Traces of Sufism in British Romanticism 9781463245535

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Eastern Mysticism
Romanticism and the Sufi Path of Love
Romanticism and the Sufi Path of Knowledge
Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

Traces of Sufism in British Romanticism

Gorgias Islamic Studies

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Gorgias Islamic Studies spans a wide range of subject areas, seeking to understand Islam as a complete cultural and religious unity. This series draws together political, socio-cultural, textual, and historical approaches from across disciplines. Containing monographs, edited collections of essays, and primary source texts in translation, this series seeks to present a comprehensive, critical, and constructive picture of this centuries- and continent-spanning religion.

Traces of Sufism in British Romanticism

Naji B. Oueijan

gp 2023

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2023 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. ‫ܘ‬

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2023

ISBN 978-1-4632-4552-8

ISSN 2637-3998

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication Record is available from the Library of Congress. Printed in the United States of America

In loving memory of my brother Nicolas Oueijan

TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents ......................................................................... v Foreword .................................................................................... vii Acknowledgments ....................................................................... xi Introduction ................................................................................. 1 The Romantics’ Search for Novelty ...................................... 4 British Orientalists and the Romantics ................................. 8 Eastern Mysticism ...................................................................... 35 Eastern Christian Mysticism ............................................... 43 Islamic Mysticism: Sufism .................................................. 67 The Affinity of Romanticism with Sufism .......................... 93 Romanticism and the Sufi Path of Love ................................... 117 The Path of Love .............................................................. 123 Self-Annihilation .............................................................. 175

Romanticism and the Sufi Path of Knowledge ......................... 193 The Divine Message and Nature ....................................... 194 Imagination and Visions ................................................... 206 Intelligences ..................................................................... 225

Conclusion ................................................................................ 259 References ................................................................................ 267 Index......................................................................................... 285 General Index ................................................................... 285 Index of Arabic, Islamic and Sufi Terms .......................... 294

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FOREWORD “No part of this [Sufi] legacy is more relevant to our time than Rumi’s frequent assertions that all religions and revelations are only the rays of a single Sun of Reality, that all prophets have only delivered—albeit in different tongues— the same principles of eternal goodness and eternal truth, the ultimate goal of humanity, according to Rumi, is union with God through love.” 1

Naji B. Oueijan, a distinguished scholar of Literary Orientalism, a fascinating subfield of English literary studies, has delved deep, for the first time, into the nexus between the universal Sufi path of love and knowledge and a host of the British Romantic poets—William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. While the Romantics’ “Oriental” content and context has received some critical attention since 1990s, including Oueijan’s own substantial writings on Lord Byron’s Orientalism in particular, their affinity with the Islamic mystical tradition had gone so far almost unnoticed. The present study stands out on many counts: a) It goes a long way in approaching the Romantic poetry from a fresh angle, underscoring as it does the profundity and nuanced depth of their poetic corpus. b) It unravels how the life ennobling universal values, common to both Christian and IsAmin Banani. Poetry and Mysticism in Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 3.

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lamic mysticism, permeate their compositions. c) Notwithstanding his impeccable credentials as a Christian Arab scholar of English studies, Oueijan has articulated in this work a perceptive exposition of Islamic Sufi tradition, as is evident from his brilliant elucidation of the riches of the Sufistic oeuvre of such outstanding Sufi masters as Al-Ghazali, Imru Al-Qays, Attar, Hafez, Ibn Arabi, Jami, Junaid, Rumi, Saadi, Idries Shah, and Shamsi Tabrizi. The breadth and rootage of his critique is breathtakingly impressive. More ingeniously, he has accomplished the enviable task of identifying the congruence, confluence, convergence, parallelism, and thematic commonalities between the Sufi masters and the Romantics. In every instance which is indicative of the common ground between the two, he has provided ample textual references and scholarly footnotes which supplement and complement his thesis. Oueijan’s Introduction familiarizes readers with essential points about the Romantic poets’ keen interest in exoticism and their quest motif, which were facilitated and accentuated by the scholarly writings and travelogues on the Orient/East by such distinguished writers as D’Herbelot, George Sale, Titus Burckhardt, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sir William Jones, and Lady Mary Montagu. Moreover, the English translations of the Arabic and Persian literary works, which had increased considerably in both quantity and quality by early nineteenth century, introduced to the Romantics a new literary and socio–cultural perspective, of which Sufism was an ineluctable part. All this, in Oueijan’s words, added a new “flavor to the pivotal aesthetics of the Romantic theory of art.” Apart from the Islamic Sufi traditions, the Romantics, as illustrated by Oueijan, assimilated also the Eastern Christian mystical ethos, represented by a host of Fathers and saints. Another laudable pioneering strand of this work consists in demonstrating. “the kinship between Christian Mysticism and Sufism, particularly in the Arab world and Muslim Spain.” Equally discerning, though largely unacknowledged point, pressed home in this study is the Muslim Sufis’ inclination towards Pantheism.

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Nonetheless, the Romantics’ affinity with Sufism, the main thesis of this study, has been elucidated with specific illustrations from major romantic works. So doing, Oueijan has brought into sharper light the engagement of both the Romantics and Sufi thinkers and poets with “the supreme power of the human mind, the imagination … their search for gnostic and mystical experiences, revealing Beauty and Truth beyond corporal existence.” Admirably enough, this study is permeated with his commitment to fostering cross-cultural understanding, universal brotherhood and peaceful coexistence among all communities. This has rendered the present work all the more valuable and noble, apart from its features of ingenuity and solid scholarship. Let us hope Oueijan’s brilliant work may prompt readers to profess and practice the Sufi master, Jami’s supplication: “O God, deliver us from preoccupation with worldly vanities, and show us the nature of things ‘as they really are.’ Remove from our eyes the veil of ignorance, and … show not to us non-existence as existent, nor cast the veil of non-existence over the beauty of existence.” Abdur Raheem Kidwai, Ph.D. (Leicester UK) Professor of English, Aligarh Muslim University (India) Visiting Professor/Fellow, School of English University of Leicester (UK) April 15, 2021

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to all those who supported me with their valuable advice and commentaries and who expressed encouragement and love, especially academicians, librarians, friends and family members. In this respect, I am also grateful to Soha El Samad, for carefully reading my work. I genuinely value Michael J. Franklin’s proficient scholarly guidance. My sincere appreciation goes to Kevin Edward King-Hudduck’s and Savo Karam’s continuing friendship and scholarly support. To Abdur Raheem Kidwai, I am ever indebted for his writing of the Foreword and for his erudite advice. I am also indebted to the librarians and administrators at Notre Dame University, Lebanon (NDU), and especially to Miss Maria Sfeir, my research assistant at the Department of English for her meticulous and professional support. To Samir S. Baaklini I am ever grateful for his prodigious support throughout my pursuit of an academic career. Last but not least, I wholeheartedly thank all my family, especially my loving brother, Nicholas, who had always offered me sagacious advice and constant encouragement.

