthologized Sa‘di’s work over the centuries, are in agreement about the early and enthusiastic reception of his works in Persian-speaking communities. Sa‘di celebrated the attention of his contemporaries and anticipated his own future success.35 While unqualified

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14  |  lyri cs o f l if e success is not the full story of the reception of our poet, it is the one that is more frequently remembered. Twentieth-century literary historians Edward Browne and Zabih Allaah Safaa provide us with detailed accounts of Sa‘di’s life and literary legacy. Between them, Browne and Safaa present a comprehensive bibliography of the Persian sources on our poet. Sa‘di’s French biographer Henri Massé adds the European admirers of Sa‘di to the list. The list includes poets and critics who translated his works, cited his poetry in their writings or made indirect allusions to Sa‘di’s verses.36 Primary sources uniformly support what could otherwise be qualified as an exaggeration in the ways in which the three biographers mentioned here speak of Sa‘di’s reception. Browne’s opening to his account on Sa‘di reads: “No Persian writer enjoys to this day, not only in his own country, but wherever his language is cultivated, a wider celebrity or a greater reputation”.37 Rypka echoes the same sentiment, describing Sa‘di as a “most curious and captivating personality,” although he is more critically aware of the shortage of “incontestable” dates and facts about the poet’s life.38 The truth is, by the mid-twentieth century, the account of the reception of Sa‘di’s work in Iran is neither simple nor uniform. In a way, Browne, Rypka and Massé are well within the mandates of their Orientalist literary tradition where they echo centuries of admiration lavished on a master poet who was literally worshiped by generations of Persian and non-Persian speakers. Typical of that same Orientalist tradition, they ignore the contemporary Iranians’ discontent with Sa‘di’s poetry on social and political grounds. Just as they write their accounts, in Iran Sa‘di’s social role and poetic legacy is subjected to strong disapproval by Iranian critics whose definition of the modern poet is undergoing rapid change. Much of this critique is built on moral principles, but there are other nuances worthy of a very brief survey here. Sa‘di’s broader approach to ethics will be the topic of an independent chapter that I will describe later in this introduction (see the section “Content and Structure”). Sa‘di, the Versifier As is common with iconic figures, Sa‘di’s critics turn out to be heated and unforgiving. Yet their underlying motivations are often less personal attacks

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a t the bri nk of wr itin g | 15 on Sa‘di and more a frustration with the generic conventions of classical Persian poetry. Beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing well into twentieth, Iranian intellectuals’ main concern is to keep up the momentum in the country’s march toward modernity. The dominant anxiety is that Iranians will be left behind in the dark ages of tradition and superstition while Europeans, the standard bearers of progress, move forward. Because the umbilical cord with the past has to be cut, and because that process is neither simple nor painless, a struggle for soul-searching begins. One of its goals is to locate all possible culprits in the country’s backward condition and to expose them. Not surprisingly, Persian language, poetry in particular, is at the heart of this national debate.39 In his timely study, Recasting Persian Poetry: Scenarios of Poetic Modernity in Iran, Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak (2012) demonstrates effectively that the process of modernization in Persian poetry, which reached its height in the twentieth century, was long and complex. Not only were various and overlapping scenarios of modernity unfolding at the same time, the European literary paradigm adopted as a model of progress was, for the most part, imaginary. Nonetheless, it was important to envision a desired destination for the literary journey to modernity, which was perceived as a propelling force for social change. To build an inventory of the old literary works that had canonized the shackles of the archaic tradition, and by necessity had to be overcome, was an important part of what Hakkak calls “recasting” Persian poetry. Sa‘di’s legacy, at least as far as the frontline modernists were concerned, belonged to the unwanted list.40 Katouzian provides an account of the exchanges on Sa‘di, which began in the 1920s, when a way of thinking defined as the “School of Sa‘di” was blamed for Iran’s social problems.41 “Why would Sa‘di be singled out?” one may ask, given that the Iranian modernists viewed almost all of Persian literary tradition as a stronghold of overused and backward conventions. The truth is that while there was no shortage of adept poets, a handful of iconic figures stood out as the embodiment of the values of the tradition. Those who exerted a powerful influence on the mass readership were viewed as particularly suspicious, even dangerous. The list of suspects included figures as illustrious as Abu al-Qaasem Ferdowsi (d. 1020), the architect of the Persian national epic the Shaahnaameh

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16  |  lyri cs o f l if e (“The Book of Kings”), and Jalaal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273), the mystic poet and author of the compendium of speculative mysticism, the Masnavi, as well as his path-breaking lyrics in the Divaan-e Shams. And, of course, the list would have to include the twin ghazal writers of Shiraz, Haafez (d. 1390) and Sa‘di, known for their exquisite lyric poetry. For reasons that I will briefly enumerate here, among these Sa‘di appeared to possess the least redeeming features needed to qualify him as able to survive the transition into the modern era.42 For reasons beyond the scope of the present study, in the transition to modernity, the imagined cultural features of pre-Islamic Iran came to acquire iconic significance for building a modern Iranian identity. There was no better source for validation of such a desired identity than a national epic. Ferdowsi provided Iranians with the desired document: a historically honored and poetically sanctified proof of their identity. By the early decades of the twentieth century, he had already built a proud and impressive résumé. Through the composition of his monumental epic the Shaahnaameh he was credited, almost single-handedly, with the revival of Persian language after the Arab/Islamic conquest of Iran in the seventh century. The trauma of the takeover and the joy of the revival were popularly imagined in sharp contrast, providing Ferdowsi with a healer’s role. Narrating the stories of their brave, triumphant and honorable kings, he had reminded Iranians of the glory they had forgotten and empowered them to recover their vanquished sense of identity. And he had done so with a vengeance: refusing to use a single Arabic term in his long epic! That the scenario had big holes in it, such as the presence of Arabic terms in the Shaahnaameh, did not really matter. Ferdowsi had given Iranians an edifice, a magnificent epic of their own. The imagined characteristics attributed to the epic were mere responses to the call of a burgeoning identity in need of historical roots. Not surprisingly, critical studies dispute the romanticized reading of the Shaahnaameh as a nationalist manifesto, but historical analysis and popular imagination do not necessarily meet. And for the majority of the Iranian literati, the tool that Ferdowsi had provided was (for some, still is) too valuable to subject to serious scrutiny. In essence, it was a mirror that allowed them to see, and, better still, reconstruct, their pre-Islamic self-image and make it compatible with their journey to modernity. Ferdowsi remained immune to accusations of holding the country back.43

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a t the bri nk of wr itin g | 17 Haafez was harder to decouple from his Islamic legacy and roots. His very name, meaning a memorizer of the holy text, pointed to a possible professional identity, which betrayed direct connection, if not loyalty, to the religious tradition. What is more, the affinity was corroborated by actual, and favorable, allusions to the Qur’an, which are prevalent in his poetry. But he compensated for that amply. With a restless, rebellious nature and an almost sectarian temperament, Haafez peppered his ghazals with sharp criticisms of institutional power and orthodoxy. In a genre traditionally not dedicated to social and political commentary, and tucked inside the most lyrical love songs, the poet constructed a candid discourse of opposition to corrupt power and hypocritical religious practice. Although the town preacher will not easily apprehend these words As long as he practices hypocrisy, he will not be a true Muslim. Learn the way of the rend, show generosity for there is no glory In being a beast that does not drink wine and does not turn human44

To be sure, Haafez got a good share of the blame and responsibility for what was perceived as Iranians’ indifference, even resistance, to modernity.45 But verses such as these received favorable attention not just because they were eloquently and bravely expressed, but because their richness made them suitable for a wide range of literary and philosophical interpretations. Few poets have been, and continue to be, claimed by so many diametrically opposing traditions as does Haafez. In his poetry, atheists find much skepticism and carefree wine-lovers find plenty of references to wine (concrete and metaphorical). Zoroastrians see ample allusions to their practices and practicing Muslims boundless reverence for their beloved scripture. Then there are the Sufis who interpret his overt themes and fine allusions until they arrive at an intricate mystical cosmology that belongs to everyone and no one. What no interpreter will dispute is that our poet stood in clear and direct opposition to any self-serving and hypocritical orthodoxy that exploited unquestioned loyalties: The preachers who appear so innocent behind the pulpit Reveal their other face when no one is there to see I have a question, why do those who order others to repent Do not themselves do as they expect of you and me? 46

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18  |  lyri cs o f l if e If only because of the sharpness of his critical mind, a tool needed in any struggle for change, Haafez could not be dismissed as a voice that belonged to the past. The fact that he appealed to various schools of thought and practice served to open more doors. By and large, he remained popular throughout the twentieth century. In a sense, the story of Rumi’s reception in the twentieth century is a different and particularly colorful one. His domestic presence is inseparable from his global ascent, riding the tide of an intense Western desire to rediscover its own face in the mirror of Oriental wisdom. As Rumi’s works began to get translated into English, he started to emerge as an object of fascination: the pre-modern Eastern mystic who knew how to heal the wounds of a modern and dynamic West. To be sure, a part of the attraction resulted from his oldness and otherness. Yet, he was friendly, tolerant and accessible, a man for all religions, and an ancient rebel with a timeless and divine cause. Furthermore, Rumi’s ecstatic energy, his propensity for happiness rather than sorrow, and his lively disregard for formal limits of any kind, made up for any undesirable traits that his medieval viewpoints displayed. An occasional sexist remark, or a biased traditional judgment, paled next to the contempt he expressed for the narrowness of parochial judgments and petty loyalties.47 While average Persian speakers had always read Rumi’s poetry with delight, his Western critics did not acknowledge his poetic prowess well into the twentieth century. A towering mystic, yes, but scholars of Persian literature were not yet ready for Rumi the poet.48 The rise of his global fortune began with the free and popular renderings of his lyrics into English by younger and less scholarly translators, Coleman Barks included.49 It is wrong to assume that Rumi would be neglected in Iran had he not been celebrated outside of the country. However, as the English-speaking readership rejoiced in discovering Rumi, in Iran, too, the chances of him being viewed as backward or traditional diminished. After all, the rational and technologically advanced West was falling in love with him. Besides, to many Iranians, he had always been a breaker of rules, an exceptionally lively figure not quite suitable for the company of the other somber pre-moderns. Now, he had taken on a new role: that of representing his deeply misunderstood culture to a largely hostile, or indifferent, world. All through the twentieth and

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a t the bri nk of wr itin g | 19 twenty-first centuries, Rumi’s lot improved with Iranian readers and critics as a daring poet of tolerance and progress. Sa‘di had less going for him. Yes, he had spoken of the “children of Adam” as limbs of the same body and considered them all to have been created of a single essence. This was a foundational Qur’anic idea boldly foregrounded in his poetry.50 But he did not possess the restless nature and ecstatic flare that Rumi did, at least not in the same deliberate and tangible sense. On the contrary, for most Iranian intellectuals seeking change, he had been a defender of morality and an upholder of tradition, literary and otherwise. Not only had he not broken many generic rules, he was a master versifier, a skillful craftsman among wordsmiths. And if all this was not enough, he had written panegyrics as well. He had praised cruel conquerors, kings and statesmen. If traditional Persian poetry with its generic limits, stylistic obsessions and loyalty to formal embellishment symbolized the imprisonment of the Iranian mind in the confines of tradition, Sa‘di was one of the prominent prison guards. And the tool with which he had mesmerized his readership into captivity was none other than the magic of his enchanting words. In short, to explain the traditionalists’ fascination with formal artistry, and resistance to substantive change, at least one culprit had been identified. To be sure, Sa‘di’s corner was not empty of defenders, fans who wrote their heated responses in support of the master. But they mostly came from the ranks of the well-educated traditionalists, rather than the young and upcoming seekers of change. A fairly well-received example from the midtwentieth century was ‘Ali Dashti’s Dar qalamru-ye Sa‘di (“In Sa‘di’s territory”). Dashti was not an academic, nor a trained critic, but, rather, a respected intellectual of his generation. His monograph, which appeared in a second edition six months after publication, provided a stylistic analysis of Sa‘di’s language, compared him to his contemporary poets and scrutinized his personality and worldview. While in awe of Sa‘di’s greatness, Dashti was not uncritical. For example, he described the master as having a tendency for preaching and described some of his arguments as repetitive and weak, even childish. On the whole, however, he presented Sa‘di as a master poet and viewed his poetic success as going well beyond a skillful use of literary devices. Utilizing the metaphor of a khatt-e monhani (“a curve”), as opposed to a sharp angle, Dashti asked his readers to visualize Sa‘di’s poetic discourse

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20  |  lyri cs o f l if e in terms of a flowing procession of words, themes and arguments, a reflection of his pragmatic and flexible personality. Like a gently curving line, Sa‘di’s poetry created a graceful flow of communication that enabled him to avoid crashing into the thoughts and sensibilities of his readership. As a result, they did not object even when they disagreed with the master’s perspective on issues. Worthy of mention here is Dashti’s sense that Sa‘di needed to be defended. While the 1979 Iranian Revolution gave rise to a new wave of interest in traditional art and culture, Sa‘di’s reception continued to be mixed. In 1984, his 800th birthday was celebrated in his birthplace Shiraz with a conference that brought tens of Iranian and foreign scholars together. During a series of presentations that led to a three-volume publication, speaker after speaker praised Sa‘di’s worldview, his poetic art and his influence on cultures as geographically distant as Japan. The poet’s critics also continued their discourse, many illustrious figures included among them. In a 1991 interview, published in Volume 1, Part 1 of the magazine Zamaaneh, the pre-eminent poet of modern Iran Ahmad Shamlu (1925–2000) lashed out at Sa‘di. It is important to place Shamlu’s critical view of Sa‘di in its proper context. Shamlu, an activist poet with strong socialist tendencies, dedicated a substantial portion of his life and a significant amount of his poetic energy to the cause of social justice and political reform. Artistic creation had a significant place in this struggle. He, therefore, viewed poetry not as an exotic art form but as an effective tool for change, a weapon with which to engage the enemy. In the heated debate, which raged in the early and mid-twentieth century between the supporters of the old and the new poetry, Shamlu emerged as one of the most articulate voices in the camp of the modernist poets. In the long poem She’ri keh zendegist (“Poetry That is Life”) Shamlu described modern/true poets as “a branch from the forest of the masses.” In this narration of literary history, Iranian traditional poets were destined to remain lethargic and socially unaware, their thoughts captive in the ridiculous snare of the beloved’s curl.51 Against this background, it is not surprising that Shamlu found Sa‘di’s poetry deficient in more than one respect: “Sa‘di on women, Sa‘di on homosexuality, Sa‘di on ethics and social matters. Which of these solves any of

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a t the bri nk of wr itin g | 21 my problems?” said the modern poet, himself an iconic figure at this point in his eventful literary career marked by political upheaval. “Which of these teaches me anything about life?” Shamlu went on, and with this underlined his continued loyalty to the perception of poetry as a tool for political activism and social reform. But as we saw with the example of Rypka’s guarded criticism aimed at Sa‘di’s panegyrics, Iranian intellectuals are not the only ones finding faults with the perspectives expressed in the Sa‘di’s poetry. Neither have his panegyrics, nor his deftness in versification, been the only causes for criticism. Sa‘di’s Ethical “Shortcomings” In the realm of ethical guidance, Sa‘di remained bold and humorous, teasing kings and beggars alike. While dealing with crisis situations, he frequently proposed pragmatic solutions not in line with conventional ethical teachings. Citing the example of a kind man who lied to save an innocent life, Sa‘di suggested that there are times when “an expedient falsehood is preferable to a mischievous truth.”52 This is one of the more famous incidents in which our poet’s proposed moral principle is in conflict with that of many a present-day reader. It is an instance in which the “gently flowing curve” of his persuasive discourse, so admired by Dashti, is reduced to a “sharp angle,” scratching our modern sensibilities. Citing this, and similar examples, Browne did not search long and hard for philosophical justifications. After all, he was a child of his time, too, one that saw a distinct line separating the Orient from the Occident. Browne, therefore, settled for a relatively easy explanation: although a master poet, and certainly ethical in his own way, after all, Sa‘di belonged to another part of the world. His ethical principles should therefore not be expected to always coincide with those of the thinkers from the West. In Browne’s own words: “When Sa‘di is described (as he often is) as essentially an ethical poet, it must be born in mind that, correct as this view in a certain sense undoubtedly is, his ethics are somewhat different from the theories commonly professed in Western Europe.”53 Murder in Somnath, or “Lovers Do Not Take Matters into Their Own Hands” It was not just Sa‘di’s advocacy of certain moral principles that got him into trouble with many a modern-day Iranian critic and biographer at the

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22  |  lyri cs o f l if e outset of modernity. His very attention to the significance of morality, as a core human value, made him undesirable. One may argue that medieval cultural figures all paid careful attention to ethical values. While that is true, Sa‘di’s approach to the topic was deliberate and distinct. Rumi, for example, had chosen to intersperse his pronouncements in between chains of colorful stories centered on lofty mystical ideals. Sa‘di, however, had made them the centerpiece of entire books. And although not a literalist Muslim, for him the road to being a healthy and fulfilled individual went through practicing the religion. Furthermore, not being a religious literalist did not make him an intoxicated subversive by any stretch of the imagination. Last but not least, Sa‘di’s way of fixing the world was by learning from the order of the universe, not by rattling that order. All this transformed Sa‘di’s poetry, particularly for those who did not like it enough to scrutinize it closely, into a symbolic repository of the less desirable aspects of Iranian Muslim culture. These were aspects of the culture that they viewed as upholding tradition and liked to see discarded. Celebrating the poetic virtues of Sa‘di the moralist was, therefore, not seen by many as a priority. Academic selective amnesia or partial blindness is not unusual. Parallels may be observed in the black-and-white landscape of the post-9/11 American milieu where Islamic orthodoxy and the bearded Muslim fanatic do frequently fade into each other. In this ambiance, lively Muslim figures such as Sa‘di have to wait a while before their religious ideals and dynamic laughter are allowed to be viewed as one. If all this was not enough to encourage criticism, and block his way into the modern era, Sa‘di had another vice that was hard to ignore. He had made undesirable “autobiographical” allusions or, more precisely, allusions that could be interpreted as autobiographical. And sure enough they were controversial. Sa‘di’s ethical compendia, Bustaan and Golestaan, are peppered with first-person accounts of what appear to be the poet’s personal experiences during his long years of travel. The colorful nature of these anecdotes has made them very popular. Among the better known examples is Sa‘di’s travel on a ship that was supposedly attacked by pirates. Elsewhere he was arrested and forced to do construction work, and coerced by the man who freed him to marry his ill-tempered daughter.54 If Sa‘di’s moral principles clashed with certain modern-day ideals, some

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a t the bri nk of wr itin g | 23 of these so-called “autobiographical” anecdotes did more than that. They dismissed the poet as even less worthy of our trust and attention. Let us look at a very extreme example, the Somnath murder mystery. With this story, Sa‘di concludes the chapter on “Gratitude for one’s good fortune” in his versified ethical compendium Bustaan (“The Orchard”). Before we even arrive at the scene of the murder, the story has other problems. For example, unlike Rumi who respected the practitioners of all faiths, in this story, as in some others, Sa‘di does not appear to have been politically correct. Here he adopts a disdainful attitude toward another religion, which sounds like a cross between the Hindu and the Zoroastrian traditions. Furthermore, he gives this story additional emphasis by placing it in the closing pages of the chapter.55 The anecdote, told in first person, begins somewhat abruptly with our poet running into a beautiful and richly decorated idol in the city of Somnath in India. Baffled by the worshipful reverence shown to this “soulless form,” he enquires gently with a Magi (“Zoroastrian Priest”) friend regarding the situation. Interestingly, Sa‘di addresses the Magi as “Brahman,” a title usually used in Persian to denote a Hindu priest! Back to the story, faced with the priests’ hostile tone, he quickly changes his skeptical disposition and begins a systematic search to unravel the mystery of the local devotion to the idol. In the process, he exhibits the fullest range of ethical failings any writer would care to put on display. This is particularly awkward as the story is supposed to provide ethical guidance to the readership. To give a few examples, he begins with praising the priest for his in-depth religious knowledge, moves on to admiring the beauty of the idol and tops it all off with a confession of personal dedication to the “soulless” deity. But this is not all. According to the story, the priest, encouraged with this change of heart, invites Sa‘di to spend the night at the convent and see for himself the miracle performed every morning by the great idol. Exemplifying full opportunism, Sa‘di accepts the offer and sheds a few crocodile tears when in the morning the idol raises its arms in prayer. This phase of the story ends with his full-scale conversion to idolatry, complete with kissing the idol’s hand and studying the religion’s Holy Scriptures to obtain the full confidence of the crowd. Taking advantage of the acquired confidence, our poet/ethics teacher (now turned detective) roams the convent free in the dark of the night “like a scorpion.” His purpose? Unraveling the mysteries of the praying idol! Sure

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24  |  lyri cs o f l if e enough, he soon finds, behind a gold-sprinkled curtain, the secret door that hides the trickery from the public. In that protected space sits the Wizard of Oz, the man who performs the magic. Every morning, he pulls the strings that raise the idol’s arms in prayer and strengthen the faith of the faithful with this “miracle.” To protect himself as well as the vital secret, the puppeteer gets into a fight with our poet, resulting in a chase that ends with the idol-mover’s death. Sa‘di murders the miracle simulator, drops his body into a well, and escapes from Somnath into India. Is our traveler poet ignorant of the actual location of Somnath? That is a possibility. But it is equally possible that this geographical confusion is intentional, a move parallel to the earlier terminological conflation of a Magi and a Brahman. Sa‘di may have been unfamiliar with India, and may carelessly confuse a Brahman with a Magi, but he had certainly lived and studied in Iran long enough to know that Zoroastrians do not worship idols. What I am suggesting here is that one way to read such “inaccuracies” in this anecdote is to treat them as deliberate attempts to exaggerate the fictional nature of the episode by creating a palpable geographical distance between the parable and reality. Another deliberate act of distancing the narration from reality takes place in the textual space in which the story unfolds. Right after the murder, our murderer/narrator Sa‘di bursts into a series of pieces of advice for the reader, which feel somewhat comical, given the circumstances. The advice pertains to protecting oneself at the time of crisis, justifying the poet’s attempt in the story to escape unharmed from the murder scene. This he compares to running away from a swarm of angry bees or the area in which there is a crumbling wall. Then, apparently pleased with the wisdom of the analogy, he adds: “[S]uch pertinent advice cannot be found even in Sa‘di’s writings.” Well, he certainly knows who Sa‘di is. This comment, then, is a clear warning that we could have been humored all along and ought to be aware that appearances are not always what they seem to be. Yet, this is not a story told lightly by a jester seeking a few laughs from the audience. Its details have been laid out with care. Its language is meticulous if not masterly. Its tone borders on somber advice, which gives it the status of a serious story worth reading with full attention. And that is what we do: reading with attention as the narrator—who is now undoubtedly Sa‘di—returns

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a t the bri nk of wr itin g | 25 to his hometown safe, savoring the sweetness of the welcoming reception. After all the hardship he has been through, he has now arrived in the court of the local ruler Abu Bakr Sa‘d ibn Zangi. Appropriate for the topic of the chapter, Sa‘di expresses personal gratitude and prays for the ruler’s good fortune and freedom from tribulation. But the story is far from over. There is something quite important and somewhat unexpected tucked away in these concluding lines. Sa‘di wants us to think about them deeply and possibly take them with us as we end the story and walk away: And every time I raise my arms in worship Calling on that knower of all secrets I know it is not my personal strength that has Animated me to take this action Lovers do not take matters in their own hands There is a string that is pulled from a world unseen

It is easy to read this story as a standard Sufi allegory, which is no doubt one of its intended functions: a lover’s every move is a reflection of the beloved’s will. In that respect, humanity is a soulless idol except when animated with divine love. It could even be read more simply as a testimony to Sa‘di’s acknowledgment of the power of the fate we are all pre-destined to live. This could be a partial message of the story as well. But those are easy and relatively unimaginative readings of the anecdote. The ending lines in the Somnath story are a clear rebuff to the tendency to fall for such easy solutions. A more humorous and provocative reading, in line with the grotesque storyline, is possible. Such a reading would suggest that we should not have looked up to the Sa‘di of the story—whether representing the real Sa‘di or not—as our teacher and guide fully and uncritically. The same goes for his opponents, the idol worshipers who cheated themselves to convince others. Neither side’s religious creeds, recorded in detail and followed to the point of killing each other, have been helping us make sense of the dilemmas of our lives. Ironically, it has been the “soulless” object, the fraudulent God, the idol, which has in the end taught the most profound lesson: understand your own helplessness before trying to convince others. Reading all about the blinded believers, we should have asked, “What is the massive helpless object of their belief doing in the center of the story?” At the

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26  |  lyri cs o f l if e same time, we were clearly expected not to see it and not to ask this question. For, if we had, Sa‘di could not have driven his point home effectively by raising the question in the least anticipated point at the end. My general argument is simple. The fact that the Somnath story has turned into an autobiographical confession documenting Sa‘di’s ethical failings is the result of rather facile reading of complicated and skillful storytelling. Other readings are possible. Like most well-constructed fables, what the story of murder in Somnath tells us depends on the questions we bring to it. We can look at it in the context of Sa‘di’s fantastic travel adventures, or literary experiments with the concept of anonymous observer, with which he is fascinated. For now, let us leave the idol and the question of reception of Sa‘di’s work and turn our gaze inward, namely to what the present work hopes to contribute to what we know about Sa‘di. Goals and Methods This is a good time to address the question that has been lingering in the background: “How does one speak about such complex and multifaceted poetry as that of Sa‘di?” How does one deal with the perpetual need to know where to start? My way of addressing the issue, in the present work, has been placing the stress on the word perpetual in order to transform the question from an opening query into an ongoing methodological strategy. In this way, I turn “Where to start?” into a permanent signpost, a reminder, a quest to stay oriented in Sa‘di’s expansive poetic landscape. No matter where we are heading, there will always be new openings, curious detours and tempting divergences. Within the limits of the courses that I chart for us, meandering will be a deliberate strategy. The goal is to shift the vantage point often, foreground Sa‘di’s poetry and engage the voice that comes to the surface. Instead of aiming to measure and evaluate the work or its composer, the goal is to allow that poetic voice to join ours in opening new areas of inquiry and debate. In this continuous and deliberate engagement with Sa‘di’s voice, I am inspired by Dorothee Soelle (2001) in what she terms replacing “the hermeneutics of suspicion” with “the hermeneutics of hunger” in her monumental work The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance.56 Although in this book she is writing on the topic of mysticism, her point applies to many subjects—indeed to scholarship as a whole. What she is trying to change is the hermeneutic style dominant in the

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a t the bri nk of wr itin g | 27 academy, namely the methodology of suspicion, the evaluative practice that begins with suspecting every text, every tradition and every detail. In its place, she offers a hunger for hearing and absorbing as many thoughts, images, ideas and rhythms as these texts and traditions have to offer. This is a hunger, a deep desire, for capturing the widest variety of meanings that these texts can harbor and searching for ways to unlock them, so to speak. We began this introduction welcoming Sa‘di into the home of my childhood and followed him all the way to India (a journey, real or fictive). In the process, we savored examples of his poetry and ran into his admirers as well as detractors. This introductory chapter could have been designed to present more neatly classified facts and figures placed under more conventionally discussed life events: birth, education, teachers, friends and compositions. However, I have resisted converting the excitement of a more-or-less openended journey into an accumulation of facts—the kind of learning that takes place in an old-fashioned museum.57 Facts are important, and they should and will be provided throughout the work. Final answers, however, will seriously limit any dynamic exploration of the works of a poet as vibrant, resourceful and versatile as Sa‘di of Shiraz. Meandering through the opportunities that his poetry provides, on the other hand, allows for reflective, adventurous and critical engagement with the work. While everything placed between the two covers of a book would necessarily carry the finalizing privileges of the author to select examples, set goals and line up answers, I will try to allow meanderings to happen. Although methodologies have to be observed in action, I hope that this introduction has given you a taste of what I am defining as a crystallization of the perpetual question, “Where to start?” Indeed, settling ethical issues such as those arising in the Somnath episode is not the main difficulty in writing about Sa‘di. After all, such issues should, and will, ultimately be settled by the individual reader. The true difficulty, as well as joy, is to choose from the many doors that invite you to enter the towering edifice of his poetry, and reach out for the treasures most relevant to the concerns of our time. What are the significant issues for understanding Sa‘di in the moment we occupy in history? And what are the most meaningful ways to engage with them? Which door opens on the most exciting possibility? While choosing from our proverbial doors is further complicated by the fact that they all appear equally familiar, accessible and easy to open, the

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28  |  lyri cs o f l if e mix of hesitation and excitement is enticing. At the methodological level, it sustains the search by firing the creative energy. The truth is that after a few tries, you know deep down that all doors promise to open on unimaginable treasures. The journey is as easy as it is impossible. We are coming back full circle to what I mentioned earlier in this introduction. That is the quality that over the centuries anthologists have identified as the most prominent literary quality of Sa‘di’s poetry, a characteristic known as sahl-e momtane’ (“the easy impossible”).58 The device usually refers to a poetic ease that is supposedly impossible to replicate. In a way, for the critic, Sa‘di himself is the easy impossible subject, a simply magnificent giant who seems to do everything expected of him. And yet, one is never quite sure exactly what to do with Sa‘di. As a citizen, he follows the rules of citizenship and professional conduct to the best of our knowledge. Even in poetic space, he demonstrates exemplary manners. Unlike ‘Attaar and ‘Eraaqi, he will not sneak out drunk at midnight. Neither will he disrupt the market by whirling in the goldsmiths’ quarters in broad daylight.59 In many ways, he is a model of conformity to literary conventions and social obligations. And yet, he will not allow you to contain him within the borders of either, laughing the social and literary restrictions out of his way. Any study of Sa‘di’s poetry will be inadequate if it fails to keep this sense of impossible ease at the forefront and share it with the reader. It would be a serious failure if Sa‘di’s signature ease were to be buried under the weight of overblown technical analysis. Ideally, reading about him, one should be able to glide forward in the way that he makes us feel he did in life and in poetry. With that, I have described the second methodological goal I am setting for the present volume, one that I should work hard to achieve. Last but not least, Sa‘di’s laughter is one of his signature poetic devices. It is one of his strategies for negotiating the twists and turns of conventions in art and in life. In a literal sense, he laughs his way through one of the most troubled centuries of Iranian history.60 The significance of laughter, this thematic golden thread that runs through his poetry, is such that at first I planned to devote a major section of this work to his sense of humor and its poetic function. An anonymous philosophical comment had made a deep impression on me. It compared Søren Kierkegaard and Woody Allen as two thinkers concerned with the very

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a t the bri nk of wr itin g | 29 same questions, and with a visible difference in their approach. Woody Allen laughs at what Kierkegaard is tormented with. The same has been observed of Lewis Carroll’s fun and delight with questions of nonsense and word-play that come up routinely in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). These same questions torment Wittgenstein into taking a philosophical leap into the domain of total silence.61 To be sure, Kierkegaard, Allen, Carol and Wittgenstein speak to different audiences, use different intellectual and creative tools and make very different contributions. Wittgenstein’s philosophical debate does not exactly replicate the observations by the Caterpillar and the March Hare. Neither is his leap beyond language identical to Alice’s venture into Wonderland. But the point is taken: laughter is more than a sign of having a good time, and humor can help one find new vantage points for looking at complicated and perturbing issues. Furthermore, the delight emanating from a humorous exchange is not just convincing, it is inviting, even irresistible. Humor is not just an effective communication device. It is a strategy for confronting life. I started reading on humor and learned that had we not lived in such a tragic and violent century, our psychologists would have been able to tell us a lot more about humor. As it were, there were too many wars, resulting in distressful experiences and mental injures, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Not only did these cases demand immediate attention, they made researching humor and laughter insignificant, if not a waste of time. Psychologists who wished to work on the subject took the risk of their research not being taken seriously and their projects not being funded by respectable funding agencies. As a result, the human habit of laughing was not always looked upon favorably. In fact, for the longest time, philosophers, religious authorities and thinkers thought of laughter as a sign of folly. A person who laughed a lot, or tried to make others laugh, was not taking the human predicament seriously. Neither could such a person be expected to be serious about his or her duties and responsibilities. In light of all this, it seemed that I had found a new door to open. This was my chance to demonstrate that laughter, as more recent psychological studies indicate, is complicated and diverse in variety and impact. I could find examples that show that Sa‘di appreciates this. Not only does he remain delighted with life and employ subtle and overt humor to get his teachings

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30  |  lyri cs o f l if e across, he enlivens even complicated, and at times somber, poetic messages with laughter. The result is a discourse fresh with joyous and delicate speech patterns that, at the same time, sustain its homiletic and traditional elements. Even in ghazals, what could be a sad plea with a careless beloved is often transformed into lighthearted and joyful songs such as this: Do not leave your hair free, windswept, disheveled, Or your riotous beauty will spread in the world. Even if you walk, discrete as a fairy, before the mind’s eye, A cry [of recognition] shakes the being of all humanity. My heart stumbled because of you. Help it back on its feet. Do not throw away a gift this rare. Do not break it either; it carries your untold secrets. I fear the secret will fall into unworthy hands. True, fools like me who become all eyes to see your face better Fall prey to sharp arrows of affliction But the time is right for the kiss that seals our lips! How much closer should I get to death before that wish comes true? Sa‘di! Be patient with this painful festering wound And think of the cooling ointments that can come your way!

Every word in this ghazal laughs, from the disheveled hair that evokes a riot in town to the heart that stumbles, the childish attempt to see the beloved’s face better and the kiss that could single-handedly save our poet from death. Even the painful, festering wound in the last line is an anticipation for a cooling ointment. I looked more and found more such poems—and then looked more, and found yet more. That was exactly the problem. This door was not a door at all. Sa‘di’s humor could not be located. It was everywhere: in love, in prayer, in practice, in praise and in politics. It was his way of being in the world and not just a methodological tool—although he did use it to step back and achieve critical distance from cultural norms, religious orthodoxy and the literary tradition in which he wrote. I had two choices: to write a book entirely on Sa‘di’s humor or write a book on Sa‘di and let his humor shine through—as do the golden threads woven into the texture of an exquisite garment. I opted for the latter.62

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a t the bri nk of wr itin g | 31 Content and Structure Meandering through Sa‘di’s poetry to fashion this volume, certain topics emerged as core ideas around which chapters could be formed. One such idea was the powerful presence of poetic voices such as Sa‘di’s in shaping a cosmopolitan subjectivity among the readers at large. This was a subjectivity empowered to feel connected with the world and to envision itself as a player in the bigger picture. Clearly, the social and historical conditions that underlie the construction of this subjectivity are significant, complex and varied. However, with the exception of Dabashi’s new monograph, quoted earlier, in which he proposes the idea of a Persian literary humanism, the Persian literary tradition is not often viewed as a significant factor in the shaping of social phenomena or personal self-perceptions.63 At best, it is perceived as a repository of signs indicating the advent of social change. Naturally, the present work is not the place in which to construct the full narrative of the development and maturation of the Persian poetic voice. Neither is it the venue in which to analyze the historical events that lead to the cultural potency of this voice. Dabashi tackles these goals effectively in the above-mentioned work and provides the appropriate foundation for further historical inquiry. What I will do in this regard is trace significant instances in Sa‘di’s work that provide new and meaningful openings into the debate. These instances are as important for exploring the multi-world subjectivity among the Persianspeaking readers of Sa‘di as they are for a better understanding of Sa‘di himself. They are clearly connected with Sa‘di’s travels which themselves provide exciting openings into the study of his life and work. The Somnath anecdote and others like it, whether fictitious or factual, provide us with a perspective on Sa‘di’s intricate understanding and portrayal of human subjectivity. It is a pleasure to observe this adventurous truth-seeking traveler speak about the world as an unpredictable cosmopolitan environment. Equally conspicuous in these episodes is the relative fluidity of his portrayal of right and wrong. The events’ main function is often to empower human subjectivity to become aware of its own vices and virtues in relation to those of others and evolve into an inter-subjectivity capable of sustaining a multi-world environment tolerant of differences. As a result, Sa‘di’s discursive universe is often a c­ olorful

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32  |  lyri cs o f l if e and kaleidoscopic multiverse, to borrow the language of modern physics. In this multiverse, events and characters fade into each other and emerge in new shapes and patterns. Here a religious authority could be wrong and a lifeless idol could acquire the persona of Sa‘di and give him the most profound spiritual lesson. What I have enumerated here goes beyond one chapter and suffuses many of the discussions throughout this volume. However, its core ideas will be the topic of Chapter 2, entitled “Cosmopolitan Kinship: The Making of a Multi-world Subjectivity in the Poetry of Sa‘di.” The chapter will take a closer look at Sa‘di’s cosmopolitan worldview as reflected in his accounts of his own travels. Next, we will seek Sa‘di the ethicist, the one who, as we have seen, receives the least attention and the most criticism from his modern critics. Not surprisingly, Sa‘di believes that the cosmopolitan citizen we just spoke about needs to form his/her personal ethical principles, and learn to negotiate his/her way through the many currents of power that flow all around him/ her. These power currents—whether religious, political or personal—define the boundaries of the world in which s/he lives. In this environment, power is not absolute, neither is freedom rigid and brittle. Rather, freedom is a careful and considered harnessing of the same power currents that can be devastating if one faces them head-on. Early in the planning of this volume, it became clear that the centrality of ethics in Sa‘di’s thoughts, his contribution to the subject and the attention of his critics to the matter, warranted the devotion of a chapter to this theme. I dedicated the third chapter to the subject and called it “Sa‘di on Care of the Self: Ethical Games of Power in Practice of Freedom.” As you may surmise from the title, in this section, I benefited immensely from Michel Foucault’s insight into the interrelation between ethics and games of power (and, at times, found the overlap between his and Sa‘di’s views on the subject nothing short of astonishing!). I very much hope that this chapter introduces new, pertinent examples from Sa‘di’s corpus into the discussion and provides new theoretical perspectives on his ethical ­teachings. Sa‘di of Shiraz is nothing if not the Persian ghazal writer par excellence. There was no question in my mind that a central part of this project should be dedicated to his ghazal writing, which constitutes a key element in his poetic

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a t the bri nk of wr itin g | 33 legacy. Still there were surprises in store when I took a close and critical look at the ghazals that I had admired and enjoyed all my life. One such surprise was finding repetition to be the main tool in the lyric poetry of the poet who is known for freshness and surprise. Few critics would describe Sa‘di as a rebel, an iconoclast or one who enjoys breaking the rules of prosody. And, yet, the same critics would acknowledge his tremendous ability to remain fresh and original within the parameters of an already shaped tradition. My initial attempt at documenting the thematic substance of these ghazals yielded a shockingly small collection. As you will see in Chapter 4, the first of two chapters on Sa‘di’s ghazals, however, my initial surprise soon gave way to an urge to scrutinize the poetic functions of repetition in these poetic artifacts. In the process, I explored the emergence of many fresh constructions within the finer literary patterns that characterized these lyrics. I describe one of these, which is particularly dynamic, and carries Sa‘di’s signature, so to speak, as the “shifting field of similarities.” This chapter is titled “‘Every New Flower Arriving in the World’: Sa‘di and the Art of Ghazal Writing.” There was a need for another chapter on Sa‘di’s ghazals, one in which I, and the reader, could step away from the close reading of the fine poetic patterns and look at the bigger picture. There were larger patterns at work that constructed the powerful lyrical ambience of the poems and demanded attention. This forms the content of Chapter 5 called “Gazing at the Garden of Your Beauty: Love in the Garden.” This chapter utilizes the metaphoric range and appeal of a garden to explore the strategies that Sa‘di uses as he encodes his broader vision of love into the lyric poetry that has become definitive of ghazal writing to this day. The topics include the moving of the garden inside, love in action, holistic vision of love, homoerotic love and finally the art of gazing at the garden. Chapter 6 is experimental. It is an attempt to subordinate fully the critical discourse to the poem that it attempts to read. In writing it, clearly, some intervention on my part was unavoidable. I had to set some specific goals for the chapter and choose a poem to be its centerpiece. Throughout this volume, I have privileged Sa‘di the master of eloquence, the traveler, the teacher and the ethical guide. So, in this chapter, I decided to foreground Sa‘di the buffoon, the joker—by no means a trivial or flippant aspect of his multifaceted personality. Sa‘di the joker is alert, witty and tough and, above all, street-wise.

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34  |  lyri cs o f l if e His language is extra-sensous and, as usual, triumphant. The message in these poems often is: much may seem wrong with me, but I will endure and remain loyal to my beloved. Do not take me for a fool. This is a life choice and a deliberate one. Thinking of these ideas, Sa‘di’s tarji’band came to mind. This is a simply enchanting piece that begins with “My tall slender-figured cypress, you are a gorgeous sight to behold!” It is quite well-known to Sa‘di’s Persian-speaking readers. The challenge and the excitement of translating the piece, coupled with the fact that the English-speaking readers of Sa‘di are not as familiar with it, finalized the choice. I started translating the poem and took it from there. * * * * * * Shortly before the completion of this volume, a friend posed a question to me that may provide a good opportunity to conclude this introduction. “First Rumi,” he pondered, “and now Sa‘di. Why always focus on major figures? Does this not shift the critical focus from events and currents to great men of literature?”64 This was by no means a new question but one worth pondering. My initial reaction was somewhat defensive: “This is different,” I responded. “Most major poets in the Persian tradition have not been studied properly, certainly not in the critical literature available in English.” In other words, I should be thanked for the service I am providing. Soon, however, I realized, much to my delight, that my motivations for producing this volume had been more complicated and far less altruistic. In fact, it had been tremendously attractive to write about mega poets such as Rumi and Sa‘di because they were expanding galaxies of imagination and vitality. Their creative ability lent itself to innovative reading strategies. It empowered the critical discourse to move beyond them as the initial individual subject and reach for broader social and literary questions. In fact, I had attempted to utilize Sa‘di’s poetic corpus to achieve more than an understanding of Sa‘di as the great man of Persian poetry. Through the prism of his work, I had tried to understand what motivates us all to create, to connect to others through poetry and to enjoy reading the creative works that emerge from the cultural panorama of likeness and difference. I hope I have given you a general idea of what is to come in the monograph you have in hand—and that our adventure will entail much meander-

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a t the bri nk of wr itin g | 35 ing, none aimless. I hope we truly travel with Sa‘di, struggle, hide, love and laugh at the humorous instances. There will be challenges in decoding the creative poetic moments in his poetry. We will agree on some strategies and disagree on others. But I hope we shall come away from these struggles feeling that they functioned as cohesive intellectual elements that hold our critical journey together the way roads are remembered by their sharpest twists and turns. It is never enough to argue a methodology. Some theoretically great approaches fail badly in action. Furthermore, looking at Sa‘di’s perfect diction, page after page, can lead to a consuming perfectionism that slows the writing process. There is often a feeling that one must not settle for an idea because there has to be a better way to handle a poet of his caliber. I have worked to transform this feeling into a healthy propelling energy with a corrective methodological edge. How much I have succeeded is for you to find out. Nonetheless, I would like to point out that this volume hopes to achieve more than presenting new perspectives on Sa‘di’s poetry. It hopes to provide an opportunity to stay aware of the methodological experiments and struggles. It is a rare challenge and privilege to write about a giant who resists fitting into a single monograph. I hope you find yourself a place in the landscape that this book opens before you—and feel at home in this landscape. It’ll be an added bonus if it points you in methodologically productive directions. With that, let us begin our journey in earnest. Our first charge is to join Sa‘di the traveler and sift through the gifts he has brought back from his adventures, factual and fictitious. Notes   1. Mosleh al-Din Abu ‘Abd Allaah Sa‘di of Shiraz is the focus of this monograph. The full verse (of which half is quoted here) is the opening of one of his wellknown qasidehs (odes frequently used for panegyric purposes) that reads: “Do not give your heart to any one person or place/for the lands and seas are vast and the people living in them numerous”; Mosleh al-Din Abu ‘Abd Allaah Sa‘di, Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, ed. Mohammad ‘Ali Forughi (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1987 [1366]), 720. All quotes from Sa‘di in this book are my translations.   2. There are extensive discussions on the topic of subjectivity and i­ntersubjectivity,

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36  |  lyri cs o f l if e including Michel Foucault’s classic Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley et al. (New York: The New Press, 1994). Here, I use the term in the basic Husserlian sense that intersubjective acts are empathic and rooted in the belief that there are other beings who feel and behave more or less like us. We can imagine ourselves in their shoes and perceive the world from their perspective. See: Christian Breyer, “Edmund Husserl,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information of Stanford University, 2013 [2003]), http://plato.stanford.edu/ info.html#c, accessed March 31, 2014.  3. Sa‘di, Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 536; emphasis added.  4. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, G. 401, 559; my emphasis. Henceforth only the ghazal number will be provided, with the abbreviation G standing for ghazal.   5. The culmination of this kind of technical and, at times, convoluted, language can be seen in the poetry of Khaaqaani of Shirvaan (d. 1190). His poems are peppered with literary, theological, astrological, medical and other specialized expressions to the point that some have considered his poetry partially inaccessible. See: ‘Abd al-Hoseyn Zarrinkub, Ba kaarvaan-e holleh: majmu’eh-ye naqd-e adabi (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e ‘Elmi, 1994 [1373]), 189–90.  6. Nezaami Ganjavi (d. 1209) went so far as to place poets in line right after the prophets: Pish o pasi bast saff-e owliyaa/pas sho’araa’ aamad u pish anbiyaa’ (“Friends of God lined up in order/Poets stood right behind the prophets); Elyaas b. Yusef Nezaami Ganjavi, Kolliyaat-e khamseh-ye Nezaami Ganjavi, ed. Baaqer Mo’infar (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Zarrin, 1983b [1362]), 20.   7. In Chapter 3, “Sa‘di on Care of the Self: Ethical Games of Power in Practice of Freedom,” I draw attention to the way in which introducing God into the picture, and forming the subject–God–Ruler triangle, Sa‘di modifies the social power dynamic; see the section entitled “Sa‘di’s Odes of Praise: Panegyric, or Fashioning Discourse into Rational Principles of Action?” in Chapter 3.   8. Ending line of a homiletic qasideh; see Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 755.  9. Ibid. 10. Hamid Dabashi, The World of Persian Literary Humanism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 10. 11. Again, Nezaami quoted above in praise of poets (Note 6), also has a well-known qasideh that devotes quite a few lines to his own poetic mastery: “I am the king of kings in superior knowledge/Heavens and earth I have conquered with my divine language”; Elyaas b. Yusef Nezaami Ganjavi, Divaan-e qasaa’ed va ghazaliyaat, ed. Sa‘id Nafisi (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Forughi, 1983a [1362]), 255.