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INTRODUCTION “To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.” 1

Ever since I read Bernard Blackstone’s Byron: A Survey (1975), in which he briefly but tactfully refers to Lord Byron’s interest in Sufism, I endeavored to study traces of Sufi features not only in Lord Byron’s poetry, but also in the works of other British Romantic poets. The kinship of the British Romantic movement with Sufism is not a coincidence but a result of a genuine interest of the Romantic poets in what was then known by western writers known as the “Orient.” Lisa Lowe traces the etymology of the term “Orient” and notes that it originates from “the Latin oriens, meaning ‘rising,’ ‘rising sun,’ or ‘east,’ the term came to mean largely all that is not the Occident, or occidens—‘quarter of the setting sun’—from the infinitive occidere, ‘to fall down,’ ‘to set’.” 2 During and before the nineteenth-century, the Orient was a geographic region occupying about two thirds of the Mediterranean regions stretching from Albania, Greece, Turkey, Arabia (Including the counties on the northern African coast), and Persian to the Far East. The “Orient” of concern to this work excludes the Far Eastern regions. The Oriental regions of the Near Lord Byron. Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works, edited by Jerome J. McGann, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980–1993), Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 4, ll. 1601–1602. [Henceforth cited as BCPW] 2 Lisa Lowe. Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalism (London: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 32. 1

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East were considered by the occidentals the birthplaces and scenes of major religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and ancient civilizations shaped by the Egyptian Pharaohs (early during the fourth millennium B.C.), and later by the Assyrians, Persians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, and the Ottomans. Thus “Oriental” in this work denotes cultures of the then known “Orient, the East, the Levant, or the Near East,” 3 especially that the Arabian, Persian, and Indian literatures had already been available for the Romantic writers in several translations and works by French and British Orientalists such as Barthelemy D’Herbelot (1625–1995), 4 Jean Antoine Galland (1646–1715), 5 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762), 6 and mainly Sir William Jones (1746–1794), 7 the father of British Sidney Nettleton Fisher. The Middle East : A History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), p. v. 4 Barthelamy D’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque Orientale, 2 vols. (Maestricht, 1776). [Henceforth cited as Bibliothèque Orientale] 5 Jean Antoine Galland’s Les Mille et un Nuits appeared in twelve small volumes between 1704 and 1717. Those volumes were immediately translated to English as The Arabian Nights Entertainment with more than thirty editions in both English and French during the 18th century. The instant popularity of all translations stirred the imagination of the Western writers, artists, and their public with the glamor of the East. For a detailed discussion of the Arabian Nights Entertainment impact on the literary circles in England, see Muhsin Jassim Ali’s Scheherazade in England: A Study of Nineteenth-Century English Criticism of the Arabian Nights (Boulder: Lynne Rienmer Publishers, 1981). 6 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The Turkish Embassy Letters, introduced by Anita Desai and edited by Malcolm Jack (London: Virago Press Ltd., 1994). 7 Cannon, Garland. The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones: Sir William Jones, the Father of Modern Linguistics (New York Cambridge University Press, 1990); De Boer. T. J. History of Philosophy in Islam, translated by Edward R. Jones. New York: Dover Publications, 1967. Lord Teignmouth. Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Correspondence of Sir William 3

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Orientalism, besides several others. Moreover, an investigation of the letters and conversations of the British Romantics reveals their knowledge and ownership of several Orientalists works, which include translated Arabic and Persian poetry. This work draws attention to the British Romantics’ familiarity with Persian and Arabian religious orders and literature, mainly with Sufism and Sufi poets, and highlights analogous conceptions of the natural world as reflected in Sufi and Romantic poetry. It is basically a study relating the works of the Romantics to those of the Sufi poets and thinkers in order to emphasize their kinship. This work claims that Romantic poets and thinkers such as William Blake (1757–1827) , William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), and John Keats (1795–1821) were not only interested in Sufism as an Oriental variation of Christian mysticism and because their underlying aesthetics were comparable to those of the Sufis’, but also because most of them, especially Lord Byron, borrowed Sufi literary themes and imagery. The Sufi poets discussed in this volume are therefore representative masters and teachers whose literary works and teachings have had a lasting impact ever since the rise of Islam until the Middle Ages when “Oriental” literature was at its peak. More relevant to this work is the fact that most British Romantic poets had been introduced to Sufism and its masters through the prominent translations of eighteenth and nineteenth century British Orientalists. 8 Together with the basic Sufi principles, I Jones. 2nd Edition. (London: 1806); and Lord Teignmouth The Works of Sir William Jones, with the Life of the Author. Vol. III. (London: Printed for John Stockdale, Piccadilly and John Walker, Paternoster-Row, 1807). William Jones. Poems Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the Asiatick Languages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1772). 8 The most influential British Orientalists included George Sale (1697– 1736, who translated the Quran as The Koran: Or, Alcoran of Moham-

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discuss the paths of Love, Self-annihilation, Knowledge, and Illumination, all of which are embedded in Romantic aesthetics. The engagement of both the Sufi and Romantic thinkers and poets with the supreme power of the human mind, the imagination, was suggestive of their search for gnostic and mystical experiences, revealing Beauty and Truth beyond corporal existence. Such revered and elevated experiences were the utmost ambitions of the Sufi and Romantic poets who recognized poetry as a prominent vehicle to map those sparks of mental and spiritual illumination energized by Divine Love. To the Sufi and Romantic thinkers, the Divine Absolute, Allah or God, created and linked human beings and all elements of Nature and the Universe to a chain holding the “Unity of Being,” which is only perceived by those who are equipped with imaginative sensibilities capable of perceiving the dynamic spirit, which is the essence of matter. It is equitable then to discuss the Romantics’ search for strangeness and novelty and the magnitude of the British Orientalists’ translations in shaping and stimulating the Romantics’ sublime pursuits.