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a t the bri nk of wr itin g | 37 12. Mohammad Taqi Bahaar (Malek al-Sho’araa’) provides an extended discussion of Sa‘di’s style in the third volume of his classic Sabk’shenaasi (Tehran: AmirKabir, 1990 [1369]), 111–33 and 144–56. 13. C. E. Bosworth, “Salghurids,” in C. E. Bosworth et al. (eds.) The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. VIII (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 978. 14. One of the best sources on the city is Shiraaz’naameh; see Ahmad Ibn Abu al-Kheyr Zarkub Shiraazi, Shiraaz’naameh, ed. Bahman Karimi (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Roshanaa’i, 1932 [1311]). 15. Another good historical source on the flourishing of Shiraz under the Buyids is Abu ‘Abd Allaah Shams al-Din Mohammad Ibn Ahmad Moqaddasi’s Ahsan al-taqaasim fi ma’refat al-aqaalim translated into Persian by ‘Alinaqi Monzavi (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Kumesh, 2006 [1385]). 16. Shirin Bayaani, Sa‘di, khaak-e Shiraaz va bu-ye ‘eshq (Tehran: Yazdaa, 2010 [1389]), 22–44. 17. C. E. Bosworth, “Turkish expansion towards the west,” in M. A. al-Bakhit et al. (eds.) History of Humanity, Volume IV: From the Seventh to the Sixteenth Century (New York: Routledge/UNESCO, 2000), 387–92. And by the same author, see “The Development of Persian Culture under the Early Ghaznavids,” Iran, 6 1968, 40. 18. Ibn Balkhi, Faars’naameh, ed. and commentary by Mansur Rastegaar Fasaa’i (Shiraz: Enteshaaraat-e Bonyaad-e Faars’shenaasi, 1995 [1374]), 322–3. 19. Ghiyaas al-Din Muhammad Khaand Mir, Taarikh-e habib al-siyar, Vol. 2, ed. Mohammad Dabir Siyaaqi (Tehran: Ketaab forushi-ye Khayyaam, 1974 [1353]), 559–60. 20. Zarkub Shiraazi, Shiraaz’naameh, 51. 21. Jan Rypka, History of Iranian Literature (Dordrecht: D. Rydal Publishing Company, 1968), 250. 22. Homa Katouzian, Sa‘di: The Poet of Life, Love and Compassion (Oxford: Oneworld Press, 2006). In chronological order, the four monographs that Katouzian lists are: Henri Masse, Essai sur le Poete Saadi (Paris: Paul Geutner, 1919); Habib Yaghmaa’i (ed.), Sa‘dinaameh (Tehran: Ministry of Education, 1938); ‘Ali Dashti, Dar qalamru-ye Sa‘di (Tehran: Ketaabkhaane-ye Ibn Sinaa, 1960 [1339]); and John D. Yohannan, The Poet Sa‘di: A Persian Humanist (Boston: Bibliotheca Persica and University Press of America, 1987). Since the publication of Katouzian’s work a new monograph on Sa‘di has been published in Iran by Shirin Bayaani; see Note 15. Besides these monographs, the current study makes use of standard literary histories that have substantial sections

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38  |  lyri cs o f l if e on Sa‘di. In chronological order, these include Edward G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923), 525–41; Jan Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, 250–5; Zabih Allaah Safaa, Taarikh-e adabiyaat dar Iraan, Vol. 3, Part 1 (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Ferdows, 1990 [1369]), 584–622. 23. Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, 250. 24. Among other things, Safaa disputes the position of Bistun as the earliest collector of Sa‘di’s works. See: Taarikh-e adabiyaat dar Iraan, Vol. 3, 605–9. 25. For Sa‘di’s tarji’band see Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 651–65. For my translation and analysis of the tarji’band, see Chapter 6 “My Poor Heart Sometimes Runs, Sometimes Whirls: Meet Sa‘di the Comedian.” 26. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 651–65. Dabashi views the time of the spread of the Mongol Empire in Persian-speaking polities as the period of the victory of the poetic persona over ethnic identification or the supremacy of the logos over ethnos (The World of Persian Literary Humanism, 155). 27. Dabashi, The World of Persian Literary Humanism, 157. 28. For an extensive study of the genre of qasideh, see Julie Scott Meisami, “Poetic Microcosms: The Persian Qasida to the End of the Twelfth Century,” in Stefan Sperl and Christopher Shackle (eds.) Qasida Poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa (Volume One) (New York: E. J. Brill, 1996), pp. 174–82. 29. I provide a close reading of one of Sa‘di’s best-known qasidehs in Chapter 3. 30. Naaser Khosrow, the Ismaili poet of Qobaadiyaan, wrote in a qasideh, “I am the kind of poet who does not throw before swines/the precious pearls of Persian words.” Naader Vazinpur, whom I will quote shortly in relation to Sa‘di, dedicates a chapter to Naaser Khosrow’s reluctance to write panegyrics. See: Madh: daagh-e nang bar simaa-ye adab-e Faarsi (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Mo’in, 1995 [1374]), 118–37. 31. Vazinpur, Madh: daagh-e nang bar simaa-ye adab-e Faarsi, 102–6. 32. Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, 252. 33. See Note 28. 34. For a summary of the various theories of the origin of the ghazal, see A. Bausani, “Ghazal, ii. In Persian literature,” in P. Bearman et al. (eds.) Encyclopaedia of Islam (Second Edition), Vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1965), pp. 1,033–6. For an overview of works of the first ghazal-writers and for the so-called first surviving ghazal, see Sirus Shamisaa, Sayr-e ghazal dar she’r-e Faarsi az aghaz ta emruz (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Ferdowsi, 1984 [1362]), 43–44. 35. Sa‘di’s clearest and most celebrated reference to his literary reputation and suc-

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a t the bri nk of wr itin g | 39 cess appeared in the opening portions of Golestaan, in which he refers to zekr-e jamil-e Sa‘di (“Sa‘di’s fair reputation”), which circulates everywhere among people; see Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 30. 36. See note above. 37. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, Vol. 2, 525. 38. Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, 250. 39. While discussions on the centrality of language to Iranian modernity continue, Mohammad Tavakoli-Targhi’s article remains pivotal to the debate; see “Refashioning Iran: Language and Culture during the Constitutional Revolution,” Iranian Studies, 23/1/4 1990, 77–101. I have explored the interconnections between poetic sacred-making and notions of modernity in a monograph entitled Recite in the Name of the Red Rose: Poetic Sacred Making in Twentieth-Century Iran (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006). 40. Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, Recasting Persian Poetry: Scenarios of Poetic Modernity in Iran (London: Oneworld Publications, 2012). Karimi-Hakkak does not focus on Sa‘di’s legacy. 41. Katouzian, Sa‘di, 3–8. 42. Edward Browne provides a comprehensive account of Ferdowsi’s life and work; see A Literary History of Persia, Vol. 2, 129–49. For references to Rumi, see ibid., 515–24 and for Haafez, see Browne, A Literary History of Persia, Vol. 3, 271–319. 43. For a fascinating critical view on the Shaahnaameh, see Dick Davis, Epic and Sedition: A Case of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Washington, D. C.: Mage Publishers, 2006). 44. Shams al-Din Mohammad Haafez, Divaan, eds. Mohammad Qazvini and Qaasem Ghani, notes by Mohammad Qazvini (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Asaatir, 1995 [1374]), 216. For a discussion of the concept of rend (and rendi), see the following essay by Franklin Lewis: “HAFEZ Viii. HAFEZ AND RENDI,” in Ehsan Yarshater (ed.) Encyclopaedia Iranica Online (December 15, 2002), www. iranicaonline.org/articles/hafez-vii-viii, accessed March 31, 2014. 45. One of the persistent critics of Haafez was the Iranian intellectual Ahmad Kasravi who blamed traditional mystical literature as being the cause of the lack of progress in Iranian society; see Lloyd Ridgeon, Sufi Castigator: Ahmad Kasravi and the Iranian Mystical Tradition (New York: Routledge, 2006). 46. Haafez, Divaan, 200. 47. Rumi does have complementary references to women—and instances of downplaying the gender difference. By and large, however, his stories in the Masnavi

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40  |  lyri cs o f l if e echo the dominant belief of his time, portraying women as the embodiment of carnal desire—the story of the king and the slave girl in the first book being one such example. 48. This lack of recognition for Rumi the poet was what motivated me to embark on writing my monograph Reading Mystical Lyric: The Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998). 49. Coleman Barks has been deeply admired and severely criticized for his renderings of Rumi’s lyrics, which he does using a verbatim translation by a native speaker. See: The Essential Rumi (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995). 50. For a calligraphic presentation and various translations of these three lines, which now adorn the entrance to the United Nations, visit: zaufishan.co.uk/2011/09/ iranian-poetry-bani-adam-inscribed-on.htm 51. For “Poetry That is Life” and a discussion of Shamlu’s view of poetry as an effective tool for change, see my monograph Recite in the Name of the Red Rose, 134–59. 52. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 37. 53. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, Vol. 2, 530. 54. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 162 and 87–88 respectively. 55. Ibid. 374–7. 56. Dorothee Soelle, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001). 57. Modern museums try to, and can, become open-ended journeys. 58. Rashid al-Din Mohammad Vatvaat, Hadaa’eq al-sehr fi daqaa’eq al-she’r, ed. ‘Abbaas Eqbaal (Tehran: Ketaabkhaaneh-ye Sanaa’i, 1983 [1362]). 59. Shams al-Din Ahmad Aflaaki, Manaaqib al-‘arefin, ed. Tahsin Yazici (Tehran: Donyaa-ye Ketaab, 1983 [1362]), 429. 60. These are the troubled years of the Mongol invasion of the area. For a description and in-depth analysis see David Morgan’s Medieval Persia, 1040–1797 (London: Routledge, 1988). 61. As far as Wittgenstein is concerned, any view expressed in words is a view of the interior of the world that finds articulation in language. The only solution is a flight on the wings of silence toward an “absence of articulation.” See: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuiness (London: Routledge/Kegan Paul, 1961), 6.51–6.522. 62. The renowned Iranian satirist Iraj Pezeshkzad, whose novel My Uncle Napoleon, trans. Dick Davis (New York: Modern Library, 2006) is a modern masterpiece, using humor to sharpen social commentary, has written an in-depth and excit-

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a t the bri nk of wr itin g | 41 ing monograph dedicated to Sa‘di’s humor called Tanz-e faakher-e Sa‘di (Sa‘di’s Exquisite Humor) (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Shahaab-e Saaqeb, 2002 [1381]). 63. In this work, Hamid Dabashi demonstrates that any history of the region will be seriously inadequate without attention to the rich Persian literature that animated individual and social exchanges across the Persian-speaking expanse; see The World of Persian Literary Humanism. 64. My first literary critical study was of Rumi’s lyric poetry; see Reading Mystical Lyric.

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2 Cosmopolitan Kinship: The Making of a Multi-world Subjectivity In the Poetry of Sa‘di

I

am about to open this chapter on Sa‘di’s cosmopolitan worldview with a reference to one of his contemporary poets. Unusual as it may be, there is a good reason for it. The celebrated poet, and mystic, whom Persian speakers call Mowlaanaa Jalaal al-Din Mowlavi is known by two equally well-known patronymics, Balkhi and Rumi, associating him with two major geographical regions thousands of miles apart.1 These two regions could be described as located approximately at the two ends of an important pre-­modern highway that, in our time, has come to be celebrated as the Silk Road. Balkh is in present-day Afghanistan and Rum (referring to Anatolia) in the country that the world now knows as Turkey. The Silk Road, which in the 1200s brought a gift as precious as the young Rumi (together with his family) from the eastern borders of the Islamdom to its west, was one of many cultural and commercial arteries that transported cosmopolitan vibrancy, among other things. I will say more about the Silk Road later but the example from Rumi will show that Sa‘di was nourished by a literary/cultural tradition that possessed a cosmopolitan mind. The main focus of this chapter, however, will be on the ways in which our poet Sa‘di of Shiraz imagined himself as an inhabitant of a diverse and cosmopolitan world. This was a world aware of and sensitive to the presence of others living elsewhere. From his perspective, life was not to be shaped solely by the values of local personalities and their practices. Rather, the ideal situation was to explore different worlds, to learn, to suffer if need be, and ultimately to acquire a multi-world subjectivity. This, as we will see, was not motivated by a romantic notion of approving or embracing all different 42

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 43 ways of life. Rather, it was an attempt to know and to taste the fruits that life has to offer whether concrete or metaphorical.2 In a qasideh dedicated to Shams al-Din Mohammad Joveyni, Sa‘di showcased the personal principle of searching and presented it as a general recommendation to all: Do not give your heart to a sole beloved or a single place The seas and lands are as vast and numerous as women and men The dog lingering in the neighborhood receives nothing but blows For instead of going out to seek its prey, it hides in its den How long will you suffer like a hen in a henhouse? Why not travel the skies like a soaring pigeon? Fly off this tree and land on the other! Be a nightingale Why be entrapped in your heart’s sorrow like a heron? The earth is trampled under feet even by cows and donkeys For it is unable to move, unlike the turning wheel of the heaven3

The ultimate goal of the chapter is to look beyond Sa‘di’s verse and examine the broader poetic context in which poems such as the above worked to stretch the reader’s world to new possibilities. Rather, drawing on his poetry, I will suggest that medieval Persian poetic discourse, which has at times been blamed for its panegyric, moralistic or overly stylized tendencies, was in fact a window through which the world could be “seen.” It was a kind of conceptual Silk Road that bridged polities and contributed to the construction of multi-world intersubjectivities. Simply put, it empowered its readers to imagine their selves able to inhabit and traverse large and varied human societies at times completely different from their own. In the chapter that follows I will further argue that in Sa‘di’s work these cosmopolitan intersubjectivities are built upon a complex and carefully devised system of ethical principles. Among other things, I’d like to prepare us for the next chapter in which I will explore Sa‘di’s ethical discussions in light of what Michel Foucault has called “the care of the self,” or “the practice of the self.” Foucault describes ethics as nothing but “the form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection” and sees nothing wrong with individuals constructing their selves in ways that they would enjoy this considered freedom.4 But first, let us open the discussion of cosmopolitanism through a celebrated ghazal of Rumi. In a style less technically refined and more intoxicated

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44  |  lyri cs o f l if e than that of Sa‘di, often in the lively neighborhood of his mystical ghazals, Rumi also probes the question of the lover’s sense of belonging. Although not always directly expressed, his aim is none other than decoupling the mystic’s spiritual identity from its ethnic and local settings—whether geographical or psychological. Typically, as a form, ghazal is not given to narrating incidents. Yet, Rumi often turns his ghazals into a vehicle for constructing short and imaginary anecdotes. In one such anecdote, in a ghazal that has now become a classic, our poet encounters a drunken midnight wanderer, not surprisingly one endowed with humor and wisdom. Rumi’s first question to the man is not, “Why are you in such a disheveled state?” or even, “What is your name?” but rather, “Where do you come from?” Not surprisingly, the drunk opts, in his carefree mood, for a short game of hide and seek: “Where do you come from?” I said, and he answered in a mocking tone, “One half of me is from Turkistan my dear, the other from Farghaaneh [I am] Half water and clay, you may say, and half heart and soul Half abandoned on the seashore, the other made with deep-sea pearls.” “Please let’s be friends,” I said. “I feel related to you.” “Right this moment,” replied the man, “I do not know friend from foe”5

Despite the reference to Turkistan and Farghaaneh (geographical regions also situated on the Silk Road, by the way), it is clear that neither our poet, nor the character he has conjured up, is speaking of physical locations. In fact, geography per se is so irrelevant to the exchange that the above verses can be read in a complete allegorical sense. At the same time, this exaggerated and playful conversation is vibrant with a sense of cosmopolitan awareness. As you read it, you cannot help but notice that intriguing far-off places exist and the poetic self is unafraid of traveling beyond the borders of its native land to get a taste of what they have to offer. Of course, what exactly is meant by cosmopolitanism is a complicated question that we shall explore shortly. For the time being, let me explain what I am attributing to the poetic self, here exemplified by Rumi’s interlocutor. This voice, I propose, empowers its readers, through textual as well as oral interaction, to transcend their safely familiar provincial selves and be intrigued by the more expansive possibility of a multi-world intersubjectivity. This is a tricky debate to have in the twenty-first century.

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 45 When we think of pre-modern societies, it is often difficult to view them as possessing a cosmopolitan imagination that is capable of picturing other polities and relating to their inhabitants in some form or another. There is a good reason for it, too. Kwame Appiah, who has written on the subject of cosmopolitanism at length, and whom I will quote among others in this chapter, has a humorous and revealing observation. He points out, “If I walk down New York’s Fifth Avenue on an ordinary day, I will have within sight more human beings than most of my hunter-gatherer ancestors saw in a life time.”6 And in case we think of the hunter-gatherers as too distant, he adds that the population of classical Athens when Socrates died at the end of the fifth century BC could have lived in a few large skyscrapers. Appiah’s point, which may be oversimplified if we rely only on this quote, is that it is a challenge to prepare our hearts and minds formed over long millennia of living in local settings with little attention to those outside of them, to produce ideas and institutions that will allow us to live together as the global tribe that we have become.7 It is fascinating to see the role that poets such as Sa‘di or Rumi played in “preparing our hearts and minds” for producing ideas and institutions that will allow us to live together. Contrary to the romantic image cherished by the so-called New Age readers, the poets I quote in this chapter did not necessarily conflate cosmopolitan openness with approving or adopting the ways of life of other societies. Neither does Appiah. Indeed, among those who have written on the subject, what I find particularly appealing in Appiah’s approach to the concept of cosmopolitanism is the importance he attaches to sharing stories. I find his attention to the subtlety of sharing and evaluating one another’s stories to be deeply insightful. He describes this practice as “one of the central human ways of learning to align our responses to the world.” In a way, this is exactly what our poets, and particularly Sa‘di, adhered to as they wrote their stories. His so-called moralistic anecdotes in the two compositions Bustaan and Golestaan are a case in point. Indeed, it makes better sense to look at these works as an exercise in story exchange with the world, rather than the campaigns of a man on a self-righteous moral mission. The lively and practical nature of these anecdotes is a clear indication of Sa‘di’s willingness to align the responses of his culture of birth to that of the larger world. At the local level, the stories give him a chance to examine, and, when

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46  |  lyri cs o f l if e he chooses, to uphold, the values that in Appiah’s words “maintain the social fabric and the texture of our relationship” with one another. The multiple roles that these stories play are so crucial that, as Appiah points out, we hardly recognize a community as human if it has no stories.8 A cursory look at the opening section of Bustaan is quite revealing. In this segment, called sabab-e nazm-e Ketaab, according to a time-honored generic tradition, the author spells out his reasons for the compilation of the book. Sa‘di starts this section by establishing his credentials as a true cosmopolitan. These do not include his openness to other belief systems or his extensive knowledge of them based on education. Rather, the main characteristics are that he has been to places, met a vast number of people and exchanged words of learning and wisdom with them: Much have I roamed through the world’s far places Spending time with all kinds of people I have found fulfillment in every corner of the earth From these harvests I have filled my small parcel 9

But Sa‘di is determined to clarify that these exchanges have not altered his deep loyalty to his homeland and culture of origin. After all, the distance that separates a wise cosmopolitan who knows where he belongs from one who has betrayed his origin is only as substantial as that loyalty: The like of the pure and humble souls living in Shiraz I have seen nowhere else; may God bless this land My love for the people of this unadulterated soil From Damascus and Greece has brought me back

Next, Sa‘di gets to the serious business of exchanging stories and aligning one’s perception of the world with that of the others. This is the process that fulfills a dual, and at times seemingly contradictory, purpose. It allows the storyteller to validate the peculiarities of places and individuals whom he left behind to travel even as he informs these very people of the presence of the others he met along the road and their different ways of life. Curiosity, pleasure, disagreement, learning and entertainment are all parts of what leads, in the end, to an acknowledgment of the presence of the others:

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 47 It was a pity to leave the abundance of flower gardens [which I saw] And return to friends with empty hands “When leaving Egypt,” I said to myself “People bring home sugar as a gift for friends” I have words many times sweeter than sugar If I have no sugar to gift and no money to spend This is not the kind of sugar that people consume as food But the kind that wise minds take on paper from land to land

Here, Sa‘di is telling his reader that he has brought them wisdom and experiential learning in the form of stories. That is to be expected. But the analogy he chooses in this poem for his book of morals, Bustaan, is revealing. Instead of a holy object with religious or philosophical overtones, it is a food item. Even then, not a food item that—like water or bread—would save lives due to its nourishing quality, but sugar, a food known to add to the pleasurable dimension of eating. Sure enough, this is not the first, nor the last, time that Persian poetry is compared to sugar in sweetness. Less than a century later, Haafez of Shiraz (d. 1390) echoes the same sentiment with regard to his own ghazals.10 But defining a book of morality tales by its sweetness, underlines the entertaining, personal and lighthearted nature of the exploration and exchange that he will offer in the book. And yet, to ensure that the reader does not underestimate the surprises and the challenges involved in learning about the word, in the last line of this segment, Sa‘di upgrades the metaphorical sugar into a date. He tells us, in this closing line, that his tales in Bustaan are plucked from an orchard (he uses the word Bustaan, which he has selected as title of the book). They are like dates, covered with a layer of sweetness that reveals a stone inside once opened up.11 My goal in this chapter is to have us look at some of these horizonexpanding anecdotes but also to look beyond Sa‘di’s Bustaan and Golestaan. In particular, I hope that our explorations would shed some light on the role that Persian poetry played in bringing mobility to the stories such as the ones Sa‘di crafted in the above works. I suggest that as silk, jade and spices—and other goods—traveled along commercial highways such as the Silk Road in various parts of the region, so did travel the poetic voices along the myriad large and small conceptual roads that we may call for convenience the Persian

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48  |  lyri cs o f l if e poetic discourse. Leafing through anthologies and literary histories, it is perfectly normal to hear a poet living in Samarqand echoed in the writing of poets from Isfahan or further to the south in Shiraz. Neither would it be surprising to catch the sumptuous ghazals of Haafez of Shiraz traveling east and reaching India. Poetry’s flair for sharp wit and melodious guile, its tendency toward brevity and capacity for memorization, made the poetic voice particularly suitable for travel. Since manuscript production flourished, in Persian-, Turkish- and Arabic-speaking worlds—and poetry memorization and recitation formed a major cultural habit even by the less educated classes—it would be safe to assume that these poetic voices traveled far in the Persian-speaking worlds. As a result, Kashgar, Balkh, Farghaaneh, Shiraz and Samarqand were not connected merely with routes that brought them commercial goods but also by many golden threads of poetic, scholarly and creative voices. The Nature and Scope of the Poetic Voice A quick footnote is in order. Obviously, these poets were not magicians or flawless individuals. Some like Manuchehri of Daamghaan (d. 1040), the royal poet, were reputed to have spent the best part of their short lives drinking.12 Others sought no occupation but praising kings and lived on the charity of rulers and their courtiers. Yet others composed highly conventional verse that hardly traveled beyond the court and made little impact. However, a considerable number of them did much more than that. They were the literati, the intellectuals, advisors to kings, ethical specialists, political commentators, spiritual masters and more. They showed great awareness of the power of the poetic medium at their disposal and the enthusiasm that the constellations of the local cultures showed for consuming their poetry. Hence the aptness of sugar as a metaphor for them! And yet they offered much more than sweetness. They made use of artistry, humor, morality, spirituality, seriousness and play. More often than not, they probed eloquently in search of a multivalent understanding of life, and, in the process, complicated the regional debates that could remain simple and monolithic. It was with this kind of awareness that Rumi wrote, “Speak a new language so the world will be a new world! So it will be freed from worldly limits and become infinite.” And yet, of course, always true to the allusive language of mysticism, here, Rumi was referring simultaneously to the life-giving speech of the beloved.13

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 49 I have, in this chapter, used the metaphor of a conceptual Silk Road for the pre-modern Persian poetic discourse to evoke mostly the phenomenon of the mobility of this discourse in space. Roads, travel and mobility mostly suggest the idea of traversing geographical distance and connecting places. But they also evoke the notion of time, albeit in a subtler way. When it comes to cultural and historical constructs, time is particularly central. In other words, the longevity of ideas and practices gain additional significance. It is, therefore, relevant to point out here that time was one highway that this poetry traveled with ease, displaying, in the process, a remarkable ability to adapt to new conditions and survive. Indeed, the time span that these poets managed to traverse is nothing short of amazing. Let us observe an example of this successful time travel in an incident from our so-called current events in which the poetry we are speaking about played a lively and effective role. In the heat of the 2009 election disputes in Iran, a Persian weblog listed a sharp poetic mockery of unjust rulers, suggesting that their desperate use of force will not help them survive: The justice of the just did not survive the ravages of time Neither will the cruelty of your brutal agents The thundering of the lions subsided, and vanished, in this land So will the barking of your noisy dogs The dust in the wake of the horse rider settled So will the dust raised by the hooves of your jackasses14

That the twenty-first century democracy-seeking Iranian youth selected the voice of a medieval poet as a viable ally in their struggle and included it in their blog felt delightful to me. Equally delightful was the fact that the poet was none other than Sayf al-Din Farghaani (d.1324), hailing from fourteenthcentury Farghaaneh. And although his verses were centered on the ravishes of time, in the case of his own poetry, the passage of time had only enhanced the reach of its intercultural and intersubjective spread. Moving beyond traditional anthologies, and entering the electronic age, it had first been selected for inclusion in the First Iranians e-book established by Iranian poetry lovers and now adorning the popular Iranian–American website Iranian.com under the heading “First Iranian Poet who Advocated Social Justice” (see: iranian. com/main/node/79335).

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50  |  lyri cs o f l if e Farghaaneh is now located in Uzbekistan and in the fourteenth century a nation state called Iran did not exist. In other words, even referring to Sayf al-Din Farghaani as an Iranian poet could be a problematic proposal. But, interestingly, the problem itself, which demonstrates the fragility of constructs such as nationality, dissolves in the face of the multicultural/­ multiregional engine that empowered and mobilized the poetic voice in question.15 However we choose to qualify Farghaani himself, his voice survived all the way through to our time, communicated with the Iranian youth in the Green Movement and carried its message of social justice to us intact. The survival and empowerment of the voice, I suggest, has been made possible through its membership in the constellation of words, images and ideas that I have dubbed—rather broadly—the Persian poetic discourse, the superhighway along which lively imaginations traveled and met. To suggest that the speed and the spread of this cultural superhighway resembled anything like our generation enjoys with its electronic weapons and toys would be overstating the case. But then, had the poetic discourse developed with a speed equal to that which the change in our virtual habits display, its communicability across generations would not have been maintained. In other words, the metaphor of a conceptual superhighway is no more fitting than any other metaphor ever is. However, it does help us conceive, although in imperfect ways, the work of those who created and/or cherished the beautiful, agitating and complicated gift of poetic wisdom. They carried their much-loved merchandize in the form of memorized pieces, illustrated manuscripts, written calligraphy, proverbs used in their spoken language, stories and poetic games as they traveled for commerce and pilgrimage, or in search of teachers, mosques/schools for lodging and learning. Sometimes, they sought Khaanqaah, the Sufi lodges, for spiritual practice and in search of new spiritual masters—where they also sought food, shelter and companionship of other seekers. Some of the travelers were themselves poets looking for wealthy patrons to sponsor their creative works, the way that we may seek interested donors, publishers, or grant-giving agencies. In their wake, spread seeds of philosophical and religious debate, poetic search for beauty, as well as the Sufi pledges of tolerance for otherness and difference. While describing the variety, scope and complexity of these traveling ideas would require a separate monograph,

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 51 they can be generally placed under the rubric of psychological/artistic/spiritual treasures embodied in the poetic word. It was a sweet date that hid a stone inside offering seductive and melodious ways to complicate easy and self-righteous answers. Whatever else this body of knowledge did, it also gave its readers, and listeners, the tools for building subjectivities that belonged to a world larger than the city of their birth. Problematizing the Silk Road and Cosmopolitanism The idea of cosmopolitanism in the Middle Eastern past has great attraction, particularly to scholars of Middle Eastern heritage. The hassles of a politically conflict-ridden present make the notion of a culturally open and vibrant past romantic and alluring. That “we” were tolerant of others such a long time ago surely contradicts the scenarios of Muslims’ existential incompatibility with much that modernity has to offer, including democracy. There is even a grain of truth in this nostalgic, if uncomplicated, idealization of the past. However, the trouble, as Will Hanley points out in his “Grieving Cosmopolitanism in Middle East Studies,” is that fantasy clings to scholarly and popular accounts of the Middle East. And even if the “cosmopolitanism fantasy,” happens to be more kindly than the “Orientalist fantasy,” he points out rightly, it is just as necessary that it be confronted.16 Hanley’s point is not so much to argue that there are not such cosmopolitan pasts to be unearthed for the Middle East, but, rather, that, first, cosmopolitanism is not a simple and homogeneous category. It can mask differences rather than revealing and clarifying. And, when used about the past, it often entails a strong sense of nostalgia that undervalues the present in comparison to this diverse and tolerant past. Second, and equally important, the Middle Eastern social pasts, as demographic and anecdotal information indicate, were “diverse and largely and functional.” In order for these pasts not to be masked and silenced by an idealized and homogeneous imaginary version, the “cosmopolitan decline teleology must be confronted and overturned.”17 Strange as it may seem, even the notion of a fixed and ongoing Silk Road connecting China in the East to Rome in the West is equally, if not more, problematic than the idea of a homogeneous Middle Eastern cosmopolitanism. In a superb article entitled “The Road That Never Was: The Silk Road and Trans-Eurasian Exchange,” Khodadad Rezakhani argues that the ­pervasive

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52  |  lyri cs o f l if e and influential idea of a Silk Road, with its manufactured boundaries and cultural markers, is more of a modern invention.18 Rezakhani takes the historiographical route, pointing out that the existing documents do not support the existence of one sustained Silk Road and its first mentions occur only by the Europeans curious about the connections between China and the West. Not only is such a connection not properly documented in Chinese sources and those of the countries along the supposed route, the Europeans who mention it are mostly interested in the beginning and the end of the road. As a result, they leave out thousands of kilometers in between the two and the major cities that flourished along that neglected part of the way.19 Rezakhani’s objective is not to disprove the existence of trans-Eurasian exchange. Indeed, his point is similar to the one made by Hanley, quoted earlier, concerning cosmopolitanism in the Middle East. Such romantic, ahistorical notions may seem to celebrate the glorious historical past of the region. But, in fact, they loom so large on the horizon that they mask the multiple, complex and changing realities that existed on the ground. If we let go of the—exaggerated and romanticized—idea of a constant, major and unchanging route, we can begin to see the many different regional centers of cultural and commercial activity that come into view in major cities and societies along the way. The de-romanticization of these two ideas, the Silk Road and cosmopolitanism of the pre-modern Middle East, may appear to be counterproductive for my current discussion at first. It appears to undermine the metaphor of the Persian poetic discourse as a conceptual Silk Road running through a cosmopolitan region. But it does not. In fact, it is essential to avoid the notion of this poetic discourse as a grand, homogeneous and homogenizing movement that demolished ways of thinking and speaking that conflicted with it. We must replace the idea of this clumsy, oversized model masking the many literary realities with the idea of a constellation of multiple conceptual discourses enriched by Persian speakers experiencing different socio-historical conditions. What we are witnessing here is not one Silk Road and it is not moving in a single direction. Rather, we have a multiplicity of roads, many cultural arteries if you like, carrying ideas and enriching human subjectivities by facilitating the flow of thought between multiple communities with significant Persian-speaking populations. These currents of thought, creativity and experience shaped and reshaped by the exacting and yet always evolving

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 53 generic conventions of an age-old but lively tradition, survived the ravages of time because of its flexibility. It could empty itself to make room for what needed to come to the foreground. It could shape-shift to assume the necessary shape of what it needed to express, and yet polish and reshape that same idea in the process. This fascinating multiplicity of imaginative struggle with language was deeply rooted in the varying life experiences of the poets who wrote in the tradition. Persian poets of the pre-modern era may seem like a predictable lot. Many of them had a solid old-style education and a mentor in a learned father or an uncle. Many found patronage for their art with a local ruler. Once they joined a court, they led seemingly predictable, perhaps even monotonous, lives in the proximity of a ruler whose tantrums and expectations hardly differed from those of his counterparts elsewhere (although some patrons turned out to be exceptionally sensitive and learned). With regard to the literary rulebooks, too, one could fall for the totalizing view that exaggerates the generic conventions of the classical Persian tradition as a daunting tradition that imposed debilitating stylistic limitations on the creativity of the poets. The reality, or rather the multiplicity of the realities, on the ground is different indeed. Persian Poets and Travel One lens through which the diverse nature of these poet’s experiences, and their approaches to the world at large, could be brought into focus is travel. The poet celebrated in this book, Sa‘di of Shiraz, spent close to thirty years of his life traveling. And he may not have been an exception among fellow poets with regard to exploring. Indeed, while the topic of Persian poets and travel merits a separate monograph, I would like to use the small window that I have opened on the subject here to highlight a new trait in the personality of these poets. This trait sheds light on how their poetry acquired the kind of cosmopolitan expansiveness that spoke to so many different cultural constellations in the area. I hope our brief excursion here would help us see these poets as men of this world—practical, down-to-earth, vibrant and frequently adventurous. They were highly educated and often multitalented. Many had had to endure poverty prior to grappling with the trials and tribulations of courtly politics. Many were torn between the depths of their personal spiritual longing to travel and the plea of their community that wished for

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54  |  lyri cs o f l if e their presence and leadership. In short, many among these spiritual teacher/ ghazal writer/panegyric master wordsmiths were many other things besides travelers. Some of these poets may have not traveled at all if their need for the bare necessities of life had been met in their birthplace. An example is Farrokhi of Sistaan (d. 1037) who left his hometown Sistaan, where a local nobleman dehqaan had been his patron. When Farrokhi got married, and requested an increase in his yearly allowance that his patron was unable to meet, the poet started looking for a new patron financially able to do that. He was told of the generous patronage of poetry in the court of the Chaghaaniyaan. So, he traveled to their territory on the right bank of the upper Oxus in the basin of the Sokhan River. The Chaghaaniyaan were at the time ruling in this area as vassals first of the Samanid and afterward of the Ghaznavid kings.20 Later on, Farrokhi made a definite upward move to Ghazneh and entered the court of Sultan Mahmud—whose love story with the slave Ayaaz I will discuss in Chapter 5 “Gazing at the Garden of Your Beauty: Love in the Garden”, the chapter on Sa‘di’s love lyrics.21 Farrokhi’s journey may have gone unnoticed, buried among the numerous examples of such excursions by poets in search of patrons—if it were not for the rare gift that he took to his patron-to-be. It was a fresh and artfully crafted poem that gave birth to a new metaphor for Persian poetry, kaarvaan-e holleh, a “caravan of fine garments.” The metaphor is resonant with Persian speakers to this day: I left Sistaan with a caravan of fine garments Spun from the heart, woven from the soul Garments of silk sewn together with eloquent speech Ornamented with patterns made out of words Every wrap recovered painstakingly from the mind Every woof separated meticulously from the soul The trace of every art you know you can see in it If you seek endless novelty, you will find that too Pour water on it; this garment will not be harmed Set fire to it; the flames will not touch its elegance The earth’s dust will not ruin its color Its designs will not fade with the passage of time

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 55 Written with ease and stored in the center of the heart The thoughts are assigned to guard it there for you22

Given the disarming elegance of this poetic gift, it is no surprise that the Amir who received such an unexpected treasure form the distant region of Sistaan (not particularly celebrated for its poetry) extended his patronage to Farrokhi the next day. A more surprising fact is that Farrokhi, the author of these verses, was at the time a relatively poor member of the lower classes and looked so shabby and uncouth that the vizier had to have him cleaned up before he was fit to meet the ruler. And, yet, the main thrust of the poem by this less than high cultured poet is the universality of poetry as the finest artistic language of creativity shared by all human beings—a gift fit for kings if they are fit to understand it. About a century after Farrokhi, the activity of traveling appears to have happened in the reverse order for another master qasideh writer in the Persian literary tradition, Khaaqaani of Shirvaan. Born in the city of Shamakhi in the Shirvaan region (present-day Azerbaijan) in 1121, Khaaqaani lost his father at an early age. Since his uncle, a physician and astronomer in the court of Shirvaan Shaah, acted as a guardian and tutor to our poet, he too learned much about these disciplines. Moreover, it was natural for him to enter the service of the same court. Much of Khaaqaani’s life, however, seems to have been taken over by a dream of getting away from Shirvaan Shaah’s court to go to Khorasan (northeast of present-day Iran) where he imagined that there would be better appreciation for his learning and particularly his poetic art. “Why do they not let me go to Khorasan?” he once wrote. “I am a nightingale, why keep me from entering the garden?”23 While the dream of going to Khorasan never materialized for Khaaqaani, he did travel with this aim more than once. One trip was cut short by illness, and another anticipated and aborted by the king who jealously wanted to keep him close. Two other trips were planned and performed as successful pilgrimages to Mecca and entailed visits to such major urban centers as Baghdad. More to the point for our discussion, Khaaqaani always returned from these excursions with gifts for his townspeople, so to speak. The relatively short masnavi, Tohfat al-’Eraaqayn (“A gift from the two Iraqs”) gives us much valuable biographical information on him as well as his impressions of people

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56  |  lyri cs o f l if e and life in the urban centers that he passed through. From his second pilgrimage to Mecca, Khaaqaani brought a shorter poem, the qasideh known as The Portals at Madaa’en, in which he captures the devastation left by the passage of time, and the sorrow he feels as he observes the remains of the palace near Ctesiphon, the Sassanid imperial capital and one of the great cities in ancient Mesopotamia. If the challenge of cosmopolitanism is to take our minds and hearts “formed over millennia of living in local settings” and equip them with ideas that will allow us to imagine others across time and space and live with them, this poem is one tool for such reshaping of the mind.24 My far-sighted heart learn a lesson from what you see The Portals at Madaa’en are a mirror reflecting that lesson Take one moment and walk from the banks of the Tigris to this place Let your tears of sorrow flow like a second Tigris on the ruins

Obviously, this poem, in which the ruins speak about bygone glories of kings, is not meant to provide historical information, in any shape or form, about the Persian emperors ruling in Ctesiphon. Rather, it is the equivalent of a pre-modern graphic novel. In it, the ominous ruins of Ctesiphon are depicted as history frozen in time. The courage, the splendor, the struggles and the suffering are all lodged inside broken pieces of stone. The only way to melt them back into intelligible time that flows, that is alive and that is meaningful to our human emotions is to re-tell them in poetic language. And that Khaaqaani is more than capable to do. He begs the palace to give him the treasures of its words, so back home in Shirvaan the king can beg him for the treasure of his story retold in verse. And yet, Khaaqaani and his readers know that the bigger story is not about Ctesiphon at all. It is about the need for the ordinary human being to listen to the past. It is a celebration of the capacity of poetry to become the language of every ruin. Things separated from us by time and space are, therefore, not alien or unreachable. They are stories waiting to be retold: Every dent in the walls of a place teaches you a lesson Listen to its story, with all your heart It says, “You are made of dust and so am I. Come close! Walk on me! And shed a few tears before you depart” 25

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 57 One of the most famous, one may even say notorious, poet travelers of the pre-modern Persian tradition is the erudite and ecstatic mystic and poet of Hamadaan, Fakhr al-Din ‘Eraaqi (d. 1289). ‘Eraaqi, whose entire life is centered on his travels, is different from the two traveling poets we have met so far. First, his travels, at least on the face of it, often begin in impulsive, or involuntary, ways. Second, his example demonstrates that there are serious exceptions to two of the statements that Appiah makes about cosmopolitanism and the allure of traveling. Appiah tells us that local life is associated with the individuals we know, and are therefore real and concrete, whereas the pull of cosmopolitanism is toward some general and abstract notion of humanity. In the case of ‘Eraaqi, this does not apply. He abandons his secure position in a local setting by a powerful attraction to a wandering young musician in an antinomian dervish group who embodies, for him, the multifaceted emotion of love. And, yet, as the events following this initial motivation to travel show, ‘Eraaqi is indeed looking for much larger and abstract perceptions/strategies for remaking of the self. Second, Appiah observes that traveling does not free you from your tradition. This may be true in many instances. Again, as we will see in a brief description of the stages of his journeys, ‘Eraaqi does break with his upheld local traditions more than once. His physical excursions are very much about exploring new ways of understanding the inner journey.26 Mohtasham Khozaa’i, ‘Eraaqi’s most recent editor, tells us that he was an accomplished scholar by the age of seventeen. One day, as he was teaching at the local madraseh a group of wandering dervishes entered singing and ­dancing—among them a handsome young man. The madraseh location may be a later embellishment to the story in order to sharpen the binary opposition between scholastic learning and ecstatic experiences.27 What we know for sure is that the encounter initiated an inner upheaval. This upheaval was strong enough to motivate ‘Eraaqi to join the group and later leave Hamadaan for Isfahan with them. Still later, our poet followed the group all the way to India. For ‘Eraaqi, this was the beginning of an inner mutiny that never quite subsided. Arriving in the city of Moltaan, he joined the Khaanqaah of Bahaa’ al-Din Zakariyaa Moltaani (d. 1262), the Sufi master who initiated the Sohravardiyeh order on the Indian sub-continent. Even then, he left the Khaanqaah and Moltaan, at first, to explore Delhi and Somnath. Some literary historians have suggested that before his return to Moltaan, ‘Eraaqi

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58  |  lyri cs o f l if e met other major Sufi figures living in the region. Once ‘Eraaqi returned to Moltaan, however, Bahaa’ al-Din’s charisma was strong enough to keep him there for many years.28 This is no place to explore the cosmopolitan nature of the city of Moltaan, now located in the Punjab Province in Pakistan. Neither can such a possible cosmopolitanism be reduced to poetry exchanges between different Persianspeaking peoples living in the existing cultural hubs in and around the area. I would like to note, however, that the city’s bazaars, mosques and shrines of Sufi saints had already distinguished Moltaan as a vibrant city that attracted the friends of God, the awliyaa. Most likely, ‘Eraaqi did not arrive in Moltaan just on a vague impulse. He must have known about the spiritual milieu created around Bahaa’ al-Din. He did not feel isolated and disconnected once he was there. Indeed, his poems and sermons were in demand by the local community. The letters written to relatives and poems composed in this time show that Bahaa’ al-Din’s presence was a powerful catalyst in ‘Eraaqi’s transition from an ecstatic young poet to a seasoned Sufi figure. His moments of ecstasy are beautifully crafted into ghazals such as this one: What a hubbub in the wine house! The clamor has spread everywhere What mutiny did her eyes plot this time? The uproar comes from all directions What wine did her lips serve? A sip intoxicated every soul there is. My life is chaos like your long, untied hair Without your upright figure, there are no straight paths for me You are the destination for the journey that is my being Cups have no purpose but to hold pure wine.29

Although the destination, mentioned in the last verse here, is more of a metaphorical one, individuals and their personal contributions often turned out to be great motivations for ‘Eraaqi’s moves across large expanses of space and culture. After the death of Bahaa’ al-Din Moltaani in the latter part of the thirteenth century, our poet left Moltaan but instead of returning to his hometown in Hamadaan opted for the Khaanqaah of another grand master, Sadr al-Din Qunavi (d. 1274) in Anatolia—the city of Konya in present-

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 59 day Turkey to be precise. The son-in-law and most prominent student of the Cordovan mystic Ibn ‘Arabi, Qunavi was a great influence on ‘Eraaqi’s writing and thinking that expanded itself yet again in order to make sense of Ibn ‘Arabi’s contribution. ‘Eraaqi moved to the nearby city of Toqaat where he had his own Khaanqaah teaching, and writing for a substantial group of followers. Whether his celebrated work the Lama‘aat (“The Divine Flashes”), which was written during his time in Anatolia, was more of a reflection on the thoughts of Ahmad Ghazaali (d. 1223 or 1226), the founder of the school of love in Khorasani Sufism, or on the thoughts of Ibn ‘Arabi, is beyond the scope of this chapter. And, it should matter less than what ‘Eraaqi himself had to offer. What is important here is that ‘Eraaqi’s travels did not just include traversing large and varied geographical expanses. It meant appropriating, synthesizing and often redefining thoughts and practices that were current in a large and culturally diverse area stretching beyond Khorasan in the east and Cordoba and Damascus in the west. The territory within was vast, too. He gradually built a mystical poetic subjectivity that was capable of embracing others not as ignorant, wrong or fallen beings that one would accept magnanimously but rather as decent and necessary members in a universe in which every being played a part. His subjectivity was an inter-subjectivity, to put it in a nutshell. Toqaat was not ‘Eraaqi’s final destination either. When his major supporter and protector, the governor of Anatolia, Mo’in al-Din Parvaaneh, was killed, ‘Eraaqi found his life in danger and fled Tuqaat for Cairo. He later settled in the grand city of Damascus where he died at the age of seventy-six.30 True, like any real human being, ‘Eraaqi faced real problems. He sometimes traveled for very practical reasons, including saving his own life. Nonetheless, the bigger journey, the inner exploration, was always in the background. The poem below echoes the desire to free oneself from the notion of belonging to specific places and ideas and move toward more liberating territories: Intoxicate me so I cannot remember who I am Maybe I’ll throw myself in the tavern for a moment Unfettered from the tricks the world plays on us I’ll collect my pieces from its colorful game board A haunter of taverns, I’ll leave this universe behind

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60  |  lyri cs o f l if e A cunning imposter, I’ll break out of my selfhood What am I doing in this dark prison of being? How long will I stay in my cocoon like a silkworm? Let me rise and put my head out of the window of this world Maybe the sun will then rise through my window When I disappear like a mote before this sun “I am the sun!” I shall declare and rightly so When the sun reflects in a mirror, at that moment Ask the sun and it shall say ,“I am the mirror!” Oh cupbearer! Give me the food for birds that belong nowhere Give the bird of my aspiration the seed; keep it flying in the air! 31

An impulsive traveler? Perhaps, at least at the initial stages. A colorful and controversial one? That could be said, too. A traveler who made a great impact on the distant environments to which he traveled and also was changed by these experiences? Absolutely! Combining an erudite and yet ecstatic elegance, ‘Eraaqi packed his poetry with souvenirs from these experiences. In his own way, he was a true cosmopolitan, or in Sami Zubaida’s definition of the term, one willing to be culturally promiscuous.32 Again ‘Eraaqi was neither a wondrous being nor an anomaly. He was a testimony to the fact that the milieu in which he lived could create and nurture many like him—similar to one another in certain respects and unique in others. While some of these poet-travelers, like Khaaqaani of Shirvaan, did not produce travel writing per se, others took every detail of their journeys of exploration seriously and made an effort to record them for later generations. Naaser Khosrow, the Ismaili poet philosopher of Qobadiyaan, present-day Kabodiyon in Tajikistan, who died in 1088, is one example of the latter.33 He is said to have possessed a great talent for learning languages and to have studied Arabic, Turkish, Greek, vernacular languages of India and possibly Hebrew. He is also said to have been well educated in all branches of natural science, medicine, and astronomy. The Iranian literary historian, Zabih Allaah Safaa, refers to his habit of carrying books with him even during long and arduous travels. Apparently while returning from Arabia to Iran, he made the camel carry his book while he traveled on foot.34 This is not

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 61 surprising. The town of Qobaadiyaan, Naaser Khosrow’s birthplace, was on the outskirts of the major city of Marv. As Hunsberger, a contemporary scholar of Naaser Khosrow observes, Marv was among the stopping places on the Silk Road (that in light of new scholarship we may need to call the Silk Roads). Marv was a commercially prosperous city with a diverse population of Muslims (Shi‘ite and Sunni) as well as Jews, Christians and Buddhists. In other words, even before reaping the fruits of his travels, our poet had been exposed to diversity as he grew up in a cosmopolitan region “rich not only in material wealth but also in intellectual, religious and artistic products.”35 Although his adherence to Ismaili “Sevener” Shi‘ism could have become an isolating factor, at times even a danger to his life, our poet traveler never shrunk from mixing and conversing with others.36 This was, in part, the result of a deep curiosity about people of different backgrounds. Appiah tells us that curiosity does not necessarily translate into cosmopolitanism. Anthropologists, he observes, are curious about other people but not necessarily cosmopolitan.37 While that may in some cases be true, I would here argue that Naaser Khosrow’s curiosity was indeed a product of his cosmopolitanism. A rationalist philosopher, and a down-to-earth scientist, he was at ease with other people and could strike up a conversation on the simplest or most specialized topics with fellow travelers or the inhabitants of the cities he passed through. This curiosity, I suggest, was rooted in what I just touched on, namely “cultural promiscuity,” Sami Zubaida’s rubric assigned to the concept of cosmopolitanism. In this definition, the cosmopolitan individual desires to live a life that is not rigidly scripted and home-centered. He or she is promiscuous in that they wish to be able to draw on “diverse ideas, traditions, and innovations.”38 I would add that the desire for drawing on largely unfamiliar cultures itself indicates confidence in a global identity shared by all human beings. Viewing one’s own culture as being completely superior to the cultures of others could discourage exchanges with strangers. For Naaser Khosrow, no one was superior to others except when distinguished through learning. And learning came largely by studying and mixing with learned people. “Whatever variety of knowledge I heard about,” he once wrote “I rushed to hear about. Even among God’s Scriptures, there are few left that I have not heard commented on by informed commentators.” In a now celebrated qasideh he wrote:

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62  |  lyri cs o f l if e If you do not turn away from learning You will move to the highest place of honor Fruitless trees are wood fit for burning Being barren deserves nothing better But if your tree bears the fruit of knowledge You will soar above the blue sphere39

There is no doubt that this belief was strengthened by being exposed to the cosmopolitan cultures residing along the extensive path he traversed in his seven-year journey starting in the year 1044. During these years, Naaser Khosrow covered approximately 19,000 kilometers, keeping daily journals and producing a travel account known in the original Persian as the Safarnaameh. Judicious accounts of the Safarnaameh have called it the most authentic description of the Muslim practices and cultural habits in the eleventh century. While, on the other end of the spectrum, some like Wheeler Thackston, the translator of the text, have proposed that the work provides us with little we do not know beyond “a rare glimpse into the attitudes of a man from an age very different from our own.”40 While, like many other Muslim travelers at this time, Naaser Khosrow’s main destination was Mecca, and its goal was a pilgrimage, he made a point of visiting many wonderful cities on the way. These cities included Nishabur, Isfahan, Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo and Jerusalem. I disagree with Thackston especially in his view that Naaser Khosrow was not “a particularly engaged observer of the people.”41 It is true that he took a keen interest in city structures and measurements of important buildings. But that should not overshadow the fact that he paid attention to the people he met in these cities, albeit with particular emphasis on what he considered significant, namely their aptitude for learning. Meeting Qatraan the poet (d. 1072) in the city of Tabriz, in northwestern Iran, Naaser Khosrow noted that although he wrote good poetry, his knowledge of Persian was not that good. This tells us that the difference between the poetic conventions current among poets of Khorasan and the ones known to Qatraan in Azerbaijan were significant enough. In the city of Aswan, in Egypt, Naaser Khosrow met a man who helped him rent a camel. He took care to tell his readers that this kind man knew “something about the subject of logic.” In the city of Akhlaat, in Armenia, he noted that Persian,

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 63 Arabic and Armenian were all spoken. In fact, he made an amusing observation that the name of the city, which means “mixing,” may have something to with this multilingualism.42 In Arrajaan, near the port of Basra in present-day Iraq, he observed people practicing different mazhabs and described the local Imam as an eloquent man claiming knowledge of geometry and arithmetic. “We argued,” he recalled “asking many questions of each other and giving many answers mostly on theology, arithmetic and the like.” He also debunked unfounded beliefs such as the one current in Jerusalem about a valley between the main mosque and the plain of Saherah. Rumor had it that this is the “Valley of Gehenna” and, if one goes to the edge of the valley, the cry of those suffering in Hell will be heard. “I went to the edge,” Naaser Khosrow told his readers, “and did not hear anything.”43 The four poet-travelers we briefly met could not be more different. Not just their writing, life experiences and temperaments, but their reasons for traveling were worlds apart. Farrokhi wanted a secure position with a stable patron. He even participated in some of the Ghaznavid king’s military expeditions in hope of booties. Khaaqaani had a secure patron he was trying to get away from all his life. He wished to get to Khorasan where he imagined his poetry would be truly appreciated. ‘Eraaqi was literally on fire. His journeys often began either with a powerful impulse toward another being, or to get away from the dangers posed to him by the people who were suspicious of his unorthodox ways. Naaser Khosrow’s journeys may have begun with a dream that kindled the desire to change his way of life. But they led to places where he paid keen, almost scientific, attention to the amazing cities and civilizations that he visited and described. My point here is not to evaluate the quality of the travel, or the travel writing, of any of these poets but rather direct our attention to the many ways in which they experienced/frequently enjoyed societies that were different from their own. In the words of Issam Nassar who writes about Naaser Khosrow’s visit to Jerusalem (in comparison to Jewish and Christian pilgrims at the time): “To Muslim travelers, such as Khosrow, Jerusalem was a part of a familiar social and cultural world, not an exotic site in a faraway land. It is only natural that in their accounts, the city appeared more as a socially vibrant and living place with holy sites than as a holy city that happened to have a population.”44

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64  |  lyri cs o f l if e It may be true that the major languages of the Middle East contain no simple equivalent for the concept of cosmopolitanism. But that, as Will Hanley aptly observes, is because cosmopolitanism is not a simple and homogeneous category. Any shorthand rubric could mask rather than display its complexity.45 If at the heart of the concept is the sense of connectedness and familiarity that allows the individual to belong to a bigger and more universal community of human beings, the poets whom we have just observed, and their connection to the world, give us much food for thought. Their worldliness and ease, I argue, is rooted in the fact that, despite cultural differences, wherever these poets went they found a shared vocabulary of values and practices with the local population, or a segment of it. This shared vocabulary belonged to a vast cultural lexicon saturated with, if not sustained by, a powerful and far-reaching literary discourse. Persian classical poetry was the staple of this discourse. Like a conceptual Silk Road, it connected not just communities but generations of readers/speakers. It taught them that others exist—others whose values and desires do not necessarily coincide with ours but cannot be dismissed. It taught them, and not always by way of didactic sermons, but often through grappling with the overpowering notions of beauty and love, that values and desires are entangled with one another, connections with others could be roads to betterment and difference could sometimes be the maker rather than the breaker of connections. Above all, it taught them that their worlds and their words were locked in an ongoing, vital and intimate exchange. Sa‘di’s Travels It is time for our poet Sa‘di of Shiraz, the master traveler whose writings are the focus of this volume, to finally make his entrance. The combination of a strong personality, masterful poetic skills, far-reaching influence and an enchanting sense of humor led to the creation, by biographers, of fictitious life events for Sa‘di. He is not quite innocent in the matter either. Rather, he provided deliberate opportunities for such inventions—too many to be resisted by the readers/biographers.46 As a result, our “curious” and “captivating” poet whose words are supposed to work as “pure magic,” collected a multitude of legendary qualities in his journey through lived and chronicled life. These include a lifespan of more than one hundred years and fourteen journeys to Mecca.47

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 65 Most likely, Sa‘di did not make fourteen pilgrimages to Mecca, but he did travel extensively. Sometime in his mid-twenties, he started a series of journeys that may have been motivated by dissatisfaction with the lifestyle he lived in Shiraz.48 These journeys, which are not easy to define in terms of scope, or events, occupied almost thirty years of his life and included a number of pilgrimages to Mecca as well. As for the scope of his travels, most agree that he traveled eastward to India and westward to Africa (although the eastern limit has been extended by some to Kashgar on the western border of China because of the account he gives of his encounter with a charming young grammarian).49 Sa‘di passed through Isfahan, Basra, Baghdad, Damascus, Aleppo, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Aksaray, Konya, Mecca, Medina, Marv and Balkh. Besides Mecca and Medina, which were sites of pilgrimage, Baghdad became an important location in these journeys. In this center of learning, Sa‘di first studied in the Mustanseriyeh and Nezaamiyeh schools and later taught in them. Furthermore, in the city of Baghdad, he met figures who had a lasting influence on his life, among them the scholar Jamaal al-Din Abu al-Faraj al-Jawzi (the II), the Sufi master Shehaab al-Din Abu Hafs ‘Omar al-Sohravardi and Governor ‘Ataa Malek Joveyni.50 Most importantly for our purpose, Sa‘di remained consciously proud of his travels and allowed for the events of these journeys (factual and fictitious alike) to spill into his serious literary writings. He certainly considered his contact with people of other races and religions to be highly educational and boasted (as mentioned earlier): Much have I roamed through the world’s far places Spending time with all kinds of people

Among other things, Sa‘di’s lively interest in other people, and his extensive travels, which echo the travels of the other poets I discussed, complicate some of the simpler notions of cosmopolitanism as a bourgeois elitist European cultural habit. This affirms Will Hanley’s suggestion that other versions of cosmopolitanism could readily be detected if we allow ourselves to see the many varieties of Middle Eastern pasts.51 Sa‘di’s travel accounts also contradict Zubaida’s suggestion that such cosmopolitan openness attracted Sufis and philosophers more than jurists who sought “narrower horizons.” It is hoped that this chapter will highlight the fact that, with ­thinkers as

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66  |  lyri cs o f l if e complex as Naaser Khosrow and Sa‘di, rubrics such as jurist, mystic and philosopher prove to be inadequate to say the least.52And now, to Sa‘di’s desire to explore peoples and places beyond his home town. Reaching for the “World”: The Centrifugal Move Neither Sa‘di nor any of the other poets we discussed in this chapter gave any indication that they put their literary activity on hold to travel. Certainly there were no slim laptops to fit into skinny briefcases. Travel, struggle, learning and writing were all natural life experiences that did coincide. However, these poets at times showcased a work that was written at the end of a major journey. Such works could be identified as the fruit of a very special experience. Khaaqaani’s Tohfat al-’Eraaqayn, to which I referred earlier, was one such example. Even in these instances, accuracy of the details mattered only if historical recording was the main objective of the poem. In all other cases, it is not possible—perhaps not even desirable—to verify the factual nature of the journey’s events as reflected in the resulting composition. After all, in the space of the poem, these poets, like their counterparts elsewhere, were in a contractual relationship with the reader. The contract gave them ownership of the “truth” to be presented as they chose. It guaranteed the trust of the reader, if (and only if) they were masterful enough to be convincing. Once they achieved this feat, they were empowered to show their readers new worlds. Rather, they were makers of these new worlds—combining fact and fiction so seamlessly that the reader embraced the worlds emerging from their poems and strove to inhabit them—although aware of their fictitious nature. The chronology of some of Sa‘di’s compositions is easier to establish than others. Bustaan and Golestaan fit in the easy category.53 It is not difficult to see them as the fruits of his travels. Rather, they reflect what I describe as the second leg of his long journeys—the one that took him back to the homeland and to his own inner peace. I will return to these two works later in this chapter, as well as in the chapter on ethics.54 With the ghazals, dating and placing them within his larger corpus is extremely hard. The genre, at times, contains as few as six or seven verses. It has no title and no introductory section. Occasionally, an allusion to a patron or a reference to a particular event, place or individual provides a glimpse into the time and the place in which the ghazal was conceived. In all other cases, the birthplace and identity

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 67 of a ghazal remains as elusive as its narrative structure or object of adoration. While we cannot be certain, Sa‘di must have composed the bulk of his ghazals during the years of traveling. The attention that his contemporary poets, such as Homaam of Tabriz (d.1314), lavished on him shows that Sa‘di’s words often traveled independently of him. It would be safe to say that large portions of the ghazals were composed—and already received well—before he composed Bustaan and Golestaan. The traveler is present in Sa‘di’s ghazals and he appears to be young and adventurous. He is proud, at times even cocky. In a ghazal opening with a simple complaint about Shiraz, he moves on to this major protest: Although the prophetic hadith “love for one’s homeland is a part of faith” is a sound hadith One cannot die in misery to be loyal to one’s birth place. (G. 371)

Metaphorically, he revives the theme of travel and allusions to distant cultures often. In one example, the pen with which he wrote turns into the Prophet Khizr traveling all day. And the black ink, resembling the zulamat, gives birth to the water of life (G. 635).55 In another, he compares his own “fine poems” to Egyptian sweets (G. 568) and in yet another he describes the beloved’s face as “Tajik like” (Taajikaaneh) (never forgetting to add a poetic touch—in this case by using an adverb in the place of an adjective, thereby introducing verbal motion) (G. 209). Sometimes as many as four different references to cultural traditions come together to simply describe Sa‘di’s gaze at the beloved’s beautiful face: May my [dark and worshipful] Hindu eyes never see your Turkish face again! If I have gazed at the China of your tresses in any wrong [khataa] manner (G.393)

Again the verse is laced with poetic word-play contrasting Hindus and Turks, creating a pun on the word “chin,” which means curls as well as the land of China. Similarly, the word “khataa,” which spelled with a ‫ ط‬indicates wrongdoing or mistake, and when spelled with a ‫ ت‬refers to Cathay or China. These passing references to other peoples and distant places may be read as expressions of yearning for freedom from a fixed homeland. They are not to be pieced together with the hope of a historical narrative or a coherent picture.

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68  |  lyri cs o f l if e Rather, they should be taken as they are: diffused and dispersed moments of desire to belong to the wide world. The genre of ghazal is the most suitable for such intense but disjoined expressions. It provides room for ample repetition of pivotal ideas. As I will argue in Chapters 3 and 4, indeed the ghazal’s generic construction in Sa‘di’s time thrived on creating near-identical patterns, a convention that could be described as fresh visits to familiar themes. The process fulfilled multiple functions, including a kaleidoscopic mixture of color, shape and movement. Through these lyrical allusions to traveling, Sa‘di reinforced the significance of reaching beyond conventional borders by leaving his city of residence time and time again. One may say that he was in a perpetual act of abandoning a sedentary state for a dynamic one. The movement was outwards and the posture was reaching for the world, so to speak. In these moments, even a simple request for a cup of wine translated into, “Bring me Oh Cupbearer, the sea of the east and of the west!” (G. 356). Such lyrical and nostalgic recollections of the world as an alluring place of discovery were not peculiar to the ghazals or to a certain stage of Sa‘di’s life. In the fifth chapter of Bustaan, when leaving a dear friend in Isfahan to travel to Damascus, he attributes an almost magnetic force to the attraction of traveling: “Without warning, travel from that land did carry me away.”56 And yet, in less emotional moments, he associates some undesirable qualities with traveling as well. One such criticism is “those who travel much live carelessly,” an observation made by a vizier who wishes to discredit a much traveled and learned man who had arrived from the sea of Oman and got the attention of the king. Although the critical voice is not Sa‘di’s, nonetheless the statement is presented as sharp and possibly convincing.57 More humorously, in the first chapter of Golestaan, a traveler who has forged himself an identity to secure the king’s favor is about to be punished for his lies and Sa‘di gives him a second chance to plead guilty and request the king’s forgiveness. “If thou hast heard heedless talk from thy slave, be not offended,” said the cunning traveler. “[A] man who has seen the world utters much falsehood!”58 Returning with the “Goods”: The Centripetal Move Although cosmopolitan traveling and exilic feelings are often intertwined, Sa‘di the traveler barely, ever, felt in exile. At least this is the feeling one gets

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 69 from his poetry. And that does not surprise the reader. He traveled not just through the geographical route described by his biographers, but simultaneously through the superhighway of transmission of thoughts and emotions to which I have alluded earlier: the spread out and sprawling conceptual Silk Road of Persian poetry. Most of the time, when he arrived in a new community, he had been there before, either through the recognition of his own poetry or due to the literary presence of his predecessors, such as Sanaa’i of Ghazneh (d.1131) and ‘Attaar of Nishabur (d.1220), who had been thoughtshapers and trendsetters. That explains his general “at home” feeling. It also explains his perception of the human community as being people who are closely interconnected. I do not need to here repeat the oft-quoted verses of Sa‘di adorning the United Nations (UN) building describing the world community as a mega-body of which we are each a limb. Just as a healthy limb could not be indifferent to the pain of other limbs, for our poet, a healthy subjectivity was by definition intersubjectivity.59 Sa‘di’s insight into human psychology told him that traveling enabled one to imagine this mega-body more accurately and develop a better understanding of the richness that came with diversity and difference. And yet, much of the world’s population, Sa‘di included, defined itself in terms of religious and ethnic ties and few people had the means to undertake the kind of extensive traveling that he did. I would propose that our poet understood the perspectival limitations that surrounded him and other human beings. He also understood what Appiah calls “the open texture of evaluative language.” That is to say, all societies value good qualities, such as courage, and despise bad qualities like cruelty. The problems begin when societies embark on defining these complex concepts. Appiah suggests that one way to overcome such misunderstandings is to evaluate stories together as a way of aligning “our responses” to those of the rest of the world. Adopting that framework, I here suggest that, interestingly, during what I call the second leg of his journeys, the centripetal move back from the world to Shiraz and to the core of the self, Sa‘di did what Kwame Appiah has in mind. He created the tools for imagining the cosmopolitan world, namely sharing stories and putting the readers in a position to evaluate them—thereby learning “to align [their] responses to that of the world.” In these stories, or in some instances conversations, rich in language of value, the readers encounter

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70  |  lyri cs o f l if e people of different persuasions shaping one another’s thoughts and actions. Even when disagreeing with one another, the shared concepts in the adopted language of value guide the protagonists in the stories—and the readers— toward an easier and more respectful disagreement.60 What can we call these stories, which are mostly told in Golestaan and Bustaan, other than gifts—the goods brought back from the journey outward, that that the Sufis have called sayr-e aafaaq (“exploring the horizons”)? At the same time, the anecdotes themselves constitute another journey. After all, they affirm the notion that cosmopolitanism is not limited to making contact with others, or being curious about them. Rather, it includes understanding the impact of these relationships, recognizing that “[e]ach person you know about and can affect is someone to whom you have responsibilities.” As Appiah observes, to understand this is “the very idea of morality.”61 Seen in this light, Sa‘di’s ethical teachings, his cosmopolitan vision and his storytelling come together and find a new meaning. He did not just entertain, moralize, reminisce about traveling or produce a literary delight. Rather, synthesizing these objectives together, he worked toward shaping a cosmopolitan citizen fit for the world he had seen or hoped to see. As a maker of worlds, he felt responsible toward fellow human beings, even those not yet born. And as a poet, he realized that each of the above would provide the best results only in conjunction with the others. Let me give you an example. In the first chapter of Bustaan Sa‘di addressed a number of issues fundamental to behavioral health and social justice. These include recognizing the value of learning, managing personal anger, dealing with jealousy and rivalry in the community, and showing prudence in making punitive decisions about others. While these could be, and usually are, the subject of rather predictable ethical discussions, Sa‘di gives his readers a simple story. In the story, an intriguing wise man has arrived from a journey over the sea of Oman. His wisdom impresses the monarch to the point that he appointes him vizier, thereby making many courtiers jealous. As the king’s attendants look for a way to discredit him in the ruler’s eyes, he gives them a suitable excuse by showing undue attention to two of the good-looking royal slaves. Fortunately, for him, his intentions are innocent rather than immoral (he enjoys watching the slaves because their charm reminds him of his own youth), and he is not afraid of explaining that to the king. The combination

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 71 of innocence and eloquence on his part, and prudence on the part of the king, saves the life of this wise and learned individual. Sa‘di lavishes ample attention on the story that he tells in a total of 128 verses laced with proverbs, ethical lessons, witty observations and shorter anecdotes that he places within the extended narrative frame. However, one of the most significant characteristics of the learned man, and one relevant to our current discussion, is his exposure to other cultures through travel. Sa‘di makes a big deal out of this quality. Rather than introducing him to us as a student of renowned scholars, he tells the reader that the man’s knowledge and wisdom are a synthesis of Muslim and non-Muslim learning. Not only that, he has acquired that knowledge not just through book learning but by mixing with a variety of peoples all over the world. Sa‘di lavishes special attention on the man by making his arrival the opening scene in the story and by praising the courage and wisdom of this explorer of geographical and conceptual horizons: From the sea of Oman there came a man Much traveled by Ocean and desert Arabs he had seen, and Turks, Persians and Byzantines From every race his pure soul had learned its science World-traveled, wisdom he had amassed, Traveled, he had learned manners and sociability62

The king, impressed with the traveler’s wisdom, is obviously in agreement with Sa‘di. The jealous courtiers, on the other hand, afraid of cracks opening up in the walls of their small world, remain opposed. Those who travel often, they argue, do not fully understand the notion of loyalty to one benefactor. After all, such people are used to living a careless life. In the dialogues between the king, the old courtiers and the new vizier, these two distinct ethical perspectives concerning lifestyle, governance and citizenship clash with one another. Sa‘di even employs the Devil himself who appears to someone in a dream as a very handsome being. When asked by the dreaming individual, “You are so gorgeous! Why is the drawing of you in the King’s palace so ugly?” she or he explains that “the paint brush is in the enemy’s hand.” So, is the Devil beautiful or ugly? Are travelers wise and worldly or careless drifters? The readers have to get involved in this partial and perspecti-

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72  |  lyri cs o f l if e val evaluation process and align their judgments with the various perspectives expressed in the story. Fortunately for those on Sa‘di’s side, the wise man manages to reclaim the undivided support of the king.63 Even in light of this one story, it is not hard to see why the most important leg of the human journey for Sa‘di was the centripetal move leading him back home. Unlike the first, he saw this journey as a perpetual one. It was a journey that—like love—had a beginning but no end and was only briefly prefaced by the centrifugal journey to explore the world. All that one encountered in the journey through the physical world had to be processed and understood within. Needless to say, Sa‘di did not initiate the idea. The concept was familiar to other Persian poets and mystics. Some like Rumi showed the endless nature of this inner journey through the symbolic circular motion in the act of whirling. Sa‘di cared much about the inner journey that processed the experiences gained through the physical act of traveling, and yet he presented the two as intimately interconnected. His skill in poetic artistry came especially handy when he needed to move seamlessly between the abstraction of the inner and the concreteness of the outer journeys. Sometimes, bridging the two seemingly incompatible realms required constructing a symbolic narrative and sometimes it was achieved through simple and clever word-play. Frequently, the two came to each other’s aid. After all, by Sa‘di’s time, a pool of poetically vibrant themes and vocabularies had developed with clearly spiritual or mundane associations. Many versatile concepts in this pool could easily cross the border between the two when the poet built the context and issued the permit. Sa‘di’s story of the father and his lost son in the second chapter of Bustaan is a case in point: A man once lost his son while traveling At nightfall he wandered round the caravan Asking at every tent and hastening in all directions At length he found that brightness in the dark I heard him saying to the convoy leader, “Do you know how I finally found my way to the Friend? Whoever came before me I said, “This could be him!”64

The Sufi term ‫“( دوست‬Friend”/ “Beloved”/“God”) in the last verse, was, and remains, such a border crosser. In the above poem, it transforms the

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 73 search for the son into a quest for the divine. Furthermore, in the momentary pause that follows the emotional reunion of the father and son/Friend/ God, Sa‘di inserts his own message of spiritual cosmopolitanism—no search should be abandoned for lack of hope and no individual excluded from being the object of the search: People with wise hearts pursue one and all For, someday, they may find the one they seek

Even in light of these brief examples, it would be fair to say that there is a difference between the poets who happened to travel and those who viewed it as a life-shaping experience. Sa‘di clearly belongs to the second group. He searched deeply for the reasons why he had to travel and explored boldly when he traveled. He, then, shared the resulting ideas with the reader in Golestaan and Bustaan as well as in the allusions—some of which we observed in the ghazals. It is hard, if not impossible, to find one rubric that speaks for what Sa‘di viewed as the definitive outcome of his journeys. Certainly, the purpose was not to collect stories—or anything else for that matter. In an ironic way, the fruit of going out to the world turned out to be learning how not to be filled with what it had to offer. For, if that happened, Sa‘di thought, the jug of the traveler’s being will have no more room. That would be the end. Rather, the purpose, as far as he was concerned, was almost the opposite: to learn to become emptied of oneself in order to open up and take in the wisdom that came one’s way. If the emptiness was not achieved, the traveler could find the greatest scholar or saint and never be able to benefit from his or her wisdom. Even more ironically, it was by going to the world and allowing its wonders to seep in, by seeing oneself in comparison to others, that one could be liberated from the stubborn and over-inflated self that “knew” everything. Once that inner space was freed, wisdom would find room to enter. Tawazu’ (“humility”) was the code word for this fruitful emptiness.65 Sa‘di named an entire chapter of Bustaan after the concept and defined it in relation to travel in a charming and brief anecdote that provides a perfect ending to this chapter. A man with scant knowledge of astronomy, and much pride in what he thinks he knows, travels a long distance to study with a certain renowned astronomer called Kushyaar. Bear in mind that

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74  |  lyri cs o f l if e the ­discipline Sa‘di selects here is astronomy, the knowledge of the greater cosmos. However, the master pays little attention to the newly arrived student. When, deprived of Kushyaar’s learning, he sets off on the road to find another teacher, the scholar says to him: You consider yourself filled with wisdom A jug that is full already, cannot take [water] any more Filled with pride, you’re bound to leave empty-handed Come when there is space in you, and you will be filled Travel like Sa‘di in faraway lands Abandon yourself and return filled with gnosis66

Notes  1. For information on Rumi, his life, and his poetry see my Reading Mystical Lyric and Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi, Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings, and Poetry of Jalâl al-Din Rumi (London: Oneworld, 2007).  2. In an interesting essay called “Jahaan’geraa’i dar andisheh va aasaarl Sa‘di,” Haakem Qaasemi and Maliheh-ye Ramezaani discuss Sa‘di’s “worldliness” and consider it to be an Iranian cultural trait; see “Jahaan’geraa’i dar andisheh va aasaar-e Sa‘di,” Motaale‘aat-e Melli, 13/2 1391, 27–50.  3. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 720.   4. See Chapter 3 entitled “Sa‘di on Care of the Self: Ethical Games of Power in Practice of Freedom.” For Michel Foucault’s discussion of the practice of self, see “The Ethics of The Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom,” 298.   5. Jalaal al-Din Rumi, Kolliyaat-e Shams, ed. Badi‘ al-Zamaan Foruzaanfar (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Ferdows, 1975 [1374]), 1,177.   6. Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York/London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2006), xiv–xv.  7. Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, 29.  8. Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, 29.  9. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 205. A literal translation of this line would be: “From every harvest, I picked an ear of corn.” Rather, from every pile of learning, I picked as much as was suitable for me. 10. Haafez’s use of the metaphor, a century after Sa‘di, is now among the most famous. He compares his ghazals that are read in India as “Persian sugar” exported to Bengal; see: Haafez, Divaan, 141. 11. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 205–6.

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 75 12. For Manuchehri, see Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, 176. 13. Rumi, Kolliyaat-e Shams, Vol. 1, 286. 14. Safaa, Taarikh-e adabiyaat dar Iraan, Vol. 3, Part 1, 623. 15. In The World of Persian Literary Humanism, which I quoted in the previous chapter, Dabashi speaks of this phenomenon as the transformation of ethnos into Logos; see Dabashi, 189. 16. Will Hanley, “Grieving Cosmopolitanism in Middle East Studies,” History Compass, 6/5 2008, 1,346–67. 17. Hanley, “Grieving Cosmopolitanism in Middle East Studies,” 1,361. 18. Khodadad Rezakhani, “The Road that Never Was: The Silk Road and TransEurasian Exchange,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 30/3 2010, 420–33. 19. Rezakhani, “The Road That Never Was: The Silk Road and Trans-Eurasian Exchange,” 422. 20. Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, 176; and Safaa, Taarikh-e adabiyaat dar Iraan, Vol. 1, 533–46. For Chaghaaniyaan, see: C. E. Bosworth, “ĀL-E MOÓTĀJ,” in Ehsan Yarshater (ed.) Encyclopaedia Iranica Online (December 15, 1984), iranicaonline.org/articles/al-e-mohtaj-a-local-dynasty, accessed March 30, 2014. 21. See Chapter 5 “Gazing at the Garden of Your Beauty: Love in the Garden.” 22. Farrokhi Sistaani, Divaan-e Hakim Farrokhi Sistaani, ed. Mohammad Dabir Siyaaqi (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Zavvaar, 2009 [1388]), 329–31. 23. Afzal al-Din Khaaqaani Shirvaani, Divaan-e Khaaqaani Shirvaani, ed. Ziaa’ al-Din Sajjaadi (Tehran: Ketaabforushi-ye Zavvaar, 1978 [1357]), 19. 24. The loose definition of cosmopolitanism here is based on Appiah’s discussion; see Cosmopolitanism, xiii. 25. Khaaqaani Shirvaani, Divaan-e Khaaqaani Shirvaani, 359–60. 26. Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, xvi. On ‘Eraaqi and the musician boy he ­follows from his home town to Hamadaan, see Nasrin Mohtasham (Khozaa’i), “Moqaddmeh-ye Mosahheh,” in Nasrin Mohtasham (Khozaa’i) (ed.) Kolliyaat-e Fakhr al-Din ‘Eraaqi (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Zavvaar, 2007 [1386]), xiii. Here I don’t dwell on the erotic versus Platonic nature of this feeling. For a discussion of that, see the section entitled “A Holistic Vision of the Garden; Sa‘di’s Variety of Love” in Chapteer 5 entitled “Gazing at the Garden of Your Beauty: Love in the Garden.” For Appiah’s second point, see, Cosmopolitanism, xii. 27. New readings of such biographical anecdotes suggest that this literature should be viewed as a later reconstruction of the themes recovered from ‘Eraaqi’s poetry rather than a historically reliable account of his travels.

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76  |  lyri cs o f l if e 28. On the trip to Moltaan, see, Mohtasham (Khozaa’i), Moqaddemeh-ye Mosahheh, viii. Quoting the renowned Iranian literary scholar of the twentieth century, Ghaasem Ghani, Mohtasham Khozaa’i suggests that the great Sufi poet Baabaa Kamaal Khojandi may be among the figures ‘Eraaqi met in the interim period of leaving Bahaa’al-Din’s Khaanqaah and returning; see ibid., xiii. 29. For the full translation of this ghazal of ‘Eraaqi, see Keshavarz, Recite in the Name of the Red Rose, 47–8. 30. Mohtasham (Khozaa’i), Moqaddemeh-ye Mosahheh, xxii–vi. 31. Fakhr al-Din ‘Eraaqi, Kolliyaat-e Fakhr al-Din ‘Eraaqi, ed. Nasrin Mohtasham Khozaa’i (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Zavvaar, 2007 [1386]), 18–19. 32. I will say more on cultural promiscuity in relation to Naaser Khosrow’s travel account. See: Sami Zubaida, “Cosmopolitanism and the Middle East,” in Roel Meijer (ed.) Cosmopolitanism, Identity, and Authenticity in the Middle East (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1999), 15–16. 33. For one of the most comprehensive sources on Ismaili thought and Naaser Khosrow’s contribution to it, see Vladimir Alekseevich Ivanow, Naaser-i Khosrow and Ismailism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1948). The translation of the poet’s Safarnaameh by Wheeler M. Thackston also provides some useful sources. Furthermore, it has an introduction and a glossary; see Nasir-i Khusraw’s Book of Travels: A Parallel Persian–English Text, trans. Wheeler M. Thackston (Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 2001). For a more comprehensive source on the life and works of Naaser Khosrow, see A. C. Hunsberger, Nasir Khusraw, the Ruby of Badakhshan: A Portrait of the Persian Poet, Traveler and Philosopher (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003). 34. Safaa, Taarikh-e adabiyaat dar Iraan, Vol. 2, 453. 35. Hunsberger, Nasir Khusraw, the Ruby of Badakhshan, 4. 36. Thackston suggests that Naaser Khosrow was not “rigorously trained in the religious and theological Arabic sciences of a systematic Islamic education”; see Nasir-i Khusraw’s Book of Travels, xi. Other sources describe his training in natural sciences as solid and suggest he enjoyed “a strong Neo-platonic structure and vocabulary” with regard to philosophy; see A. C. Hunsberger, “Nasir Khusraw (1004–1060),” in James Fieser and Bradley Dowden (eds.), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, www.iep.utm.edu/khusraw, accessed March 30, 2014. 37. Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, 14. 38. Zubaida, Cosmopolitanism and the Middle East, 15–16. 39. Quoted in Safaa, Taarikh-e adabiyaat dar Iraan, Vol. 2, 459. 40. Thackston’s introduction to Nasir-i Khusraw’s Book of Travels, xiii. Thackston

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cosmopoli tan k i n s h ip  | 77 also suggests that there is little in the Safarnaameh that would suggest that Naaser Khosrow was a professional traveler, although I am not sure how he defines a professional traveler for eleventh-century Khorasan; see: ibid., xii. 41. Ibid. 42. Khosrow, Nasir-i Khusraw’s Book of Travels. For reference to Qatraan’s poor Persian, the camel owner in the city of Aswan in Egypt, and the mixing of languages in the city of Akhlaat in Armenia, see pages 7, 8, and 84 respectively. 43. Ibid., 124 and 29. “Gehenna,” which in Arabic is “Jahannam,” is the word for “Hell” in many languages spoken by Muslims; see ibid., 28. 44. Issam Nassar, “Naser-e Khosraw’s Journey to Jerusalem,” Jerusalem Quarterly, 6 1999, 57. 45. Hanley, Grieving Cosmopolitanism in Middle East Studies, 1,348. 46. The Somnath story, which I discussed in the first chapter, is a good example; see the section entitled “Murder in Somnath” in Chapter 1 entitled “At the Brink of Writing: Which Doors to Open First?” 47. Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, 250–3; for a careful tracing of Sa‘di’s travels, see Bayaani, Sa‘di, khaak-e Shiraaz va bu-ye ‘eshq, 63–84. Bayani is, at times, too accepting of Sa‘di’s references to events during these trips. 48. Bayaani, Sa‘di, khaak-e Shiraaz va bu-ye ‘eshq, 63. 49. See the section entitled “A Holistic Vision of the Garden: Sa‘di’s Variety of Love” in Chapter 5 entitled “Gazing at the Garden of Your Beauty: Love in the Garden.” 50. Safaa, Taarikh-e adabiyaat dar Iraan, Vol. 3, Part 1, 595–6. According to Safaa’, the Ibn al-Jawzi whom Sa‘di studied with is not the famous Ibn al-Jawzi but rather his son. 51. Hanley, Grieving Cosmopolitanism in Middle East Studies, 1,348. 52. Zubaida, Cosmopolitanism and the Middle East, 19. 53. Bustaan and Golestaan were composed with one year difference in 1258 and 1259 respectively; see Rypka, A History of Iranian Literature, 251. 54. See Chapter 3 entitled “Sa‘di on Care of the Self: Ethical Games of Power in Practice of Freedom.” 55. Zolmaat, zolamaat, zolomaat (pl. of zolmat, zolomat), darknesses; a dark place where the water of life or immortality is said to be; see Francis Joseph Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian–English Dictionary (London: Routledge/K. Paul, 1892), http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/steingass, accessed March 30, 2014. 56. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 323. 57. Ibid., 217.

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78  |  lyri cs o f l if e 58. Ibid., 65. This humorous observation is, at least partially, a confession on Sa‘di’s part as well. 59. Ibid., 47; Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, 30. 60. Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, 58. 61. Ibid., xiii. 62. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 215. 63. Ibid., 219. 64. Ibid., 272. 65. It is the fourth chapter of Bustaan; see ibid., 297–321. 66. Ibid., 313.

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3 Sa‘di on Care of the Self: Ethical Games of Power in Practice of Freedom

P

oetry dedicated to ethics seems something of an oxymoron. After all, poetry is the domain of the ambiguous, the uncertain and the half-­ concealed. The joy and the energy it generates are rooted in these very uncertainties. We become active readers of poetry only after learning to discover in it that which is conducive to discovery. And to invent, without violating its overall logic, that that remains undiscovered. In the domain of ethics, the rules of engagement are entirely different. Here, what is said, done, and even imagined, must be placed in the open, accessible to the public gaze. Everything is due for inspection: needs, fears, desires—and most of all—vices. It is, therefore, not accidental that much ethical teaching is reduced to predictable formulaic edicts with a self-righteous undertone. Neither is it surprising that often little is found—in the way of lyrical vitality—in the poetry created with the express goal of offering ethical guidance. I hope to show in this chapter that if the poet in question is Sa‘di and ethics is understood in the dynamic sense that Michel Foucault perceived it, the result could be different. Explored from Foucault’s perspective, ethics is about a “conscious practice of freedom,” not about being tied to “the rigid vantage point of morality.”1 Interestingly, Sa‘di ’s approach to the subject also emerges as a strategy for care of the self with the hope of leading to self-governmentality. Our poet usually stands for a reflective and conscious participation in the ethical games of power as a means of preparing the reader to acquire the skill that Foucault has called the “practice of freedom,” a responsible and reflective freedom. One that is ethical.2 79

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80  |  lyri cs o f l if e I hope to also demonstrate that—unlike narrow, austere or punitive worldviews—Sa‘di’s ethical teachings embody a caring, pragmatic spirit and an entertaining humor, which bring them to life.3 And they do so without betraying their quiet and confident pedagogical mission. The mission remains a main priority without stifling the artistic play and surprise. To borrow Foucault’s words again, Sa‘di ’s ethical teachings emerge as perfect guidelines for “the care of the self” and “the considered form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection.” 4 In Sa‘di ’s case, there is an addendum with two more components in addition to reflection: poetic color and complexity. Foucault had a serious distaste for judgment. He was amazed by how humankind’s propersity to judge throughout its history. Trying to avoid judgment seems like dodging one’s duty for a philosopher, a critic, and particularly for a writer on ethical subjects. However, Foucault understood the habit as an easy way out of ethical dead ends. He once said in an interview, “And you know very well that the last man, when radiation has finally reduced his last enemy to ashes, will sit down behind some rickety table and begin the trial of the individual responsible.” To provide his alternative to the interviewer who seemed to define judging the value of a work as the duty the public expects of a critic, Foucault described in almost whimsical terms his favorite kind of criticism, the alternative to the narrow and judgmental evaluation: “I can’t help but dream about a kind of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; it would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it. It would multiply not judgments but signs of existence; it would summon them; drag them from their sleep. Perhaps it would invent them sometimes—all the better. All the better.” He, then, reiterated, “Criticism that hands down sentences sends me to sleep; I’d like a criticism of scintillating leaps of the imagination.” 5 I hope this delightful perspective, alive in its appreciation for dynamic criticism, and captivating in its poetic description of what it can do, will inspire and animate my methodology in this chapter. Since Sa‘di ’s leaps of the imagination are nothing short of scintillating, his work deserves a lively criticism. Therefore, in this chapter, I will foreground the vitality of Sa‘di’s language and thought, and approach his ethical/poetic worldview to bring them to life rather than accept or reject their precepts. I will do so in the hope

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sa‘di on ca re of the s e l f  | 81 of lighting fires, and listening to the wind, as anecdotes are “dragged from their sleep.” There is another reason for keeping the above quote in mind here. In an almost prophetic—although obviously coincidental—manner, Foucault’s dream of a lively and dynamic criticism, was shared, more than eight hundred years ago, by Sa‘di himself. The master, fully aware of the significance of ethical principles, must have nevertheless realized that writing yet another standard book of rules was not going to make much impact or change the status quo. It was not going to make a dent in the already jelled ethical discourse, much less impact the lay reader. At best, it would join similar titles on the shelves of the specialist, perhaps to be highly praised and commented upon, but not able to fire up the imagination of the ordinary folk. The average person, alienated by the intricate and aloof nature of the legal discourse, and caught in the messiness of real-life experience, needed a different kind of pedagogical wisdom, couched in an earthly voice. This would be a voice capable of singing and laughing with them, not one showing off its knowledge of abstract concepts or speaking from on high, a voice that did not solely admonish but amuse, touch and comfort as well. Above all, such a teacher would realize that when life can no longer be stretched to accommodate the law, the rules may be bent to show some respect for life. Let us take a brief anecdote, a piece of fatherly advice to a son, from the second chapter of Golestaan (“The Rose Garden”) as a case in point.6 Over the centuries, the anecdote has acquired the status of a classic, among lay as well as specialist Iranians r­ eaders—and Persian speakers as a whole. The story recounts the memory of an early morning conversation between the narrator—perhaps the young Sa‘di himself—and his father. The young man has been an eager practitioner of the daily Muslim rites known as the five pillars of Islam. Anyone with knowledge of the pillars knows that daily prayers are among the most important. According to “the tradition of the Prophet,” they are “the pillars that keep the edifice of religion” standing.7 The narrator remembers having been up all night meditating on the holy Qur’an and then getting ready to perform his obligatory dawn prayer. To his childlike eyes, and to that of many a grown Muslim, this would be a praiseworthy effort. Noticing some members of the household sleeping not very far from them, and convinced that his good performance has earned him a measure of

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82  |  lyri cs o f l if e authority to judge others, he turns to his father and observes, “None of these folks rise to offer a humble morning prayer to the Lord. So deep are they in their heedless slumber that they might as well be dead!” Father does not waste a moment: If you have risen to spy on others, [judging by what you just said] You too, my dear son, would be better off in bed! 8

Sa‘di ’s works are replete with this kind of frank and humorous reality check, couched in playful verse or in rhyming prose. The laughter cracks the unfriendly outer shell of righteousness, the smug attitude aimed at mystifying and valorizing austerity. The same laughter preserves the poetic pleasure and makes the teachings accessible to the public. Even the lyrical domain of the ghazals is used regularly to impart such playful words of ethical wisdom. Nevertheless, Bustaan (“The Orchard”), Golestaan (“The Rose Garden”) and the qasidehs (“The Panegyrics”) are the three genres in which a deliberate and clear concentration of ethical debates is palpable. The examples that I use in this chapter are therefore selected mostly from these works. As for Foucault’s insight into human ethics, I am mindful of his modern context, and broad range of writings. Here I focus especially on his more universal observations in the essays collected in the volume Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (1994). An important conceptual underpinning in Foucault’s engagement with ethics is his awareness of the significance of “the games of power,” not just in society at large but in personal relations. Needless to say, the concept of “game” here does not imply a lack of sincerity or seriousness on the part of the players; it denotes a conscious learning and implementation of certain rules and strategies, which allow one to attain the freedom for the practice of the self. In the ethical domain, according to Foucault, these are “strategies by which individuals try to direct and control the conduct of others” and no society can exist without them. The issue, then, is to overcome the naïve desire to “dissolve” these rules through a utopian vision of liberating the self or attaining a perfectly transparent system of communication. Rather, the solution is “to acquire the rules of law, the management techniques, and also the morality, the ethos, the practice of the self that will allow us to play these games of power with as little domination as possible.”9 I will later discuss, in some detail, Foucault’s rationale for ruling out

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sa‘di on ca re of the s e l f  | 83 the option of “liberating” the self, an ideal pursued and recommended by many schools of thought/spirituality. For now, I would like to address two possible misperceptions. The first is the idea that playing ethical games of power may indicate a lack of respect for ethics or its rules. I would argue that, in Foucault’s discussion, as in here, such a perception would be erroneous. Rather, entering such games suggests an awareness of the complexity of the rules that govern human relations, the elasticity desired in the law and the willingness of the individual to acknowledge it. My second point is that, from this perspective, ethical subjectivity, or the ethical self if you like, is not so much a finalized entity as it is a perpetual process of becoming. Let us now take a moment to focus on this chapter’s core concept, the notion of the “practice of the self,” through instances in which Sa‘di illustrates the dynamism entailed in ethical practice. Through examples from Golestaan, I will illustrate his awareness of the complexity of the domains of power, and the significance of learning to navigate them. The result is a “reflected” freedom that the player can muster in these domains through anticipating strategies of control and avoiding domination. Sa‘di, Power Games, and Dealing with Domination Human beings play power games in all levels of personal as well as social relations. Nonetheless, due to its public nature, the social domain provides more readily detectable examples. It is tempting to view power as blind and unidirectional. In hierarchical social structures, such as undemocratic societies, the powerful appear to be controlling those who are deprived of power. Indeed, medieval social systems frequently seem harsh and un-nuanced to our postmodern sensibilities. Similarly, the medieval citizen is often perceived as too accepting of these rules. However, like many of his medieval counterparts living in developed urban centers, Sa‘di understood, observed and wrote about the subtleties in the power exchanges that sustained his world. The benefit of extensive travel provided him with a geographically rich comparative perspective. He recognized the hierarchical nature of the social relations, the existence of power games and the significance of learning the rules that governed them. Foucault once wrote: “[I]f there are relations of power in every social field, this is because there is freedom everywhere.”10 In this and similar ­statements,

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84  |  lyri cs o f l if e he frequently spoke to the co-existence and interdependency of freedom and power. Sa‘di, for his part, showed awareness of this interdependency when he taught his readers that in the most hierarchical of systems, there is freedom to be located, defined and legitimized for consumption. Neither thinker understood learning the rules, and playing by them, as an ethical shortcoming. Rather, they saw it as being critical to success in the ongoing process of negotiation that is our life. Let us now turn to our first example without further ado, the story of the drunken king and the homeless man in the opening chapter of “The Rose Garden.” In this chapter, which is dedicated to sirat-e paadshaahaan, the personalities of kings, Sa‘di unfolds the story of the exchanges between an all-powerful member of the society and one totally disempowered. In the process, however, utilizing his poetic voice of authority and knowledge of the traditional ethical rules crucial in games of power, our poet subverts the king’s absolute dominion. 11 The anecdote begins with the king singing loudly in his palace after a night of drinking and festivity: The world knows no moments so free of sorrow No thought of good or evil, fear of the enemy or concern for tomorrow

A poor man sleeping out in the cold hears the king and cries out in response: Surely, no one’s fortune is matched by that of His Majesty Since he has no personal concerns, may he have some for the likes of me?