THE ROMANTICS’ SEARCH FOR NOVELTY

From the beginning, Romantic poets disclosed their observations of themselves and the world in works embracing elements of their national culture merged with fragments of different or med; With Explanatory Notes; Various Readings from Savary’s Version of the Koran, and a Preliminary Discourse on the Religious and Political Condition of the Arabs Before the Day of Mohammed (London: William Tegg and Co., 1817); Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; Sir William Jones; Francis Gladwin, who translated Musleh Al-Deen Sheik Saadi. The Gulistan, Or Rose Garden (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1865); and literary figures such as Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), who published Gulliver’s Travels in 1726; Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), who published Rasselas in 1759; and William Beckford (1760–1844), who published Vathek in 1786.

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even unfamiliar ones. Since then, a diversity of literary identities characterized their writings as dynamic, simple, free from uniformity and susceptible to novelty. In effect, each Romantic poet sought his literary identity in realms lying outside the restrictive rules of literary orthodoxy. While some went beyond the borders of their country in search for the knowledge and cultural wealth of other countries, William Wordsworth visited France; Samuel Coleridge, Malta; Lord Byron, the Continent and the Orient, particularly Turkey and Albania and Shelley, mainly Italy, where he died in 1822. Their infinite search for Truth about man, the universe, and divinity defied the boundaries of time and place and surpassed the ostensible and traditional in their search for originality. Thus, they went beyond the temporal to pursue the eternal, and beyond the national to seek elevated perceptions of Self and Other. In their endeavors to perceive the cryptic and furtive, they transcended worldly limitations through mental meditations. In realms obscure yet sensed and experienced, in the unraveled beauties and mysteries of nature, in the deep recesses of the mind and the soul, in the living experience of real existence, and in the all-consuming power of the Universe and its Creator, they endeavored to locate the truth of human identity. Love, knowledge, and illumination, amongst other lexicons, became keywords in Romantic thought. God, Humanity, Nature, and the Universe became the main targets of Romantic contemplation. As such the mystical experience, whereby Self and Other become one via sparks of mental and spiritual illuminations, rendered the Romantic theory of Art original not only because it introduced unfamiliar concepts and ideals, but also because it initiated distinctive approaches of perceiving, assimilating and exposing them. The Romantics had a common sentiment that a new cultural system should be established following the restrictive practices of traditional dialectic especially after the devastating events of the Napoleonic wars and the dehumanizing effects of the Industrial Revolution.

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Like the German and French Romantics, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, John Keats, and especially William Blake, made explicit calls for the creation of new literary systems, otherwise, they thought, they would be confined by current, established doctrines. The Romantics sensed the need for a deeper understanding and appreciation of other cultures and were right in conjecturing that the spiritual and literary visions of humanity, divinity, and the world of other cultures might provide them with new dimensions of thought that were fundamental for breaking outmoded intellectual trends. To arrive at such an experience, they studied the adjacent “Oriental” beliefs and values, after the rise of Islam and its expansion to some western countries, especially Spain, Portugal, and Malta. Most British Romantic poets went as far as venturing outside their national boundaries to participate and mingle with the Other rather than depend on secondary sources such as history and travel books for inspiration. While some Western scholars and literary figures crossed the channel and visited European countries, a few went to the Orient, which ever since the medieval times and until the end of the nineteenth century included Albania, Greece, Armenia, Turkey and Arab countries lying on the northern coast of Africa and Eastern Mediterranean and extending as far East as Persia and India. Their mobility was geared towards authenticating or negating what had been studied in their national libraries about other cultures. Among the cultures that most captured the attention of a number of British and European Romantic scholars and literary figures were the “Oriental”, especially those of Turkey, Arabia, Persia, and India. The ancient Greek culture was well-known and even studied at Western universities, while the literatures of the countries mentioned above were partially obscure and underestimated by most western thinkers who had not visited those regions.

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The seventeenth and eighteenth century Western scholars mentioned above studied “Oriental” languages and translated its literatures; 9 their works were available for the British Romantics, who found a world endowed with spiritual, ethical, and cultural wealth—a world order firmly established upon the reconciliation of three spiritual dogmas, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Based on this amalgam, they discovered a literary heritage endowed with love, power, and wisdom, or what Bernard Blackstone calls “the Triple Eros” of the East. 10 The Romantics discovered that Love is a recurrent theme in Pre-Islamic and Islamic literature such as in the devotional love tales of Youssef and Zuleika, Leila and Majnun, and Antarah and Abla (the Arabian Romeos and Juliets). 11 Moreover, Sufi poetry attracted the Romantic poets for its mysticism, spirituality, and other worldliness. Essentially, British interest in and fascination with Islamic culture was partly pushed forward by political and economic interests and partly by genuine concerns in locating new artistic colours and themes. Indeed, no one can deny the fact that Persian and Arabian sciences, theology, philosophy, and literature had an impact on energizing Western cultures, For instance, Lady Montagu resided in Turkey from 1716 to 1718; Sir William Jones lived in India from 1783 to 1794; and Francis Gladwin served in the Bengal Army and became professor of Persian language at Fort William College in Calcutta, in 1800. 10 Bernard Blackstone, “Byron and Islam: The Triple Eros,” Journal of European Studies, vol. 4 (1974), p. 325. [Henceforth cited as Blackstone “Byron and Islam”] 11 Youssef and Zuleika’s love story was first written by Jami (1414– 1492) in his Haft Awrang (“Seven Thrones”); Majnun Leila, a love story written in Persian language (584/1188); and Antarah ibn Shaddād al‘Absī (525–608), became a legendary pre-Islamic Arab poet and worrier and author of one of the seven hanging odes, which suspended in the Kaaba, Mu'allaqāt, was deeply in love with his cousin Abla, but he was forbidden form marrying her by her stern father. 9

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and it is British Orientalists who were largely responsible for this surge of interest in those cultures. This different world order, bordering the Continent, fired the Romantics’ imaginative and intellectual faculties and provided them with opportunities to revitalize their own.