Interrupting the personal celebration and joy of a drunken king is no trifling matter. It could startle the monarch, the way it has shocked us—with the difference that the king could condemn to death the speaker of these words. But the intruding voice is not a rough and rude one. It does not reek of the uncouthness of the words used by the unschooled common folk. On the contrary, Sa‘di has given the poor man’s response an elegance surpassing that of the king’s. Surely the king appreciates these refined words or we have to doubt his imperial tutelage and taste. With this line, which rivals the king’s song, Sa‘di has given voice to the feelings of a usually silenced and marginalized person. Placed on equal footing with royalty, for now the homeless is protected. Indeed the man’s entrance into the discourse and his

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sa‘di on ca re of the s e l f  | 85 short and poetic outcry has given meaning to what we could have otherwise dismissed as the king’s meaningless drinking song. As it is, we are waiting for his response to the poor man’s eloquent challenge. The first discrete subversion of power has already happened. Humbled, disarmed and moved with the poem, he extends a pouch of gold coins out of the window of the royal chamber suggesting that the man holds the front of his robe out to catch the gift. “I would if I was wearing one,” is the answer of the poor man. The king adds to the gift, and climbs one more step down by sending his personal envoy to give it to him. The story could nicely end here with a celebration of the unexpected talent of a destitute man moving a gentle and refined king to exceptional generosity. In fact, the story is about to begin in earnest, with the introduction of a series of complications. The first thing that happens is that the poor man goes off, spends the money in no time and returns to the palace door for more. Although the story is not about the man’s squandering of the royal gift, Sa‘di sticks his head in momentarily to make a comment. This timely revival of the narrating voice is a feature of “The Rose Garden” and one of its strengths. The voice usually belongs to the characters. But they can be too closely tied to their personal context, unable to see and serve the broader and more universal principles framing the anecdote. In this case, the following is the larger context that Sa‘di the narrator wishes us to keep in mind: The free spirited cannot hold onto gold and silver Any more than a lover’s heart can hold patience, or a sieve water

The story may not be focused on the man’s spending habits, but this  comment is not innocent or redundant. It highlights the most significant rule in the power game that has begun and will dominate the story: learn to measure and time your spending or it will come back to haunt you! It is not so much what you have to spend but “how” and “when” you spend it that makes the difference. The return of the man is brought to the attention of the king at a time when he is busy with other, more important, matters. “Throw out the ­shameless ­squandering beggar!” cries the angry king. “[T]he public ­treasury is for feeding the poor, not for nourishing the devil’s brother!” And, in his sharp and still elegant royal anger, he seals the conversation with a beautiful line of poetry:

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86  |  lyri cs o f l if e The simpleton who burns his candle when the day is bright Soon runs out of oil to light the lamp at night

With this, the king endorses the central message of the story, the significance of recognizing the true demand of the moment: wasting the candles at daytime leads to sitting in the dark at night. Little does he know that Sa‘di will take his metaphor, expand it into a general ethical principle and throw it back at him when the time is right. The metaphor of wasting light speaks to the imbalance at the heart of the general human temperament: the failure to realize when to start and when to stop. Indeed, the art of measuring one’s moves properly, and taking action in a timely manner, should apply to everyone, including the king and his courtiers. The courtiers are likely to observe the virtue in the rule of conduct and personally adopt it. Getting the king to comply, even with his own words of wisdom, however, is not that simple. Everyone should remain mindful of their manner of approach to the symbol of absolute authority, the king. If they approach the king in a subtle and timely fashion, they will reap gold and if they do it at the wrong moment—or in the wrong way—they will be called the devil’s brother and thrown out of the court. The question then is, “How will the law apply to the king if his authority is absolute?” And if he can barely be approached, who will measure his actions and tell him not to cross the line? Foucault suggests that wherever there are relations of power (that is, in every social field), there is freedom to be identified and put to use. Where is the freedom that can be extracted in this old and centralized power system? Well, in this case, the freedom seems to come in the garb of old age and wisdom. Usually, traditional power systems have their inbuilt safety mechanisms that can be activated in moments of crisis. Sa‘di, and the Persian literary tradition through which he encodes his poetic messages, have many such safety valves, prominent among them an experienced, wise and courageous vizier. Viziers live in close proximity to the sources of power. They are almost always on the brink: the short distance between saving others and losing their own life. This close encounter with danger earns them respect and recognition by all, including the king himself. It also endows them with experience

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sa‘di on ca re of the s e l f  | 87 and an uncanny instinct to identify the times to keep silent and opportune moments to step in. The vizier steps in and reminds the king, in a gentle but candid tone, that he too needs to measure his actions and follow the rules of the game. “I believe,” he says to the monarch, “it would be more prudent to give people like him only as much as they need and even then in installments. In that way, they will not have a chance to squander their allowance.” The king listens, which means he appreciates advice and realizes that prudence is necessary to a king. It can play a major role in holding on to power. The vizier is safe now to move a step further into the ruler’s personal space to register a serious note of concern about his manner of treating his subjects. “As for punishing or forbidding this man [from coming here,]” he goes on, “it is not fitting for people of generosity to show kindness and create hope only to injure the hopeful and drive them away disappointed.” Everyone has benefited: the king, the homeless, and, above all, us. I should say especially us because we have learned in a unique way through Sa‘di’s eloquence and his talent to amuse and entertain his readers. Highlighting Rules of Conduct Admittedly, Sa‘di’s stories in “The Rose Garden” and “The Orchard” are not always as long and intricate as this one. They are quite varied in their thematic emphasis as they are in their response to the questions that they raise. The variety adds to their entertaining nature and keeps the reader engaged. However, there are constants in the stories that the reader recognizes and relies on to feel that he or she is in familiar territory. One such constant is the ease and clarity with which the stories highlight the rules of conduct usually masked by the messiness of reality. In a way, they view the unpredictability of life not as a cause for haste, or shock, but rather for reflection. As an experienced traveler and a practitioner on the Sufi path, Sa‘di knows that certainty is a rare gift. Ethical decisions often have to be made in emotional moments fraught with uncertainty. His words of wisdom do not deny the pain and the uncertainty the individuals have to face in making such decisions. At the same time, he has little patience for shallow and simplistic bickering among warring parties or individuals. He does not waste philosophical solution or in-depth analysis on such petty quarrels.

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88  |  lyri cs o f l if e On these occasions, he usually wears his amused expression and allows the playful and inventive mood to take over. What he offers in these instances are sharp and entertaining remarks delivered like a bee sting or a fast knockout blow designed to leave the reader with an ouch feeling. The “ouch” anecdotes are usually very short, exaggerated and deliberately fictitious. In the seventh chapter of “The Rose Garden”, the son of a rich man, visiting the family burial place, boasts to a needy orphan friend, comparing his father’s elaborate tombstone to that of the poor friend’s father.12 “Unlike your father’s tomb,” he brags, “my father’s is decorated with beautiful calligraphy written on hefty pieces of marble inlayed with turquoise.” “How interesting!” observes the poor boy. “Before your Dad moves beneath the weight, mine will have reached paradise.” The tombstone, with its weight and decoration, is obviously a metaphor for the weight of human vanity and self-importance. But the anecdote is not meant to evolve into a more extended philosophical statement on the issue. It remains pointed, short and funny, a quick punch to nudge and awaken the sleepy reader. Such short and entertaining anecdotes have the additional function of lightening up the general ambiance of the chapter just as it begins to sound too somber. At the same time, these short and humorous anecdotes sometimes become the vehicle for serious subversion of authority. In such instances, shortness is very important in avoiding unnecessary complications and enabling the ordinary citizen to memorize and quote the piece when in need of bolstering his or her voice in the face of rampant power. In the anecdote that I have in mind the tyrannical ruler of Iraq Hajjaaj Ibn Yusof, no doubt representing a type, hears about a dervish in the city of Baghdad famous for his wishes being granted by God. In this episode, which is related in the first chapter of “The Rose Garden”, the ruler predictably rushes to the dervish to ask that the former pray for him. “Oh God! Please take his life!” prays the venerated saint. “What kind of a prayer is that?” Hajjaaj says, shocked and startled by the boldness of the man. “This is a prayer,” answers the dervish, “that would save both you and everyone subjected to your rule.” The episode ends with two verses with extraordinary mobility. That is to say, they can be read as a universalizing attempt to connect Hajjaaj to all tyrannical rulers anywhere that they are in time and space. This is a great example of the narrating voice emerging to expand the context. At the same time, these two verses can travel

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sa‘di on ca re of the s e l f  | 89 out of this episode and stand on their own, which is why I referred to their mobility: You who injure those serving under you How long will you be able to carry on with the charade? What good is ruling the world to someone like you? Death serves you better because it ends the hurtful deed 13

Many anecdotes in Bustaan (“The Orchard”) show the above characteristic. For one thing, “The Orchard” is all in verse and subject to more demanding generic rules. Furthermore, in preparing morality lessons for poetic elegance, Sa‘di finds brevity and sharp humor more useful than elaborate argumentation. The following anecdote is a good example, which has gained additional popularity with readers due to being presented as an autobiographical episode from our poet’s student days in the famous Nezaamiyeh School in Baghdad. Whether the claim is based on fact is of course beside the point:14 I used to have a scholarship to study in Nezaamiyeh School We reviewed lessons day and night to master every rule I said to my teacher one day, “Oh, wise master!” So-and-so is jealous of my great success here That example of conduct listened to my complaint Angry and surprised he told me without restraint You did not like the jealous feeling your friend had What makes you think back-biting is not so bad? If he is heading for hell because of his improper feeling You’ll join him via your road, that’s a sure thing! 15

The Suppressed Laughter and the Elasticity of the Poetic Voice Needless to say, Sa‘di does not treat all human behavior as simple or amusing. Neither does he treat the emotions behind them as essentially positive or negative. A good example is the appreciation that he shows for the complexity of the emotion of fear and its close interrelation with power. In more than one instance, stories in “The Rose Garden” highlight the close connection between the two. For example, he demonstrates with remarkable skill that, as

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90  |  lyri cs o f l if e a common emotional experience, trepidation triggers anxiety in the despotic mind of a ruler in the same way that it invades the daily life of the fearful subject. In the sixth story from the first chapter of “The Rose Garden” we meet a Persian king who treats his subjects harshly and usurps their property.16 Fear forces many to flee their homeland. Not only does the foolish king not notice this, he jails the vizier who warns him about the mass migration and the resulting weakness in the economy. In this story, fear is the emotion under scrutiny. It blinds the king and alienates the subjects with equal strength. The despot gets his lesson only after being toppled by a few young cousins. The reader feels like shaking the king out of his blindness to the consequence of his own actions. One wonders why the vizier’s warning falls on closed ears this time. Perhaps Sa‘di wishes to underline the fact that ethical teachings, seemingly so convincing and perfect, can become totally ineffective when massive power is concentrated in the hands of an ignorant and arrogant individual. Nevertheless, the dominant wisdom of the story is the harm coming to the king’s power because of the fear he has created among his subjects. Two stories later in the same chapter, another king makes the same mistake: ruling his people with a heavy hand. Interestingly, however, he understands fear in a very different way. In fact, his errors are rooted in the fact that he is over-sensitive to fear. When he comes to power, he jails all of his father’s viziers. “What have they done wrong?” asks a courtier overwhelmed with shock. “Nothing that I am aware of,” answers the king, “except, they fear me too much to trust my pledge [to protect them]. I worry they will plot to kill me for fear that I might possibly harm them.” He then cites the example of snakes biting shepherds and cats fighting leopards if they are overwhelmed with fear, suggesting that the harmless personality of the former and the superior strength of the latter are no match for this powerful instinct. The above anecdotes are a perfect instance of addressing the complexity of human temperaments and emotions. Nonetheless, a back-to-back discussion of fear could darken the mood in this chapter of Sa‘di’s otherwise plush “Rose Garden”. Sa‘di is sensitive to the need for keeping the reader engaged by lightening up the ambience with humorous anecdotes. Indeed, as we have already seen, humorous anecdotes are a cultural/poetic product he can provide with no difficulty. I would here suggest that these anecdotes are much

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sa‘di on ca re of the s e l f  | 91 more than fun-generating breaks to brighten up discussions of bleak topics. They play an additional role in Sa‘di’s overall engagement with ethics, and a very significant one at that. But first let us take a closer look at the kind of humor we are dealing with in these brief episodes. Sa‘di’s humor is at its best when he pretends that he cannot suppress his laughter. That is a jest. In truth, he can keep a straight face while giving his readers factual-sounding fiction dressed in a respectable legal or historical garb. Pretending to suppress his laughter, however, may be a poetic strategy to prevent the joke from coming into the open and turning the inventiveness and self-amusement into an end in itself overshadowing the deeper ethical/ pedagogical objective. On the other hand, if the narrating voice surrendered itself to the deadliness of serious judgment, the daunting ethical wisdom could be overwhelmed with its own grandeur. Sa‘di’s solution is the suppressed laughter in the background. It threatens to break into the open and disrupt everything at any moment. In this liminal space between seriousness and amusement, there is room for pain, fear and making mistakes as well as learning the ethical principles. The message: there is room—even need—for ethics because real life is about forgetting principles. At the same time, the freshness of the laughter and the courage to mix it with tears suggests that goodness does not have to be bleak. Last but not least, these episodes are about what the poetic voice is capable of doing for a reconceptualization of the ethical precepts. The issue of the elasticity of the poetic voice is particularly significant here. Discussing the human need to locate freedom within systems of power, Foucault observes, “A system of constraint becomes truly intolerable when the individuals who are affected by it don’t have the means to modify it. This can happen when such a system becomes intangible as a result of its being considered a moral or religious imperative.”17 At the same time, Foucault (with whom I agree fully) does not consider the truth or the human self to be some kind of a treasure that exists somewhere buried, or alienated, as a result of certain historical, economic and social processes. Belief in such an original untainted self, or elevated truth, often generates a search for ways to liberate them. In this perception of goodness and the “good self,” all we need to do is to free the self. That is the beginning and end of human action and agency in this regard.

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92  |  lyri cs o f l if e As far as Foucault is concerned, however, what needs to be learned is a “practice of the self” which must be carried out over and above any processes of liberation.18 In an essay called “Self Writing,” Foucault suggests that like all techniques and professional skills, the art of living must be learned. It should be understood as a training of the self by oneself. He bases his perception on the way the ancient Greeks understood the art of living and suggests that for them writing for oneself and others was one of the ways in which to acquire the training. The ancient Greeks, according to Foucault, perceived regular writing as a form of meditation, an exercise of thought on itself that reactivated what it knows, called to mind a principle, a rule or an example, reflected on it, assimilated it, and “in this way prepared itself to face reality.”19 Clearly, Foucault himself, and, as we will see in this chapter, Sa‘di, were both deeply involved in this “truth game” that essentially involved writing. And it is not surprising, given the faith they had in the centrality of the act of writing as a stage in the process that Foucault calls “fashioning accepted discourses, recognized as true, into rational principles of action.” Foucault goes on to explain that ancient Greeks used writing as a means of transforming the truth into ethos.20 I suggest that Sa‘di thought and acted very much in the same way in his writings. Keeping these points in mind, let me now return to what I described ­earlier as Sa‘di’s use of suppressed laughter in his ethical stories. In these stories, Sa‘di deals with “moral and religious imperatives,” which could ­contribute to the building of an “intolerable system of constraints” based on intangible but powerful principles. This is one of the typical places in which Sa‘di resorts to inventing funny stories. In these anecdotes, on the one hand, he uses laughter as a humanizing process, a way of putting an ordinary face on shortcomings so a door may remain open to the idea of forgiveness. The reader does not have to abandon his or her loyalty to moral principles. Yet he or she will laugh and therefore open up to life’s lighter side even if involuntarily. On the other hand, the very fact of inventing funny stories about ethical and legal matters indicates the human freedom to enter into the realm of “accepted discourse” with an eye to modify it. As it turns out, an excellent way out of ethical dead ends is inventing new, and funny, approaches. Let me start with a quick and lighthearted redefinition of the rule of

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sa‘di on ca re of the s e l f  | 93 conduct for ascetics in the presence of kings. This happens in a clearly fictitious anecdote in the second chapter of “The Rose Garden” dedicated to the manner in which ascetics are supposed to conduct themselves generally. The anecdote is very brief (in a way, a reminder of the conversation between Hajjaaj and a Sufi saint I quoted earlier).21 It begins with the clearly fictitious, “A king runs into an ascetic”—a highly unlikely encounter. Next, the king asks a question that is even less likely to be one that a king would ask: “Do you ever remember me?” The usual code of conduct would be for the ascetic to find a clever answer that is not a lie but that is not disappointing to the king either. In the story, our ascetic answers, “Yes, whenever I forget God!” This is funny, the quickness of the comeback, the contrast between remembrance and forgiveness, and most of all the opposition established between two kinds of authority: the power of God versus that of the king. But you don’t want the king to catch you laughing. The ascetic’s answer is not just belittling, rude and dangerous. It, in effect, reduces the king to an existential hazard. Given the fact that the definitive virtue for an ascetic is his or her remembrance of God, the memory of the king works as a destroyer of that virtue, and with it the ascetic’s identity. Before suspense sets in, however, Sa‘di joins forces with the ascetic to move us beyond the possible anger of the monarch. There follows a beautiful one-liner capable of charming the king and the readers alike with its elegance. But it does a number of other things as well. First, it introduces a new and different force into the exchange, an equalizer of kings and ascetics: genuine longing for God. Second, it turns our gaze from the king and the ascetic to all humanity, opening the debate and therefore reducing the tension. It also points the imaginary king to a place in which he will no longer have to be running to another human being for spiritual favors: He will make the one He has banished from his door run in all directions But the one He calls, He will never send running to other people’s doors

A pleasant aspect of Sa‘di’s stories is that they involve a wide range of people from a cat that belongs to an old woman, to a king, to a slave. In story number eight, in the first chapter of “The Rose Garden”, a slave is put in a trying situation in order to teach a lesson to a king.22 The king is on a sea journey with his Persian slave. The poor slave, who has never been on a ship,

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94  |  lyri cs o f l if e is in tears, “his whole body shaking with fear.” The king’s fun is being spoiled and the attendants do not know how to remedy the situation, for no amount of attention and kindness pacifies the fearful slave. A wise man traveling on the ship says to the king, “If you permit me, I will calm this man down.” No sooner has the king issued his permission than the slave is picked up, at the wise man’s suggestion, and thrown into the hostile sea. He is, then, rescued and dragged close to the ship and left to his own devices to climb up to safety. Once he is back on the ship, his restlessness gives way to perfect calm. The narrating voice in this story, again a fusion of Sa‘di’s and the wise man’s, is really interested in educating the king and the reader. It is not always easy to see that contentment and safety are related. And, that they are relative. Those who have not tasted hunger will not appreciate simple food. They find nothing to their satisfaction because they have not experienced true hardship. But the slave, whose childish fear, as well as struggle to get back on the ship, is narrated in a lighthearted manner, is much more than that. He is our slavish subordination to voices of caution keeping us away from stormy moments of life. He is the fear that prevents us from facing our fears, conquering the waves. Although in our supposed corner of safety, there is little peace and serenity, we hold on to the illusion of calmness. After being thrown into the sea and climbing back into the ship, our safety is real, something that we have personally earned. More importantly, our perspective on life is, now, different. The gaze we had fixed on the sea is liberated to fall on other things. We are free to move forward. As important as the complexity of the message in the story is the underlying laughter in the slave’s exaggerated fear, and the wise man’s extreme solution. Face your fear of life’s cruelty with inventive boldness, Sa‘di says, and laugh your way through dangerous and forbidden territories. Although what Sa‘di allows to happen to the slave in the above story is cold-hearted, he lets us sympathize with his fear and feel his subsequent calmness. Sarcasm, as well as dark and sharp instances of our poet’s humor, are usually reserved for kings and rulers. Let me end this discussion with a very short—literally a two-liner—anecdote following this one.23 In this anecdote, a pious man recommends midday naps to a cruel king who asks, “Which act of worship is the best?” He follows the suggestion with a candid footnote: “That is the one breath in which you do not harm people.”

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sa‘di on ca re of the s e l f  | 95 Sa‘di ’s Odes of Praise: Panegyric, or Fashioning Discourse into Rational Principles of Action? Jan Rypka, in his celebrated work A History of Iranian Literature, devotes a paragraph to Sa‘di’s panegyric qasidehs (“odes of praise”). Rypka acknowledges that in utilizing this genre, Sa‘di departed from the standard panegyric practice of his time by reducing the eulogy and adding to the “didactic purport.”24 Furthermore, Rypka suggests that poverty was responsible for the panegyric work that our poet composed. Nonetheless, Rypka seems deeply disappointed by Sa‘di ’s praise of rulers and kings, whatever the justification: What must one think of a moralist who glorifies Hulagu-Khan, the man who had executed the Salghurid Seljuq-Shah, the same man whose praises our poet had sung a few months previously; who, forgetting that after the terrible devastation of Baghdad he had written a long elegy mourning the Caliph al-Musta’sim, who in his turn had been made to suffer a most cruel death at the hands of none other than the same Hulagu-Khan?25

In the remainder of this chapter, I will do a close reading of one of the most celebrated, and yet typical, of Sa‘di’s odes of praise written for Amir Ankiyaanu.26 The point of the reading is not so much to expose Rypka’s rather superficial view on the subject as it is to search for new ways of looking at such works. For one thing, Rypka is not alone in his critical perspective on Sa‘di’s panegyric poetry.27 Our poet’s praise of rulers has proven unpopular with the majority of the critics from the twentieth century and beyond. Rather, I hope my reading of the ode, here in this concluding portion of the chapter, paves the way for an answer to the rhetorical question that Jan Rypka has asked, namely, “What must one think of a moralist who has glorified such rulers as Hulagu-Khan and others?” Regardless of what motivated Sa‘di to write such words of praise—financial need or other reasons—what was the function of these poems beyond pleasing a single patron? Is there a way to bring them to life rather than just condemn and/or abandon them as devoid of serious content? In short, is there a way to make sense of them? Sa‘di ’s collection of poems contains just over sixty odes in Persian, which vary dramatically in length and thematic focus.28 Praise of God and Prophet Muhammad, description of nature, celebration of the arrival of the spring,

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96  |  lyri cs o f l if e singing the praise of his native city Shiraz, and tribute to kings and rulers are among the chief topics of these odes. The ode that I will focus on here was dedicated to Amir Ankiyaanu, the Mongol Governor who ruled the province of Fars, where Sa‘di’s historic native city of Shiraz is located, from 1269 to 1271. Little is known about the personality of the governor or the events during his short term in office except that he was appointed by Abaaqaa (d. 1281), the Ilkhanid King and son of Hulagu. A very brief introduction is in order about the poem itself. Earlier in this chapter I discussed the significance of the ethical discourse encoded into poetry. In reference to the process of discourse building, I am particularly cognizant of the act of writing itself, which Foucault identifies as “an essential stage” on the road to the construction of an accepted discourse. Such a discourse, recognized as true, is according to Foucault transformed into “rational principles of action” through the activity of writing.29 What I would like to add here is the following. Since odes, poems of praise, are addressed primarily to kings, rulers or other influential individuals, it is natural to assume that what led to a fashioning of the resulting discourse was primarily an elitist process carried out by erudite poets such as Sa‘di, educated and poetry-loving kings and governors, and the courtiers. However, this is only partially true. On the one hand, the odes that Sa‘di wrote, like other classical Persian poetry, were preserved through a strong and sophisticated literary tradition: the age-old cultural habit of manuscript production. On the other, the oral practice of memorizing poetry brought these poems a generation-to-­ generation longevity and reach that is nothing short of amazing. As Meisami has observed with regard to mixed prose and verse in medieval Persian literature, general readers memorized and quoted these odes on numerous occasions. Such quotes, which were a part of my own childhood, were used in parental instruction, sermons, teaching, storytelling, calligraphy practice, social problem-solving and more.30 Sa‘di, with his humor and his easy and graceful style, has long been a particularly suitable candidate to be quoted on such occasions. The poem we are about to read has many a celebrated line quoted in various writers’ works throughout the centuries, and known to contemporary Iranians of varying backgrounds. Indeed, the verses that I have marked with asterisks have found currency as proverbs. In short, if writing is generally an elitist practice in the process of discourse building, in the garb of

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sa‘di on ca re of the s e l f  | 97 classical Persian poetry, it has acquired a mass-production capability hard to imagine let alone measure. And now, on to Sa‘di’s ode! Referring to the poem we will read below as panegyric is misleading. Praising the patron is its least significant part. In truth, it is a drama, with multiple ethical and philosophical messages, unfolding on a social stage. It is about justice, prudence, wakefulness, freedom and, above all, self-­governance, or what Foucault has called governmentality. I propose, through my reading in this segment, that the process of writing this poem for a powerful Mongol Governor is, in fact, an act of generating hope on Sa‘di’s part. It is our poet’s way of contributing to the popularizing, shaping and reshaping of the ethical discourse. Let me explain. In his essay “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom,” Foucault wrote: “I don’t know anything about anthropology, but I can well imagine societies in which the control of the conduct of others is so well regulated in advance that, in a sense, the game is already over.”31 Foucault identifies this, rightly, as the most hopeless situation, one in which negotiation and change are no longer a possibility. I am suggesting that, here in this poem, as the ruler, courtiers and the mass of readers (celebrating the poem century after century) listen, Sa‘di turns to the figure of authority of his time and says, “The game is not over! In fact, for you, it has just begun!”32 The poem is written about twenty years before Sa‘di’s death (c. 1291) and early in the Governor Ankiyaanu’s term in office. We can tell the latter point from Sa‘di’s use of the adjective “novin” (“nascent”) to describe the governor’s dowlat (“fortune/rule”). The combination endows our poet’s voice with a special authority. To enhance that authority, he makes a very interesting choice. He sets the entire world as the stage for the unfolding of the poem. Not only does Ankiyaanu’s word carry less weight anywhere outside the Province of Fars, Sa‘di’s boldness in opening up the horizon is a sign of confidence. After all, ethics is not a private enterprise. It is not about rescuing oneself either. Neither is this poem saying “Give me a handsome reward and I will sing your praise more!” It is about the larger ethical role that a person with military capabilities and political authority can play. Hence the ode opens, not with a description of the fine spring weather in Shiraz, the glory of youth or the magic of love, but with a reference to the instability of the world and the precarious nature of power:

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98  |  lyri cs o f l if e Much has the world turned and turn it will The wise do not get attached to that which does not keep still **Do whatever you can when you are able to! Before old age takes the strength from you33

So far, it is fair to assume that Sa‘di is addressing his readers at large, indeed humanity as a whole. But then, through a reference to the Book of Kings (Shaahnaameh) and the “khodaavand-e molk” (those in possession of power), he narrows the audience to the ruler and his courtiers: That in the old fables and books of kings There are tales of Rostam, immortal Esfandiyaar, and such things Is for the rulers, and the owners of wealth to understand That the world was, before them, in other people’s hands Those are all gone but, blinded with greed We do not seem to learn a lesson or take heed 34

In the fifth line of the poem, Sa‘di has already established the power of his voice and his own courage to use it to admonish the governor. But there is such a thing as giving too much advice to “those in possession of power.” Wisely, our poet takes a step back and opens up the arena for the audiences again to the larger human community. After all, instead of forcing the patron into a corner, one can evoke conditions we all share, weaknesses that make us all human and therefore equalize us despite our uneven social conditions. Throughout the poem, Sa‘di uses this strategy. Changing the lens on the camera he moves deftly between the intimate court scene and the larger human society to ensure his warning does not outweigh the ruler’s tolerance: I am talking to you who were an oblivious cell! Then grew into a suckling babe—and who could tell? That in no time you would be grown and all ready To greet life as a cypress-figured beauty More time passed. You made yourself a name As brave on the battlefield as in any hunting game Whatever you saw did not stay still Do not think that it now or ever will

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sa‘di on ca re of the s e l f  | 99 And now, assuming the main audience is ready, the bitter reality pill is offered in stunningly elegant words. This time, there is no doubt that our poet is addressing Ankiyaanu himself: Sooner or later, this form of yours so beauteous and fair Will be dust and even then scattered in the air Surely the gardener will pick the flowers all And those, which he does not pick, perish and fall This all amounts to nothing: things which you cannot own Happiness, victory, being in command, sitting on the thrown **Indeed, leaving a good name behind is much better Than an ornate palace adorned with gold and silver

And since he is getting to the hard advice, and the governor has not thrown a fit yet, why sugarcoat the most candid equalizer of all, the end that no one can avoid, death itself: What will next year bring? Nobody would know Or the friend we had last year, where did he go? The dead are sleeping helpless in their grave Their heads a resting place that only lizards crave **This beauty of your face my dear is worth nothing Inner beauty is what matters if you can bring A human being needs the rational soul in her body For the animal soul is given to all—even to a donkey

Now, all of us, not just the ruler, are thinking, “Okay, the world is unstable, power is precarious, and life is short, what are your suggestions?” More to the point, “Are you ever going to get to the praise portion of this poem?” That is exactly what Sa‘di has been hoping for, an audience moved by the strength of his arguments and the elegance of his words and in need of ideas and solutions for the dilemma it is facing, the dilemma called life. So before the passage of time and the turning of the wheel Takes the reins from your hands and you lose the deal Sow your seeds for the harvest; do not idly sit! **If you want a treasure, get working for it!

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100  |  lyri c s o f l if e This is candid advice, yet general and open to personal interpretation. Maybe the patron would understand the above lines to mean he needs to conquer the next-door city before the reins are taken from his hands. In other words, the time for discussing generalities, which was intended to prepare the governor, has come to an end. The time is now ripe for getting to the specific point that sa‘di wants to address to him in a clear and direct fashion: Since God has given you greatness and power Do not look down at the poor from your ivory tower Since the heavens have given you the upper hand To those who are under you be gentle and kind Those who come to apologize and to confess Protect their lives, show them forgiveness

But there is a downside to continuing with the dichotomy that has started: the governor in absolute power and his subjects at his total mercy. Just as Sa‘di is careful with excessive warning, he is also sensitive to praising the ruler’s authority beyond a certain limit. Yes, Ankiyaanu has a lot of power that he should use wisely. However, the limits of his power, and by extension that of all who rule, must also be kept in mind. And that is not just because rulers will inevitably face death in the end like all other human beings. Rather, the limits to the powers of the ruler are important, for his contemporaries to understand and record for posterity, because there is a bigger picture. This bigger picture must be kept in view in order to help us understand and define power in a totally new light. What is the force of gravity in the bigger picture and how could this be brought to the patron’s attention in a poem of praise? Sa‘di’s solution is elegant and simple: to invite God, who has so far been absent from the poem, into the picture and to give him all dominion.35 It is very important not to read God’s grand entrance into the poem as a tool for intimidating the holder of this worldly authority, namely the ruler. That would be too easy, and perhaps even too cheap: if you do bad things, God will punish you! Rather the idea is to stretch the horizon so to speak, perhaps to redecorate the stage (if we chose to stay with the metaphor I offered at the beginning of this section, presenting the poem as a grand play unfolding on a stage). I believe, bringing God into the picture, Sa‘di achieves two clear goals in this newly created space. One is to remind us (and

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sa‘di on ca re of the s e l f  | 101 the ruler) that in one reading of life he is the governor and the people his subjects. In another, everyone is subject to a higher power. If in the former, as the ruler’s subjects, people are inferior to him, in the latter, the ruler and the people are all on equal footing at God’s door. Indeed, some ordinary subjects may be in a better position than Ankiyaanu; they do not hold unlimited power over others to abuse. The second point that stands out in the new setting is the emphasis it places on the freedom of all people in a particular—one may say religious— sense. This is the freedom without which faith in God is open to question, if not totally meaningless. No governing authority can ask his subjects to serve two Gods at the same time, not even Amir Ankiyaanu. People need to be free agents to practice their servitude to God. Furthermore, to be a proper ruler, the Amir himself needs to stay mindful of his duties as one of God’s servants: To express gratitude to God, do good things God loves those who express thankful feelings His blessings do not fit into quantity and number His bounties are vast beyond scope and measure If every hair on your body turns into a tongue to speak To thank Him for one out of a thousand bounties, it will be weak

Since it is obvious that the Amir will not be able to express his thanks even if every hair on his body turns into a tongue to speak, it makes sense for him to ask, “Isn’t there any other way for me to perform this duty much valued by God?” Sa‘di assumes that the Amir is sensible enough to ask such a question and proceeds to answer it with a range of recommended actions befitting rulers and kings: Do not defame the deceased if you’re smart So your own good name remains after you depart The guardian of the land cannot spend his nights on partying and laughter Either drunk or suffering the headache of “the day after”

Fulfill the wishes of the helpless and the poor So God will not send you disappointed from His door Strangers passing through, give them a generous helping hand So they spread your good name throughout the land

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102  |  lyri c s o f l if e Again, the king needs to be reminded that the discourse of power has its complexities and ups and downs. One may get over-confident by focusing on the aspect that convinces him of his strength. But there are always finer and less obvious areas in which even the most powerful are not equipped to handle the struggle. It is important for the Amir to see both of these sides and see them in relation to each other. He needs to have the courage to face a vast and threatening army. And yet, he needs to be afraid of the hurt feelings of the seemingly powerless people: You have a strong body and a sharp and glorious sword You can face an army threatening to take over the world It is the inner feelings of the injured you need to watch for And the prayers of the pious folk who come to your door It is the arrows of the sighs of those who have faced malice36 Which hit the unjust hiding in the safety of their palace

Excess is the biggest threat to maintaining control of power. Keeping the balance, in one sense necessary for all people, is an absolute must when it comes to kings and rulers who wield excessive amounts of power. They simply cannot afford to be hesitant just as they cannot be reckless: **Be good to those who are good, and bad to those who are bad Be gentle with the gentle opponent, attack if you are attacked

And, of course, superstition is one form of illogical and excessive fear that rulers need to overcome. How could they be an instrument of keeping their subjects free and dignified if they themselves surrender their power of rational judgment to baseless superstition? Instead, they need to be free from many things, among them naivety, greed, vindictiveness and brutality: Demons are not the ones you need to fear or condemn Demonic people are the trouble, be afraid of them! The one who shelters ferocious animals or bad people Sooner or later sees the results of his mistake well No matter how kind you are or how much you suffer for their sake Like a snake charmer you will someday be bitten by your snake

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sa‘di on ca re of the s e l f  | 103 As we get close to the end of the long poem, we begin to wonder where is the praise for the Governor Ankiyaanu? Is this not supposed to be a panegyric poem? Yes, it is. But the praise for the ruler will not come before we have heard Sa‘di’s praise for himself. That is a time-honored convention in poems of praise. It is one of the few places in which the poet is free to display his self-worth. After all, the patron should be very happy to know that he is not being praised by an ordinary mortal. It is Sa‘di the master poet of Shiraz lavishing his words on him: If you have eyes, ears, wisdom and intelligence See that my words are jewels, wear them hence! Only a callous person breaks his bonds with me Those who are blessed listen and those who are lucky

Like everything else, Sa‘di takes this self-praise and turns it on its head as well. He moves from a description of the jewels of his words to his unique courage in voicing the truth. Only those who have proper “eyes and ears” can see the jewels that he is distributing with generosity. Now Ankiyaanu has little hope for his political power to be viewed as unique or beyond question. It is not just the rules of conduct, and God’s entrance into the picture with his divine authority. Sa‘di has now taken his own seat of honor next to the divine. After all, poets are the voices of the unseen, particularly if they are God-fearing and fearless in the face of this worldly power: Sa‘di, say whatever you know without hesitation The truth must not be told except in the open The one who is not held back by fear or greed Speaks in the face of the enemy without heed I pray for the nascent fortune of our great king To be on the rise and long lasting Our just monarch, our illustrious Amir The noble Ankiyaanu, the ruler without peer Others bring our sovereign gifts of sweetmeat I pour the jewels of my words at his feet People usually praise and panegyrize the ruler

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104  |  lyri c s o f l if e I offer him my simple words of prayer: “Oh, Lord please steer him toward kindness And make his life long and prosperous May forever your wishes be fulfilled! And your enemy vanquished in your battlefield!”

The tables are completely turned. In this so-called panegyric poem, Sa‘di is not begging the ruler to free his subjects. Rather, he is reminding the Amir that he is the one in need of liberation. He must free himself of haste, anger, arrogance and greed if he is hoping to rule honorably. He must learn to govern himself if he has any ambitions of governing those under his authority in his state. Here, Sa‘di is to the young Ankiyaanu very much what Xenophon was to the youth that Foucault tells us about. Toward the end of his essay “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom,” Foucault quotes Xenophon as greeting a few young men with, “You want to become a politician, to govern a city, to care for others, and you have not even taken care of yourself. If you do not care for yourself you will make a poor ruler.”37 Before this chapter ends, let us lighten up with a brief anecdote from Sa‘di. The equivalent of the youth admonished by Xenophon, in Sa‘di’s humorous narration, is the naïve astronomer who, in the fourth chapter of Golestaan, walks in on his wife and her lover. “How much could you know about the distant galaxies,” observes a friend, “if you are ignorant of what goes on in your own home?”38 Again, our poet infuses the short anecdote with ­laughter—this time at the expense of the devastated astronomer—but the point is nothing but governmentality. If you wish to become capable of making a real impact on your larger environment in a way that will make it good and just, then there is only one way: starting with that which is the closest to you, yourself! Then, and only then, are you fit to observe the flow of power around you and manipulate it—without breaking the rules of decency. Your purpose: to avoid being manipulated. Hence, Sa‘di’s ethical games of power in practice of freedom find their central focus on care of the self. Live a life, our poet suggests, that is wholesome and full but do not forget those who reach out to you for help. Laughter and joy will not be frivolity if they teach you how to put your freedom to good use. And certainly there is nothing wrong with riding currents of power

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sa‘di on ca re of the s e l f  | 105 to protect your personal freedom if it is a considered and not a careless ride. So much is offered by many great teachers of ethics. Sa‘di, however, would ask his reader to also stay mindful of the beauty that fills the world (despite it being a troubled world) for love is generated from the interaction with that beauty. And love is a more complicated country. If you are in need of a map to guide your steps, he would add, the ghazals of Sa‘di of Shiraz are a good start. That is exactly what we are turning attention to next, Sa‘di’s celebrated ghazals. Notes   1. Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom,” 282–3.  2. I have demonstrated in the first chapter that there is substantial criticism of Sa‘di’s system of ethics in early to mid-twentieth century Iran. However, in more recent years, Iranian scholars and critics have tried to provide a more nuanced understanding of his ethics and reconcile it with modern pedagogical perspectives and principles of social justice. See: Mohammad Hosein Soruri, “Nazariyaat-e tarbiyati-ye Sa‘di dar sistem-e jadid-e aamivzesh va parvaresh,” Daaneshkadeh-ye Adabiyaat va Olum-e Ensaani-ye Tabriz, 88 1969, 496–504; and yet later, Bizhan Zaaheri Naav and Omraan Paakmehr, “Andisheh‘haa-ye siyaasi va hokumati-ye Sa‘di dar Bustaan va Golestaan,” Pazhuhesh’naameh-ye Olum-e Ensaani, 58 2008 [1387], 87–110. Most recently, in the field of education and Islamic ethics, see Seyyed Hosein Masjedi, Haamed Musavi Jarukaani and Safiyeh Tavakoli Moqaddam, “Faraayand-e akhlaaqi shodan-e jaame‘eh az negaah-e Sa‘di,” Pazhuhesh’naameh-ye Adabiyaat Ta‘limi, 17 2013 [1392], 220–43.   3. With regard to the broadness and the practical nature of Sa‘di’s ethics, a short and succinct essay by ‘Abd al-Hossein Zarrinkub entitled “Sa‘di shaa’er va mo’allem-e akhlaaq” is very much worth mentioning here. In this essay, published in the second Daftar of the well-regarded electronic journal Sa‘di’shenaasi (1991 [1378]), Zarrinkub speaks of Sa‘di’s two-fold contribution: poetic and ethical. But he is careful not to present that as a site of division and conflict. See: http://sadishenasi.com/Detail.aspx?id=695.   4. Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom,” 284.

  5. Michel Foucault, “The Masked Philosopher,” in Paul Rabinow (ed.) Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: The New Press, 1994c), 323.

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106  |  lyri c s o f l if e  6. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 74.  7. Al-Horr al-Aameli, Vasaa’el al-Shi’eh elaa tashsil masaa’el al-shari’eh, Vol. 4 (Qom: n.d.), 27.  8. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 74.   9. Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom,” 298. 10. Ibid., 292. 11. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 48. 12. Ibid., 163. 13. Ibid., 47. I have written on this episode and others involving saintly humor. See: “Sa‘di’s earthly vision of sainthood in the ‘Busta¯n’ and ‘Gulista¯n,’” in John Renard (ed.) Tales of God’s Friends: Islamic Hagiography in Translation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 94–5. 14. Nezaamiyeh of Baghdad, one of the earliest universities in the world, was established in 1065. Indeed, Sa‘di did study at the Nezaamiyeh Academy; see Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, 250. 15. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 350. 16. Ibid., 43. 17. Michel Foucault, “Sexual Choice, Sexual Act,” in Paul Rabinow (ed.) Ethics: Subjectivity And Truth, trans. James O’Higgins (New York: The New Press, 1994d), 148. 18. Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom,” 282–3. 19. Foucault, “Self Writing,” in Paul Rabinow (ed.) Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: The New Press, 1994e), 208–9. 20. Ibid. 21. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 78. 22. Ibid., 45. 23. Ibid., 47. 24. Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, 252. 25. Ibid. 26. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 724. 27. Vazinpur, a noted contemporary Iranian critic, has composed a book called Eulogy: The Seal of Shame on the Face of Persian Literature (Madh: daagh-e nang bar simaa-ye adab-e Faarsi). If Rypka is a child of the Czech social revolution, Vazinpur writes his book in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. See: Vazinpur, Madh: daagh-e nang bar simaa-ye adab-e Faarsi. There are later and more nuanced studies of the concept of praise in Sa‘di’s work. For an example, see Sa‘id Hamidiyaan, “Sonnat-e madiheh’pardaazi zemn-e ghazal: eshaare’i beh

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sa‘di on ca re of the s e l f  | 107 jaaygaah-e Sa‘di,” Zabaan va Adabiyaat-e Faarsi, III 2001, 35–40, which is published by Aazaad University of Araak. 28. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 701–57. He also has five major odes in Arabic. They are often not viewed as having a literary quality comparable to his Persian compositions. See: Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, 252. 29. Foucault, “Self Writing,” 209. 30. Julie Scott Meisami, “Mixed Prose and Verse in Medieval Persian Literature,” in Joseph Harris and Karl Reichl (eds.) Prosimetrum: Cross-cultural Perspectives on Narrative in Prose and Verse (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), 295–320. 31. Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom,” 300. 32. In the eleventh Daftar of the online journal Sa‘di’shenaasi (2009 [1387]), Azhar Tajalli Ardakaani provides an exhaustive discussion of Sa‘di’s perspective on the relationship between the ruler and society; see “Raabeteh-ye zemaam’daar va mardom az didgaah-e Sa‘di,” available at: http://sadishenasi.com/default. aspx?content=71 33. For a substantive and positive reading of this qasideh in Persian, see Iraj Vaameghi’s “Shojaa’at-e akhlaaghi-ye Sa‘di dar aasaarash,” Sa‘di’shenaasi, 2 1991 [1378], http://sadishenasi.com/Detail.aspx?id=701, accessed March 30, 2014. 34. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 724. 35. On God’s role in such crucial educational occasions, ‘Abd al-Rezaa Modarres Zaadeh has an interesting discussion in his essay “Khodaay’khaani va and aamorzesh’khaahi dar she’r-e Sa‘di,” Pazhuhesh’naameh-ye Zabaan va Adabiyaat-e Faarsi, 4 2009 [1388], 133–50. 36. The word Sa‘di uses here is “manjaniq” (“a catapult”). I translate it into “arrow” because using a catapult as a metaphor for a sigh does not resonate in English. 37. Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom,” 293. 38. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 125.