BRITISH ORIENTALISTS AND THE ROMANTICS

The positive attitude of Western literary figures toward the Orient and “Oriental” cultures, especially that of the Romantic scholars, was strengthened during the second half of the eighteenth century, especially in view of the positive stance of British Orientalists, specifically George Sale, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Sir William Jones, Francis Gladwin and literary figures of the caliber of Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, William Beckford and others, employing their mind rather than heart when studying or writing about “Oriental” matter in the works mentioned above. Translations made by Orientalists of literary works became quite popular in the West during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. George Sale (1697–1736), a British Orientalist who had studied the Arabic language at an early age, was the first to translate the Quran from Arabic into English. Sale published his work, as The Koran: Or, Alcoran from the Original Arabic Mohammed, Translated into English Immediately With Explanatory Notes—from the most Approved commentaries. To which is Prefixed a Preliminary Discourse (London: J. Wilcox. 1734), when the age of reason was at its beginning. Although in his dedication and address to the readers, Sale seems apologetic due to the negative popular images made in earlier centuries about Prophet Mohammad and the Quran, he confesses: “I cannot see why he deserves not equal respect, though not with Moses or Jesus Christ, whose laws came really from Heaven,” yet, he professes that he [Prophet Mohammad] who founded a new religion acknowledging the “one true God, and to destroy idola-

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try” deserve some study. 12 In his dedication of Mahomet to the King of Prussia, the French writer Voltaire (1694–1778) writes: “Mr. Sale … has given us an excellent translation of the Koran into English.” 13 Sale’s work may not have had a great impact on the common British readers, but it was widely read by the scholars and thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and this advanced the study of not only Orientalism but also Islam and particularly Sufism, which apart from the fact that it takes the Quran as its basic scripture, is basically a blend of religious and literary movements. Another work which gained a lot of attention by the literary circles of the eighteenth and nineteenth century is Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s The Turkish Embassy Letters (1763). As wife of Edward Wortley, who was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary to the Court of Turkey, Lady Montagu resided in Constantinople for about a year, between 1717 and 1718. Highly cultured and inquisitive, Lady Montagu got acquainted with the culture and local color of the Turkish people. On first being admitted to a Turkish bath in Sofia, she was struck by the beauty of Turkish females and wrote in one of her letters: There were many amongst them as exactly proportioned as ever any goddess was drawn by the pencil of Guido or Titan, and most of their skins shiningly white, only adorned by Sale, The Koran, p. iv. Up to 1900, Sale’s translation was reprinted around 100 times. 13 Voltaire. The Works of Voltaire, Vol. 8, the Dramatic Works Part 1 (Mérope, Olympia, The Orphan of China, Brutus) and Part II (Mahomet, Amelia, Oedipus, Mariamne, Socrates). The Online Library of Library (1901), p. 272. Available: http://files.libertyfund.org/files/2187/Voltaire_0060-08_EBk_v6.0.pdft. Voltaire’s play, Mahomet was staged in London in 1742–1744; Matthew Dimmock depicts the Prophet Muhammad as “the epitome of evil and fanaticism: in his Mythologies of the Prophet Muhammad in Modern English Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 201. 12

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM their beautiful hair divided into many tresses, hanging on their shoulders, braided either with pearl or ribbon, perfectly representing the figures of the Graces.” 14

This representation of the Turkish females fed the imagination of writers who compared them to ancient mythological goddesses. However, her interest in Turkish literature is obvious in one of her letters to Alexander Pope: “You are so well acquainted with Homer, you cannot but have observed the same thing, and you must have the same indulgence for all Oriental poetry. … You see I am pretty far gone in Oriental learning, and so to say I study very hard. I wish my studies may give me occasion of entertaining your curiosity.” 15 Lady Montagu’s learning of the Turkish language was good enough to translate several Turkish poems. The most significant among her translations is “Turkish Verses Addressed to the Sultana, Eldest Daughter of Sultan Achmet III,” which is comprised of four stanzas. I quote the first stanza of the poem because of its rich “Oriental” colorings: The nightingale now wanders in the vines; Her passion is to seek roses. I went down to admire the beauty of the vines; The sweetness of your charm has ravished my soul. Your eyes are black and lovely, But wild and disdainful as those of a stag. 16

The nightingale and the roses are Sufi symbols representing the lover and the beloved. Besides, comparing the black eyes of the beloved to the big dark eyes of the stag is a familiar “Oriental” simile. Lady Montagu’s letters aroused the curiosity of not only Pope but also of several neo-Classical and Romantic British literary figures, the most conspicuously eminent being Lord Byron, Montagu, p. 59. Montagu, p. 79. 16 Ibid. 14 15

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who referred to the nightingale and the rose in his Giaour and The Bride of Abydos. 17 Among the most prolific Orientalist was Sir William Jones, who became President of the Asiatic Society when it was established on January 15, 1784, in Calcutta, India. The society’s main objective was to foster objective research in all aspects of “Oriental” cultures and not only in Indian literature, and the Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal became the main transmitter of research about “Oriental” matter. By then, contacts between the West and East were no longer restricted or limited to politics and trade. Traveling became considerably easier than before, and literary or scholarly travelers to the Orient, especially to the Holy Land, were fascinated by a culture deeply rooted in ancient Biblical heritage, which had significantly contributed to the formation of their own cultures. Those travelers, particularly the ones who detached themselves from political and economic concerns, observed, studied, and reported genuine accounts of “Oriental” life and manners to their friends and countrymen in the West. Sir William Jones and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu provided the British educated classes with valued information about the Orient, its peoples and literatures: Jones, through his translations of the masterpieces of various Eastern works, and Montagu through her earnest embassy letters whose circulation was advanced by the fact that she belonged to a wide circle of literary figures. Their works therefore, invigorated the interest of the British men of letters to learn more about the Near East. Moreover, Sir William Jones, the leading Orientalist of the eighteenth century, made translations of Sanskrit, Persian, TurkFor its elucidation, see A. R. Kidwai’s Orientalism in Lord Byron’s Turkish Tales (Lewiston: Mellen University Press, 1995), pp. 87 and 130, and Naji Oueijan’s The Progress of an Image: The East in English Literature (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), pp. 80–109 and 80–110 respectively.

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ish, and Arabic literary texts, which changed the Western negative images of the East. Some of his brilliant translations of Persian and Arabic poetry included: “A Persian Song of Hafez,” 18 Gulistan (literally “the garden of roses”) for Saadi Shirazi, 19 sections of Omar Khayyam’s 20 Rubāʿiyāt (the quatrains), the lovesongs of Firdausi, 21 the pre-Islamic The Mu'allaqāt; or Seven Arabian Poems from Arabic, and Hatifi’s 22 “Laili Majnun.” Besides his Hafez is the pen name of one of the most celebrated Persian poet Khwaja Shamsu d-Din Muḥammad Hafez Shirazi, born in 1315, in Shiraz, Persian. Like many of Muslims, he memorized the Quran and later in his life taught at a religious college. His poetry is known for its spirituality of love. For a brief biography of Hafez; see Faces of Love: Hafez and Poets of Shiraz, introduced and translated by Dick Davis (New York: Penguin Books, 2013). 19 Saadi is the pen name of Abu-Muhammad Muslih Al-Din bin Abdallah Shirazi, who was born in Shiraz, Persia around 1213. He studied Islamic theology, sciences, law and history in Baghdad. He visited most of the Arab countries and joined a group of Sufis at Aleppo, in Syria. Later in his life, Saadi lived in isolation and wrote one of the famous poems Gulistan. For a biography of Saadi, see Homa Katouzian. Saadi: The Poet of Life, Love and Compassion (London: Oneworld Publications, 2013). 20 Omar Khayyam was born in the district of Khorasan, Persia, in early eleventh century. Later in his life he became a well-known Persian astronomer and poet. One of his most known translated works is Rubāʿiyāt, which was translated to English by Edward FitzGerald; see Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the Astronomer-Poet of Persia (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1855), pp. ii–xii. 21 Firdausi was born in 970 in a town near Khorasan, in Persia, to a rich family. His interest in the history of the rulers who ruled or conquered Persia drove him to write his Shahnema, one of the world’s longest epic poems. 22 Abdallah Hatifi, born around 1454, lived on the outskirts of modern Afghanistan and was the custodian of a museum. He was a nephew of the famous Persian poet, Nūr ad-Dīn 'Abd ar-Rahmān Jāmī, [Jami]. 18

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translation of “Oriental” poetry, Jones wrote several poems celebrating the wealth of Eastern literature, including that of Islamic mysticism or Sufism, all of which had a great impact on the British literary circles during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Michael Franklin sheds light on Jones’s “A Hymn to Na’ra’yena’,” which “is more than a proto-Romantic bridge between ‘We know this only, that we nothing know’ of Pope’s Essay on Man and the mystical pantheism of Percy Shelley’s ‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’”; Jones’s poem, according to Franklin, “traces the metaphysical relationship between the variegated veil of nature and the Supreme Mind that continuously creates it.” 23 Jones also wrote authentic historical, religious, and linguistic texts and made them available to Western scholars, who had the privilege of studying the rich cultural heritage of the Eastern world. He even went as far as advising Western scholars to study Eastern cultures for their wealth and originality stating, I cannot but think that our European poetry has sustained too long on the perpetual repetition of the same images, and incessant allusions to the same fables: and it has been my endeavour for several years to inculcate this truth, if the principal writings of the Asiatiks, which are reposited in our publick libraries, were printed with the usual advantage of notes and illustrations, and if languages of the Eastern nations were studied in our great seminaries of learning, where every other branch of useful knowledge is taught to perfection, a new and ample field would be opened for speculation; we should have a more extensive insight into the history of the Hatifi wrote Khamsa (five), an anthology of five narrative poems; the most well known among them is “Laili Majnun.” 23 Michael J. Franklin. Orientalist Jones: Sir William Jones, Poet, Lawyer, and Linguist, 1746–1794 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 231. Franklin quotes and offers a full analysis of “A Hymn to Na’ra’yena’,” pp. 229–232.

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM human mind, we should be furnished with a new set of images and similitudes; and a number of excellent compositions would be brought to light, which future scholars might explain, and future poets might imitate. 24

This advice was taken seriously by several literary figures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries among whom was Samuel Johnson, an influential figure in the of literary circles during the second half of the eighteenth century. Johnson acknowledged Jones’s accomplishments in a letter to Warren Hastings, who was in India: “I shall hope that he who once intended to increase the learning of his country by the introduction of the Persian language… and that, at his [Jones’s] return, we shall know the arts and opinions of a race of men from whom little has been hitherto.” 25 Sir James Mackintosh, President of the Society of Bombay also praised Sir William Jones in his “A Discourse at the Opening of the Literary Society of Bombay,” which was read out at Parell, November 26, 1804. He began his address by asserting the necessity of opening up to other cultures, in order to “illuminate and humanize the whole race of man.” 26 Mackintosh also added: But, notwithstanding the merit of these individual exertions, it cannot be denied that the era of a general direction of the minds of Englishmen in this country towards learned inquiry, was the foundation of the Asiatic Society by Sir William Jones. To give such an impulse to the public underWilliam Jones. Poems Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the Asiatick Languages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1772), pp, 198–199. 25 James Boswell. The Life of Samuel Johnson (London: n.p. 1833), Vol. II, p. 281. 26 Sir James Mackintosh, “A Discourse at the Opening of the Literary Society of Bombay.” Transactions of Comment the Literary Society of Bombay (London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, Paternoster Row; and John Murray, 1819), p. xi. 24

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standing is one of the greatest benefits that a man can confer on his fellow men. On such an occasion as the present, it is impossible to pronounce the name of Sir William Jones without feelings of gratitude and reverence. He was among the distinguished persons who adorned one of the brightest periods of English literature. It was no mean distinction to be conspicuous in the age of Burke and Johnson, of Hume and Smith, of Gray and Goldsmith, of Gibbon and Robertson, of Reynolds and Garrick. It was the fortune of Sir William Jones to have been the friend, without him, the age of the greater part of these illustrious in which he lived would have been inferior to past times in one kind of literary glory. He surpassed all his contemporaries, and perhaps even. the most laborious scholars of the two former centuries, in extent and variety of attainment, and he possessed that faculty of arranging and communicating his knowledge, which these laborious scholars very generally wanted.” 27

If anything, the aforementioned quotation testifies to the momentous work and authority of Sir William Jones, whose works fed the curiosity of literary writers, especially the Romantic poets and thinkers, who were seeking novelty and knowledge of distant cultural values at a time when Western literature suffered from exhausted themes, metaphors, and forms. John D. Yohannan insists: The publication in 1799 and again in 1807 of the collected works of Sir William Jones was at once a symbol and source of the new Orientalism. Most of the major writers of the age read Sir William, because in his works were reflected forces that played upon them all. Some of these forces should be

27

Mackintosh, p. xiii.