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4 “Every New Flower Arriving in the World”: Sa‘di and the Art of Ghazal Writing

F

or as long as I can remember, I had thought of reading a ghazal of Sa‘di as a visit to a blooming garden with carefully trimmed tall trees standing on the edge of flowing streams. There was nothing wild or unruly about this fully cultivated garden. This exercise in verbal perfection did not feel contrived or out of reach. The full access I felt to the garden may have been, at least in part, a youthful self-delusion. But it was the result of a sense of clarity, order and control enforced by the poet. Even when out in the open meadows, the space felt elegantly simple and easy to reach despite its majesty: The morning arrived from one end and the spring breeze from the other The divine artistry mesmerized my intellect and my nature. I joined a group of youth heading for the open meadows at dawn “You are old!” said one. “Stay home with the others!” “Can’t you see” I retorted, “the dignified old mountain?” “Filling its skirt—like children—with heaps of colorful flowers!” “And the tree branch wearing a jacket made with sprouting leaves” “Hiding her fruit from the heat of the sun and the harshness of thunder” “When the wind plays rough with the flowers in the morning” “Don’t you see the agitation on the wrinkled face of the water?” “The spring has bloomed wearing its lightest shirt” “The foxglove has put away its fur coat for the next winter” “Does this breeze carry the fragrant soil of Shiraz, or musk from Khotan?” “Or, perhaps, my beloved has just untied her sweet-scented hair” (G. 476)

108

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“e ve ry new f lower a rri vi ng in th e wo r l d ” | 109 I recall the feeling that Sa‘di was present as one read the ghazals and pointed proudly to fine details. This was spontaneous poetry to be sure, but not the kind that would defy control and start a wild fire in the mind of a sober reader. It was no Rumi-like sea journey on uncharted waters, bringing you face to face with monsters of oceanic proportion and then suggesting that you should abandon ship and dive into the waves. And yet, as with most fine poetry, freshness, play and surprise were the main staples of Sa‘di’s work. Whether I knew the ghazal I was reading by heart—or read it for the first time—I found the poetic edifice I had entered filled with deliberately arranged surprises. I simply expected every ghazal to say something fresh in every reading. And sure enough it did. Little did I know about the surprise that the ghazals would have in store for me upon starting to write a chapter on them. A careful and critical approach to the ghazals entailed taking stock of their main themes. This time, I was going to enter a fabric seller’s store with a customer’s discriminating eye. What were the favorite colors and textures of this enterprising merchant who had given us layer upon layer of colorful silk? Why were so many customers waiting at his door? Why, unlike some other poets of the pre-modern era, did his words travel far and wide?1 What were the chief subject matters that occupied Sa‘di of Shiraz as he encoded his thoughts into ghazals now known as the most refined examples of their generic form in classical Persian poetry?2 Even before I started to make lists and line up flash cards, I expected his ghazals, like all Persian lyric poetry, to make ample use of conventional tools, including stock characters such as the lover, the beloved, the opponent and the like. Every student of Persian poetry knows that these characters have acted and interacted within a complex web of events and themes that—over the years—have been woven into a lively shared literary memory. This shared memory was not just the bigger storyline, the unwritten context, it also was the reservoir of literary conventions. Until the dawn of the twentieth century, it served the average reader as he or she tried to make sense of the variations created by each new poet.3 Astonishingly, in the works of master poets, this reservoir did not go stale under the weight of the tradition. Thanks to their ability to build dynamic structures, conventional themes could expand, allowing each poet to infuse them with his or her imagination. At the risk

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110  |  lyri c s o f l if e of being repetitive, let me give you a few thematic templates from this vast reservoir. The blamers never understand the depth of a lover’s dedication, the opponent is always just a little bit more powerful than the lover, love is the true religion, and the wine-seller often is more of an agent for spiritual transformation than a religious judge or a cleric could ever be. I knew that every master poet had to stand on this familiar scaffolding as he or she planned the ways in which their edifice was to deviate from the conventional master plan and take its own shape and size. With that in mind, I started preparing lists of what I could identify as the main thematic concerns of Sa‘di—the poet who clearly knew these conventional templates inside out. On the one hand, he was known as a master of conventional verse. On the other, his individualistic style and fresh vision was known for pushing ordinary-looking borders and defying structural limits. I looked forward to the long list of the thematic foci that I was going to amass! There was plenty on love as action and devotion. Love was portrayed in a concrete form or a garden-like space filled with beauty and mystery as well. The beloved was Godly and human, male and female.4 Sa‘di ’s self-image as the poet and the lover occupied a special place, usually followed by that of the cruel opponents and the ignorant blamers who were given a far less prominent position. Sa‘di the lover had the most colorful persona: at times humbled, by nature impatient, certainly cosmopolitan, and always ready to crack a joke. The heavenly bodies were almost always in view, as was nature in its colorful display of seasonal change. Both were meant to remind us of the cosmic order and beauty that we desperately needed to see and internalize. In fact, because so much depended on our learning to see, Sa‘di made the act of “gazing” into an art and gave it a special thematic role in the ghazals. In what follows, I will unpack this familiar thematic core that, among others, Julia Kristeva has spoken about. She describes what the lover’s soul loves to gaze at as “the hall of mirrors,” reflecting a luminous entity beyond sight, form or eroticism. In this regard, Kristeva calls love “the soul’s sight” for invisible things.5 Ours in this chapter will be the search for that which gives the act of gazing Sa‘di’s conceptual and poetic signature. But first, the surprise! The list of the main themes in Sa‘di’s entire Divaan of ghazals came to just over a dozen. Just over a dozen? If I could, I would rush to Sa‘di and say, “No offence, sir, but is that all? Is this how you kept the undivided attention

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“e ve ry new f lower a rri vi ng in th e wo r l d ” | 111 of poetry-loving Persian speakers for more than eight hundred years?” The result, at least in the first instance, was shocking. My trendsetter, visionary ghazal writer, the one full of laughter and mischief had built his unparalleled edifice of lyric poetry on the basis of just over a dozen main themes and concerns. And yet, there was little doubt that he had achieved unprecedented poetic variety and freshness—not to mention a great reception for it. Every source I had at my disposal, written by a variety of historians, biographers and anthologists, attested to that. My own life-long reading of his poetry, which had led to the desire to write the monograph in your hands, only affirmed him as deserving of this reputation and honor. I appeared to have a task ahead of me: making critical sense of this edifice built with varied arrangements of deliberately repetitive building blocks, each harboring exquisite details. While the poetic vista before me had always made sense, speaking about it demanded a new eye and a new language, perhaps even a fresh approach to the genre. As I hope this chapter will demonstrate, I went to the poems themselves to formulate my answers with their help. Only, I made a point of taking varied and new entrances into Sa‘di’s rose garden of ghazals. Each new road provided its own view and its own roadblocks, generating questions, delights, puzzling turns, and opportunities to formulate answers. Needless to say, this led to taking a close look at some of my own critical tools as well (a gift that any critic can look forward to while working on a master poet). As a result, new ways to speak about Sa‘di’s ghazals did eventually come to me—although the question, “Where to start?” loomed large for quite a while. Following a chronological order is always tempting. It holds the promise of providing a factual ground to stand on. That we have not had many chronological studies of Divaans of Persian ghazals may simply be the result of the enormity of the task. The historical and contextual unearthing that needs to be carried out, in tandem with a close reading of the verses, is daunting. The fact that the formal convention of a ghazal rejects a coherent narrative line, only adds to the problem. While this fragmented narrative structure endows the ghazal with distinct lyrical possibilities, it makes the genre tricky as a historiographical resource. Most significantly, The classical Persian ghazal—as we shall see in Sa‘di’s case—defies linear development by moving in concentric circles and returning always to familiar central themes.

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112  |  lyri c s o f l if e In other words, what Sa‘di’s ghazals do most prominently is to dance around core themes that appear as simple thematic repetition. That is, until one takes a closer look. “Every New Flower Arriving in the World”: Sa‘di and Repetition Sa‘di was fascinated with new births and fresh beginnings and wrote on the subject frequently. Some like this verse are quite well known: “Every new flower arriving in the world, I’ll take its scent and be its nightingale.” And yet, I had sifted through more than 610 ghazals, putting the total verse number at several thousand, running into few freshly minted themes. Indeed, the centripetal flow of the poetic energy in these verses kept us connected with the dozen or so themes I mentioned earlier. We were looking at a master poet who praised newness and built his lyrical legacy on the basis of repetition. True, critics had spoken of repetition in fancy terms such as parallelism, reiteration, echo, resonance, and so forth. But carried out on such a massive scale, did it not indicate a poverty of the imagination? Was this a shocking finding about Sa‘di—or was I missing something? In Western literary criticism, the tradition in which I have been trained, creativity is often understood in terms of the breaking out of familiar structures and the finding of new and unexpected connections. From this perspective, originality is almost identical with novelty and with the capacity to generate new ideas. It does not take an extensive study to show that most cultures echo this literary attitude as well. At least, they do so when idealizing the concept of originality. One may even say, most human beings have a preference for things that are unique—not subject to repetition. For example, we like to consider our identities unique and attach significance to historical events that are unlikely to happen again. In his classical study of repetition, Telling It Again and Again, Bruce Kawin suggests that repetition—particularly of an unsure or unfulfillable nature—can easily be viewed as compulsive, and even an indication of neurotic, activity.6 Even if not viewed as neurotic, repetition, without careful planning and insight, is often understood to create routine, take excitement and curiosity out of life, and dull the senses. Habit formation is typically considered to be a destructive outcome of repetition, a barrier to practical as well as spiritual

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“e ve ry new f lower a rri vi ng in th e wo r l d ” | 113 progress. Sa‘di himself found repetition to even have a lethal effect on happiness for those who never know sadness, going from one happy day to the next. Such people, he observed, cannot feel their happiness anymore. Only if the cycle of happy days is interrupted with a hard one can the individual tell the difference between the two. “Those living on the bank of the Tigris,” our poet philosophized, “do not know what thirst is like.”7 At the same time, my efforts to better understand repetition led me to indepth and technical discussions of repetition that suggest that exact repetition is in fact impossible because the time and context for any repeated action is never exactly the same. In this sense, what we hastily call repetition should in fact be termed near repetition. Furthermore, whatever we choose to call it, the repetitive action does not always have a neurotic source or a sleep-inducing effect. In a chorus or a song, for example, repetition is a different matter altogether. On the positive side, repetition can bring about a sense of rhythm, closure and comfort, even pleasure. In certain art forms, as in real-life situations, intentional repetition can strengthen one’s voice and add an emphatic or persuasive effect. We all know that repetition is closely connected with anticipation, and it is pleasing to anticipate enjoyable events. Psychologists tell us that repetition, “re-experiencing something identical,” is in itself a pleasurable experience.8 Others have reminded us that repetition is fundamental to human experience, even biology. Numerous things in our environment, ranging from the sunrise and seasonal change to our own heartbeat, are subject to infinite repetitions. Furthermore, when it comes to artistic expression, we may not wish to give unconditional support to novelty. After all, novelty is exhaustible, but depth, interest and complexity are not.9 My poet appreciated the versatility of repetition as a literary tool. That much was clear: Heart-breaking beauties sometimes show loyalty too! They send you pain and suffering, but they cure you too! These kings of loveliness when galloping out to hunt Paralyze their prey, but sometimes liberate them, too Do not drive away the lovers from your door So they offer their life, their belongings, and a word of prayer, too

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114  |  lyri c s o f l if e Do not blame my heart for desiring a beauteous face This is a sin that people commit in your city, too (G. 250)

In the ghazal I am partially quoting here, Sa‘di generates a good deal of thematic as well as sonic repetition through the natural grammatical structure of the phrases that form the rhyme and the refrain. For example, the auxiliary verb konand (“they do”) is part of every compound verb used as a rhyme, such as davaa-konand (“they cure”) or rahaa-konand (“they liberate”). Furthermore, to enumerate the multiple and—at times conflicting—actions of the beloved, Sa‘di uses the word “niz” (“also”), inserting it into the compound verb that forms the rhyme, changing davaa-konand (“they cure”) to davaa-niz-konand (“they also cure”). A very similar meaning could have been achieved through other grammatical constructions. However, in this way, Sa‘di adds to the number of the words that get repeated in each verse while, at the same time, foregrounding the poetic force that propels the poem, namely the comparison and contrast between the beloved’s conflicting behaviors. Although I found such subtle word-plays to be a common feature of Sa‘di’s ghazals, and a sign of his tremendous ease with language, it soon became clear to me that manipulating natural grammatical patterns was among his less complex ways of utilizing repetition. In a way, it was the tip of the iceberg. If I wished to take my understating a step further and get a broader sense of the ways in which he used the tool, I needed to dive deeper into the sea to explore the less visible connections between repetition and poetic utterance.10 Repetition and Poetry Almost any study of poetry, one may even say textual expression in general, will tell you that “repetitive textual traits,” sometimes called “formal iteration,” are at the heart of communication. The reason is simple. The new can only be understood in terms of the already known, and if something is totally new, it will be impossible to understand.11 These studies tell us that repetition creates movement and complexity. It builds structure and integrity. It generates rhythm and musicality and it becomes a major conduit for discharging key emotions built gradually around the poet’s feelings and intentions. More philosophical approaches admit that the aesthetics of repetition

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“e ve ry new f lower a rri vi ng in th e wo r l d ” | 115 cannot be separated from the aesthetics of change. Bruce Kawin has written, “That we are always dying is a tyranny of the present tense,” and goes on to explain that repeating ourselves is a manifestation of our hope for perpetuation.12 Notions of death and re-living are intimately interconnected, not to mention that acts as central to our lives as remembering and overcoming fear are also strengthened with repetition. When it comes to poetic expression, making use of repetition becomes a bigger responsibility and a finer balancing act. To put it bluntly, what gets repeated could become superfluous. But here the difficulty is also the blessing. In good poetry, where brevity is the central virtue, superfluous details have no room. Here, every word, every image, even every allusion must be a deliberate choice on the part of the poet. Every detail must be employed to perform a specific task. In other words, if repetitive constructs are chosen intentionally and given tasks to perform, it does not matter what they are and how often they are used. At the onset of his fascinating study The Poetics of Repetition in English and Chinese Lyric Poetry, Cecile Chu-chin Sun provides a brief but meticulous survey of the centrality of repetition in nature, thought and philosophy, as well as in art and aesthetics. Despite its brevity, the survey underlines the significance of repetition for almost all our intellectual and artistic endeavors. When it comes to the lyric genre, Chu-chin Sun considers repetition to be essential. According to her, lyric poetry thrives on repetition through rhythm and cadence, as well as in sense, through a centripetal revolution around a complex of thoughts and feelings.13 Chu-chin Sun calls repetition in sound “overt repetition” and repetition in sense “covert repetition,” an interesting distinction, which is very important for classical Persian poetry as a whole.14 “In the enclosed circle of resonance between sound and sense that is poetry,” observes Chu-chin Sun, “the covert mode of repetition concentrates on the sense of the poem. Though inseparable from overt repetition, it is in every way distinct. Unlike overt repetition, it conceals its own act of iteration. It is repetition in disguise.”15 The Shifting Field of Similarities An obvious question here is: why does art make such a central use of repetition, if the device has to conceal its own act of iteration and if indeed it is

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116  |  lyri c s o f l if e the opposite of freshness and change? Furthermore, if repetition is central to poetic expression, and in particular the lyrical genre, why is it not able to shake its bad reputation, so to speak? In his classical study of literary criticism, Words about Words about Words: Theory, Criticism, and the Literary Text (1988), Murray Krieger has a fascinating discussion of the concept of change that sheds light on the dilemma I have mentioned, even as it focuses on an apparently opposite concept. The point that Krieger makes in his discussion is this. Our human, and sometimes necessary, desire to create universalized concepts is deeply embedded in our language. The result is that our language essentializes and reifies, through its imperfect words, even as we try to capture their dynamism and reach an opposite goal. Even as we may describe radical changes from one historical moment to another, we retain the generic noun and with it the sense that it is a common, essentially unchanging entity that is undergoing minor, though untransforming, alteration. If we ask, “What is it that changes?”, the language of the question itself persuades us to a single, constant “it,” whether it be “art” or “the aesthetic” or “poetry” or “drama” or “fiction” or whatever, as we allow the nominal subjects to trick us into essentializing them. It may be as some post-structuralists might argue, that the generic term, representative of a static nominalism of language, has indeed induced us into a false essentialism, so that we have, not the changing single entity (the “it”) we think we are talking about, but only a constantly shifting field of differences which we carelessly mislabel as if it were one thing.16

In short, the misunderstanding and reification of concepts are rooted in the very act of speaking. Our poverty of conceptualization freezes our words in time and our limited words kill the dynamism in the process of conceptualization. As a result we call the shifting field of differences, which is change, “it,” a pronoun we use to denote things. Borrowing Krieger’s insight, I would suggest that the same process of simplification and reification has happened to our understanding of repetition. It is already clear that, despite its terrible reputation as the epitome of dullness and redundancy, repetition contains a creative energy that has played a key role in a vast number of art forms. To begin to unlock this exciting potential

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“e ve ry new f lower a rri vi ng in th e wo r l d ” | 117 in this chapter, I suggest that we conceptualize the phenomenon commonly referred to as repetition in a new way. In forming the new rubric to help us reimagine repetition, again using Krieger’s model, I propose that we think of what Sa‘di does with reoccurring patterns in his ghazals not as repetitive but as constructing “a shifting field of similarities.” Sustaining this shifting field of similarities involves a highly complex poetics of reviving, combining and echoing previous patterns of expression whereby a fine interplay between the old and the new gives birth to a subtle and constant process of remaking. To start exploring Sa‘di’s varied use of repetition, the literary tool that he adopted and refined in the course of using, let us do a simple experiment. It will not explain the complexity of the process—and neither will it answer all our questions. But it will open a window into the shifting field of similarities that I am referring to. It is a good start. Let us take the tip of a hair, literally the finest of the images in Sa‘di’s ghazals and see how much he fits on that tip, as the image reappears and in the process transmutes to express the wide range of ideas that Sa‘di demands. All of this happens in very familiar and yet shifting lyrical environments: A limb of mine devoid of your remembrance? How could that be? There is not a tip of hair in the wrong mood in my whole body! (G. 120)

That same fine strand of hair, on the beloved’s person, expands to encompass the world: You sold me for nothing and I am still devoted to my promise Not to exchange a single hair of yours for the entire world (G. 405)

There is a way also for every simple tip of the hair in the lover’s body to become a wellspring for the upsurge of love. But that requires an action, albeit a simple one, on the part of the beloved: Just for once generously call me your slave! And hear my response from every strand of hair in my body (G. 517)

And of course the ideal situation is the duet in which the lover, the beloved, the joy and the pain are indistinguishable. There are times when it all happens in a symphony of give and take, the kaleidoscopic dance of the lover and the beloved moving to the life-giving rhythm of pain and joy in love:

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118  |  lyri c s o f l if e I will not lessen my love for the Friend, not as much as a tip of a hair Even if she turns every hair in my body into a dagger [causing me pain] (G. 554)

Clearly, the phenomenon of repetition, which is dull and deserves its terrible reputation, bears little resemblance to this process of poetic creation and recreation enlivened with a panorama of rhythms, aware of the buoyant flow of time and capable of freeing us from “the tyranny of the present tense,” as Kawin put it.17 At the same time, the difference between the supposed “good” and “dull” repetition is stark and it cannot be reduced to one characteristic, such as the mechanical nature of one as opposed to the intentionality of the other. Here, the details are everything. As examples of the use of the “hair tip” show, the success of the poet in being repetitive in a fresh and imaginative manner depends mostly on his ability to generate the required fine nuances through carefully constructed details. These fine structures, although in one sense repetitive and familiar, are in another sense new. Their newness is in their ability to regroup to make new formations out of old building blocks. Let us now turn to the ghazals of Sa‘di of Shiraz, in search of freshly configured details, emerging from the “shifting field of similarities” that turn subtly reoccurring patterns into a poetic tool for revitalization. At the same time, to keep the act of repetition in its larger context, let me address an important related question: what is the setting in which this fine poetic machinery operates? On what stage does Sa‘di unfold his fresh dance of familiar patterns and shapes? “Is This the Spring Breeze Coming from the Garden?” In the opening verse of a ghazal that echoes a question recurring in hundreds of Sa‘di’s other verses, our poet asks, “Is this the spring breeze coming from the direction of the garden? Or, is it you having arrived to fulfill your promise of union?” (G. 79) The image of a garden, I hope to demonstrate here, is not an incidental one. Rather, as we shall see, in Sa‘di’s poetry, the major setting for the emerging and dissolving patterns in the ongoing drama of love and life is a garden. One may ask, “Why a garden? Besides freshness and beauty, which it shares with other natural scenery, what makes a garden into a central and inexhaustible lyrical motif for Sa‘di?” An equally compelling question

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“e ve ry new f lower a rri vi ng in th e wo r l d ” | 119 would be, “How does he keep his garden fresh and blooming?” Our ensuing stroll in Sa‘di’s lyrical garden will reveal the two questions to be interconnected. With regard to the relevance of the garden, however, I will start us with a simple working theory that I hope will evolve into a more complex model as we move forward. In what follows, I argue that Sa‘di keeps returning to the large and thriving flower garden of love, mostly because it provides him with an organically fresh conceptual model for a perpetually shifting set of configurations among similar things. A million green leaves on a tree do not make the tree repetitious, and yet none of them are drastically different from others or foreign to the eye. Neither do rose bushes look boring for reproducing flowers with near identical petals. By the way, are rose petals nearly identical? We do not really know that. Rather, that question is itself a part of the active experience of gazing at the rose bush.18 More importantly, the garden is the place in which multiplied beauty can open the onlooker’s horizon and free him or her from adoring one tree, one rose bush or one rare bird. “The short-sighted have their eyes on a fruit or two,” Sa‘di exclaims in a celebrated ghazal. “The likes of me gaze at the entire garden.” (G. 439) What he wants us—the readers—to seek is the flowing symphony of color, fragrance, taste and sound, which is the garden. Surely, the garden is one of the oldest perpetually changing sites in the architecture of the human imagination.19 It is always there, and yet, never in quite the same way. Its inhabitants too are well known and often charming, although occasionally shady and unpredictable. They appear and disappear at our poet’s will without harming the overall composition. While they gift us their freshness, and at times surprise us with their unconventional manners, they are not wild or unruly in any significant way. On the contrary, among the characteristics of gardens are that they are well groomed, cultivated and trimmed to elegance. From another perspective, these well-groomed gardens are also metaphors for a cultivated self. Sa‘di’s vision of the “self” is not that of an inner treasure that one stumbles upon someday and unearths for consumption. In his view, you cultivate, raise and trim the self to become the person you have the potential to become in the same way that you cultivate your garden. Indeed, the centrality of the subject of personal ethics, and their implementation in daily life for Sa‘di,

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120  |  lyri c s o f l if e necessitated that I address his vision of care of the self, or practice of the self, in a separate chapter.20 Back to the garden, above all it is a royal scene of beauty and order. Our poet can transplant the cypress-like figure of the beloved right into the heart of this symphony of fragrance and color at a moment’s notice. In fact, in verses such as the following, we are frequently unsure as to the exact nature of what the poet is encouraging us to see in our minds’ eyes. Is it the beauty of the garden, the charm of the beloved? Or, is it an echo of the inner paradise blooming to reflect the coming together of the two? Everyone’s sun rises from behind the mountains My nights end with the sun rising in you The soul comes to dance in the bodies of your lovers When the wind shakes a branch in your rose garden! (G. 146)

What Sa‘di keeps on our mind, throughout the ghazals, is that the garden is concurrently an inner and outer space. The interconnection between the two spaces is itself a conduit for quick and effective transportation of poetic energy. For example, the garden without and the garden within can overlap and generate a carefree mood resulting from gazing at the physical beauty combined with the inner sense of freshness. Or, they can come into sharp contrast, as in the case of a deserted lover walking among trees covered in blossoms. Here the contrast heightens the sadness of the mood by foregrounding the divergence and dissimilarity between the inner and the outer spaces: There was a time when my love-stricken heart took me to gardens I became ecstatic with the scent of the flowers, the sweet basils, the green trees A nightingale singing here, a bud tearing off its garment there Then … the thought of you came and took them all from me It is so shortsighted to seek joy in the garden, when One is caught in the thorns of your love’s melancholy (G. 24)

In his comparison of Chinese and English lyric poetry, Chu-chin Sun speaks of a special poetic phenomenon in Chinese classical poetry that he calls the “scene-feeling” model. According to this model, which the author presents as a counterpart to the English poets’ use of metaphor, the predominant thrust lies in the implicit and spontaneous correlation between

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“e ve ry new f lower a rri vi ng in th e wo r l d ” | 121 feeling and scene. According to him, the correlation is evoked in the poetic medium as an ideal expression of what may have taken place during the creation process, namely, the dynamic resonance between the poet and what is encountered in nature.21 It would not be wrong to suggest that, from time to time, Sa‘di takes advantage of the ambience of the garden to highlight his creative experience, allowing us a glimpse into the natural process of crafting his poetry. One of his favorite tropes in this regard is “the only one fit to gaze at the garden of your beauty is “Sa‘di” (G.3), implying his unique position not just as a lover but also as a poet capable of translating the ambience of the garden into poetry. Chu-chin Sun, however, seems to propose the “feeling-scene” model, the description of the natural ambience as a reflection of the poet’s inner feelings, as a substitute for the use of metaphors in which complex processes of personification and transference take place. From this perspective, in the “feeling—scene” model, the poet evokes nature to echo his inner feelings, and the process ends there. The description remains attached to the ambience of the poetry as an end in itself. I would suggest that in many instances, for Sa‘di, this is not the end. It is the beginning of the cultivation of the garden. It is the beginning of appropriating this field of shifting similarities and making it speak for the kaleidoscopic dance of colors that the human eye longs to decipher—that of love. This brings me to a third constituent element that we must keep in mind with regard to our poet’s garden of creativity. That element is love. In short, if Sa‘di uses repetition as his main poetic tool, and cultivates his creative lyric art in a garden setting, the source of the poetic energy he uses to keep the flowers blooming and the words singing is love. If the sun shines, the orchard thrives and the lover survives, it is all because of love, love in all its human and divine dimensions: How could you close the garden in this season? Open its door, and see my heart open! Tell the maids to grind musk [to spread in the air] Give the servants incense to burn I expect the cypress-figured beloved Will appear to greet us at any moment! (G. 275)

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122  |  lyri c s o f l if e The topic of love and its relevance to the health of the garden is so pivotal that I will address it more fully in the next chapter. For now, we will focus on our discussion of repetition by taking a close look at the ways in which Sa‘di uses this device. That is easier said than done. The idea of a kaleidoscope, which I touched on earlier, can help as a model.22 In a kaleidoscope, ­identical—and near identical—patterns move before us. Poetic repetition often acts in much the same way. That is to say, it takes place in building (or one may say developing) time relying on its familiar past. Yet, the most entertaining aspect of repetition is that it has many varieties. On the one hand, poetic resonance generated by repetition frequently makes use of the intense anticipation that it creates in the reader’s mind. But this is not true of all repetition. There are varieties of repetition unable to remember their own past. In some cases, including in some of Sa‘di’s uses of the device, the repeating patterns act as if they have no recollection of having been expressed before. Using this scheme, our poet introduces his favorite previously articulated themes as if they were a novelty he is not sure how to handle. As readers, the least we are expected to do is to sympathize with the poet’s feigned sense of helplessness in the face of the surprise. Let us look at concrete examples. Repetition without Remembering in Sa‘di ’s Ghazals The discussion of time in art is a fascinating one we will not be able to explore in detail. Suffice it to say that time is not felt in the same way in different art forms. In painting, for example, time is instantaneous. That is, no matter how long the story, it unfolds on the canvas right in front of our eyes.23 In some ways, the genre of ghazal, because of the relative thematic independence of each line, can, if the poet wills, act like a moment torn out of time, a picture fixed before the eye. At the same time, paintings, or ghazals, do not usually hide the different layers of time that have come together to construct their present. Neither do they want us to overlook the intratextual resonances that sustain them, as do all art works, connected to their prototypes. What we shall see in the examples here is a humorous and intentional seeing-it-for-the-first-time feeling that Sa‘di generates to downplay the past through feigning a memory loss. In this way, he turns these familiar and often repeating themes into unique moments that will not be replicated in time. In

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“e ve ry new f lower a rri vi ng in th e wo r l d ” | 123 these instances, repetition is not built on memory but on “fictitious” surprise, as if broaching the subject was incidental, a new beginning for the poet and by extension for us. Do you think they are burning incense down the road? Or, does the earth you walk on turn into ambergris naturally? (G. 64)

Similarly: Is this a breeze from paradise? A gentle wind from the garden? The scent of the laudanum … or perhaps your fragrant breath? (G.78)

Or: Has the star of dawn risen? Is this really you? Or, my eyes are teasing me. Perhaps this is the Night of Power, that luckiest and most blessed of nights (G. 384)

Whatever general uses Sa‘di may have for the gesture of surprise in these lines, his main goal is to breathe new life into old themes and images. Posing fresh questions about well-known tropes, he keeps them on our radar screen, so to speak, and affirms their centrality through the process of repetition. The over-dramatized surprise engenders a sense of play that our poet exploits happily—at times by reversing his strategy. In these instances, he teases the beloved’s aloofness, downplays love’s awesome presence and rebels against the hardships it entails: Imagination cannot tell what a lovely tree you are. Obviously, no one has tasted the fruit of this tree. The mystery of God’s impeccable power is reflected in your face In the same way in which a face gets reflected in a mirror From you, I want only you and nothing else. Give your sweetmeats to those who do not know what love tastes like! (G. 61)

As one may imagine, in such cases Sa‘di has more than a surprise in mind. It is as if with each of these variations on a familiar theme, he takes a fresh look at the theme, his own ability to articulate it in poetic language and asks: is this good enough? Is it better than my previous attempt? Maybe I’ll begin again and this time I won’t express myself in such certain terms as if the image were

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124  |  lyri c s o f l if e the most perfect it can be. Perhaps, this time, I’ll reveal my insecurity, awe and wonder at the enormity of the beauty before me and the task of encoding it into poetry. These are feelings shared by writers of all ages. In our own time, William Faulkner wrote of Absalom, Absalom “… I am still trying to put it all on one pinhead … all I know to do is to keep on trying in a new way.”24 Faulkner’s attempt to “put it all on one pinhead” is also a reminder of Sa‘di’s attempt to pack as much as he possibly could on the tip of a hair. I here suggest that at least one propelling force behind the varieties of repetition utilized by our ghazal writer was the anxiety not unlike that which drove Faulkner to trying again and again to “put it all on one pinhead.” Throughout his works, Sa‘di oscillates between the self-image of a master poet, the only nightingale fit to sing in the beloved’s garden (G.3), and the poet utterly humbled by the impossibility of putting it all on one pinhead or strand of hair: Ah, you are here at last! I was so restless with longing You left me lifeless like a body without a soul. It was not negligence if I stopped speaking of you Utter bewilderment had stolen all my words (G.379)

Indeed, the humbling task of speaking about the cosmic mystery and the beauty of the beloved brings our poet to his knees periodically. He speaks of these moments with frankness and clarity (and without losing the opportunity to turn the apology itself into an art): A simple beggar in the king’s entourage I am a prisoner of my own love for Him Slaves do not choose their own name They will be whatever He decides to call them (G. 439)

The apology comes toward the end of the ghazal: If my words tell anything but the story of the beloved, I regret all that I have ever said throughout my life (G. 439)

However, there is more to the apology than its standard purpose. While the humbled Sa‘di has apologized, the one proud of his artistry has endowed the verse with an alternative reading for which the word “If” at the beginning of

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“e ve ry new f lower a rri vi ng in th e wo r l d ” | 125 the verse is pivotal. In short, the verse adds an addendum to the assertion “if they are anything but the story of the beloved.” The addendum is “of course they are not,” suggesting the alternative reading “no matter what I appear to have written throughout my life, it has all been nothing but the story of the beloved.” Taking it one step further, one may read the verse as a celebration of Sa‘di’s gift to transform all that he says into the story of the beloved. The Garden is Alive: Repetition in “Building Time” Returning to the topic of repetition to complete our discussion, we must take a look, albeit a brief one, at the variety that Sa‘di uses most: repetition that is aware of its own occurrence in moving time. Indeed, Sa‘di’s garden of lyrics is enlivened with repetition occurring amidst a palpable sense of movement. I must hasten to reiterate that this movement is not chaotic, constant or out of control. Rather, it is deliberate and orderly. A way to sense this better is to contrast it against the movement dominant in the majority of Rumi’s lyrics in the Divaan-e Shams.25 In the Divaan, one is never sure what the next movement may be, jumping, running, whirling or simply flying off into the sky. With Rumi, spontaneity and the sense of joyous discovery are primary. Thus it is fairly normal to come across verses such as: Love’s cry comes every moment from all directions: “I am heading for the heavens, anybody like to watch?” We were always up there; we were friends with angels I say let us go back to where we all belong26

In Sa‘di’s ghazals, the movements are less dramatic, more gradual and always measured and regulated and one may even say deliberately graceful.27 Let us take a closer look. Unlike repeating static photographic moments, repetition with remembering makes full use of the past, the present and the future. Even when the beginning and the end are not specifically marked, the flow of time is foregrounded and palpable. Indeed, the beginning and the end are sometimes intentionally concealed. In these cases, the concealment is itself a way of highlighting the duration of the drama and the significance of the neverending journey of love:

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126  |  lyri c s o f l if e No times are happier than the times of love Into the lovers’ day, no night will ever descend The musicians leave but the Sufis keep dancing Because love has a beginning but it has no end The wish of every seeker ends at some point Ending points are what lovers transcend (GM. 13)28

Repetition in “building time” fulfills many roles. It gives the reader a sense that his or her “truth” is important enough, and strong enough, to be evoked repeatedly. With it comes an underlying assurance that, by returning to what really matters, we can eventually work our way to a kind of resolution. Like its other variations, this repetition generates a comic ambience as well, a point that is not lost on Sa‘di. Like other instances of Sa‘di’s use of humor highlighted in this volume, I shall return to this instance again. Let us now turn to examples that best illustrate the category that I have selected for us, namely repetition in building time, the kind dominant in Sa‘di’s lyrics. This category involves reviving a discrete presence. The presence is discrete insofar as it constructs the poem’s backdrop rather than its central motif. It is therefore subtle and hard to detect, a quality that does not reduce its poetic force. On the contrary, the subtlety allows the poet frequent use of the trope to strengthen the impact. The trope I have selected to examine here is that of planetary and seasonal change. After all, celestial movements shape our sense of the passage of time more than anything else. Do They Play the Drum Lighter Tonight? This is a special night! It is the night of union and our poet is in a tight embrace with the beloved. Sa‘di’s mornings are usually a “breath from heaven,” the promise of sunrise. But not tonight! What lover would wish to hear the drum announcing the dawn in a night like this? Do they play the untimely drum faster tonight? Or, perhaps, the cocks lost track of their crowing time. Was this just a moment that passed, or did a whole night vanish from my life? Our lips are still locked in a kiss, but our hearts desires are not fulfilled (G. 14)

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“e ve ry new f lower a rri vi ng in th e wo r l d ” | 127 The morning can be welcome, too—particularly if its bright smile brings our poet the promise of a luckier day: The morning smiles, but I am tearful because of separation Oh, breath of the dawn! What’s the news of the beloved’s arrival? Oh, the morning breeze! Will you tell her my story? I know of no other soul but you fit to enter her quarters (G. 99)

In these and similar lines, the main themes are the same. The night of separation is lonely, long and desolate. The morning is a breath from heaven, bright and alive with the promise of a new day. The breeze that announces the arrival of the morning is the messenger of hope. None of the above is Sa‘di’s invention in any fundamental sense. There are not even many dramatically re-imagined versions of these tropes in his work. His contribution is in the complexity and the arrangement of the fine details. They are slightly repositioned each time to create a fresh variation on the theme of the arrival of the morning. It is “renewal” at the microcosmic level, the creative poetic process to which Kristeva refers aptly as “open,” “infinite” and “indefinite.”29 To return to Krieger’s metaphor, this is Sa‘di’s way of creating new dawns through shifting the field of similarities. The garden is brightened with fresh, and always somewhat altered, mornings that he imports on a massive scale into the ghazals. Although the differences built into the variations are so fine that they do not catch the eye at first, they reveal themselves upon closer examination and make their impact. This explains why the successive arrivals of the mornings are never predictable—only faintly familiar. And the familiarity is just enough to throw the unique flavor and construction of each new expression into relief. The main role of these mornings, besides marking the flow of time in the garden, is highlighting the freshness and luster of what thrives in this hybrid environment. I shall return to the concept of hybridity of the garden later, especially when we meet some of its inhabitants. For now, let us examine a few more examples of Sa‘di’s portrayal of the life-giving breath of the morning. In the example below, it is the arrival of the beloved that opens the gate to the next day. But, as usual, the freedom offered by love is only one side of the coin. The other evokes captivity, and with it the paradoxical nature of love:

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128  |  lyri c s o f l if e The night of the desolate lover is long, very long! Come! And the night’s gates will stay open all the way to dawn. It will be a wonder if I can ever travel far from where you live Where would a pigeon go, a pigeon captured by a hawk? (G. 194)

Sa‘di’s mornings remain fresh, in part, because, looking at the entire body of the ghazals, they turn out to be more than ordinary mornings. Rather, they are recreated sequences in stylized language expanding into general and artful echoes of all tangible and desirable mornings—a kind of archetypal daybreak, if you like. In these poems, Sa‘di explores the poetic possibilities that arise from opening up to a new day, or in the inability to face it. There are even instances of coexistence of the two seemingly contradictory experiences in the space of one ghazal: The sun is intent on not rising tonight What thoughts passed through my head—but no sleep! Did the cock lose its voice that it did not crow even once? Are the nightingales all dead and only ravens alive? Do you know why I so love the arrival of the morning? Because it resembles the beloved’s face suddenly dropping its veil (G. 519)

The question, “Do you know why I so love the arrival of the morning?” here addressed to the reader of the ghazal, is not rhetorical or frivolous. It is Sa‘di’s way of keeping the reader engaged in the ongoing process of re-envisioning these mornings as he unveils them in ghazal after ghazal. In order for these poetic daybreaks to represent the unveiling of the beloved as a prominent feature of the garden, there is the need for a catalyst: the reader’s full engagement. Ultimately, it is the reader who must step in and take responsibility for creating, on a personal scale, what our poet has almost mass produced. And lucky for the reader, the personal process of reception always entails reconstruction. This complex and personal process, as we shall see, is centered on the act of gazing. Sa‘di’s mornings come to life when we (the readers) witness them. Our participatory act is equally poetic and cannot be performed as a duty. It is Sa‘di’s job to make each morning fresh and alluring and of a level of intensity that is sufficient to keep us all engaged.30 Only then, can we capture, feel and retell in our own

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“e ve ry new f lower a rri vi ng in th e wo r l d ” | 129 language what Kawin calls “that one complex living moment” emerging out of these repeated images.31 At the same time, through the orderly repetition of these intricate variations, Sa‘di attains what one may call an assurance that the poems carry a strong underlying order so complex as to never be fully explained, or unraveled. Brown raises this point in relation to prose works, reminding us that complexity and order in variations created in art forms is a reminder that the underlying order is hard to unravel and must remain so.32 The variations in the lines quoted below provide examples of this underlying order, keeping the shifting field of similarities interconnected: If this long night kills me with longing for you Will the morning breeze not bring me back to life? (G. 635) You will open a door onto paradise For the one you visit early in the morning (G. 506) The world is a night, you the sun The one you visit will be a blessed morning himself (G. 506) I’ll sit until the morning begins to breathe That is when the heart receives the message of the Friend (G. 599)

What is the underlying order in these variations on “the arrival of the morning,” the theme that Sa‘di has returned to in the above verses? According to our poet, the reason for this fascination is that the morning’s arrival resembles the beloved’s face suddenly dropping its veil (G. 519). A popular correlated theme, and one of Sa‘di’s favorites, is gazing at a beautiful unveiled face— nazar kardan.33 Examining just a few verses built around this theme reveals Sa‘di in the act of introducing a steady and calculated expansion in the debate by constructing variations on all kinds of resonant sub-themes related to the act of gazing at an unveiled face. Well-versed in the Islamic sciences, Sa‘di picks one of his sub-themes from among issues evoking the relevant legal literature and expands on the main theme. The question is that of permissibility or prohibition of gazing at a beautiful unveiled female face, or that of a young beardless body. The topic has great resonance with Sufis, and other readers, across traditions.34 In

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130  |  lyri c s o f l if e these verses, however, Sa‘di does not engage the intense legal debate on the subject in any serious manner. Rather, by foregrounding the forbidding tenor of the legal arguments, he constructs an amusing and exaggerated vision of the moralistic approach to the act of contemplating human beauty. Having built the prohibition into a straw man, so to speak, he then destroys the legal argument with quick and humorous blows: Physical beauty was created to be seen, oh Sa‘di! Otherwise a healthy eye would be good for nothing (G. 309) The fruit of my entire life has been one look at your beautiful face Now, what do you want in return, tell me! (G. 637) If this is the case that looking at the beloved is a sin I repent from avoiding sins this very instant (G. 635) The one who does not gaze at your beautiful face is An animal, and most probably a dead one at that! (G. 302) Who said it is not permissible to see a beautiful face? It is, in fact, not permissible to forbid this to people! (G. 251) It is not permissible to hide such a beautiful face And it is not quite possible to show it either! (G. 503) We are all eyes, you the light of that eye Far be evil eyes from your face! Do cover your face, for you are a Huri Whoever sees your face, will be in paradise (G. 420)

Here, the underlying order in reviving this literary/religious theme contains shifting similarities that can be read in an evolutionary sequence. In that order, gazing at the beloved’s beauty goes from a sin to an act of piety to entering the onlooker into paradise. Whether it is the case that Sa‘di has an evolving order in mind or not is extremely difficult to prove—and perhaps not quite as relevant as it may seem. Indeed, our poet may intentionally opt for a disorderly revival of the theme to enhance the poetic impact through freshness and surprise. Furthermore, surprise places the reader in the domain of unpredictability where the latter’s reading can contribute to the expansion

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“e ve ry new f lower a rri vi ng in th e wo r l d ” | 131 of the theme more openly. But why is gazing important in the first place? Is it more important as a concept or as an act? One thing is clear; gazing should be explored in its proper context: namely the human ability to fall in love. And so, this may be a good time to shift our attention to the vital force that keeps Sa‘di’s garden alive: the force of love. The theme of love and its deep interrelation with gazing are too central to form the conclusion to this section. I will give them a fuller treatment in the chapter that follows. However, let us end the present discussion with a beautiful ghazal dedicated almost entirely to the connection between gazing and love. Although a ghazal is typically not devoted to one core theme, here Sa‘di foregrounds the theme with clarity. More importantly, he highlights the contradiction inherent in the practice without reservation: Who would live without longing to be with you? Who would refrain from gazing at your beauty except for the blind? And yet, not everyone should be allowed to gaze at your beauty This pleasure is forbidden to those who do not possess a pure mind

Although Sa‘di uses the term “haraam” (“forbidden”), a term with legal connotations about acts prohibited to Muslims, what he is speaking of is far more subtle than issuing a legal decree. In the verse that follows, he elaborates on the process of regulating the privilege of the gaze which is carried out through a complex inbuilt mechanism. Its logic is not that far-fetched either. Those who do not develop the spiritual insight (in this case, literally the mystical eye-sight) will see nothing even if they look at the beloved. At the same time, in the upcoming verse, subtly shifting the actor of the gaze, Sa‘di replaces the general potential gazer with the pronoun “I”. From this point on, the ghazal gains the added force of a personal story: Even when looking, not everyone feels the pleasure that I feel Not every onlooker’s act of seeing is of the same kind

Indeed, this privileged personal position is so forceful that it is able to redirect the laws of nature: Every night is followed by a day, every day by a sunset For me and my beloved, the night of union is perpetually undefined

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132  |  lyri c s o f l if e But all that personal energy, all the transforming love, will come to nothing if the life-giving glance of the beloved does not keep the lover captive: Glance at me, just for an instant, as fine as the strand of a hair And every hair in my body will sing your praise day and night

If this looks like going in circles, it is exactly what the motion is. The beloved’s beauty demands to be seen, praised and perpetuated. The lover needs the spiritual eyesight to see; the beloved’s glance is needed to develop the ­eyesight. The beloved will not glance back, if you are not dedicated fully to seeing. The lover cannot stay focused if the beloved does not keep him or her captivated. The road may have appeared straight from a distance, but all kinds of paradoxes start to emerge now that you have started the journey: Everyone knows that the remedy for the lover is patience But what can the lover do when no patience he or she can find I had promised to tell you about the sorrow in my heart But what is the use of words when the heart itself is left behind?

Fortunately, this is ultimately a win–win situation, as long as the beloved is onboard lending his or her support to the struggling lover: If others abandon me, it’s no problem, I can handle that The one whom you support will never feel undermined

All this to make it possible for the reader to understand why: The world is before him, and Sa‘di looks only in your direction The ambition focused on you is not petty or unrefined (G. 115)

Notes   1. Every biographer of Sa‘di has joined him in suggesting that his work was well received and celebrated by his contemporaries and beyond. A good source for the study of his reception in different cultures is Zekr-e jamil-e Sa‘di: majmu’ehye maqaalaat va ash’eaar b-monaasebat-e bozorgdaasht-e hashtsadomin saalgard-e tavallod-e Shaykh Ajal Sa‘di, the collection of essays celebrating his 800th birthday published in three volumes in Iran (Tehran: Vezaarat-e Ershaad-e Islaami, 1987 [1366]).

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“e ve ry new f lower a rri vi ng in th e wo r l d ” | 133   2. The earliest manuscripts of Sa‘di’s Divaans classify the ghazals into four categories: tayyebaat, badaayi‘, khavaatim, and the earlier ghazaliyaat. Some scholars have claimed this arrangement to be Sa‘di’s own. See: Nowruzi, Jahaan’bakhsh, “Cheh kasi ghazaliyaat-e Sa‘di raa be chehaar dasteh taqseem nemudeh, va be cheh ‘ellat?,” Majalleh-ye Bustaan-e Adab, 56/1/2009 [1388], 157–77.   3. In his insightful study Recasting Persian Poetry, Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak tells the story of the “new poetry” with due attention to both continuity and change in the poetic conventions as the art form goes through thematic and stylistic modernization and arrives in the twentieth century.   4. Mohammad Yusef Nayyeri provides an excellent reading of the diversity of the force of love and Sa‘di’s poetic expressions of it in “Lataayef-e erfaani-e ‘eshq dar baab-e panjom-e Golestaan Sa‘di,” Sa‘dishenaasi, 12 2009 [1388], http://sadishenasi.com/?content=70, accessed March 14, 2014. I will discuss the gender of the beloved and the practice of looking at beautiful faces later in this chapter.  5. Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 110–11. For a religious analysis of Sa‘di’s approval of gazing at beautiful faces, see Jalil Nazari’s essay “Mofti-ye mellat-e ashaab-e nazar” in Majalleh-ye ‘Olum Ensaani va Ejfemaa’i-ye Daaneshgaah-e Shiraaz, 26/2 2007 [1386], 244–62.   6. Bruce F. Kawin, Telling It Again and Again: Repetition in Literature and Film (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1972), 12–20.  7. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 369.   8. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans. James Strachey (New York: Liver Right, 1924) 44–45.   9. In some instances, such as advertising, for example, novelty is an impediment but familiarity works. I will discuss repetition further in Chapter 6 where Sa‘di’s tarji‘band is the focus of attention. 10. One of the critics I’ll quote shortly calls this kind of repetition at the sonic surface, the one that operates through word-play, “overt repetition.” See: Note 12. 11. Stamos Metzidakis, Repetition and Semiotics (Birmingham, AL: Summa Publications, 1986), 2. 12. Kawin, Telling It Again and Again, 33. 13. Cecile Chu-chin Sun, The Poetics of Repetition in English and Chinese Lyric Poetry (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2011), 1–10. 14. I have dedicated a chapter to rhythm and repetition at the sonic surface of ghazals in Rumi’s Divaan; see Keshavarz, Reading Mystical Lyric, 100–17.