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM briefly discussed before any consideration of the influence of the Asiatic fad upon the work of the romantic poets. 28

Along the same lines, Garland Cannon considers Sir William Jones a promotor of “Oriental” scholarship; he writes: “Basically, his [Jones’s] scholarship and translations drastically altered the West’s view of India, stimulating the general interest in Asia that is still seen in the West, and introducing the vast Oriental knowledge that has been interpolated into the body of total Western thought.” 29 More importantly, Sir William Jones’s translations of “Oriental” literature were not only known in England but in Germany and France as well. Johann Georg Forster, a German traveler and scholar, rendered Jones’s translation of Śakuntalā, a fourthcentury Sanskrit play by Kālidāsa, 30 into the German language and made it available to Johann Friedrich Herder, who later wrote, “Behold the East—the cradle of the human race, of human emotions, of all religion!” 31 Herder’s acquaintance with the Persian poets Hafez and Saadi is evident in his observation: “We are almost satiated with Hafez’s odes; Saadi has proved more edifying.” 32 Friedrich Schlegel, on the other hand, makes a compelling and more relevant statement about Śakuntalā when he writes in his Redeüber die Mythologie [“Talking about Mythology”]: “It is to the East that we must look for supreme ideals of John D. Yohannan. “The Persian Poetry Fad in England, 1770–1825.” Comparative Literature, vol. 4, no. 2 (Spring, 1952), p. 152. 29 Garland Cannon. The Life and Mind of Oriental Sir William Jones, the Father of Modern Linguistics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. xiii. 30 Kālidāsa was a fifth century eminent Sanskrit poet and dramatist. 31 Johann Friedrich Herder. Sämtliche Werke, edited by B. Suphan, vol. 5 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877), p. 562. 32 Johann Friedrich Herder. Ideenzur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschihheitvi, 3rd edition, vol. 13 (np: np, nd), p. 222. 28

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Romanticism. … If only the treasures of the Orient were as accessible to us as those of Classical Antiquity.” 33 And among the German Romantics, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe exerted a formidable effort to study the Arabic language and even translate some of the Arabic versions of Rumi’s 34 poems into German. Indeed, Goethe aspired to learn Arabic; Katharina Mommsen writes: By the beginning of 1815, Goethe would reflect on his motivations for these linguistic efforts in a letter to his friend, Christian Heinrich Schlosser; writing on January 23, 1815— in the midst of his composing poems for his 1819 Divan— Goethe confesses to Schlosser his aspirations to “learn Arabic”, as well as “practice” its script, concluding that “In no [other] language, perhaps, is spirit, word and script so primordially bound together.” 35

Goethe also practiced Arabic calligraphy and bought and read several “Oriental” manuscripts by Rumi and Hafez, and later Goethe and Herder translated Arabic poetry from the Mu'allaqāt of Imru’ Al-Qais, a poet of Al-Jahiliyah. 36 Friedrich Schlegel. “Redeüber die Mythologie.” Athenaeum, vol. 3 (1800), p. 103. 34 Jalaluddin Rumi, one of the most famous Sufi poet in the western world, was born in 1207, in Afghanistan, which was then under the rule of the Persian empire. His father, a theologian and mystic, tutored Rumi, who later became a sheikh, tutor of the mystic order, and a poet. Rumi’s poetry has been translated to most languages of the world; and up until the current days, he is the most read Sufi poet. For a detailed life of Rumi, see Afzal Iqbal’s Life and Work of Jalaluddin Rumi (Islamabad: Pakistan National Council of the Arts, 1991). 35 Katharina Mommsen. “Goethe and the Arab World.” Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts, vol. 19, (1965), p. 80. 36 The “Jahiliyyah,” or “The Age of Ignorance” may imply a dark age in the culture of the Arabs; however, it was one of the golden ages in Ara33

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Goethe’s interest, however, went beyond Rumi to include Persian Sufi poets such as Saadi, Firdausi, and especially Hafez, whose poetry was translated into German Language by Josef von Hammer-Purgstall. 37 Here one must not forget that Sir William Jones’s translations of Hafez’s songs into English preceded other translations; for instance, Jones’s translations of “A Persian Song of Hafez,” and “Shirazi Turk,” (a Ghazal or praise of women poem), which Jones translated as “Sweet Maid.” These songs left lasting impressions on not only Goethe by also on Western poets, who owned Jones’s works. Hafez’s Divan-i-Hafez or Anthology of Hafez’s Poetry (1812) inspired the German poet to write his own “Oriental” work, which he titled West-östlicher Divan (“The West-East Divan”). And in his “Goethe's Fantasies about the Orient,” Walter Veit remarks: Goethe was himself attracted to this vogue for Orientalism. In the Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände [Morning Herald for Cultured Audiences] (24 February 1816), therefore, he offers the following comments concerning the opening poem of the Divan, “Hegire”: “The poet considers himself a traveler. He has already arrived in the Orient. He delights in the customs, habits, objects, religious beliefs, and opinions: indeed, he

bia. The term “Jahiliyyah” was given by the Arab Muslims to indicate a literary the pre-Islamic literary period in Arabia. The literary genres of Jahiliyyah were mainly ghazal or lyrical love poetry, epic poetry, narrative folk tales such as the Arabian Nights Entertainment, besides prose satire, philosophy, astrology, and science. The most significant poets were Imru’ Al-Qais’, Tarafa, Zuhayr bin Salma, and Antarah Ibn Shaddad. 37 Josef von Hammer-Purgstall also made several translations of Persian poems, especially of Rumi’s, in Fundgruben des Orients (1809) and also in Geschichte der schonen Redekunste Persiens (1818), which included translations of Rumi’s Divan-e Shams and his most well-known work, Masnavi.

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does not counter-mand the suspicion that he is a Muslim himself.” 38

Walter Veit claims that the “investigation of the intellectual background of Goethe’s poetry leads me to conclude that the Orient came to symbolize the cradle of civilization, where he hoped to discover the origins of language and poetry.” 39 Jeffrey Einbodin dedicates almost half of his book, Islam and Romanticism: Muslim Currents from Goethe to Emerson, to discuss the impact of Islamic culture, especially the Persian, on German Romantics such as Goethe, Herder, Friedrich Schlegel, and Novalis. In his “Introduction,” Einbodin highlights the significant impression of Islam and the Persian Sufi poet Hafez on Goethe by referring to the “Goethe-Hafis Denkmal—the Goethe-Hafiz Memorial—a UNESCO site [in Weimar] commemorating the pivotal exchange between the national poets of Germany and Iran.” 40 Evidence of a genuine interest in and use of “Oriental” matter is also detected in works of French writers including Montaigne (1533–1592), Montesquieu (1689–1755), Malbranche (1638–1715), Voltaire (1694–1778), Diderot (1714–1784), and Rousseau (1712–1778). J. J. Clarke discusses such influences and asserts that “Oriental” matter fascinated Western minds, invading their culture in ways which indicate that the erudition emerging from the Orient contributed to the rise of a fresh understanding of humanism and the rise of Romanticism, a movement concerned with the nature and truth of the self, the world, Walter Veit. “Goethe’s Fantasies about the Orient.” Eighteenth-Century Life, vol. 26, no. 3 (Fall 2002), pp. 165–166. 39 Veit, p. 166. Another work that discusses the nexus between German authors and Orientalism is Annemarie Schimmel’s “Germany and Iqbal,” in Muhammad Iqbal und Drie Reiche Des Giestes, edited by W. Koehler (Hamburg: Deutsch-Pakistanisches Forum, 1977), pp. 45–60. 40 See Jeffrey Einboden. Islam and Romanticism: Muslim Currents from Goethe to Emerson. (London: Oneworld Publications, 2014). Ebook. 38

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and the creator. 41 Michael J. Franklin explains in his seminal work, Orientalist Jones, that Jones contributed much to the birth of Romantic Orientalism on the Continent, especially in Great Britain: Romantic Orientalism is born, not in scented seraglio sheets or amidst the petals of a Turkish rose bed, but within the pages of a London Welshman’s Persian grammar. It would delight young Company [East India Company] writers as they dreamed of the pagoda tree on their long passage to India; the Romantic writers—Coleridge, Southey, Landor, Byron, Moore, Percy Shelley, Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Dacre, Sydney Owenson, to name but a few—who were to reap the literary rewards of “sticking to the East” were as yet unborn. 42

Indeed, Jones’s contributions to the emergence of the Romantic movement and of Orientalism as literary discourses during and after the nineteenth century changed Western literary and cultural scholarship with the introduction of new metaphors and images, besides furnishing new information about a culture profoundly rich in antiquity and spirituality. Though it could be argued that none of the other Orientalists had a similar effect on Western writers as Jones, yet one cannot overlook the contributions of other Orientalists, particularly of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Besides Jones’s and Montagu’s works, the neo-classicalists and the Romantics turned to a variety of English editions that included “Oriental” poems in translation, with some even printing the original versions of the poems. The following were some of the popular translations: Stephen Sulivan’s Select Fables from J. J. Clarke. Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter between Asian and Western Thought (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 5–7. 42 Franklin, pp. 72–73. 41

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Gulistan (1774); Joseph Champion’s The Poems of Ferdosi (1785); John Herbert Harington’s The Persian and Arabic Works of Saadi, 2 vols. (1791–1795); and Stephen Weston’s Specimens of Persian Poetry (1805). Late in the eighteenth century, Francis Gladwin, an officer in the British East India Trading Company and an Orientalist, founded the Calcutta Gazette, the first English newspaper in India. Gladwin wrote and translated several “Oriental” works related to “Oriental” History and Literature, the most noted being: Dissertations on the Rhetoric, Prosody, and Rhyme of the Persians (1801); The Persian Guide, Exhibiting the Arabic Derivatives (1800); Persian Moonshee (1822), a book about Persian grammar including seventy-seven popular Persian tales, and short biographies of “Oriental” Philosophers; a translation of The Pundnameh. A Compendium of Ethics (1788), which is collection of perceptions about Persian ethics; and Saadi’s The Gulistan, or Rose Garden (1806), which is a collection of popular Persian tales, the most relevant to this work is a section titled, “Of the Morals of the Durwaishes [Sufi Dervishes],” which is a major source of Sufi stance in the form of forty-nine tales underscoring the piety, purity of heart, selfless love, and spiritual search of the Sufi for union with Allah by treading the paths of selfannihilation, purgation, and illumination. 43 Gladwin’s works written during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries satisfied the curiosity of the Romantic scholars and literary figures seeking novelty and exotic experience(s). 43F

Tale XV in The Gulistan, or Rose Garden, summarizes the Sufi devotion to Allah: “A certain king said to a religious man, Do you ever think of me? He answered, “Yes, whenever I forget God. He fleeth everywhere whom God driveth from his gate; but whomsoever God inviteth, he will not suffer to run to the door of any one”; see Musleh Al-Deen Sheik Saadi. The Gulistan, Or Rose Garden, translated by Francis Gladwin (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1865), p. 182.

43

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Similarly, several modern scholars have written works, which, on specific historical and general literary grounds, have demonstrated the significant contribution of “Oriental” culture to British and other Western cultures. 44 The earliest of these scholars is Martha Pike Conant, who strongly believes that the “Arabian Tales was the fairy godmother of English novel.” 45 In his The Arabs and Mediaeval Europe, Norman Daniel considers that the debt of the Romantic writers to “Oriental” cultures, notably the culture of the Arabs has not been acknowledged yet. 46 Raymond Schwab and Edward Said emphasize the great influence of Eastern culture on Western thought, deliberating on this 46F

Amongst these works the most significant include the following: Norman Daniel. Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (Edinburgh: The University Press, 1962); Samuel C. Chew. The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance. 1965; rpt. (New York: Octagon Books, 1974); Edward Said. Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979); Mary Anne Stevens, ed. The Orientalists: Delacroix to Matisse: The Allure of North Africa and the Near East (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984); Raymond Schwab. The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s Rediscovery of India and the East, 1680–1880 (New York: Colombia University Press, 1984); Nigel Leask. British Romantic Writers and the East (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Mohammed Sharafuddin. Islam and Romantic Orientalism (London: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 1994); John M. MacKenzie. Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995); Emily A. Haddad, Orientalist Poetics: The Islamic Middle East in Nineteenth-Century English and French Poetry (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002); Peter Cochran’s Byron and Orientalism. (Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006); Samar Attar’s Borrowed Imagination: The British Romantic Poets and Their Arabic-Islamic Sources (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014); Hasan Javadi, Persian Literary Influence on English Literature: With Special Reference to the Nineteenth Century (Costa Mesa, Mazda Publishers, 2005). 45 Martha Pike Conant. The Oriental Tale in England in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1908), p. 243. 46 Daniel, p. 107. 44