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134  |  lyri c s o f l if e 15. Chu-chin Sun, The Poetics of Repetition in English and Chinese Lyric Poetry, 95. 16. Murray Krieger, Words about Words about Words: Theory, Criticism, and the Literary Text (Baltimore/London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 66; my emphasis. 17. Kawin, Telling It Again and Again, 33. 18. Kristeva’s articulation of this understanding of repetition is poetic and perceptive. “The lyrical whole,” she suggests “is not logical gradation or structure formed on this or that variant of the laws of repetition. It is a renewal, itself open, infinite, indefinite—in salvos, gusts, reiterations of a violence that is as semantic as it is emotive” (Tales of Love, 92). 19. In the case of classical Persian poetry, it is not just the readers who are the consumers of this poetry but the reciters and their audience as well. In addition to its healthy textual dimension, the tradition has a robust oral aspect as well. So, the reciters, and those who make poetry part of their speech, should be kept in mind. 20. See Chapter 3 “Sa‘di Care of the Self”. 21. Chu-chin Sun, The Poetics of Repetition in English and Chinese Lyric Poetry, 104–5. 22. Michael Sells first used this metaphor in speaking about Ibn ‘Arabi’s poetic prose; see Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 63. 23. Kawin discusses repetition that is not built on memory at some length (Telling It Again and Again, 112). 24. Malcolm Cowley, The Faulkner–Cowley File (New York: Viking Press, 1968), 14 quoted in Kawin, Telling It Again and Again, 116. 25. Rumi, Kolliyaat-e Shams. 26. Jalaal al-Din Rumi, Gozideh-ye Divaan Shams, ed. Mohammad Rezaa Shafi’i Kadkani (Tehran: Amir kabir, 1983 [1362]), 86. 27. As Susan Jabri and Parand Fayyaazmanesh demonstrate in their meticulous essay “Kaarkard’haa-ye zibaa’i’shenaasi-ye pishaa’i fe’l dar ghazal-e Sa‘di,” our poet often creates this movement through subtle and carefully devised syntactic structures, such as placing the verb in the initial position. The authors demonstrate that this verbal position contributes to a sense of brevity and speed in reading that creates a sense of movement. See: Pazhuhesh-e Zabaan va Adabiyaat-e Faarsi, 18 2010 [1389], 113–41. 28. GM is for the ghazals that are part of the section Forughi describes as Mavaa‘ez. 29. Kristeva, Tales of Love, 92.

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“e ve ry new f lower a rri vi ng in th e wo r l d ” | 135 30. I will say more on the reader’s participatory role in the concluding section of this chapter. 31. Kawin, Telling It Again and Again, 62. 32. E. K. Brown raises this point in his work Rhythm in the Novel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1950), 115. However, it applies to many situations in which artistic creation makes use of orderly variations or a “shifting field of similarities.” 33. This practice is usually referred to as nazar’baazi. I use nazar kardan to stay loyal to the rubric that Sa‘di uses in his poetry. 34. The issue of contemplating beautiful faces as a means of admiring the complexity of God’s artistic creation has been the subject of intensive legal and theological debate. I will return to the topic in the next chapter. For a comprehensive study of the topic in Persian history and literature, see Sirus Shamisaa, Shaahed‘baazi dar adabiyaat-e Faarsi (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Ferdows, 2002).

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5 Gazing at the Garden of Your Beauty: Love in the Garden

I

f Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden for approaching the forbidden tree, Sa‘di’s lyrical garden is one of presence and possibility.1 In Kristeva’s words it is the attempt “to open up the amorous experience of the speaking being to the complex gamut of his untenable passion, paradise and hell included. Neither denying the ideal nor forgetting its cost.”2 Sa‘di’s garden is joyous and noisy, particularly in the spring, which seems to arrive quite often. Punishment and exile are not normally among the things that this festive environment would bring to mind. The trees are in bloom, the birds intoxicated The world is young again, lovers are celebrating! My beloved was always heart-ravishing Especially now that she is adorned with jewels Those who broke musical instruments in the month of fasting Sensed the scented breeze and broke their vows this time The green grass is trampled under joyous feet So many people, noble and commoner, have started to dance

The Garden Moves Inside The rejuvenation and the freshness need to be internalized for the seasonal joy to be complete. In order to achieve that, Sa‘di invites the spring, the beautifier of the exterior of the world, to come inside. As with many of his ghazals, here, too, this expansive scene, buzzing with color, movement and fragrance is shaped and reshaped until it becomes his personalized space. In the next 136

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gazi ng at the g arden of yo ur b e a uty  | 137 two verses, the meadow in the above poem, nature overjoyed with the return of the spring, comes close and speaks to our personal feelings: Friends separated from one another and then reunited Truly know the joy of being with the one they love No one ever leaves the Sufi lodge remotely sober Who can tell the law enforcement that Sufis are drunk!

And with that we take one more step toward this rapidly personalizing space, our poet’s backyard so to speak: I have my very own rose bush in the courtyard of my house Cypress trees are bent low when she stands there tall And so, if the entire world becomes my enemy, Immersed in good fortune, I cannot feel their existence at all

The open scene of the meadows, the breaking of the vows of repentance made during the month of fasting and the green grass trampled under joyous feet have come together and been reshaped into the tale of a group of Sufis getting drunk inside the Sufi lodge and the personal story of two lovers. But similar to Sa‘di’s backyard, which houses a rose bush, making cypress trees bend low and feel small, these interior spaces of love and worship have their own alchemical magic. And that is not all that happens here. In this interior space, empowered with the alchemy of love and devotion, spring outgrows the boundaries of personal celebration and becomes an archetypal spring. In its new role as the exemplary force of life, of blooming and of overcoming the fear of death, spring is once more ready to move out. This time, its role is to teach the lovers, wherever they are, how to prune their own self and free it from the unnecessary baar (“luggage”) that can overburden and eventually drown the boat of their existence. They need to do that because being tohi’dast (“poor”; literally empty-handed) is the experiential means, and the proof, of attaining a free-spirit: Those who give their lives for love are travelers in the sea They throw their luggage overboard and get themselves to safety “Will you never bear fruit?” someone asked a cypress tree “The free-spirited,” the tree answered, “keep their hands empty”

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138  |  lyri c s o f l if e Sa‘di! Many people failed to find the world of madness That is why they chose the way of rationality (G. 226)

The joy of spring has transformed the garden and with it the lover. All possessions thrown overboard, utterly poor, and free from the bounds of rationality, she or he now embodies the beauty of nature, the limits of humanity, and the boundlessness of love. All of this has happened in a fairly conventional and orderly environment: a well-crafted ghazal of Sa‘di. This ghazal is yet another instance of constructing freshness and surprise out of the familiar if not conventional. Just as, in Kristeva’s words, “We invent it [love] each time, with every necessarily unique loved one, at every moment, place and age,” our poet breaks the old into small pieces and refashions them into the new.3 The constituent thoughts and images are woven together with recurrent patterns—in ceaselessly shifting fields of similarity. What are the shifting forms and function of love in all this commotion? Exploring this point is the primary goal of the present chapter. Love in Action In the previous chapter, I spoke about love as the core substance used in the construction and maintenance of the lyrical life in Sa‘di’s poetic garden. If we were to stay with the idea of construction, the metaphor would work. However, our brief incursion into the lively space of the garden, and all that takes place in it day and night, is already beginning to reveal the inadequacy of the concept of substance as a suitable metaphor when love is to be examined in its fullness. At least when it comes to observing love in action, substance is a noun that, evoking Krieger’s thoughts discussed earlier, can stifle our ability to conceptualize the dynamism at the heart of the experience. In Sa‘di’s hand, love is an experience more appropriately envisioned as an event or an action. This action is neither simple, nor unidirectional. Two of the verses in the ghazal that we just read refer to “Those who give their lives for love,” a sacrificial move involving action. Furthermore, in this verse, lovers are compared to “travelers in the sea.” In the century in which Sa‘di wrote these verses, all travelers put their lives on the line by getting on the road. A sea journey was even more dangerous and unpredictable than one taking place on land. Indeed, it could easily involve throwing one’s entire belongings overboard to

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gazi ng at the g arden of yo ur b e a uty  | 139 keep the boat afloat in a deadly storm. Even more interesting, in this regard, is the verse that immediately follows the one regarding the sea journey. The line is centered on a quiet and composed cypress tree, a tree that does not shake wildly in the wind nor lose its leaves in the autumn. Nonetheless, what we learn about the tree is neither ordinary nor unremarkable. It is about unshakable dedication to utter poverty: “Will you never bear fruit?” someone asked a cypress tree “The free spirited,” the tree answered, “keep their hands empty” (G. 226)

This brings me to love’s most subtle and unfathomable action: what I will call its disontological presence. Love is everything because it can, and must, reduce the lover to nothing. In this sense, the gift of love is the shaking that makes the tree’s dead leaves fall, the shock that liberates the lover from all that pleases or frightens a person (even an entire world taken over with enemies). Love prepares its recipients for an absence. It is a decluttering of the abode of the self and learning to live with truly empty hands. Perhaps it is in a similar sense that Kristeva refers to love’s “supreme guarantee of renewal.” After all, loss is central to renewal.4 Sa‘di the traveler has to have tasted this loss/freedom firsthand. Throwing the extra burdens overboard in order to travel safe must have been lesson number one to a traveler who spent close to thirty years of his life on the road. Seen from this perspective, love is not a shield, a badge of honor to wear, or a wine to drink so as to forget one’s troubles. It is the courage to abandon what it is not vital to carry. While love can induce a state of courage, perhaps even intoxication, to empower the lover to initiate action—to throw everything overboard and get to safety—choice is still an issue. There has to be an initial willingness on the part of the lover. Indeed, as far as Sa‘di is concerned, openness to love is a sign of humanity because there are those who look like human beings but are incapable of responding to this life-giving force. For him these beings occupy a rank below that of animals. As he suggests in one verse, they are more like a lifeless image on the wall (G. 198 and 200). But the human response, mostly in the form of giving, is crucial to trigger the advent of love and help it reach its pinnacles. What one has to give is not as important as is the courage to do it. That courage to act is similar to opening the floodgates, or to letting in an

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140  |  lyri c s o f l if e awesome force that kills and revives at once. Love is then able to activate its disontological presence with all that follows: the disappearing of the veils, the removal of the obstacles and the enabling of paradoxical coexistence among opposites. Again Kristeva describes this state of being as a “blurring of identities,” even the blurring of the line between “reference and meaning.”5 In the following ghazal, Sa‘di explores the difference between the two categories of people—those have tasted love and those who have not: Tell them, “Be the way you choose to be, o brother!” Your state and ours are very different You have been sleeping all night What do you know about the singing birds of dawn? A human being without an inner life Is a tree unable to bear fruit

By contrast, the story of lovers is colorful. Or rather, it begins to be more colorful as they enter this new state of their existence. They are soon past the stage of a fruit-bearing tree and turn into marvelous beings, each a mystery worthy of separate exploration: We [lovers] are at once dispersed and together Our beloved is absent and always present Green leaves dry with the passage of time Our eyes are always blessed with tears What we have to offer Him is all too small But that is all we have to offer And we cannot hide behind any veil For love’s job is to tear it asunder (G. 65)

To sum up, in the garden that constitutes our life, eyes moist with tears of love are the signs of health and vitality. A human being, who has not shed such tears, is simply not alive. Even if such a person possesses life, it is not one to desire. In Sa‘di’s words, “The one who says I have a heart but not a sweetheart, is a bizarre animal” (G. 120). Like all living organisms, in order to survive, humanity depends on the natural forces that surround and animate it. Since the entire universe is also enlivened with love, human beings are in the right garden to grow

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gazi ng at the g arden of yo ur b e a uty  | 141 and blossom. 6 And fortunately for poets, who are in the business of putting complicated events and experiences into words, although love itself defies description, its action-generating and transformative impact can be observed and described. Again, as in the earlier examples, opening doors, tearing veils asunder and taking us away from ourselves are among the actions of love. Especially significant for our purpose is the fact that despite the awesome nature of these experiences, the lover can often speak about it—albeit in a vague and dreamy manner. The varying vagueness that characterizes these assertions can only add to the richness and variety of the ways in which love manifests itself to lovers: You entered the room, I left. I lost myself! As if I was taken from this world to another universe I had waited so long for someone to give news of you Then the bearer of news came, and I became unconscious Like a dew drop fallen before the sun A ray of His warmth touched me, and I was in the heavens! (G. 374)

Here Sa‘di takes a moment to give us a bit of history! Perhaps because he is a seasoned storyteller and teacher, even in his lyrics, he steps back and gives the reader something of a summary of the events, namely how he happened to get to where he is now: I told myself, “Let me be with my beloved, it will calm the longing” Wrong! I have been so much worse since being close to her I lost my strength to walk to where I could be in her presence When my feet were no good, I used my head to move closer I longed to watch her walk and hear the words she spoke I turned my being into an enormous eye and a gigantic ear (G. 374)

And just to underline the paradoxical nature of the event of love, in the midst of the above scene of the lover’s total surrender, Sa‘di tells us that without the prey’s own efforts at falling into this delightful trap, the beloved would have not had any interest in capturing him. The next two lines are particularly powerful, because they occupy the ending position to the entire ghazal: She was not particularly interested in me as her prey Till I walked so close, I got caught in the lasso of the glance

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142  |  lyri c s o f l if e The glance here could be read as the lover gazing at the beloved’s beauty, or a graceful glance of attention coming the lover’s way from the beloved. Either way, the alchemy is in that contact, the glance that can transform the meager existence of a lover into a precious and lasting one: They say, “Sa‘di, what made your rose-colored face change its red for yellow?” “The elixir of love,” I say, “fell on the copper; it turned into gold!”

The Lover’s Role So far, we have established the fact that the process of falling in love does not occur automatically because it requires action rather than a passive reception of the treasure. With that comes the hard part: the action that human beings need to take is neither simple nor unidirectional. For example, fasting, prayer and other religious duties won’t go nearly far enough (although one has to perform them). Similarly, the characteristics universally expected of lovers, such as perseverance, truthfulness and the like are only the basics in the process. Sa‘di adds his fascinating new list of requirements. Acknowledgment and respect for all concrete human experience, including physical and this-worldly, is high on his agenda. The physicality of the world, and our own presence in it, cannot be pushed out of the way to make room for our spiritual capacity. The two are deeply interconnected. In fact, the beauty of the form and what is accessible to our human senses, works as a guide. It can help us travel between the world of dreams and that of concrete reality: A cypress-figured beloved stole my heart One very different from those planted on the edge of the streams Last night I dreamt I was holding onto her tresses My hands still smell of musk this morning (G. 89)

If you dare to dream of this concrete beauty, reality can become an extension of the dream. Or, rather you will reach the realization that there was never a substantial difference between the reality and the dream, the physical and the spiritual. Like all meaningful journeys, however, this one too is long and involves arduous experiences. So, in the above ghazal, Sa‘di continues: Like a polo ball, I have been rolling through the world, and the polo stick has not abandoned its pursuit yet!

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gazi ng at the g arden of yo ur b e a uty  | 143 In another ghazal, changing the realm of dream for the land of miracles, the beloved’s voluptuous lips guide the Prophet Khezr toward the fountain of life: If [Prophet] Khezr ever saw your lips He would say it is the fountain of life And I know, using your magic, one day You’ll claim it is a full-blown miracle! (G. 53)

When, in the concluding verse to this ghazal, Sa‘di declares that he has no worries about losing his life “because for the lover dying is to live,” he is not speaking of a sacrifice but rather of a transition from one kind of living to another. When we are not in love, conventions are most powerful and definitions resistant to change. However, Sa‘di is pointing us—rather transporting us—to this liminal space between dream and wakefulness, the miraculous and the ordinary, where the disontological presence of love can perform its miracle and help us overcome the power of conventional definitions. In that space the Prophet Khezr and the beloved’s sensuous and life-giving kisses mingle in inseparable ways. Similarly, in that space we will be able to transcend intellectual, and faith-based, conventions and see the overlap between all beauty, physical and non-physical. For beings defined by, perhaps even trapped in, their sensual possibilities, this will be a liberating and empowering experience. Although not simple, Sa‘di’s message is short: “If you brave love’s sea journey, and throw your luggage overboard, you will find your way to safety!” There is at least one more central theme that we need to touch on before closing this chapter. It is yet another crucial skill for a true lover as far as our poet is concerned. And that is witnessing the unrestrained flow of life in everything that shares the garden with us. In a way, it is an art, the art of gazing at the constantly emerging beauty/love all around us and developing a holistic vision of the garden as the location for love’s varied and changing manifestations.7 But, first, let us finish our ruminations on Sa‘di’s multifaceted expressions of love.

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144  |  lyri c s o f l if e A Holistic Vision of the Garden: Sa‘di’s Variety of Love Many aspects of life in the garden may be used to examine the varied daily manifestations of the divine. In his own life, Sa‘di tried his hand at much that life had to offer. As a result, he came to be described as many things: a moralist, a humanist, a humorous teacher, a versifier, a great lyricist, a legal conformist, a panegyrist and a mystic of the first order. Indeed, the rainbow of his life experiences has had too many colors for the conventional charts of expectations developed over the centuries. While most critics have testified to the diversity of his approach to art and life, at times, his openness to the full range of human experiences has earned him harsh criticism or a respectful silence in the place of criticism.8 Since we are focusing on the variety of love’s manifestations in the garden, it ought to be said that prominent among Sa‘di’s controversial experiences are his unabashed use of homoerotic themes and images, particularly in autobiographic episodes in Golestaan and in some of the ghazals. While Golestaan’s episodes are a clear combination of fact and fiction, some episodes, even if fictitious, illustrate Sa‘di’s acceptance of homoerotic desire. An example of this is his recollection of a personal infatuation with a young grammarian in the city of Kashgar told in the fifth chapter of the book.9 In the story, Sa‘di hides his identity (as is often the case) and attempts to leave the city to avoid further contact with the young man he desires. When the grammarian finds out that the person he has conversed with has been Sa‘di in disguise, he catches our poet on the morning of his departure and demands an explanation. Sa‘di’s response comes in the form of a very short anecdote put into three fine lines, translated as: In a remote mountain, I once saw a great man Who had abandoned the world for living in a cave I said why won’t you come and live in the city? That would make us so very happy The city, he replied, is full of desirable beauties When the road is too muddy, even elephants can slip10

This episode is an example of the sophisticated manner in which Sa‘di engages the theme. While he does not mask the homoerotic nature of his

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gazi ng at the g arden of yo ur b e a uty  | 145 desire, his skill in taming the eros is notable. For one thing, the episode is more about Sa‘di than the young grammarian of whom we know little. The young man knows his laws of syntax and admires Sa‘di’s poetry. He must be handsome as well, since Sa‘di compares him to the “desirable beauties” who trouble the hermit in the story. In focus is Sa‘di, the giant, the elephant that walks away because in the slippery domain of love even elephants can take a fall. At the same time, the wildness and the unpredictability of the eros is tamed in the face or the vulnerability of the elephant, his self-restraint and the elusiveness of love and desire. All this make the erotic content of the poem secondary—if at all significant. The ghazals, due to their capacity for expressing abstract concepts, and because personal pronouns in Persian are gender neutral, place less of an emphasis on the gender of the beloved. Sufi literature traditionally plays on this ambiguity to keep the divine nature of the beloved as a strong possibility, a running theme in the background of all dwellings on love. For Sa‘di, like any good poet, this ambiguity is a productive moment. However, it does not always provide a choice between the human and the divine nature of the beloved. Sometimes, it is just a game, a way of wrapping the beloved’s ­identity in a layer of mystery to intensify the reader’s anticipation concerning the way the encounter will play out. In such instances, the sensuous nature of the affair is not downplayed but instead emphasized. Ghazal sixty-two in Sa‘di’s Divaan, for example, begins with, “Oh, my beautiful doll, who has been sucking your ruby lips?” If the word “doll,” points to a possible female gender for the beloved, Sa‘di counters that perception in the second hemistich: “My delicate garden! Who took a bite off your sweet quince?” The choice of a quince (an acidic, pear-shaped fruit) instead of, say, a rose petal or a peach is, here, interesting and, in my opinion, premeditated. While a peach or a rose petal would have a clear feminine connotation, the skin of a quince is covered with a fuzzy material often compared to the beard on a young man’s face. The rest of the ghazal makes use of other fruits, such as melons and blackberries, to enhance the playful ambience and leave any possible gender hints to the mind of the reader. In the ghazal immediately before this one (in alphabetical order), however, Sa‘di makes a definite gender choice for the beloved, a male one:

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146  |  lyri c s o f l if e I pity the eyes that have not seen your face Or those who have, but turned to look at another If those who blame the lover saw the magic fairies Only then, they would know what has driven them to madness Who is that, with a countenance as bright as the face of the sun? Who has drawn a half-circle around it with black musk?

Although in this ghazal Sa‘di moves on to the image of Farhaad and Shirin, a celebrated model of heterosexual love in Nezaami’s romantic epic Khosrow o Shirin, and ends the poem with a clear transition to Divine love, there is no doubt that the last verse quoted above celebrates homoerotic beauty, a glowing face framed in a black beard.11 As we shall see, such verses have caused much anxiety among the modern critics of Sa‘di as they could point to a sexual practice viewed as immoral and therefore beneath the master. Let us step back for moment and take a broader look. Interestingly, Sa‘di’s contemporaries, and many later pre-modern critics, do not seem to have seen a conflict between his non-heteronormative expressions of love and his religious or ethical stance. Minoo Southgate, one of Sa‘di’s twentieth-century critics, in her essay “Men, Women, and Boys: Love and Sex in the Works of Sa‘di” observes, “Apparently Sa‘di’s contemporary readers found no incongruity between the autobiographic homosexual episodes of Golestaan or the deliberate obscenity of the Hazliyaat on the one hand and the devout homilies and the religious prologue to Bustaan on the other.”12 Southgate does not pay much attention to the critics’ change of heart and the fact that Sa‘di’s modern biographers have mostly taken him to task for what his contemporaries did not seem to consider significant (there are exceptional contemporary critics who do not hold this against Sa‘di).13 Fortunately, as gendered readings of literature become more mainstream, scholars from outside the field have begun looking at the topic of ­non-­heteronormative sexuality in Persian literature. We cannot treat the subject here with the full attention it deserves but a brief look will be enlightening. One meticulous study in this regard is Scott Kugle’s “Sultan Mahmud’s Makeover: Colonial Homophobia and the Persian–Urdu Literary Tradition.”14 Using the example of the Ghaznavid Sultan Mahmud and his beloved slave/companion Ayaaz, Kugle reminds us that in Persian speaking/

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gazi ng at the g arden of yo ur b e a uty  | 147 reading parts of the world (including India, Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia) the couple was always mentioned as a pair on par with heterosexual romantic partners like Leila and Majnun, or Heer and Ranja in a wide range of epic and lyrical works.15 My lifelong encounter with classical Persian poetry and its recipients corroborates Kugle’s point. It would be most ordinary to hear an uncle, a teacher, even an older family member—who I could say with certainty did not approve of the homosexual practice in life—quoting a verse referring unambiguously to the passionate love between Mahmud and Ayaaz. Neither was their love portrayed as platonic, a point to which I shall return. Perhaps the best explanation lies in the general trust placed in the alchemical properties of love for, as Kristeva observes, love is always for “the good and the beautiful.” That gives it a transforming ability. Although fraught with desire, eros can free itself and move in the direction of goodness and beauty. The only condition for this assent is that love remembers its divine origins.16 Since, in Sa‘di’s work, for example, the divine origin of love is one of its essential qualities, its transforming ability and its assent toward goodness and beauty is also essential to it. As a result, true lovers, again in Kristeva’s words, are “intensely true, powerfully subjective” and deeply “ethical.”17 Sa‘di could therefore voice his desire, homoerotic or otherwise, and still remain a true and ethical human being who has been purified in the crucible of love. Kugle also takes care to establish Ayaaz as a concrete and historical person, a non-Muslim slave who came from eastern Afghanistan. He, then, gives us beautiful examples from the Masnavi of the Iranian poet Zulaali (d. 1615) who constructs his epic on Sultan Mahmud’s conquest of Kashmir. As Kugle observes, even though Zulaali’s work is an epic, vivid descriptions of the loving encounters between the couple take precedence over empire building.18 In the fascinating discussion that follows, Kugle holds the colonization of India by the British and the application of their Victorian models to the South Asian society responsible for the marginalization and later criminalization of homoerotic love. “The British” he observes “policed the corridors of literary imagery but also framed homoerotic love as criminal.”19 This was done formally in the garb of a new criminal code that remains in the penal codes of India and Pakistan to this day. Perhaps, more important than the

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148  |  lyri c s o f l if e formal legal codes, as Kugle admits, were the cultural scars left on the Muslim South Asian and Middle Eastern cultures, which in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were looking desperately for ways to reinvent themselves by eliminating the “decadent” habits that had left them inferior to progressive Europe. Both in India and Iran, the poetic tradition and its celebration of the ideals of love were considered to be among the culprits.20 Two Ways of Absolving Sa‘di of Homoerotic Love Ahmad Shamlu (d. 2000), the modern Persian poet par excellence, felt prominent enough to criticize Sa‘di (or any other major poet of the classical era for that matter) for such unacceptable habits as praising kings or celebrating homoerotic love. Others usually remained silent on the subject or sought ways of explaining the “problem” to absolve Sa‘di—or his contemporary poet ‘Eraaqi (d. 1288) whose love for a young male musician is infamous among contemporary literary historians.21 Two particularly common strategies have been used to invalidate these homoerotic tendencies and explain them away. One solution has been shifting the emphasis of poetic references to beauty’s general and universal, or metaphorical sense. Even if not a metaphor, according to this reading, although love engages the beauty of form, it seeks a more real, in-depth and “purer” understating of beauty. Cyrus Ali Zargar, in his discussion of ‘Eraaqi, the aforementioned poet whose love for a young musician boy took him from Anatolia to India, writes, “For ‘Eraaqi, form lacks any real existence and is only conceived by the viewer; existence ultimately corresponds to formlessness.”22 If we take this view, the homoerotic imagery used by Sa‘di and ‘Eraaqi evokes formless beauty and, therefore, is devoid of sexual content. The question would then be: why did these poets produce the abundance of the powerful erotic images that they did? Regular use of a theme, or frequent association of two concepts with each other (in this case, beauty and erotic images and themes), is not the best way to show the insignificance of one, or the lack of association between the two. Perhaps what it is that Zargar is trying to articulate here, namely ‘Eraaqi’s belief in the formlessness of existence, has greater applicability in the domain of philosophy. In the realm of poetry, where the abstract is concretized and moving colors and shapes constitute the main tools for expression, the significance

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gazi ng at the g arden of yo ur b e a uty  | 149 of form cannot be dismissed easily—although strategies could be adopted to make it secondary to other aspects of the beloved’s charm. The other solution to Sa‘di’s use of homoerotic themes and images has been accepting the homosexual connotations and attributing them to a deep social affliction, namely the supposed categorical inferiority and personal inadequacy of women to be in the position of the beloved. Minoo Southgate, whose article I quoted briefly, opts for this solution. “Destined for marriage and motherhood,” Southgate observes, “the girl is trained to be submissive and docile to limit her horizons.” She then quotes a passage from the Qaabusnaameh, a mirror for princes composed in the eleventh century, to the effect that women should only be educated in the basics of the sacred law and not taught how to read and write.23 First, Southgate ignores the fact that many of the women Sa‘di refers to are anything but submissive.24 Second, if indeed women were submissive, and if Qaabusnaameh’s recommendation reflects the social reality of the time, why would the ideal of womanhood as gentle and submissive make women less erotically desirable? After all, ideals are fine to those who embrace them.25 Furthermore, motherhood would not be actualized without the currency of heterosexual intercourse, which in turn requires a measure of idealization of the female erotic charm in the social norm. Southgate goes further in describing the disgust of men with women in Sa‘di’s time using a philological argument. Attempting to explain certain demeaning terms such as mukhannas (“catamite”) applied to homosexual males, Southgate suggests that this contempt for the passive homosexual was perhaps due to its similarity in the sexual act between the function of the passive catamite man and the passivity of a woman. In other words, in her view, women were held in such low esteem that the low regard for them was transferred to catamite men.26 No doubt, Sa‘di’s readers will continue to make sense of the homoerotic imagery in his poetry in various and conflicting ways. Furthermore, their views will be more a reflection of their values and approaches to the subject than that of Sa‘di’s. I cannot help but point out, however, that I miss the rather neutral and open reception that I observed among the non-expert traditional readers of his ghazals as I grew up. Sure enough the rapture of love overshadowed the gender of the lover. Nonetheless, there was no attempt to bury the erotic under a cover of spirituality. Neither was there a haste to conclude whether he

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150  |  lyri cs o f l if e approved of the non-heteronormative sexual practice of his time or not. There it was for you—the reader/listener—to experience and explore it the way you saw fit. This was not a careless or non-committal position. Rather, it came from a deep and age-old recognition, albeit a subconscious one, that the space of poetry was expansive enough to accommodate different minds, emotions, conceptual models, and even social practices.27 While narratives and didactic poems were more open to scrutiny, lyric poetry utilized its capacity for ambiguity. Our own contemporary poet Billy Collins, the United States Poet Laureate Laureate from 2001 to 2003, puts it beautifully in a poem he has aptly named “Introduction to Poetry.” Presumably speaking of his students, or perhaps the general readership, Collins begins the poem with: I ask them to take a poem And hold it up to the light Like a color slide Or press an ear against its hive.

The stanza most relevant to our discussion here is the one in which he uses the metaphor of a room, suggesting that the reader should walk inside the poem’s room and “feel the walls for a light switch.” Unfortunately, as Collins suggests in his closing lines, most readers chose to compress the poem into unchanging semantic, social and literary constructs in order to extract what the poet really means. In his words: But all they want to do Is tie the poem to a chair with rope And torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose To find out what it really means28

The idea of not torturing a poem to confess its beliefs is more than a pleasant attitude. It is a needed critical method. Could Collins’s approach of walking inside the poem, and allowing others to take their walk, too, which so reminds me of the non-judgmental reaction of the lay readership in my childhood, be an extension of the way that Sa‘di’s readers historically dealt with his approach to homoerotic expressions? There are short, at times seemingly

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gazi ng at the g arden of yo ur b e a uty  | 151 insignificant, anecdotes in biographical dictionaries and anthologies that lend credence to this assumption. I will quote one here, as we will not be able to do a more in-depth exploration of the subject in this chapter. One fitting example is an anecdote about our poet passing through the city of Tabriz. It is most probably apocryphal, but nonetheless reflective of the view of the biographer and the readers of his time. The anecdote, relayed by Dowlatshaah Samarqandi in Tazkerat al-sho‘araa’, focuses on Sa‘di and one of his contemporaries, the celebrated poet Homaam Tabrizi (d. 1315). According to the account, which includes a couple of sharp exchanges between the two, Homaam asks Sa‘di—who is once more traveling as an anonymous Shirazi— if the people of Shiraz know any of his (Homaam’s) poems. At the time of asking this question, Homaam and Sa‘di, who have come out of the public bath, are sitting close to each other. And the former, an important figure in his hometown Tabriz, is being fanned by a good-­looking young attendant. Sa‘di, apparently annoyed that Homaam is blocking his view of the young man, responds, “Yes, he is quite well known in Shiraz,” and quotes the following line of Homaam: Homaam is the obstacle that separates me from the beloved It is time to pull this curtain to the side.

This presence of mind and literary command leads to Homaam’s discovery of the true identity of the unknown traveler, namely Sa‘di, and he then invites him over to his house for a meal and further exchange of poetry.29 The episode is clearly about Sa‘di’s fame and wit and the recognition he enjoyed even by his opponents. His admiration for the young man’s charm is, therefore, made secondary to these important biographical hints. At the same time, the casual approach of Dowlatshaah to the matter speaks to the currency of non-heteronormative desire. Sa‘di and the Nature of Love It would be fair to conclude that, in his lyrical journey, Sa‘di does not seem concerned with the expression of non-heteronormative love as an aberration. Nor does he idealize homoerotic love to the exclusion of the other. For him everything that is in the garden is woven into the “silk of beauty sold in the market of life” (G.214). Every detail embodies the whole. In that sense, all

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152  |  lyri cs o f l if e that is in the garden is form and spirit, male and female, sacred and profane, at the same time. And it is all lovable. Indeed, loving is the only way that the inhabitants of the garden can come to life. And that is a blessing. For, if it were not for the experience of falling in love, how could one tell the difference between the cypress-figured beauties and trees standing on the edge of streams? Without love, how could one see the beloved walking, dancing and spreading his/her grace in the garden? Forget the cypress, it has a tall figure, but it is only able to stand Come! See the [beloved’s] graceful movements, the elegance of the stature (G.20)

Fortunately, everything in the garden is alive and, like all life forms, in flux. The limits of one’s identity can vanish, in the same way that the gender of the beloved can be transcended. Indeed, so constitutive is this flux that even the human–tree divide can be overcome as well: From this corner in solitude, my thoughts travel to open fields Where the early morning breeze has brought a message from the garden: “Do not stay heedless, if you have wisdom and a heart Times as blessed as these may never come again Where the cypress in the garden with its wooden legs moves, Let us get the cypress-figured beloved to rise and dance” (G.15)

Not only does the wooden-legged cypress move, its exuberance is not a mechanical movement induced by the wind. Instead, it fountains from within. But, it takes a perceptive observer to see the source of the movement and the joy: The way the fire of your beauty blazes through everything To be burnt is not a surprise, to remain raw is The one who does not fall in love in springtime is not human The plant that does not move in Nowruz is wood for fire And you think the cypress tree is moving with the wind No, it is ecstatic listening to the birds that sing (G.51)

In other words, like life itself, love flows in all who live and its motion is circular, sometimes from the beloved to the tree, and sometimes from the tree

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gazi ng at the g arden of yo ur b e a uty  | 153 to the beloved. Nothing is going to stand in love’s way, or define it—least of all gender. Sa‘di’s ghazals demonstrate this limitless quality by opening themselves to multiple gender readings and empowering the reader to read them in the ways in which these verses make sense to them. The true strength of the poems, and the reason for their remarkable endurance, is this very elasticity. Homoerotic images are easily adaptable to heteronormative perspectives and vice versa. Furthermore, Sa‘di’s unabashed references to personal involvements belie any anxiety or search for a strategy of disguise. Rather, his openness points to a perception of love as requiring the shouldering of bigger and more serious responsibilities than assigning gender orientation. Love’s responsibility is to keep the entire garden alive. And it has the license to take action. Those who are wise, therefore, appreciate the awesome power of love and seek ways to ­harness it rather than fight it or tie it to a chair and extract a confession out of it: Patience is not possible, what can I do? I left you angry and returned in a poor state Love’s majesty puts lions’ heads in a bridle And pulls as the yoke in a camel’s nose pulls him (G.625)

The best response to this awesome force is to sometimes tolerate the captivity and sometimes to run from it as fast as one can (G.34). In either case, an inner movement has to begin, a movement as subtle as the dance of the branches to a gentle breeze. Even gentle movements distinguish a living branch from a piece of dead wood suitable only for fire (G.51). The movement can be spread over time, as in the blooming of the bud into a full flower, or more gradually, as in the stone that turns itself into a gem by absorbing the rays of the sun (G.269). The sun shines on all; that much is obvious. But not every stone is capable of actualizing the transforming magic of its rays. Only some can. More importantly, once that potential is actualized, the direction of the give-and-take can change. Love is now the kind of captivity that frees the lover of all bondage. At times, it even resembles a fine tool, the needle that takes out the thorn of daily fixations lodged into the journeyer’s human feet (G.560). Fortunately for all, “love has a beginning but no end” (GM.13). It is not

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154  |  lyri c s o f l if e an art that can be perfected and finished. Rather, it is an ongoing journey, and one that is never “too long” for the lover (G.91). Every gaze intensifies the experience, and every new experience adds to the longing for another gaze. Before narrowing our focus on the gaze, however, to conclude our discussion I would like us to take a look at the ways in which the garden houses and cultivates the never-ending engagement that is love. The Dimensions of the Garden: Defining the Lyrical Ambience In choosing a garden as the metaphor for Sa‘di’s lyrics, I wish to open us up to a broad sense of possibility rather than leading us to a narrow and literal comparison. True, a metaphor is always meant to appropriate concrete reality in order to enhance poetic expression through transference of salient features. That is essentially what metaphors do. At the same time the mutability of Sa‘di’s garden and its kaleidoscopic scene-changes brings it a special poetic resilience that demands special attention. No doubt, Sa‘di was aware of the existence of thriving gardens in his home town of Shiraz. The connection between these and the gardens he builds through lyrical expression, however, go beyond the literal sense. Like the sequences of cosmic movements of the heavenly bodies that he recreates in stylized language in the ghazals, the recurring garden scenes are reconstructed and orderly evocations of natural foliage. But they too expand gradually into echoes of an ever-changing archetypal garden. This is not the poet’s fantasy of a single garden and it does not correspond faithfully to any reader’s experience of a garden. Rather it expands to become a part of any garden imaginable. Perhaps the most important role of this archetypal garden bustling with life is, in Chu-chin Sun’s words, to maintain “the continuous regenerative vitality” of the ghazals by keeping them connected with the imperishable abundance of green life.30 We are returning to the literary critic Julia Kristeva, one last time, and this time to refer to her insightful observations concerning the nature of texts. Unlikely as it may seem, her discussion of texts is here helpful in clarifying the special nature of Sa‘di’s lyrical garden. Kristeva’s view, now widely accepted, suggests that every text is an intertext.31 That is to say, every text is alive with the presence of numerous other texts to which it is connected: direct quotes, allusions, stylistic imitations, parodies or simply echoes in a general sense.

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gazi ng at the g arden of yo ur b e a uty  | 155 Here, I will argue that part of the elasticity and multilayered nature of Sa‘di’s lyrical garden is due to the fact that it is an “intergarden.” That is, Sa‘di’s garden is pieced together from parts of innumerable gardens, some growing in the outside world and others in the human inner landscape. Either way, the garden is festive, orderly and carefully cultivated. It pulsates with an inner rhythm that ranges from awe-inspiring to ecstatic or lighthearted: Who will intercede and bring the Friend back? Happiness is imperfect when S/he is not here Who will dare to speak in His/her presence? Only the East Wind can deliver the message (G.165)

Then he lightens up the ambience by turning his gaze, and ours, to the more welcoming corners of the garden: Our gathering resembles a garden today The pleasure of intimacy feels like gazing at roses Drinking wine is permissible for the one who is in paradise Especially when served by the keeper of the Garden (G. 221)

In this ghazal, even the lover’s tears are not sad or lonesome. They are lifegiving like the spring downpour mixed with the lightning of the beloved’s laughter: Your laughter flashes like lightning, why should it not? I shed tears so hard that it resembles a downpour

All through, Sa‘di’s chief strategy of subtle repetition works as an undercurrent that keeps the foundational garden tropes on the reader’s mind. At the same time, these familiar, and often common themes, are revived by being placed into freshly encoded poetic scenes: I won’t be offended if you laugh at me Crying with sorrow you have caused The garden blooms with laughter Every time the autumn clouds pour down (G.298)

The standard roses and nightingales, lovers and their opponents, the coquettish rose buds and elegant cypress trees (of both plant and human

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156  |  lyri c s o f l if e origin) are amply present in the garden. They have the job of providing the needed conventional background. The garden, however, expands its possibilities considerably in two different ways. One is through allowing the familiar inhabitants to transmute into other beings and develop into hybrid personalities. The second is borrowing a range of new inhabitants, some also of hybrid nature. As a result, the inhabitants of the garden may or may not be who they appear to be. Earlier, we witnessed the transmutation of an unbending tree into a dancing one, and later into the figure of the dancing beloved. The same happens to the archetypal personage the Dust (“friend/ beloved/spiritual guide”) to give another example. S/he gets paired with Yar, which is standard usage for the beloved, but also with Aashenaa, which simply means “the person or the thing you know well.” Aashenaa carries a wide range of meanings in its semantic field. S/he knows you, recognizes your pain and appreciates your taste in friendship, art and life. It can be paired with dard (“longing”), for example, and become the capacious construct Dard’aashenaa (“the one who appreciates the enormity of your longing/quest”). Or, it can be contrasted with its opposite Bigaaneh (“the stranger”) and Doshman (“the enemy”), combinations that give Sa‘di the opportunity to weave intricate— and at times playful—relational webs on the basis of the interactions between these character types: I swear by Dust’s life, even Doshman will not allow Keeping an Aashenaa [no doubt referring to Sa‘di] behind closed doors (G.21) I cannot share my intimate thoughts with the Bigaaneh Complaining about Dust to Doshman is not the [lover’s] way (G.51) People complain of the Doshman to their Dust When Dust is Doshman, who should one complain to? (G.437)

The examples are many. In Persian, an adjective, such as Aashenaa or Bigaaneh, once separated from its noun expands itself to represent a whole type. Sa‘di uses this tool to create many subjectivities and inter-subjectivities to diversify the inhabitants of the garden. Here, I will refer only to one more, Teshneh (“the thirsty”). The lover’s longing for the beloved has no doubt been described as thirst in many different poetic traditions. Again, using his mastery of repetition, Sa‘di gradually establishes “the thirsty” as a familiar and resonant type:

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gazi ng at the g arden of yo ur b e a uty  | 157 Do you know what it feels like to see the beloved after separation? [Imagine] the clouds appearing in the desert sky and pouring down on the thirsty (G.144)

In another ghazal: The news of you made the wound of separation worse Like the image of clear water shown to the thirsty (G.505)

Or: Thirst made me brave. I thought the water will come to my waist I realized you were a sea, only after I had lost my foothold (G.501)

We cannot conclude the discussion of the inhabitants of the garden without looking at the foremost among the character types, namely the true nightingale, Sa‘di himself. In this role, Sa‘di the lover, the wise man, the cosmopolitan traveler, and other personae all come together to construct an exquisite poetic voice that is the grace of the garden. Indeed without it, the glorious story of the garden will remain untold. The treasures we have been speaking about will remain unappreciated and unknown. Even the beautiful, all powerful, aloof and self-reliant beloved will be incomplete without his/ her rare bird: In the meadows of the world, no one saw a flower quite like you With a rare bird like me singing in its garden (G.95)

Even more candidly: My fragrant flower! If the spring returns a hundred thousand times You shall not see the likes of me among sweet-voiced nightingales (G.22)

And the relationship is reciprocal. This rare nightingale is equally dependent on his flower in order to sing. The interdependence of the two is complex and therefore often expressed through elegant metaphors such as: The cloak of Sa‘di’s artistry—which has no need for a lining32 Has boundless beauty especially if you care to wear it (G.483)

At times, the relationship is of a more existential nature:

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158  |  lyri c s o f l if e Without a hidden longing, fine emotions do not reveal themselves Sa‘di has seen a flower; that’s why he sings with the passion of a nightingale (G.212)

In the transforming ambience of the garden our nightingale goes through many a poetic transmutation. In one instance, he turns into a tree in the arid desert, hit by the lightning bolt of love—and yet able to bear succulent fruits (of poems no doubt) while burning (G.64). And, in another, he expands into an orchard full of singing birds all by himself: Sa‘di! The sweetness of your songs cannot be measured Your mind is an orchard full of singing birds Since poetry blossomed in the garden of your thoughts Nightingales are silenced before you like seabirds (G.229)

And so, the question with which we may end this chapter, or rather take it to its next stage, is, “What are we, the readers, supposed to do with this glorious intergarden?” Yes, it is fresh, beautiful and bustling with life. It has dancing cypress trees, flowing streams and splendid mornings that resemble the beloved unveiling her face. All this is Sa‘di’s—and ours—to enjoy. And yes, we have time and again come back to the point that love entails action. But what is the action—if any—that we are supposed to take once inside the garden? Does our poet, who lures us into this elaborately constructed garden, have any plans for us? What he does with the garden is easier to see. He assigns each leaf, breeze or branch a range of poetic roles to reiterate, emphasize and amplify the beauty he is articulating with his voice in order to strengthen in us the moods he considers pivotal to the human understanding of love and life. At times, he even turns the garden into a place in which to unpack subtle philosophical thoughts otherwise hard to articulate: I come from the neighborhood of the lovers Not the passers-by who stop for a quick glance Nothing else is visible to my eyes The sun of your face has filled my horizon with light (G.544)33

The question remains, what is the point of our presence? We are not Sa‘di. We cannot replicate the voice he has given the garden. In fact, he likes

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gazi ng at the g arden of yo ur b e a uty  | 159 to keep us all in our place when it comes to the question: who has the real voice here? No one will add to your beauty, or to my eloquence We have set the limits: you for loveliness and I for speaking about it (G.20)

That is a role well enforced, over the centuries, with the vigor of Sa‘di eloquence. What about our role, what are we doing in the garden? The Art of Gazing: The Lover, the Gazer Par Excellence Whatever the nature of their love, the diverse inhabitants of the garden are not there to be judged. They are not there to work in the orchard, plow the earth, or water the garden. Their most significant responsibility is gazing at this abundance of beauty, taking it in, and feeling its ever-expanding nature that needs to be seen and known.34 The point is that the garden is incomplete without those who know how to look for, find and pick the life-giving apple of the beloved’s grace and partake of it (G.102). Yes, it needs its special nightingale, the humorous lover/ poet who points to the majesty of the beloved even as he makes us all laugh, the one who can sing in a thousand new ways the old song: I am befuddled with your beauty from head to foot Your beauty, which needs no ornament Only Sa‘di can speak of you in this way Not every beggar has such a jewel (G.546)

But above all, it needs us, the onlookers, not to have our eyes on a fruit or two as the short-sighted do but to perfect the art of gazing at this royal unfolding of beauty in its entirety (G.439). You may think, “Great! This is the easiest and the most desirable thing to do! Let us all gaze at this amazing garden that Sa‘di has prepared for us!” Well, in a general sense, millions have done so over the centuries. In a finer sense, however, there is a hitch—the nature of the beauty is such that it shields itself from all but the ahl-e nazar (“those who know how to gaze”). The hiding is not an intentional challenge. It is in the very nature of created things. In his Sufi Aesthetics, which I quoted earlier, Zargar observes, “Created things are limited and yet they attempt to reflect the l­ imitlessness [of

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160  |  lyri c s o f l if e the Creator]. Thus the created things have multifarious essences and continuously changing states, to serve—however deficiently—as a divine mirror.”35 Here our role becomes crucial as the give-and-take between us and the beauty we are gazing at develops new and significant dimensions. First, the beauty wakes us up. It frees us from ourselves, or rather the tyranny of the small self that has distracted us all along: Since you have returned I do not wish to look at anyone else You have turned your image into a guard [keeping me from looking at others] (G.528)

And from this point on, a two-way road opens before us: The Friend I had my gaze on with love S/he first had his/her eyes on me with grace (G.261)

Seeing the beauty stirs us into love/action as we gaze at it. In the process, we, the gazers, are transformed but we are also the transformers of this “limited” beauty in created things. We take it in and expand it to “limitlessness” in our longing selves and evolving perceptions of the garden. In an immediate sense, the initial gaze showered on us by the beloved is the source of empowerment for us/lovers to return the gaze. In a more fundamental sense, it is the instrument for cleaning the mirror of our being and turning us into polished ones. Now, gazing is of a different nature: The perfect beauty of your existence does not fit into description Only the mirror can tell the story as it is (G.152)

We are now empowered to look, to see, to live a different life, which is a practical way to witness the pervasiveness of the beauty. We have gazed and gazed until our soul has become a pure gaze toward the One:36 The sun will set if you do not cover your face It will say: “Two suns do not fit in one horizon!”

Being the gazer par excellence is not a small distinction: I am the first! For there is no one in the whole world Who has appeared to me more beautiful than you are (G.554)

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gazi ng at the g arden of yo ur b e a uty  | 161 Our need for repeated gazing, until we see, sheds a new light on Sa‘di’s recourse to poetic repetition as well. He has set himself the goal of speaking “the beauty in created things” into an ever-evolving garden of beauty capable of transcending its own limits. He may be “Sa‘di-till-the-end-of-time” as he claims. But, ironically, he cannot achieve this task over time without us. For one thing, he is mortal and we, the readers he has lured into the garden, are his only conduit, his only hope, for perpetuating his voice. We are the reason why the garden has lived so long and will continue to live on. Furthermore, when he speaks the garden into life and we, the readers, take it in, the process is not a reflexive one performed en masse. Rather, every one of us takes the garden’s life and beauty, re-cultivates, reinvents and eventually perpetuates it in his or her unique way. Despite all of its abundance and beauty, the place will be incomplete, short-lived, and therefore meaningless, without us. If Sa‘di is the nightingale par excellence, we are the lover/perpetuator of the beauty, the actualizer of the force of love, and the one who can feel it, live it and more importantly pass it on to generation after generation. If synchronically the beauty is amplified through Sa‘di’s eloquence, diachronically it will be lived and perpetuated through us. Our ways may be not as refined as his words but they are needed because pure beauty cannot be contemplated by the untrained eye. This is the eternal story of Sa‘di and us: we need him to sing the beauty into limitlessness, and he needs us to listen, make it ours, and perpetuate it in time. Your beauty is rare in this age as is my poetry My eyes are fixed on you and everyone’s ears on my words You say, “Who can contemplate the Friend’s countenance as it really is?” Only those who look through Sa‘di’s eyes (G.247)

Let us end with a lively ghazal about a night of union. It is intense and complex. The longing of the lover, the charm of the beloved, the beauty of the garden and the cosmic scene have been enmeshed into this one moment, one night. And that night is encoded into one ghazal. This nocturnal poem, this moment of creativity, however, will echo into eternity for as long as we live to hear it in new ways and pass it on to our children to do the same. This is one way to interpret Sa‘di’s famous verse “Love has a beginning but no end!”

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162  |  lyri c s o f l if e Tonight that my sweetheart is holding me tight If they burn me like aloe wood, I’ll feel nothing but delight! When you have what you want, death has no meaning Arrows of hardship, fall on me! I will not fight Tonight, my moon and I are ecstatic being together Tell the heavens to close its gates on sunlight Has the star of dawn risen? Is this really you? Or, are my eyes deceiving me? Perhaps this is the Night of Power, that luckiest and most blessed of nights Oh, how I want us to sleep in the orchard and take in the garden’s scent If the birds of dawn wouldn’t agitate and wake us before the morning light With these eyes that are looking at you this wonderful moment Tell me, how do I ever contemplate any other sight? The thirsty are usually comforted with the sight of fresh water Deeply submerged in the river and thirstier every day, that is my plight! When we were separated, I was beside myself with longing Now you are here and I am confused with joy, a pure laughing sight! Talk to me! There are no strangers here, just the two of us All right, there is that candle. I’ll cut its tongue and take away its light Now, there is nothing between us except this garment If it keeps us apart, I’ll tear it open with love’s joyful might Please, do not say Sa‘di will die of the pain I have given him Tell me what to do, if you leave me, and I stay alive (G.384)37

Notes  1. Different religious traditions have different narrations of the story. In the Qur’anic version, Adam and Eve are equally responsible and their sin is approaching a tree that God has warned them not to approach or “they would be among the transgressors” (Qur’an, 2:135).   2. Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love, 17. The discussion of love in this chapter has been illuminated, in numerous instances, by Kristeva’s insightful commentary on love.  3. Ibid., 6.  4. Ibid., 16.   5. Ibid., 2.   6. On the centrality of love, one may see Ahmad Ghazaali’s depiction of love as

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gazi ng at the g arden of yo ur b e a uty  | 163 God’s essential attribute and the source of all creation in his influential treatise the Savaaneh. See Nasrollaah Purjavaadi, “Sa‘di and Ahmad Ghazaali,” An Anthology of Iranian Studies, 4 2000, 24–61.   7. The significance of gazing, or witnessing, the beauty in creation has been discussed by Cyrus Ali Zargar in his monograph Sufi Aesthetics: Beauty, Love, and the Human Form in the Writings of Ibn ‘Arabi and ‘Iraqi (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011).   8. The harshest criticisms are voiced in the twentieth century, starting with Edward Browne, the great historian of Persian literature, seeking a categorical solution. He suggests that while referring to Sa‘di as an “ethical poet,” we should be mindful that his brand of “ethics” is somewhat different from that professed in Western Europe; see A Literary History of Persia, Vol. 2, 530. Jan Rypka, the Czech ­historian of Persian literature who finds Sa‘di to be one of the “most curious and captivating personalities” in Persian literature with a far-reaching influence, is critical of his panegyrics written for opposing personalities in a short period of time; see History of Iranian Literature, 252. At home, Zabih Allaah Safaa gently evades all controversial subjects, including the panegyrics and the homoerotic references. Nonetheless, Safaa’s extensive and erudite history provides invaluable facts about Sa‘di’s life and work; see Taarikh-e adabiyaat dar Iraan, Vol. 3, Part 1, 584–622. The prominent literary critic Gholaam Hoseyn Yusofi refers to Sa‘di’s homoerotic episodes as the poet’s gracious confessions to his shortcomings; see Didaari ba Ahl-e Qalam: darbaareh-ye bist ketaab-e nasr-e Faarsi (Tehran: Ketaabforushi-ye Daanesh, 1997), 266–8. The harshest critic of Sa‘di at home is the prominent poet and critic Ahmad Shamlu. He chastises Sa‘di for his panegyrics, openly homoerotic images and themes, and what he describes as “versification.” See: Ahmad Shamlu, “Interview with Ahmad Shamlu,” Zamaaneh, 1/1 1991, 17–18.   9. Kashgar or Kashi is an oasis city with approximately 350,000 residents in the western part of the People’s Republic of China. Here I insist on keeping the adjective “grammarian” for the man of Sa‘di’s desire to highlight the fact that we are dealing with a grown and educated person, not a young beardless boy. 10. Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 139–40. 11. For a general account of Nezaami of Ganjeh and his romantic epic Khosrow va Shirin, see Rypka, A History of Iranian Literature, 210–13. 12. Minoo Southgate, “Men, Women, and Boys: Love and Sex in the Works of Sa‘di,” Iranian Studies, 17/4 1984, 413–52. The Hazliyaat “Obscenities” are pornographic works forming an independent body of Sa‘di’s works. They do contain homoerotic themes and images.

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164  |  lyri c s o f l if e 13. One contemporary critic of Persian literature who looks at the homoerotic imagery in Sa‘di’s work without passing judgment is Ehsan Yarshater. Unfortunately, Yarshater describes the archetypal beloved of Persian literature as predominantly male. See: “Love-related Conventions in Sa‘di’s Ghazals,” in Carole Hillenbrand (ed.) Studies in Honor of Clifford Edmund Bosworth, Volume II, The Sultan’s Turret: Studied in Persian and Turkish Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 420–39. The problem with Yarshater’s position, in my view, is that it over-emphasizes the homoerotic in Persian poetry, and he also seems to be looking for a culprit in the spread of the practice among Iranians. 14. Scott Kugle, “Sultan Mahmud’s Makeover: Colonial Homophobia and the Persian–Urdu Literary Tradition,” in Ruth Vanita (ed.) Queering India: Same-sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society (New York/London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 30–46. 15. Ibid., 31. 16. Kristeva, Tales of Love, 62, 67. 17. Ibid., 3. 18. Kugle, “Sultan Mahmud’s Makeover”, 31. 19. Ibid., 37. 20. Tavakoli-Targhi, “Refashioning Iran”. 21. Shamlu expressed his critical view in an interview with the quarterly Zamaaneh, 1/1 1991, 17–18. For an English translation of his assertion, see Keshavarz, Recite in the Name of the Red Rose, 145. The silence on the subject is quite substantial, too, particularly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In 1363/1984, the proceedings of a conference celebrating Sa‘di’s 800th birthday were published in three volumes that total more than a thousand pages. Sixty scholars from all over the world contributed essays to these volumes, which discuss everything from Sa‘di’s life events, studies, travels and politics to his influence on others. Not a single reference is made to this subject. See: Zekr-e jamil-e Sa‘di. 22. Zargar, Sufi Aesthetics, 41. 23. Southgate, “Men, Women, and Boys”, 420. 24. One of Sa‘di’s strong female characters is the ill-tempered woman whom he is forced to marry in the thirty-first story in the second chapter of the Golestaan when a friend supposedly rescues him from captivity in a non-Muslim army in Tripoli. Sa‘di describes her as more heavy-handed and overbearing than his captors; see Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 88. 25. A gruesome example is that of cannibals justifying their practice of cannibal-

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gazi ng at the g arden of yo ur b e a uty  | 165 ism as the best way to prevent the “prey” from going to waste. See Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, 16. 26. Southgate, “Men, Women, and Boys”, 434. 27. Not long ago I heard Michael Sells, of the University of Chicago, using the poetic space model to explain the capacious and diverse nature of Ibn ‘Arabi’s poetry in a presentation he made to the Ibn ‘Arabi Society. 28. Billy Collins, The Apple that Astonished Paris (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2006), 58. 29. Dowlatshaah Samarqandi, Tazkerat al-sho’araa’ (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Khaavar, 1987 [1366]), 153. 30. Chun-chin Sun, The Poetics of Repetition in English and Chinese Lyric Poetry, xi. 31. Kristeva’s idea has been analyzed frequently since its inception. For a critical reading, see Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentiethcentury Art Forms (New York: Methuen, 1985). 32. The word hashv (“lining”) has a double meaning. The second meaning denotes an extra or useless component to a poem, a sign of a poet’s lack of skill. Sa‘di is praising his own poetry in two different ways simultaneously. 33. Because of the centrality of the act of gazing, the section entitled “The Art of Gazing: The Lover, the Gazer Par Excellence” has been dedicated to this topic. 34. For the hadith “Kuntu kanzan makhfiyan …” See Badi‘ al-Zamaan Foruzaanfar, Ahaadis-e Masnavi (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Daaneshgaah, 1955 [1334]), 28. 35. Zargar, Sufi Aesthetics, 43. 36. Julia Kristeva has an interesting discussion of gazing as well; see Tales of Love, 113. 37. I gifted this translation to my PhD student Mathew Thomas Miller and his lovely companion Nima Sheth on the eve of their wedding.

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6 My Poor Heart Sometimes Runs, Sometimes Whirls: Meet Sa‘di the Comedian

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a‘di, the master of eloquence, the lover (mystic and otherwise), the seasoned traveler, and the maker and teacher of ethical rules has a complex poetic persona with multiple faces, some quite colorful. And just as his language does not appear strained by the enormity of the tasks ahead, his persona has no difficulty integrating the various dispositions that constitute it. A constituent element of this persona, one that has hardly been discussed, is what I have here termed Sa‘di the comedian. If you think the term “comedian” would not do justice to a classical figure as dignified as Sa‘di, I must confess that I would even use the term “jester” if it did not imply putting his humor at the service of a king. Sa‘di the comedian is called to action often and does more than being funny. He lightens up the poem’s ambience with a set of techniques that lead to the construction of a carefree mood open to casual but intimate poetic moments. The informality and intimacy of these sensual moments endow Sa‘di’s voice with remarkable reach. A few words about the character itself! Sa‘di the comedian is alert, witty, tough and, above all, streetwise. He does not display aloofness and does not use elitist language (except to make fun of it). His language is simple and extra-sensuous, at times slightly indiscreet, and often triumphant. But even in less festive moments, when he is abandoned, helpless or destitute, he will not seek anyone’s help besides that of the beloved. Others have given up on him, anyway. His message is simple, too. I have no fear, because I have little to lose. And although much may be wrong with me, I am one to endure every hardship and remain loyal to my 166

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m y poor hea rt someti mes runs, s o me time s wh ir l s  | 167 beloved. So, do not take me for a fool, this is a life choice and a deliberate one at that. Sa‘di the comedian is a survivor. Generally, in Sa‘di’s work the undercurrent of laughter is universal. In a way, you may say the comedian is virtually everywhere. But a closer look reveals a distinct poetic behavior when Sa‘di consciously jests. Furthermore, certain poetic genres in his corpus are not that hospitable to the idea. The Monajaat (“conversations with the divine”), for example, do not provide a welcoming space to a mischief-maker. The emphasis on the smallness of the self, when faced with God’s magnanimity, requires a mode of quiet humbleness. This humbleness would be undermined by the unchecked boldness and daring personality often characterizing a comedian. Some varieties of ethical literature, akin to preaching, will not be open to fooling around either. They often draw their poetic energy from the sobriety promoted by the message and wish the rules they enforce to be taken seriously.1 While laughter and Monajaat may be relatively distant, laughter and love appear to mingle easily. The fact that human love’s primary recipient is another human being (although in close competition with the Divine) permits the use of a more lighthearted, even flippant, behavior. Indeed, it would be safe to say that, in Sa‘di’s works, one of the comedian’s responsibilities is to break the outer shell of proper and largely sublime love and relish untamed carnal passion with its full range of joys and sufferings. The mischief-maker’s language is informal and driven by chance. Through the lens of his intimate and casual conversations, we come to see that our poet has not just been observing the world from a distance. He has lived in it. Sharing that experience with Sa‘di, we too find ourselves capable of a fuller range of experiences. No wonder the poetic space he constructs has been described as exceptionally hospitable to erotic love.2 In this space, human beings can travel between the mystical and the carnal without dishonoring the divine ambiance or sacrificing the carnal pleasure. Poetically, Sa‘di bridges these moments with ease. At times, he gives prominence to the mischievous voice in a seemingly serious and somber setting when it is least expected. Frequently, the laughter falls into sharp relief as a result of contrast with its serious surroundings. At other times, laughter leads to more laughter or hits a moment of sobriety and subsides instantly. These moments of amusement are by no means devoid of ­seriousness. Neither

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168  |  lyri c s o f l if e are they identical with one another. What they tease—and at times subvert— changes from instance to instance. In what I identify, in the present chapter, as one of the most playful moments is his poetic career, Sa‘di reaches for a generic form that displays all the plasticity he needs for the maneuvers mentioned above. It is a genre that has an energizing repetition built into its tight formal structure. It can tolerate informality, even intentional compositional randomness or chaos, because its overall formal constitution mandates the return to a pivotal thought that ties the loose ends of its many currents together. We can meander and enjoy the carefree ambience certain that the gatekeeper, the refrain, will call us back to the central theme of the poem in time. This generic form is the tarji’band.3 A tarji’band is said to consist of ghazals separated from one another by a repeating refrain. Its very name—from the Arabic verb raja’a (“return”)— foregrounds this act of circling back to a focal point.4 It may not always be useful to think of the stanzas that are attached together with the refrains as ghazals because their generic habits change, to some extent, when they are a part of a tarji’band. Most notably, as we will see with Sa‘di’s example, in their new generic habitat the ghazals/stanzas show less concern for decorum and seriousness than their standalone counterparts. And frequently, an inner narrative line, albeit a loose one, keeps them attached to one another, which is why their return to the refrain feels natural. Still, they do display some of the prominent features of the ghazal, not least of which are their emotive force and subtlety of expression. It would be safe to say that Sa‘di’s tarji’band, translated and explored here, is among the best known of its kind in Persian literature.5 The significance of this long and celebrated poem for our discussion here is in its comprehensive character more than anything else. It provides us with a complete inventory, so to speak, of the voices of Sa‘di the comedian. It comprises twenty lyrical stanzas that always land on the highly conversational and memorable refrain: I will go about doing my own things Waiting patiently for whatever life brings

In this poem, Sa‘di makes use of a variety of poetic strategies to construct the voice of a simple, destitute and very playful lover who could at first appear to be rather generic. He is suffering from the common side effects of

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m y poor hea rt someti mes runs, s o me time s wh ir l s  | 169 the beloved’s neglect and is intent on voicing them. As a result, he appears to be expressing familiar themes that begin to, more or less, echo those uttered in the previous stanzas (if not the previous poets in the tradition). But soon a larger picture begins to emerge: a sense that through these familiar echoes, the poem is generating a set of ripples on the polished surface of the language. The result, as Julia Kristeva has aptly observed, is something of a chant, an incantation. In her discussion of repetition in amorous dialogues, Kristeva suggests that these repetitions reflect the intensity of the relationship and the infinity of the love that is echoed in each repeated instance. It would be a mistake, she argues, to understand the repeating patterns as a means of getting “the message across to the beloved.” This is not communication per se. Rather it is a kind of incantation, an invocation of the emotive power in the message.6 In the case of Sa‘di’s tarji’band, the repeating chant, “I will go about doing my own things/Waiting patiently for whatever life brings,” establishes, beyond doubt, the steadfastness of Sa‘di the lover. No matter how unresponsive the beloved and how cruel life may become, our poet will not deviate from the way of love. And yet, there is an important, although casually added, subtext. Contrary to the standard expectations of the lyric genres of the period, the refrain portrays a lover who displays a relatively detached if not defiant attitude. “Are you playing hard-to-catch?” is Sa‘di’s message to the beloved. “Fine, I will go about living my own life.” These chants form the central links relating the concentric emotive circles that are built and expanded in each stanza. At the same time, remarkably, each separate stanza pulsates with fine nuances of difference, variety, and even contrast with one another. The differences between stanzas matter particularly because of their fineness. These subtle variations allow them to carry out their poetic action in a delicate microcosmic environment in which the minute details of each verse matter. Let us now turn to the poem itself for specific details, as the enchanting voice of Sa‘di guides us from one stanza to the next. Let us also not forget to enjoy the charm of the incantation style, the force that supplies a good deal of the poetic motion propelling us forward without hesitation: Oh, tall cypress of my beloved’s figure Wow! How lovely you are, how fair!

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170  |  lyri c s o f l if e May every cypress tree on the edge of a stream Be a sacrifice to your beauty supreme 7

Sa‘di’s long “a” and “u” in the words qaamat (“the figure”) and dust (“the beloved”) have already given us the poetic visual on the tall cypress of the beloved’s figure. But the exclamation “vah, vah!,” something akin to “Wow!” in the beginning of the second hemistich, tells us that this seemingly conventional praise for the beloved’s charm is not headed in the standard pensive direction, concluding with the lover’s quiet suffering. And we are right because, next, Sa‘di proposes the mass sacrificial ritual of every planted cypress at the feet of the human figure he adores. This could be too dark a wish—if it were not for the fact that a vivid laughter is in the air. Our poet has started his jesting act defusing all seriousness. The jesting begins with a technique that will soon become a standard feature of this tarji’band: frequent reorientation of the poetic voice. Sa‘di is still on the topic of the beloved’s beauty, but no longer speaking to the beloved or begging at her doorstep. Indeed, he has now turned fully in our direction, addressing us, the readers. And to make it a real and sincere conversation, he shares intimate details about his cypressfigured beloved that we would not otherwise know: A figure so fine it cannot tolerate clothes Tearing them open like a bud blooming into a rose Standing on the rooftop where the moon will appear Who can tell if it is the moon or her? An armful of flowers! No, she is a full garden. And not just any but the Garden of Eden! Are those fragrant polo balls she hides under her dress? Or, is it the aroma of her breath, fresh as ambergris?

The evocation of the tactile experience of the beloved’s breasts and the aroma of her breath in the last line are harbingers of the lively sensuality that Sa‘di will continue to offer us if we cross the threshold to the poetic space to which we are warmly invited. And yet, the point to be foregrounded here is the shifting nature of the poetic voice. It is almost as if the poet makes us search for him everywhere in a game of hide-and-seek as he disappears frequently and shows up in a different place every time. Laughter is in the very fabric of

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m y poor hea rt someti mes runs, s o me time s wh ir l s  | 171 these movements. As we turn our gaze to the poet, he has already moved on. For example, in the next verses, the polo balls of the beloved’s breasts have already inspired another thought. They have now merged with our poet’s restless being, helping us visualize a small, insignificant lover running to avoid the harsh, unpredictable blows of the polo stick: Caught like a ball in the polo stick of her curls My poor heart sometimes runs, sometimes whirls Burning with love, it is as loyal as ever Dying with pain, it still prays for her

Then comes the time for another one of the recurring themes in the poem—one that is almost always voiced in an exaggerated and tongue-in-cheek manner, namely the poet’s self-blame. Yes, who would deny that emotional suffering is ultimately the lover’s own fault? While elsewhere Sa‘di may explore this topic seriously, as we shall see, here he does not intend to reflect genuinely on his own shortcomings. This is another poetic scheme, another ruse to make us sympathize with the mischief-maker. Self-blame is a strategy to transform us from a detached observer into a sympathizer. Sa‘di is taking another step in our direction. “Look at my state!” he says, “inflicting all this suffering on myself, and enjoying it too. But do I have a choice? Does anyone have a choice? If you wish to be a true lover, you cannot take yourself too seriously. You have to be a good sport, so to speak, and carry on with everyday life, with playing your role. And with a smile on your face too—even as you suffer. Or, what you have in your chest is not a genuine heart, despite what you may think.” The longing lover’s life-and-death struggle Is the result of his own looking for trouble. To be a slave to every beauty is what I do best This is a human heart, not a piece of brass in my chest People blame me, “What have you done?” “You have wasted your life on that ill-tempered one!” “You’re hard in the heart!” I respond. “And weak in emotion!” “Is this what you call loyalty? Is this what you call devotion?”    That I go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings?

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172  |  lyri c s o f l if e Of course not! Our hearts are not made of brass either. We would like to taste true love with all its trials and tribulations, particularly since Sa‘di does not seem to be suffering in the real sense of the term. So, why not join him and speak to the beloved of our heart and soul, telling him/her that like Sa‘di we have no other choice but to follow our heart. And so a fresh stanza begins, one that gives us that very opportunity, speaking to the beloved: When your beauty reigns, my heart-ravishing one! Promises are broken, loyalties are gone! The heart of the one who has been your lover Cannot ever seek the love of another

And before we know it, he has pulled us into another one of his comical acts. And of course we are caught by surprise because he has been making one of his most serious confessions and elegant pleas to the beloved: for the one in love with you no one else could ever exist. But suddenly we do not see him anymore. He is not there and for a good reason. He has transformed into a stubborn fly, chasing a piece of candy: No matter where you are, I am drawn near A helpless fly drawn to a lump of sugar

And lest we the readers (whose sympathy he seeks incessantly) blame him for this childish and annoying metamorphosis, another tongue-in-cheek confession follows: Love uprooted the tree of my rationality Longing took my patience from me

Of course! How did we not realize that? It is not Sa‘di’s fault at all. It is the spellbinding charm of the beloved that is to be blamed for his irrational behavior. We, and other people who are in their right minds, can see our poet’s shortcomings, but how can we expect him to see them? He is blinded by love for this unique being, this beloved par excellence, this presence truly different from any other. We and Sa‘di are now on the same side and he will help us see his perspective better through another playful technique: posing a set of totally rhetorical questions to the beloved. With the help of this interrogative mode, our poet keeps the conversation flowing, just as a child

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m y poor hea rt someti mes runs, s o me time s wh ir l s  | 173 holds a parent’s attention by asking very obvious questions. And yet, there is more to these questions. They provide an opportunity to poetically amplify the beloved’s charm and lighten up any possible seriousness in the ambience: Before you were born, did any mother ever Give birth to a child so delicate, so fair?

The hint of laughter in the background says: “No, please do not bother to answer; there is no need! I am just trying to educate the clueless bunch who do not seem to know anything about you!” Friends advise me [to leave], they do not understand Their words are like the wind, grief of separation: Mount Alvand! If anyone was ever satisfied with the beloved’s memory That person is certainly different from me!

In case the language turns too facetious and threatens the seriousness of the laughter, suffering is always kept in the broader background of the story. And yet, there is always a price for evoking suffering in a poem that takes much of its energy from a lighthearted handling of the drama of life. Sa‘di has a strategy for handling this! The rhetorical question that follows has the express purpose of lightening up the mood. It introduces such an exaggerated quantity of self-blame and mockery that it cannot but dispel the gloom. It is as if Sa‘di says, “Fine, I am suffering, but cheer up! If I can afford to laugh at my own misfortune, you cannot take the dark moods I create too seriously!” This harsh treatment, how long should I endure? This suffering I go through has no end to be sure I must say I was a bird that chased food and fell into a trap Where every greedy wolf coveting sheep has ended up

It may be that a bird caught in a snare is not such a funny sight, but one can certainly laugh at a greedy wolf in a trap. Upon a closer look, however, there is even more happening in these four lines. With complex poetic creativity, Persian or otherwise, it is generally rewarding to leave the larger picture from time to time and focus on the poetic happenings at the microcosmic level of each stanza. There is a marvelous opportunity for such a narrowing of the focus here. It reveals a clear and

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174  |  lyri c s o f l if e expanding poetic panorama of interconnected images in the more controlled environment of the stanza we are about to finish. While Sa‘di’s rhetorical questions have been at work, he has also been mindful of our natural response to subtle interconnection and symmetry. Yes, the birds, the wolves and the sheep in the last verse remind us that the greed displayed by our inner animals can turn each one of us into a zoo. But, equally important, they join forces to construct a thematic parallel to the earlier line that welcomed an annoying fly into this segment of the poem. The interconnectedness introduced through the presence of these creatures is clear and effective. At the same time, the animals’ presence opens up love’s sublime circle and interjects into it beings that are alive and yet driven by their instinctual needs. Are we that different as human beings? And now Sa‘di the ethics teacher gets his moment for genuine philosophical self-reflection. Will he subject the topic to another one of his feats of buffoonery? Will he make fun of our serious existential shortcomings? Maybe, maybe not! The impressive plasticity of the genre provides us with a range of possibilities. It gives us the opportunity to decide whether he is serious or joking. Perhaps we can even make our decision based on our own feelings at the moment of reading this particular stanza. On some days they may be funny and on others not quite so: I fell captive and that was the best that could happen Without hardship, humankind does not learn its lesson I deserve this and more, I’d be the first to admit May I learn my lesson from now on and just sit    Quietly and go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings.

But every poetic instinct in our being tells us that “going about doing his own business” will, in all likelihood, be the last thing that Sa‘di would do. Like the obvious questions he has asked, this announcement is not meant to inform but rather to provoke us. “What is he really about to do?” we are now encouraged to ask. Sure enough he dives right into the next stanza and emerges with renewed energy and a sense of entitlement that translates into an accusatory tone that is stronger than before:

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m y poor hea rt someti mes runs, s o me time s wh ir l s  | 175 These days no one acts cruelly in town anymore You do, and only you, that is for sure Your lovers are captives in your snare Your friends are behind walls of despair

But, by now, our role as readers of the poem has evolved. We are engaged, participating readers shaping our perceptions and posing our own questions. We are curious to know where he is going with this. Our heads have been turning with too many changes, too many moves, so to speak. After all he has spoken to us, acknowledged our companionship and even sought our approval for his ways of handling the problem of life. We have a right to know the answer to some basic questions. Is it the beloved’s fault or is it his? Should we not leave this blame game behind altogether and attend to some more substantive matters? As we enjoy shaping our participatory identity to the upbeat rhythm of the poem, something new—and somewhat ­unusual— begins to attract our attention to the language of the stanza that has just begun. It is not a major formal or thematic sea change. But, by now, we know that minute changes at the microcosmic level of the poem are equally important. They often start as tiny new waves that, in time, join one another and build currents powerful enough to encode fresh poetic messages. The irregularity, if you will, is this: the adjective used to describe the captive friends in the very last hemistich is not the regular Arabic mahbus (“captive”), which would have been the standard choice in Persian for describing a regular prisoner. Rather it is mohabbas, an especially fabricated adjective from the Arabic root habs (“captivity”), which would have to be translated into “very imprisoned” if that concept made any sense. But making conventional sense is not foremost on Sa‘di’s mind, certainly not in this particular tarji’band. Contrary to his general habit of following grammatical and prosodic rules meticulously, here Sa‘di is breaching a grammatical convention. Admittedly the breach is small and rather discrete, not a Rumi-like gushing forth of sounds, a breaking into repetitive and seemingly nonsensical sound patterns.8 Yet, there is little doubt that this adaption of the uncommon usage serves a specific poetic purpose. If nothing else, it has the so-called defamiliarization effect, one of the strategies of transforming familiar referential language into poetry.

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176  |  lyri c s o f l if e Following the introduction of the above, invented, adjective, our poet takes the process further by introducing more Arabic words and phrases into the simple and flowing Persian of the stanza. These are no longer sporadic words, but, moving deeper into the new linguistic territory, he switches over to the Arabic language completely in the next verse. The topic is a passionate comparison of the burning effects of the beloved’s fiery countenance to smoldering embers from which new fires could be made. Almost immediately, he introduces a cooling effect by suggesting that the beloved is the morning that brings the lover to life as s/he breathes in its fragrant air. Nonetheless, the beloved is the only resort. Whether it is to experience the fiery passion, or survive the heat, the lover has no choice but to go to the beloved. The beloved, on the other hand, has the luxury to choose. S/he may embrace the lover or simply turn away. It is not unusual for Persian poets of Sa‘di’s era to occasionally mix Arabic with Persian. There is even a traditionally sanctioned macaronic form known as the mulamma‘—of which Sa‘di has composed a few himself.9 But the long tarji’band we are reading here is clearly not a mulamma’. The occurrence of Arabic in it is limited and dispersed. Indeed, except for the current stanza and a couple of others, there is hardly any. Sa‘di has already made us pause in our tracks and wonder about the choice of these few lines in another language. Our attention has wandered away from the bigger storyline to the surface of the poem, the concreteness of the words. Is he encouraging us to hear the sounds, or is he trying to keep us on our toes, so to speak, by inserting the act of translation into our reading? Or, is he following the time-honored tradition that many mystics followed by switching to another language to underline the ineffability of the subject at hand.10 We are certainly not dealing with a deeply mystical poem here—if not with its complete opposite. And yet we are occupied with all of these thoughts. In the meantime, our poet has been playing yet another game of hide-and-seek with us. He has reverted back to Persian completely while we were trying to make sense of his venture into Arabic. More significantly, his return to Persian takes a highly conspicuous manner, using a simple and flowing language that foregrounds the ease and the elegance of every familiar Persian word uttered by the native-speaking reader. This is a deliberate maneuver between the distant and the foreign and its linguistic opposite. The content of the verses affirms the

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m y poor hea rt someti mes runs, s o me time s wh ir l s  | 177 underlying idea: use what is naturally beautiful and belongs to you as opposed to that which is a foreign and borrowed luxury: Your figure is as delicate as silk from faraway lands Why do you cover it in silk? I do not understand

But the larger picture is not forgotten either. After we have forged our individual answers to the question behind his sudden adoption of Arabic ­language, our poet offers his own personal explanation. He gives us the wisdom behind his switch to Arabic—and without saying it directly—of course. It is as follows: I am articulate in all the languages I know Trying to describe you, I sound like a dumb fellow!

We do not need to ask, “Which languages are you referring to?” for we are enjoying his mastery of the poetic idiom already and have just observed his use of Arabic in the past few verses of the poem. It is a simple and delightful game of show-and-tell. “I know how to use other languages; here, listen to the Arabic expressions that I have inserted into this Persian piece.” And of course, this claim too is expressed in the tongue-in-cheek manner that we have come to expect of him. His use of Arabic is exaggerated and playful and his reference to its excellence only one more way to indicate its insignificance relative to the tremendous wealth that the beloved has at his/her disposal: I would spread my life for you to walk on If you did not have finer things to stroll upon

Sa‘di concludes this stanza with a verse that demonstrates the flexibility of his poetic voice by reconciling, momentarily, his joking tenor and the somewhat more somber tone that the reader would expect in a didactic poem. Admonishing the broader readership, something he does not do often in the tarji’band, Sa‘di here reminds us that no matter how attractive we are, we need to learn the fine art of fidelity for physical charm is not forever. Likewise, in order to give thanks for the perfect health we enjoy, we must listen to the broken-hearted and the disempowered who have no voice to articulate their misfortunes. And lest we think this momentary lapse into ethical wisdom is going to change the joyful tenor of the poem, Sa‘di revives his comical act without missing a beat, armed with another mock threat. It is a

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178  |  lyri c s o f l if e puzzle of a phrase in which words bump into one another and fall on the floor laughing: From now on, do not do what you have done so far For if you do, I swear to God, that I will hence forth    Go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings

Now that the issue of language is settled and we know our poet is articulate “in all the languages he knows,” he bursts into a lively, and linguistically chaotic, stanza in which Arabic and Persian are mixed at the syntactic and word structure level, resulting in a hybrid—in many instances invented—language. The beloved’s “narrow, fine” (baarik) lips provide a rhyming opportunity with baarik (“may you be blessed”) from the Arabic barakah (“blessings”), as the sword of the beloved’s “glance” strikes to kill. In the penultimate verse, following the lover’s plea, “In short, there is no patience and serenity left,” Sa‘di creates hybrid constructions, such as Kam tazjoroni, in which kam can function as the interrogative and exclamatory Arabic particle, meaning “how much,” in which case the phrase would read, “How much will you torture me?” Alternatively, one can go with the playful Arabic/Persian combination and read kam in its Persian adverbial sense of “less, little, or few,” in which case the phrase would mean “Torture me less!” and keep the ambience lighter. Just in case some of us find the invented Arabic/Persian combination an unlikely method to be adopted by a law-abiding poet of Sa‘di’s caliber, he re-uses the technique very clearly in the last verse of the stanza. Here, he Arabicizes the Persian na-migozaari keh (“you do not allow me that …”) into na-migozaarik, converting the Persian relative pronoun Keh (“that”) into the Arabic possessive pronoun k (“your”), foregrounding the playful mixing and matching. Sa‘di here employs roughness and intentional grammatical imprecision to show his control of Arabic and Persian while at the same time mocking his own language skills. It works almost the way Lego pieces attached together create new and colorful constructions with the aid of our imagination. Being artistically refined and practically viable is not a part of the claim that such pieces make. Inventiveness and play is. Likewise, Sa‘di’s Persian-speaking reader recognizes the intended meaning and smiles at the

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m y poor hea rt someti mes runs, s o me time s wh ir l s  | 179 intentionality of the liberty taken with both languages. The stanza ends with another bout of exaggerated self-blame: Alas, my life has gone in complete futility And you, my heart, do not allow me    To go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings

It is about time for a more refined discussion of love. After all, this is Sa‘di we are listening to and, as far as he is concerned, falling in love (in all its manifestations) is the most serious of the human engagements on Earth. In the previous chapter, I endeavored to establish this claim with regard to Sa‘di’s expansive and—at times unconventional—perception of love. In that chapter we saw that in Sa‘di’s lyrics, the human yearning for nazar (“unrestrained gaze”) is the propelling force for partaking of the beauty that surrounds us all. This gaze is the gateway to falling in love, which in turn helps us to embrace, internalize and perpetuate the beauty that has led to love in the first place. In this scheme of things, being in love is not a passive state of feeling, it is an evolving and participatory act. And yet this does not mean that the lover is a totally free agent. Rather, s/he goes everywhere in search of this beauty, sending out the messenger of his/her gaze, and seeking the much desired calamity of love. If s/he fails, it is his/her fault. And if s/he succeeds, it is the beloved’s grace and generosity that has bestowed the lover’s good fortune upon him/her. Not taking the risk means total deprivation and going all out means exposure and vulnerability. Therefore, The gaze that falls on everything with no concern Gets the poor heart in trouble at every turn The one who is a gazelle in the lasso of her hair Puts his life on line, a dangerous affair

We get it. The lover has to be careful where his/her gaze falls beacause the lasso of the beloved’s hair pulls him/her like a helpless prey. After all, there is a powerful hand at work designing the larger scheme of things. And so: God protect us from the hand that shapes and refines! And from the beautiful forms that this hand designs!

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180  |  lyri c s o f l if e What should God protect us from? Is it all pre-designed? What is our part then? Well, the maze of love is itself a long and perplexing story. Discussing it at the abstract level could lead to endless ambiguity. Sa‘di is not planning to go there, certainly not here in this lighthearted and sensuous tarji’band. He needs a way out of the debate and free association provides him with that: a way out and a useful concrete example. The word naqsh (“design”) leads him to Farhaad the stonemason and the tragic legendary lover that Nezaami eternalized in Persian literature.11 Farhaad, who created exquisite designs on stone to entice his beloved Shirin, never succeeded in carving his own image on her heart, and that fact, no doubt, has something to do with the designer par excellence of bigger forms and shapes. It is not for no reason that: Wherever there is a tormented lover like Farhaad There is a Shirin appointed to make his life hard For no one can reach the fruit of gazing without trouble Before they sow the seeds of their own struggle

And yet, even more important than the struggle is the recognition of the devastating intensity of love and the passion of the lovers who give all they have to it. Having the privilege to be in the presence of such beings and to recognize and honor their selfless acts is no small fortune even if those who do not know better dismiss them: The cry of the lover burning in flames To inexperienced ears sounds like fun and games The one whose harvest has been burnt to the ground Cries and let him not be by any rules bound The longing journeyer does not mind thorns in his feet If you strike him with a sword, he will not retreat I have come to the door of the beloved who is known For not putting the lover’s wish before her own

The arrival at the doorsteps of the beloved signals the end of the philosophical debate concerning the fiery nature of love. Sa‘di, who is getting ready to return to his witty and carefree self, finds a playful transition in a subtle linguistic ambiguity. In the last verse of the stanza that we just read, he has described the beloved as someone who haajat-e kas na-migozaarad, a phrase

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m y poor hea rt someti mes runs, s o me time s wh ir l s  | 181 that we have understood in its most customary reading, namely a person who does not ignore anyone’s request. Our poet, however, surprises us by choosing to employ the expression in its less common usage, that is, “the one who does not grant anyone’s wish.” And so the rest of the conversation resumes its mocking tenor: People tell me, “Leave her! How long will you take abuse?” “I would like to,” I say, “but she does not let me choose!” “In short, it is not I who is in control of me” “For if she did set me free, you would all see”    That I will go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings

A noticeable pattern in our reading of the tarji’band has been moving deeper into each stanza, each phrase, looking for fine configurations that generate and sustain the poetic energy. While acknowledging the broader—and by now familiar—patterns, we have moved our search for the poetic event more and more to the microcosmic level of individual words and images. Again, as Kristeva observes, this is not because the poet is repeating himself to get his point across. Rather, now that the broader outlines of the exchange are established, he is giving us fresh echoes of these seemingly repetitive chantlike expressions that together create the rhythm of an incantation. As the poetic artistry works at the minute level, the larger repeating patterns reflect the intensity of the relationship and the infinity of the love that reverberates in each stanza. The next stanza embodies the phenomenon that I will call the duel mood: dark and bright at the same time. This subtly constructed duality is prominent in but not peculiar to this stanza. It is funny and tongue-in-cheek and, at the same time, deeply introspective. The conversation begins in the regular lighthearted manner with the poetic voice looking more and more inward, examining its own way of handling (or mishandling as the case may be) the puzzle of life and love. Then the mood begins to change from bright to dark and darker. It is as if our poet is running in a circle, questioning everything while pulling us along with him. The circle gets smaller, and smaller, until there is a sense of total entrapment:

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182  |  lyri c s o f l if e Seeking you is all I know how to do The deeper I look inside, there is none other than you You will not allow me to come any closer And I cannot see my way out of here I am a helpless bird dying in love’s tight noose With no wings to fly even if you let me loose

The darkness is palpable. What if the helplessness of the bird, the tightness of the noose, and the “seeing no way out,” together drain the energy out of the poem completely? An extraordinary measure, something of an almost magical nature, is needed to keep hope, and with it the poem, alive. That magic happens before our eyes in a very simple move. The beloved enters, and that is all s/he needs to do to free the lover from the prevailing darkness. For s/he is the only fairy capable of erasing all images from the lover’s mind: Fairies like you do not appear among human beings I do not believe anyone is capable of such things To love you I abandoned everyone else’s love All the minds’ images, I fully disposed of

Sa‘di is now speaking to us and the beloved in the same breath. How could luck turn its back on him so blatantly? Could we see his situation and still blame him? They say, “Seek, and you will surely find!” I have been seeking but luck has not been kind The destiny that has not been allotted to me No matter how hard I try, is not meant to be.

Destiny is resisting and the stanza is coming to an end. In the presence of the beloved, Sa‘di could have opened a window for daylight to pour in and for the mood to change. But, instead, he takes the drama of sinking deeper into the night and makes us all feel it: Sometimes I wish I was as blind as a bat When my beauty is not mine to gaze at My thought has searched the world over There is no place better than the patience corner

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m y poor hea rt someti mes runs, s o me time s wh ir l s  | 183 I cannot fight my luck, that’s all I can say I have looked everywhere and there is no other way    Than going about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings

We have sunk into the night with the bats and the stanza has ended. “This is not like Sa‘di,” is the thought that crosses our minds. “What is going on?” We won’t really know what is going on until the next stanza begins. And it begins as fresh and playful, as if there was never a dark night or a blind bat in the memory of the poem before us: Oh my heart! Did you not promise me a thousand times That you will not seek desires of the frivolous kind?

The pattern is familiar: the mocking tone, the overstated self-blame and the reproach. We are certainly moving into the daylight, or some place in which we can see Sa‘di delivering his overdramatized rebuke: Whose fault is it if you hit your own body? Against a sword and get all bruised and bloody? Another thing, love does not like deception and farce If you claim to be in love, you will pay the price Either you live with it and put up with the suffering Or you give it all up and abandon the whole thing!

The contrasting effect is intended. In no small measure, it is the blind bats of the previous stanza that make these lines funny and different. The lover that hurts himself childishly, the deception and the farce, even the need to put up with suffering, all seem entertaining in contrast to the previous dark mood. Once again, Sa‘di knows (on some level) that he is playing the black and white against each other: My silver-skinned beloved, my dark-haired one! You occupied me with worries and my dark hair is gone! The turning of the blue heavens beautiful and bright Have turned many a dark hair into white

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184  |  lyri c s o f l if e And in case the magnitude of the suffering of the lover is not appreciated, history is called upon to provide a hyperbolic backdrop to the actions of the victorious beloved: There is, at last, peace between the infidel and the believer Are you still waging war on the poor lover? Do not put me down anymore. Do not turn away from me I admit to being as small as your slave can be I am happy with the pain you give and the reason is simple You are the illness but also what makes the illness well You say, “Be patient!” but you know better than anyone The heart that contained my patience is forever gone! There is only one answer, endurance and surrender For otherwise I do not know how I can engender    The strength to go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings

Maintaining the humorous tone, Sa‘di has signaled his desire for the happy mood to hold and possibly become even more concrete. And what better way to do that than inviting the beloved to grace the stanza with her sensuous charm: She just passed by, and did not glance in my direction Her skirt brushing the ground, proud of her perfection Walking in front, her eyes intoxicated, looking half-sleepy And who is running behind, longing to see her, but me?

And, now, it is time for a gentle linguistic twist. Something that at first sounds like a threat: Oh, the Ka’beh of all the yearning lovers! What you do to me, if you also do to others

What will they do? So many folk will bring their lives—precious and sweet And just as I do, pour it all at your feet

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m y poor hea rt someti mes runs, s o me time s wh ir l s  | 185 Okay, he has fooled us, and we are neither surprised, nor unhappy. We are not the only ones who make mistakes anyway: I was thinking of complaining of you to the king People do this when they cannot do any other thing I said, I’ll tell him of your pitiless heart and feeble emotions Ask if this is your fault, or I misplaced my devotion Then I thought it was not the sign of a true lover To cry and complain when the pain gets hard to bear My head will be a simple sacrifice at your feet My hands will hold on to you and never admit defeat May the things I desire be unlawful for me to do If I ask God for anything but union with you!

And the closing verses of the stanza revive the centrality of the act of gazing: “Avoid her! Turn your gaze away!” people tell me But I do not know how to avoid my destiny I am sure you have never heard of a lover patient in separation So I may follow that model, learn my lesson    And go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings.

The next stanza amplifies the beloved’s beauty, taking it to a cosmic level. As the sun shares the fourth heaven with Jesus, the divine lover par excellence is invited to the stanza: Your countenance is the world’s glowing sun One and all are pointing in your direction Your scent brings to life the soul of the dead As the breath of Jesus does to those departed “Bravo!” I say to your gracious and beloved soul May “God’s name” protect your blessed form!

With blessings from the Divine, Sa‘di now praises the earthly to his heart’s content:

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186  |  lyri c s o f l if e To me you are as precious as my own right eye My cypress! With those beautiful arched eyebrows With your fairy face, and delicate palms and wrists You steal hearts and no one can resist It is not just me captive in your love’s snare A whole crowd of lovers has gathered there Today you are the Shirin, the beloved the world knows Forget the one before you and what history shows In the rarity of your beauty there is no doubt To live without you is what I am unconvinced about You broke your promise to me but remember That will never happen on my part, ever! Do not allow the ailing to die in separation All the while waiting for your life-giving potion You can go on without me, as you previously went But do not assume that for one fleeting moment    That I’ll go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings

And now, Sa‘di is addressing us once more, describing the beloved’s splendor and amplifying her charm. We should be getting bored by now. But our poet’s reconstruction of her exquisite beauty, at the microcosmic poetic level, keeps the verses fresh and engaging: With that flower’s exquisite beauty Do not speak of flowers before me Mesmerized with that full moon’s dreamy hue I became the bent new moon everyone pointed to They blamed me everywhere, day and night They went on and on, no end was in sight I said do not throw stones to harm my reputation That piece of fine china, I have personally broken

With that display of courage to sacrifice his reputation for love, Sa‘di turns to the beloved once more:

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m y poor hea rt someti mes runs, s o me time s wh ir l s  | 187 Just look in my direction at least for once Some are fortunate, others not, but what is a glance? I let the fire of love burn me with yearning Apparently, I am still raw after all the burning They say the heart broken by love, only patience can mend I am still waiting and who knows what will happen in the end Sometimes I beg to be the dust scattered on your street Hoping I may, someday, feel the blessing of your feet How long can I be calm while away from you? Set someone on fire, and watch what they do Like a wild bird I agitate in the trap you have set The more I twist and turn, the worse it will get No, I am not happy with separation, it is true But since I can never dream of union with you    I’ll go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings

I have been gradually retrieving my commentary out of the picture to allow Sa‘di’s voice to flow uninterrupted. While I hope that critical conversation continues to serve as the backdrop to the ebbs and flows of the poem, I’d like us to now step back and foreground Sa‘di’s poetic presence. In the chanting style of the tarji’band, what Kristeva likens to an incantation, the narrative ebbs and flows, the rippling and reverberation effects, and the periodic returns to the refrain, all depend on continuity for their effect. As we return to the poem’s broader colorful themes and images, Sa‘di is taking the description of the beloved’s beauty to a level as fine as her every strand of hair: Every single curl in your hair is a far-reaching lasso Your eyes have a million baffling tricks to show Do not come out to stroll in everyone’s full view Are you heedless of what the evil eye can do? You are a mirror, innocent and clear Beware of the sigh of the lover! Beware! I ask you to cover that face, I admit

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188  |  lyri c s o f l if e Or, if you make fire, burn some rue on it! To him who chooses your love and loses his mind All advice is to be ignored, all cures declined Waiting so long has left me tired and bitter You are sweetness itself! Give me a taste of your sugar! You do not resemble her figure, you silly cypress tree! You are not as beautiful, no matter how tall you may be I cry with hope and anticipation, but my foes Laugh at my tears, that is how life goes I only wish she would walk in through my door So they will be blinded with envy and laugh no more Oh God, would it be that with kindness and compassion She looks—only for once—in my direction? Life has, for a while, been going to total waste From now on, at least for a while, I have promised    To go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings Alas, the warmth of life is leaving my body! I’ve lost all control, things are going badly Has anyone ever seen a health so feeble and poor? Is this me? I can no longer be sure I am an injured butterfly that rises to fall Burn and finish me once and for all If you show kindness, I’ll take it as fitting And if you are cruel, that too is the right thing Either way, there is no image on my mind but yours On my tongue, no name will be found but yours And if you make my life bitter with separation The sweetness of your memory is my consolation I will always protect your secrets well I will never praise you in front of people! The pain you inflict, I cannot take to any judge No way to escape it or to hold a grudge Wise people run away from the sword

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m y poor hea rt someti mes runs, s o me time s wh ir l s  | 189 I put my head down to die at your threshold Since I have no hope to ever reach you There is no better way for me than to    Go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings Is that a rose petal or your gentle sweet face? Or, a fresh fountain does growing grass embrace There are things that will never ever be Your figure in the arms of the likes of me! I have not seen the moon wearing a hat on its head Nor a cypress tree putting on an outfit In coming and going, I cannot describe the grace S/he simply comes and gone is all my sense A pistachio opened its mouth to laughter Your mouth said, “Silence! Don’t you dare!” My mind was toying with the thought of repentance Love said, “Do not be a hypocrite! You know your place!” I am submerged so deeply in your thought That I do not remember if I am here or not! My friends advise me to settle down and try To stay calm, be patient, and not cry “You raw creatures, do you not see me on fire?” How can you blame me boiling like a potful of water?” I will try the best that I can and be patient And when I cannot try, I’ll surrender to my fate    Going about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings I finally lost patience and revealed to all My secret love for you and the story of my fall That I have said goodbye to comfort and rest for ever Since the day that your love and I found each other I stay awake with the grief of separation till daylight Ask me about the pace of this never-ending night

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190  |  lyri c s o f l if e Tear drops fall from my eyes, and I feel blessed For each is a diamond I have patiently pierced If I die very soon, it will be no wonder The true wonder is that I am still here Fate grabbed me by the neck and threw me into the fray Although I tried hard to keep myself away Yesterday, I found her neighborhood and for a moment Swept the dust under her feet wherever she went “Am I lowlier than this dust on the ground?” I said Let me throw myself under her precious feet instead [And tell her] since you left me, that very day My patience said farewell and went her way She left saying in her proud coquettish manner “What will you do without me?” I replied to her    I’ll just go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings Pay me a visit sometime! This separation Has left my wounded heart in agitation Speak to me! Words, even if bitter Out of your mouth are sweet as sugar Throw a glance at the one who died for you! If you happened someday to pass through You smile brightly like a candle and people Are butterflies being burnt by that candle Who am I in this crowd to think that I should Hope to pitch my tent in your neighborhood? I did not choose this love, only my eyes Looked at you and that was my demise So many have cried and tears collected into seas Shallow waters, barely reaching your knees! You intoxicated with wine, sleeping soundly I, sleeplessness in the bed you spread for me! Mine is surely a strange situation, Not able to be with you nor in separation

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m y poor hea rt someti mes runs, s o me time s wh ir l s  | 191    Able to go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings Alas, when providence turned totally against me I lost my beloved, my heart, and my serenity I left, and I had no choice in the matter But her leaving was entirely up to her I had given her my life every night and every day Like life, she abandoned me and went her way Without her companionship, I wish this love would cease I wish her sorrow would leave me in peace Be compassionate to the broken-hearted one, Whose poise and patience are both gone Forgive the wounded lover who surely will Run like prey you shot but did not kill Only the one who turns away from the seashore Will not be threatened by the deep sea anymore Alas, I am a resident of love’s neighborhood And the condition for getting in is staying for good With love, helplessness is the only help you get When she returns? I’ll use my usual threat    To go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings Any heart that has not surrendered to love There is no suffering it’ll be worthy of Only the lover’s bold brazen eyes Shed tears of blood when he cries A shortsighted guy the other day said to me You’re not mad, why are you acting crazy? I said you think I am not burning, I have lied Because you do not have this fire inside But you should understand—if you have a brain Where there is longing, there will be pain For the lover, this is the final destiny

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192  |  lyri c s o f l if e There is no freedom, wherever he may be What is the solution but patience when misfortune pours? When you have one beloved, and she is not yours Whether she chooses to kill, or spare me totally None under her command is as feeble as me I’ll tell you how I describe my tears of despair Like quicksilver! Shaking and running everywhere But in this world faithfulness has never thrived Or, it disappeared the moment I arrived To see her I ransomed the only life I am given I thought that’ll make her loyal but it didn’t    So I’ll go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings Those who do not give their lives for you will fail To glance at your countenance without a veil Birds that do not shed their wings as the cost For union, fly the wrong way and get lost To face your castle in a game of chess someday Their soul is the pawn they have to give away Your sorrow does not brighten the life But for the candle that died in strife I will not abandon you. I am that kind of a person Who gives his life and still carries his burden The person who dies without revealing his pain Without talking about his suffering in vain I said to her one day ,“Do you know that nobody Will put his life in danger for you like me?” “Well,” she said,“I do not really think so!” “For I never captured a prey weaker than you.” I’ll sit there and stare at her all day long If you think she returns one glance, you are wrong! I still have hope that she may someday Turn to look and, if she doesn’t, that too is okay

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m y poor hea rt someti mes runs, s o me time s wh ir l s  | 193    For I’ll go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings The cloak of beauty fits perfectly on your figure While a hundred cloaks are torn by your distraught lovers Every time the sun falls on earth from the heavens It is as if it prostrates itself in your presence I will turn into dust and disappear but behold On my face the dust of your own threshold Any chance I could give up your love? None whatsoever! To choose over you, there is no other! First, return the heart you stole in daylight Then I’ll stop following you day and night After you, I will put my hope in none Neither will I be afraid of anyone Pain given by you is a medication pure Poison will not kill, it’ll be a cure Your love is the fire that destroys the world over Separation from you a desert dangerous and bare Oh, Sa‘di, enough of describing His perfection It does not fit into human perception A dust particle may fly in the air But it cannot reach the celestial sphere My yearning has no strength to move, to travel No tricks will work anymore, I have lost the battle    Unless I go about doing my own things    Waiting patiently for whatever life brings

Sealing the stanza with his name, Sa‘di ends the tarji’band by taking it back all the way to heavens—a dust particle though he is. Is it God he has been speaking about all along? Or, is it his earthly beloved? Does it really matter? No doubt, to some it would. But Sa‘di has shown us the many ways in which one can fall in love. Just as he has shown so many ways, from pure despair to total mischief for “going about doing his own things/waiting patiently for whatever life brings.”

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194  |  lyri c s o f l if e Notes   1. Didactic story telling could be an exception, as we have seen in Chapter 3 entitled “Sa‘di on Care of the Self: Ethical Games of Power in Practice of Freedom,” but we cannot explore the topic any further here.  2. An example is John D. Yohannan’s comment on the difficulty that English translators have faced in handling Sa‘di’s “frank treatment of erotic love, both heterosexual and homosexual” in The Poet Sa‘di, 77.  3. For sources and examples, see Sirus Shamisaa, Anvaa’-e adabi (Tehran: Enteshaaraat-e Ferdowsi, 1997 [1376]), 297; Browne, A Literary History of Persia, Vol. 2, 39–41. Interestingly, Zabih Allaah Safaa does not mention the tarji’band in his rather lengthy account of Sa‘di; see Tarikh-e adabiyaat dar Iraan, Vol. 3, 584–622.   4. Hosein Razmju, Anvaa’-e adabi va aasaar-e aan dar zabaan-e Faarsi (Mashhad: Aastaan-e Quds-e Razavi, 1995 [1374]), 38.  5. Shamisaa, Anvaa’-e adabi, 300.  6. Kristeva, Tales of Love, 93.   7. For the full tarji’band, see Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di, 651–62.   8. See my discussion of sound patterns in my study of Rumi’s poetry, Reading Mystical Lyric, 129.   9. Steingass defines the term as a coating of gold over silver, and a poem written part in Arabic and part in Persian. (See: A Comprehensive Persian–English Dictionary.) For a literary study, see: Ali Asghar Ghahramaani Moqbel, “Mulamma’ (Macaronic) Verse: The Link between Persian and Arabic Poetry,” Studies in Arabic Language and Literature, 2/6 2011, 77–100. 10. Nargis Virani, “I am the Nightingale of the Merciful”: A Book of Translation of Jalāluddīn Rūmī’s Multilingual Poems (Oakland: University of California Press, forthcoming) and Nargis Virani, Keeping God’s Secrets: Multilinguality and Mystical Discourse in Jalāluddīn Rūmī’s Lyrical Poems (forthcoming).  11. Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, 210–13.

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7 Epilogue: Leaving the Garden Already? Here Are a Few Things I Hope You Take Along

T

he problem with exploring something as delightful as Sa‘di’s lively garden is that you do not wish to leave the place. If you are writing a monograph that must see the light of day in your own lifetime, this could be a problem. The good news is that with a book acting as a portal to the garden, visitors will be invited in perpetually—that is, if they find the visits enticing enough to return. I certainly hope this will be the case with Lyrics of Life: Sa‘di on Love, Cosmopolitanism and Care of the Self—and I would like to offer a few keepsakes for you to take along—together with anything else that you may select personally. First and foremost, the more I wrote on Sa‘di’s poetry the more I realized that this book was only partially about his work. He had been the bright star that had pulled our gaze to the heavens. But, ultimately, it was the heavens we explored all along. The luxurious low-hanging fruit of his lyrics lured us to the tree of the Persian lyrical tradition. We explored this absolutely familiar edifice and made new discoveries. Indeed, for those of us who are Persian speakers, the tree had been rooted in our life experiences so deeply that we often failed to see it for what it really was. When we had seen it, in our hubris, we had refused to see the tree in its entirety: flowers, thorns, green shoots and dead branches. Other things had remained hidden: the complexity of the non-native shoots that had grafted themselves onto the tree over the centuries and had made it so much more robust. In the same manner, we had often neglected to look at what works in this amazing body of poetry—and ask why it works. Why did so many people, over the centuries, run to the shade of this tree to rest, live a more wholesome life, know more, or see better? 195

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196  |  lyri c s o f l if e In the Prelude to the book, I examined my personal relationship to Sa‘di’s poetry. I opened the door to the house of my childhood and took you along to meet my mother even as we passed by. While this is fine in a memoir, serious literary critical writing will frequently refrain from doing so—and with a good reason. It has to abide by a narrow definition of objectivity. More personal could mean less distance from your subject, which could, in turn, mean less objectivity. Throughout this work, I have tried to counter this superficial equation. Whether a work is academically robust has little to do with how personally/emotionally involved the author is; it has everything to do with realizing that what you see is a product of exactly where you stand, how well you know the landscape spread before you and how inclusive a vantage point you occupy. And so, I have searched, consciously, for a language that has room for the personal touch, wonder and delight. After all, why should such amazing human capacities not be employed in our serious academic endeavors in a field that is at the heart of the humanistic inquiry: understanding literary creativity. But my inclusion of the personal has other reasons. All global phenomena are ultimately local and all universal matters are at an important level personal. If we are to make a lasting impact, we must be brave enough to keep the personal—the human—in the picture. Matters of historical proportion and global consequence need to be observed close at hand, if possible smelled, touched and tasted. Why always stand on the shore when it is possible to dive in from time to time? I hope that we have dived in often, and that in light of our personal encounters with the complexity of Sa‘di’s work, and by extension the Persian poetic tradition, our findings become accessible, personal and all the more meaningful to each reader. In a way, that determines the longevity of these findings. When I first stumbled upon “the conceptual Silk Road of the imagination” in my thoughts as a metaphor for the Persian poetic tradition, I was excited. It opened doors, and generated possibility with regard to understanding the poetry of Sa‘di as well as many other master poets of the classical era. Their words had traveled so far and wide and connected so many constellations of cultures that it was truly mind-boggling. Soon I decided that, like all conceptual models, the Silk Road has its limits and we should not settle for anything short of a superhighway. But then, a superhighway dragged along

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e pilog ue: leavi ng the g a rde n a l r e a d y ?  | 197 notions of advanced technology as well as images of physical connectivity that led to mass transportation of tangible goods. Economic growth was part and parcel of that kind of exchange. Such roads also empowered teachers, pilgrims, merchants and soldiers to bring along goods and ideas—some desired and some not so! Could that be said about poetry? Certainly not in an exactly analogous way. But if you traveled in the pre-modern Persian-speaking regions of the world, in all likelihood, Sa‘di’s words had reached there before you. If you knew a few of his poems, which the locals revered, you would not be quite a stranger anymore. If you could bring them a few new ones that they did not already know, you could even have the beginning of what it took to be considered cultured and learned and, by definition, more trustworthy. Upon proving your credentials you could even be offered a teaching position. Not to mention the fact that if you had impressive verses of your own, you could be the exotic learned/cultured traveler that the local governor would wish to keep in his court. My point here is not to establish that in pre-modern Persian-speaking regions of the world no talented poet remained unappreciated. Neither do I wish to provide facts and figures. My purpose is, rather, to open the horizons of possibility for further thought and exploration. Similarly, with regard to Sa‘di’s travels, my goal has not been to establish our poet as an exceptional globe-trotter capable of embracing any and all. Such a super human being in all likelihood does not exist. More to the point is that Sa‘di was nurtured by a tradition expansive and robust enough to make room for a variety of ways to view the world and a wide range of methods to facilitate perception and meaning production. Equally significantly, Persian poetry had developed the poetic tools for articulation of complex ideas, creative or fact-based alike. It, therefore, exposed the hearts and minds of the local inhabitants of many Persian-speaking polities, in which it was read, to the large and varied arrays of thoughts and ideas that surrounded them. Equally important, the adherence to values propagated by the Persian ethical poetry that spread in the land indicated that an ideal human being is a person with true devotion to a set of ideals and principles. This, obviously, does not suggest that all individuals lived fully by those ideals. Neither are these poems provided as hard historical data. Poetry cannot be used as the sole window opened into a society to gather information on social conduct

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198  |  lyri c s o f l if e or to carry out cultural analysis. History, anthropology and other social sciences are all needed to complete the picture with statistics, facts, figures, and ethnographical and archeological data. There are few of us who do not know how hard and arduous the process of historicizing individual instances is. However, literature can open new windows. It can point to something that has remained invisible because we have not been looking for it. It can make new conceptualization possible. That is no small gift. Indeed, it is a privilege to have access to Sa‘di’s ethical principles through his poetry and prose. His insights and strategies for “care of the self,” based on his practical understanding of the games of power in the practice of freedom, are an edifice onto themselves. I initially reached out to Michel Foucault in my explorations of Sa‘di’s ethics because Foucault’s understanding of the self as a practice rather than a treasure to be unearthed made sense to me. Little did I know that I would find a wide range of overlapping ideas and practices between the two thinkers. Exploring those was particularly rewarding. That was one instance in which I allowed the elegant and humorous verses of Sa‘di to guide my writing to the low-hanging fruit, and this suggested that the tree should not be ignored. At the same time, Sa‘di’s ethical poetry did reveal interesting facts about social beliefs and practices. Foremost among them the understanding that, like Foucault and the society of his time, Sa‘di, and possibly others who thought like him, conceptualized freedom as a practice and an ethical one at that. Living in a large and diverse society, in which he traveled extensively, taught Sa‘di that educating the readership to function and practically “care for the self” requires a pedagogy that transcended the carrots-and-sticks model. As a result, Sa‘di displayed an impressive awareness of the need for flexibility in ethical rules. If the public was to be empowered to recognize and harness the currents of freedom flowing through seemingly rigid social structures, it had to be given the autonomy to think and make choices. Moreover, with regard to ethical insights, I found Sa‘di aware of the seminal nature of our distinct performative characteristic, namely speaking in the world. We are speaking beings and our interaction with the world around us is intensely hermeneutic. By pointing to roads, inroads, even cracks in the wall that may remove some of the hurdles in the way of our speaking, Sa‘di underlined the significance of this hermeneutic act. Time and again, he dem-

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e pilog ue: leavi ng the g a rde n a l r e a d y ?  | 199 onstrated that speaking is not only reportive and evaluative but constitutive of who we are—and who we can inspire ourselves and others to be. It is for all of these reasons that his ethical teachings, as we have clearly seen, are not dry and joyless. By contrast, they are open to desire, laughter, suspense and surprise if/when such human affective aptitudes become necessary teaching tools. One of the most effective poetic tools that Sa‘di has at his disposal is the elegance and beauty of his words. His language is as polished and well-crafted as it is flowing and spontaneous. The combination of the two has earned him the reputation for writing the impossible with the ease that is the reason for its impossibility. To put it metaphorically, he walks the tightrope of the gradually evolved conventions of a time-honored tradition, highly conscious of its stylistic elegance, with the ease of a casual stroll in a garden. And as all good poets will be careful not to, he wastes none of the beauty and elegance of his craft on hyperbole, undignified panegyrics, misplaced self-praise, or the like. It is not surprising that the ease with which Sa‘di speaks sets a near impossible goal for the translator as well. But fortunately for us all, if there is one great lure in the act of translation, it is in its near-impossibility. The higher the summit, the more exciting the thought of climbing it and the temptation, “If only I get somewhere close this time!” In short, while the summit is high, I hope the translations that I provided in this book demonstrate something of the stunningly simple elegance of his poetry. For, besides the joy that this rare elegance brings, it empowers his language to become a very effective pedagogical tool. When I started my research on Sa‘di’s ghazals for the current book, I did not anticipate what I may now define as “the thematic scarcity surprise.” Neither did I plan from the start to write two independent chapters on his lyrics. When the search for core plots/themes yielded fewer results than I expected, the burning question for me became how to explain the concurrent familiarity and freshness of these lyrics. I did, of course, understand that master poets stand on existing and familiar structures that in fact provide them with a set of existing conventions to uphold, stretch or subvert as the case may be. The boundaries are there to sometimes be obeyed and sometimes pushed. Nonetheless, freshness is usually associated with new ideas.

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200  |  lyri c s o f l if e How could this poet (and by extension some other major Persian poets of the classical era) generate such a distinct sense of inventiveness and novelty working with familiar—if not overused—materials? I knew that much happens at the microcosmic level in the poems—in the fine alchemical interactions of the details that are too subtle to be detected by the naked eye, so to speak. The trick, however, was to find a new way to look at these fine details. Reading on the topic, I ran into Murray Krieger’s observation concerning our human way of articulating complex and restless concepts such as “change.” Krieger’s discussion of the topic was an eye-opener. He suggested that when speaking of dynamic phenomena such as “change,” the limitations of our essentializing language reifies the concept without us intending, or even realizing, it. As a result, we conceptualize change, for example, which in truth consists of different configurations of “shifting fields of difference,” as a thing—after all we do refer to change with the pronoun “it,” which is normally used to signify an object, a thing. That observation inspired an ongoing set of thoughts. Why think of seemingly repeated themes as a dull and mechanical recurrence of identical “things”? Why not try to understand these patterns as “shifting fields of similarities”? Sa‘di’s frequent use of trees and gardens came in handy once more. Thousands of near-identical leaves on a tree never became in repetitive. Neither did the forever blooming and expanding gardens, not to mention mornings that never greeted the same sun—particularly if Sa‘di was the architect of the preceding night. That Sa‘di was the poet of gardens and meadows had paid off. I could say, a way had come to me to articulate an intricate phenomenon that I had known but not had the language to speak about. It was a rewarding experience. There was another breakthrough not unrelated to the one I just described. It happened with the idea of the garden moving inside. I had been reading on descriptions of landscapes as a way to foreshadow the poetic mood. I kept thinking that this may be partially the case but there is more to the transmutations that Sa‘di’s gardens seem to go through. I finally conceptualized the interplay of the numerous gardens in his poetry as an act of connecting the inner and outer landscapes on his part. Perhaps, in certain instances, one could even conceptualize collisions of the outer and inner landscapes. The violence inherent in the collision could be a productive one. It suggested a

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e pilog ue: leavi ng the g a rde n a l r e a d y ?  | 201 not-always-smooth coming together of the inner and outer geographies of human experience. And clashes can release energy. Sparks usually result in less smooth encounters—in the physical world as well as within poetic formations. This was the transition to the second chapter on the lyrics. The garden had moved inside, and the lover had to be an active in-taker of all the beauty that became available to him or her. A major moment of conceptualization occurred with the agency that was required to rescue the lover from passivity. That came with introducing the act of gazing into the critical structure and giving it two distinct roles. The act of “gazing” is the lover’s most proactive way to take in the geography of love and allow it to perform on him/her its most subtle and unfathomable of actions. I called this love’s disontological presence. Looking from this vantage point, love does not beautify the garden. It is the garden. Indeed love is everything and that is because it can, and must, reduce the lover to nothing. I compared this action of love to the shaking that makes the tree of human existence let go of its dead leaves and branches. From another angle, love is the collision, the shock, which liberates the lover from all that pleases or frightens him or her. Love, the concept that we so often view as an indescribable presence, in fact, prepares its recipients for an absence. It is a de-cluttering of the abode of the self, a way of learning to live with truly empty hands. Love, this domain of collision and light—pain and pleasure—turns even more complicated when Sa‘di’s holistic vision of love is taken into account. After all, Sa‘di is not one to mince his words or shun concrete reality in favor of philosophical speculation. His poetry opts for a clear and unabashed experience of life, one that includes admiration and adoption of homoerotic imagery. To this I dedicated a section that I tried to keep as comprehensive as seemed reasonable in the general scope of the book. In writing it I found Julia Kristeva’s insights in her classic Tales of Love (1987) most inspiring. Her approach to the ethics of love, her perception of the alchemy that transforms the lover and makes his nature incorruptible, and the conceptualization of the lover’s soul as a “pure gaze,” were all transformative thoughts. She helped me to step back and see the human behavior in light of the alchemical reactions that take place because of love’s presence, and in the context of Sa‘di’s writings. In a way, I could understand

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202  |  lyri c s o f l if e the puzzling acceptance towards Sa‘di’s homoerotic imagery in people that I knew to be not at ease with non-heteronormative love. To them, love was the elixir that purified the nonconventional notions and practices of love to them was a given. The garden that Sa‘di had opened to them all was pure or purified because of love’s presence. In a way, this chapter could have provided the natural ending to the book by bridging the inner and the outer geographies of emotion. Moreover, the chapter portrays Sa‘di, the great architect of love, as feeling justified to build his edifice with building blocks that ought to be in serious conflict with one another. At least from a standard perspective, he has placed the most sacred next to the most mundane, even sinful. And yet, the edifice is standing. It lives on untroubled—even refreshed and renewed as readers with new minds approach it to make new sense of its artistic intricacies and surprising nooks and crannies. But the book felt incomplete without a chapter guided by Sa‘di’s voice. Impossible as it may seem for any author to achieve this freedom, I wanted to be free of myself and allow Sa‘di to take over. “I’ll have to choose the poem,” I thought from time to time. “There goes giving Sa‘di the reins.” And yet I decided to go ahead with the experiment as best as I could. I picked the famous tarji‘band that I had loved forever. What I loved about it was Sa‘di’s unchecked playfulness that bordered on clowning, his down to earth almost streetwise language. There was little philosophizing here, few Qur’anic allusions, little appeal to lofty prophetic Hadith. The poem was the simple love story that repeated itself into an incantation, a Zekr. It was the plight of the lover who oscillated between begging the beloved to stay and abandoning her forever to “go about doing his own business.” Again, what was in this playful back and forth, was in the artful circling around what was supposed to be a pivotal line but changed from begging to sulking periodically. Translating the tarji’band was among the most pleasurable aspects of writing the book. In this poem, Sa‘di’s language is simple, funny, and totally and amazingly neat. And it is as flowing and elegant as ever. I tried to translate it into rhymed verse, a risky strategy that could lead to making a fool of oneself. But, in this case, it felt okay, since Sa‘di seemed to be doing an excellent job of keeping himself associated with that group anyway.

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e pilog ue: leavi ng the g a rde n a l r e a d y ?  | 203 What I hope I have achieved in this chapter is a kind of criticism that tries earnestly to give the center stage to the poem it is trying to read. This may seem unlikely as the author is the one who chooses at every turn. Allowing the subject of criticism to be in the driver’s seat, so to speak, is a farfetched—if exciting—thought. Funnily enough, now that the chapter, and with it the book, are done, I am very aware that the one who will have the dominant voice from this point on will be the reader. * * * * * * Now this book on Sa‘di is done, at least for the time being, I can’t help but dream of what Foucault once dreamt about: “a kind of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; it would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it. It would multiply not judgments but signs of existence; it would summon them; drag them from their sleep. Perhaps it would invent them sometimes—all the better. All the better.”1 I hope this book has achieved something of the above. And I hope it will be approached like a garden with doors that are perpetually open. After all, real Sufis keep dancing even when the musicians have left. For as Sa‘di once observed, “Love has a beginning but no end.” Note 1. Foucault, “The Masked Philosopher,” 323.

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Index

Bayaani, Shirin, 8 Bistun, ‘Ali ibn Ahmad, 10 Book of Kings, 15–16, 98 Britain, 147 Browne, Edward, 14, 21 Bustaan (The Orchard), 10–11, 22, 23, 45, 70, 146 1st chapter, 70–1 2nd chapter, 72–3 4th chapter, 73–4 5th chapter, 68 anecdotes, 10 behavioral health and social justice, 70–1 chronology, 66 composition, 10–11 dedication, 9 ethics, 82 father and lost son, 72–3 humility, 73 rules of conduct, 87, 89 sabab-e nazm-e Ketaab, 46 Sa‘dinaameh, 10 Somnath murder mystery, 23–6, 31 story sharing, 46 sweetness, 47 travelling, attraction of, 68 Buyid era, 8

Afghanistan, 42 Akhlaat (Armenia), 62–3 Aksaray, 65 Aleppo, 62, 65 Alexandria, 65 Allen, Woody, 28–9 Anatolia, 42, 58, 59 Ankiyaanu, Amir ode of praise written for, 95–105 Appiah, Kwame, 45, 46, 70 cosmopolitanism, 45, 57, 61 inner journey, 57 language, 69 scholar, 57 story sharing emphasis, 45–6 traveling, allure of, 57 ‘Arabi, Ibn, 59 Armenia, 62–3 ascetics, conduct of, 93 Aswan (Eygpt), 62 Ataabaks of Fars (Salghurid), 8, 9 Mozaffar al-Din Abu Shojaa’ Sa‘d ibn Zangi, 9 Mozaffar al-Din Zangi, 9 ‘Attaar of Nishabur, 12, 28, 69 authority, subversion, 88–9 Azerbaijan, 55, 62 Baghdad, 10, 55, 65, 88 Nezaamiyeh School, 65, 89 Bahaa’ al-Din Moltaani, 57–8 Balkh, 42, 48, 65 Balkhi see Rumi Barks, Coleman, 18 Basra (Iraq), 63, 65

Cairo, 62 ‘caravan of fine garments’, 54–5 care of the self, 79, 80, 104, 120, 198; see also ethics, games of power Carroll, Lewis, 29 Chaghaaniyaan, the, 54

211

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212  |  lyri c s o f l if e China, 51, 52 Chinese classical poetry, 120–1 Chu-chin Sun, Cecile, 115, 120, 154 Collins, Billy, 150 Cordoba, 59 cosmopolitanism, 42–8 Appiah, 45, 57, 61 concept, 45, 61, 64 ghazal by Rumi, 44 misconceptions, 51–3 nostalgia, 51 searching, 43 Silk Road, 51–3 travels, 53–74 criticism conventions of classical Persian poetry, 15–21 Sa‘di, of, 14–15, 19–26 Ctesiphon, 56 cypress, 34, 98, 120, 121, 152, 155, 158, 169–70, 186, 188, 189 Dabashi, Hamid, 7, 10–11, 31 Damascus, 59, 62, 65, 68 Dashti, ‘Ali, 19–20, 21 dawn prayer, 81–2 Delhi, 57 discourse building, 81, 96–7 Divaan-e Shams, 16, 125 Dowlatshaah Samarqandi, 151 al-Dowleh, Azod, 8 dust, 2, 49, 54, 56, 99, 187, 190, 193 easy impossible (sahl-e momtane’), 28 ‘Eraaqi (of Hamadaan), Fakhr al-Din homoerotic love, 148 influences, 59 Lama’aat, 59 manners, 28 poet traveller, 57–60, 63 ethics, 21 care of the self, 79, 198 ethical poetry, 6–7, 197–9 games of power, 32–3, 82–4, 198 practice of freedom, 79–80 Sa‘di’s shortcomings, 21–6, 27 Farghaaneh, 44, 48, 49, 50 Farghaani, Sayf al-Din, 49, 50 Farhaad and Shirin, 146, 180

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Farrokhi of Sistaan poet traveller, 54–5 Fars province, 8–9, 96, 97 Faulkner, William, 124 fear and power, 89–91, 94 Ferdowsi, Abu al-Quasem, 15–16 nationalist manifesto, 16 Shaahnaameh, 15–16, 98 First Iranians e-book, 49 five pillars of Islam, 81 Foucault, Michel, 32, 43 criticism, 80, 81, 203 ethics, 79, 80, 82, 83, 198 free the self, 91 games of power, 82, 83, 86 governmentality, 97 practice of freedom, 79, 80 practice of the self, 92 writing, act of, 96 Xenophon, 104 games of power drunken king and the homeless, 84–7 ethics and, 32–3, 82–4, 198; see also ethics examples, 84–7 spending habits, 85–6 timing, 86–7 vizier, role of, 86–7 garden as image, 118–22, 195, 200 butterfly, 188, 190 cypress, 34, 98, 120, 121, 152, 155, 158, 169–70, 186, 188, 189 cultivated self, 119–20 dimensions, 154–9 gazing, 159–62 holistic vision, 144–8 inner and outer space, 120, 136–8, 155, 200–1 love in action, 138–42 lover’s role, 142–4 lyrical ambience, 154–9 nightingale, 43, 55, 112, 120, 124, 128, 157, 158, 159, 161 renewal, 139 rose, 8, 111, 119, 120, 137, 145, 155, 189 spring, 136–8 tree, 156, 195 gazing, 110 art of gazing, 159–62, 201 divine mirror, 160

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i ndex | 213 love, 131, 132 rose bush, at, 119 unrestrained gaze, 179–80 unveiled face, at, 129–32 Ghazaali, Ahmad, 59 ghazals development, 13, 111–12 ‘Eraaqi, 58 generally, 13, 111 Haafez, 16–18, 47–8 Rumi, 43–4 ghazals of Sa‘di G.1, 4–5 G.2, 4 G.3, 121, 124 G.14, 126 G.15, 152 G.18, 6 G.20, 152, 159 G.21, 156 G.22, 157 G.24, 120 G.34, 153 G.51, 152, 153, 156 G.53, 143 G.61, 123 G.62, 145 G.64, 123, 158 G.65, 140 G.78, 123 G.79, 118 G.89, 142 G.91, 154 G.95, 157 G.99, 127 G.102, 159 G.115, 132 G.120, 117, 140 G.144, 157 G.146, 120 G.152, 160 G.165, 155 G.194, 128 G.198, 139 G.200, 139 G.209, 67 G.212, 158 G.214, 152 G.221, 155 G.226, 137–8, 139 G.229, 158 G.247, 161

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G.250, 114 G.251, 130 G.261, 160 G.275, 121 G.298, 155 G.302, 130 G.309, 130 G.356, 68 G.371, 67 G.374, 141 G.379, 124 G.384, 123, 162 G.393, 67 G.404, 3 G.405, 117 G.420, 130 G.437, 156 G.439, 119, 124, 159 G.476, 108 G.483, 157 G.501, 157 G.503, 130 G.505, 157 G.506, 129 G.517, 117 G.519, 128, 129 G.528, 160 G.546, 159 G.554, 118, 158, 160 G.568, 67 G.599, 129 G.625, 153 G.635, 67, 129, 130 G.637, 130 GM.13, 126, 153 artistry of, 13 chronology, 66–7 garden, as, 108; see also garden as image gazing at an unveiled face, 129–32 gender neutral, 145 generally, 10, 13, 32–3, 199 homoerotic themes, 144–8 laughter, 30 repetition, 33, 112–14 Tayyebaat, 13 themes, 110–12, 199 word-play, 67–8 Ghaznavid era, 8, 54 God, 4, 6, 7, 185, 193 Golestaan (The Rose Garden), 10, 11, 22, 45, 70 1st chapter, 84–7, 88–9, 90, 93

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214  |  lyri c s o f l if e Golestaan (The Rose Garden) (cont.) 2nd chapter, 81–2, 93 4th chapter, 104 5th chapter, 144 7th chapter, 88 ascetics, conduct of, 93 astronomer, 104 chronology, 66 composition, 11 drunken king and the homeless, 84–7 ethics, 82 false identity, 68 fearful slave, 94 homoeroticism, 144–5, 146 narrating voice, 85, 94 rules of conduct, 87–9 sirat-i paadshaahaan, 84 spending habits of kings, 84–6 subversion of authority, 88–9 tombstone as metaphor, 88 wasting light metaphor, 86 Green Movement, 50 Haafez of Shiraz, 16, 17–18, 47, 48 Hajjaaj Ibn Yusof, 88–9, 93 Hamadaan, 58 Hanley, Will, 51, 52, 64, 65 Heer and Ranja, 147 Homaam of Tabriz, 67, 151 homoerotic themes, 144–51, 201–2 Hulagu-Khan, 12, 95 humor, 6, 29–30, 89–94; see also laughter Hunsberger, 61 India, 147, 148 inner and outer space, 120, 136–8, 155, 200–1 inner journey, 57 Iran Arab-Islamic takeover (7th century), 16 disapproval of Sa‘di, 14, 15 election disputes 2009, 49 influential poets, 15–21 pre-Islamic self-image, 16 Tabriz, 62 transition to modernity, 15–21 Iraq, 63, 88 Isfahan, 62, 65, 68 Islamic Revolution 1979, 11, 20 al-Jawzi, Jamaal al-Din Abu al-Faraj, 65 Jerusalem, 62, 63, 65

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Joveyni, ‘Ataa Malek, 65 Joveyni, Shams al-Din Mohammad, 43 kaarvaan-e holleh, 54 Kabodiyon (Tajikstan), 60, 61 kaleidoscope, 32, 68, 117, 121, 122, 154 Karimi-Hakkak, Ahmad, 15 Kashgar, 48, 144 Kashmir, 147 Katouzian, Homa, 9, 15 Kawin, Bruce, 112, 118, 129 Khaanqaah, 50, 59 Khaaqaani of Shirvaan poet traveller, 55–6, 60, 63 The Portals at Madaa’en, 56 Tohfat al-’Eraaqayn, 55, 66 Khaarazmshaahs dynasty, 9 Khanqaah of Bahaa’ al-Din Zakarriyaa Moltaani, 57–8 khodavandaan-e molk, 98 Khorasan, 2, 9, 55, 59, 62, 63 Khorasani Sufism, 59 Khosrow, Naaser, 12, 66 poet traveller, 60–3 Safarnaameh, the, 62 Khozaa’i, Muhtasham, 57 Kierkegaard, Søren, 28–9 Kolliyaat-e Sa‘di K.43, 90 K.45, 93 K.48, 84, 85, 86 K.47, 89, 94 K.65, 68 K.74, 82 K.78, 93 K.125, 104 K.139–40, 144 K.163, 88 K.205, 46 K.215, 71 K.272, 72 K.313, 74 K.323, 68 K.350, 89 K.369, 113 K.701–57, 95 K.720, 43 K.724, 98 K.755, 6 Kolliyaat-e Shams (Rumi), 125 Konya (Turkey), 58, 65 Krieger, Murray, 116, 117, 127, 200

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i ndex | 215 Kristeva, Julia, 110, 127, 136, 138, 139, 140, 147, 154, 169, 181, 187, 201 Kugle, Scott, 146–8 Kushyaar, 73–4 language skills, 4, 176–9, 199 laughter, 28–30, 81, 82 freedom, 104 poetic device, 28–30 Sa‘di’s tarji’band see tarji’band significance, 28–9 suppressed, use of, 89–94 undercurrent, 167 see also humor Leila and Majnun, 147 love, 110, 121 action, in, 138–42 fountain of life, 143 gazing, 131, 132, 154, 159–62 homoerotic, 144–51 intensity, 180 lyrics, 13, 54 nature of love, 151–4 thirst, 156–7 transforming, 147 lover’s role, 142–3 Mahmud and Ayaaz, 146–7 Manuchehri of Daamghaan, 48 Marv, 61, 65 masnavi, 7 Masnavi, the, 16 Massé, Henri, 14 Mecca, 55, 56, 62, 64, 65 Medina, 65 Meisami, Julie Scott, 96 Moltaan, 57, 58 Mongol period, 8, 9, 13 morning and night, 126–9, 200 moshaa’ereh, 3 Mowlavi, Mowlaanaa Jalaal al-Din see Rumi Mozaffari School, 9 narrating voice, 85, 88, 91, 94 Nassar, Issam, 63 nazar, 179 Nezaami Ganjavi, Elyaas b. Yusef, 146, 180 Nezaamiyeh School of Baghdad, 65, 89 night and morning, 126–9, 200 nightingale, 43, 55, 112, 120, 124, 128, 157, 158, 159, 161 Nishabur, 62

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odes of praise see qasidehs Orchard, The see Bustaan (The Orchard) Pakistan, 58, 147 panegyrics, 11–13 Persian poetry ethical poetry, 197–9; see also ethics conventions, frustrations with generic, 15–21 influential poets, 15–21 preservation, 96 repetition in, 114–15 taghazzol, 13; see also love Persian sugar, 47 poetic voice, 5–6 elasticity, 91–2, 177 nature and scope, 48–51 suppressed laughter, 89–94 poetry exchange, 3 post-traumatic stress disorder, 29 power balance, 102 fear and, 89–91 freedom, 83–4, 86, 95–105 limits, 100 manipulation, 104 subversion, 84–5 those in possession of, 98–102 power games see games of power practice of freedom, 79–80; see also games of power prayer, dawn, 81–2 Prophet Khezr, 143 Qaabusnaameh, 149 qasidehs composition, 11 generic form, 12 qasidehs (Sa‘di), 5, 7, 10, 12–13 Amir Ankiyaanu, written for, 95–105 composition, 11–12 ethical debates, 82 importance, 11–13 love poetry, 13 meaning, 11, 12 panegyrics, 12 taghazzol, 13 world as a stage, 97 Qatraan the poet, 62 qet’eh, 7 Qobadiyaan (now Kabodiyon, Tajikstan), 60, 61

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216  |  lyri c s o f l if e quince, 145 Qunavi, Sadr al-Din, 58–9 repetition building time, 125–6 kaleidoscope, 122 literary tool, 113–14, 121, 122 movement, 125–6 poetry, in, 114–15 positive aspect, 113 routine, 112–13 shifting field of similarities, 115–18 surprise, fictitious, 122–5 without remembering, 122–5 Rezakhani, Khodadad, 51–2 robaa’i, 7 rhyming prose, 7 rose, 8, 111, 119, 120, 137, 145, 155; see also Golestaan (The Rose Garden) Rose Garden, The see Golestaan (The Rose Garden) rules of conduct, 87–9 Rum, 42 Rumi, Jalaal al-Din, 16, 23, 42, 48, 175 allegory, 44 cosmopolitanism, 43–4 Divaan-e Shams, 16, 125 drunken midnight wanderer ghazal, 43–4 Masnavi, 16 reception of works, 18–19 whirling, 72 Rypka, Jan, 10, 12, 14, 21, 95 Sa‘di of Shiraz autobiographical allusions, 22–3 care of the self, 79, 80, 104, 120, 198; see also ethics, games of power composition, 7–8 comedian see tarji’band conference of 1984, 20 content and structure, 31–5 criticism, 14, 15, 19–21 early years, 9–10 ethical shortcomings, 21–6, 27; see also ethics ghazals see ghazals goals and methods, 26–30 God, 4, 6, 7, 185, 193 gratitude, 7 humility, 6–7 humor, 6, 29–30, 89–94 joker, as, 33–4

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language, 4, 176–9, 199 laughter, 4, 28, 29, 82, 91, 92 life and works, 9–13 methods, goals and, 26–30 morality, 21–6 mother, 3 panegyrics, 11–13, 19, 21, 27, 82, 95–105 perpetual journey, 72 poet traveller, 53, 64–74 political correctness, 23 qasidehs, 11–13, 82, 95–105 reception of work, 13–26 responsibility, sense of, 70–1 sahl-e momtane’, 28 searching as personal principle, 43 self-image, 5–8 structure and content, 31–5 tarji’band see tarji’band temperament, 4 travel, 2, 10, 53, 64–6, 138–9, 197 word-play, 67–8, 72 works and reception, 9–26 Sa‘d ibn Zangi, Abu Shojaa’, 9 Sa‘d ibn Zangi, Abu Bakr, 9, 25 Sa‘dinaameh, 10 Safaa, Zabih Allaah, 14, 10, 60 Safarnaameh, the, 62 sahl-e momtane’ (the easy impossible), 28 Salghurids, 8, 12 Saljuqids of Khorasan, 8, 9 Samarqand, 48 Sanaa’i of Ghaznah, 12, 69 School of Sa‘di, 15 ‘Sevener’ Shi’ism, 61 Shaahnaameh (The Book of Kings), 15–16, 98 Shamakhi, 55 Shamlu, Ahmad, 20–1, 148 She’ri keh zendegist, 20 shifting field of similarities, 115–18 Shiraz, city of, 1, 8–9, 20, 48, 96, 154 Silk Road, the, 42, 44, 47, 61 conceptual, 1, 43, 52, 64, 69, 196–7 modern invention, as, 51–2 Persian poetic discourse, 47–8 sirat-i paadshaahaan, 84 Socrates, 45 Soelle, Dorothee, 26–7 al-Sohravardi, Shehaab al-Din Abu Hafs ‘Omar, 65 Sohravardiyeh order, 57

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i ndex | 217 Somnath, India, 23, 24, 57 Somnath murder mystery, 23–6, 27, 31 Southgate, Minoo, 146, 149 Sufism, 17, 57–8, 59, 65, 72 sugar as metaphor, 47, 48 Sultan Mahmud, 54 superhighway metaphor, 49–50, 196–7 suppressed laughter, 89–94 Tabriz, 62 taghazzol, 13 Tajikistan, 60 tarji’band, 10, 34 beloved’s figure, 169–70 bright to dark, 181–3 captive friends, 175 continuity of style, 187–93 defamiliarization effect, 175–6 incantation, 168, 169, 202 irrational behavior, 172 language skills, 176–9, 202 meaning, 168 microcosmic level of stanza, 173–5 playfulness, 202 poetic strategies, 168, 177 repeating refrain, 168, 169, 202 self-blame, 171 suffering, 173 Tayyebaat, 13 Thackston, Wheeler, 62 time, notion of, 49 tip of a hair, 117, 118, 124, 132 tombstone as metaphor, 88 Toqaat, 59

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travel ‘Eraaqi of Hamadaan, 57–60 exposure to cultures, 71–4 Farrokhi of Sistaan, 54–5 Khaaqaani of Shirvaan, 55–6 Mecca pilgrimages, 55, 56, 62 Persian poets, 53–64, 196, 197 records, 60–3 Sa‘di, 1, 64–6, 197 tree as metaphor see cypress Turkey, 42, 59 Turkistan, 44 United Nations building, 69 unveiled face, 129–32 Uzbekistan, 50 Valley of Gehenna, 63 Vasinpur, Naader, 12 vizier, role of, 86–7, 90 wasting light metaphor, 86 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 29 writing activity of, 96 meditation, as, 92 Xenophon, 104 Zamaaneh, 20 Zargar, Cyrus Ali, 148, 159–60 Zoroastrians, 17, 23 Zubaida, Sami, 60, 61, 65 Zulaali, 147

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