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influence from a political and ideological point of view. Mary Anne Stevens confirms that the Romantic figure’s “celebration of the primacy of the imagination, together with the pattern of early nineteenth-century political and scholarly interests, guaranteed a position for the Islamic lands as one of the most effective locations for Western expressions of exoticism.” 47 Lisa Lowe examines the Turkish matter in Lady Montagu’s correspondence and French writings of Montesquieu and Flaubert. She believes that “[t]he Oriental motif is the distinguished mark of sentimentalism in Flaubert, a sentimentalism that longs for a memory of earlier innocence, an impossible union, a lost wholeness in which European culture is faithfully reflected in its oriental Other.” 48 Nigel Leask observes that, heavily doctored translations of Persian poets like Firdausi, Hafez and Saadi enjoyed a tremendous vogue in England, exercising a strong influence on poets like W. S. Landor, Southey, Coleridge, Byron and Moore. … The writers of the Romantic age had interests in the ‘Orient’ to a degree which went far beyond their Augustan and mid-eighteenth-century forebears. 49

But to Leask, the Romantics’ interest in the Orient heavily rests on their concern in selling their literary works to a nineteenthcentury public obsessed with possessing “Oriental” merchandise; he claims that “Byron speaks like a Levantine or East India merchant who has tapped a lucrative source of raw materials in a newly opened up Orient.” 50 Leask, like several other western critics, underestimates Byron’s authentic interest in “Oriental” culture. Mary Anne Stevens, p. 17. Lowe. p. 95. 49 Leask, 18. 50 Leask, p. 13. 47 48

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Peter Cochran stipulates that the wars on the Continent during the time prompted Lord Byron to seek the Orient and that “Byron’s orientalism is in fact a product of boring historical contingency.” 51 Cochran goes further to assert that none of Lord Byron’s “Oriental” characters of the “Turkish Tales” “might be called a ‘true’ Oriental let alone a Muslim”; he justifies his view by referring to Childe Harold, Gaiour, and Selim, who is son of a Christian mother. 52 Indeed, Lord Byron’s Childe Harold and Giaour are not “Oriental” nor are they Muslim characters, but there is no doubt that Selim, though born from a Christian mother, is an “Oriental” character because his father and Giaffir Pasha, his uncle, are Muslims. Cochran seems not to acknowledge the historically fact that Christians had lived and still live in the East up till the present times in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Iraq. He adopts Edward Said’s classification of the East as Muslim and the West as Christian. 53 Giaffir, Hassan, Seyd, the fisherman in Giaour, Leila, Gulnare, Haidèe, Medora, and Zuleika are “Oriental” characters but not necessarily all Muslims. 54 Indeed, Islam does not necessarily signify the East, and Christianity does not represent the West, and an Eastern character could be Christian or Muslim, or belong to a hybrid religion as was the case with the nineteenth-century Albanians who were half Christians and half Muslims. Another discourse on Orientalism stipulates that all Muslims are devoted Muslims, such as the argument made by Seyed Mohammed Marandi, who considers Lord Byron’s image Cochran, p. 82. Cochran, p. 156. 53 Said, “one could discuss Europe’s experience of the Orient, or Islam,” see p. 17, and pp. 74, 91, and 107. 54 For a detailed discussion of the Eastern names of Byron’s characters, see Naji Oueijan’s A Compendium of Eastern Elements in Byron’s Oriental Tales (New York: Peter Lang, 1999, pp. 97–127. The book is considered by Cochran “very useful indeed for consultation, and is free of postmodern, post-imperialist jargon,” p. 83. 51 52

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of the Turkish fisherman, in The Giaour, unverifiable and that “Byron is almost completely ignorant about some of the most basic principles and laws of Islam.” 55 He basis his claim on the fact that the curse the fisherman inflicted on Giaour is neither Islamic “nor can anything similar to them be found in any reliable Islamic text”; but later Marandi contradicts himself when he asserts that “Hassan and the fisherman are both symbols of devout Muslims. They constantly use religious terminology in their speech, they pray, and they live in hope of an afterlife ‘full of pleasure’.” 56 Marandi believes that Byron’s characters, Hassan and the fisherman, are “symbols of devout Muslims”; yet, at the same time they are capable of cursing and killing. A more comprehensive reading of Byron’s Orientalism is presented by Richard Cardwell who writes: The Orient, I suggest, was a convenient “Other” to frame the mirrors he [Byron] creates to himself and make them more exotic, more theatrical, more saleable given the fame of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (Cantos I and II) and the growing vogue for things Oriental of the period. The Orient is not “appropriated in a space of representation”. For all the detailed notes to the text and the careful research that informs them, his heroes do not think or behave in an “Oriental” or “Islamic” way. Byron had seen enough of human cruelty in Spain and Portugal to know of man’s depravity and cruelty without recourse to images or clichés of a supposed Ottoman savagery. 57

Seyed Mohammed Marandi. “Byron’s Infidel and the Muslim Fisherman.” Keats-Shelley Review, vol. 20 (2006), p. 136. 56 Marandi, pp. 146 and 148. 57 Richard A. Cardwell. “Byron and the Orient: Appropriation or Speculation?” Byron and Orientalism, edited by Peter Cochran (New Castle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006), p 171. 55

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It is true that Byron witnessed so much human cruelty on the Continent; but this does not necessarily support Cardwell’s view because human conflicts have stamped the history of Man in all regions of the world. And at the end of his article, Cardwell admits that in Byron’s works there are no “violations” or “falsifications” or “domestication” of the Orient. 58 Leask’s, Cochran’s, and Cardwell’s views of the East/Orient are acquired from books such as the works of Said, who constructed a colonial and political cultural linkage between the West and the East. I understand that for a non-Easterner Orientalism is rather problematic. However, Orientalists who studied the East, lived its local colours, and at the same time studied the Western cultures in the West, such as Kidwai, Sharafuddin, Emily Haddad, Samar Attar, and several Western scholars such as Bernard Blackstone and John M. MacKenzie, 59 who had firsthand experience of the “Oriental” cultures, can read the oeuvre of Romantic writers and make fair judgments of the genuineness of their interests and works. And, indeed, the same applies to scholars and historians such as Humberto Garcia and Roderick Cavaliero, who seek facts and not fiction. Mohammed Sharafuddin studies the impact of Orientalism on four Romantic writers: Walter Savage Landor, Robert Southey, Thomas Moore, and Lord Byron. He confirms that his purpose is to “promote genuine interchange between cultures, and promote the sort of understanding that effects a change in the perception of others.” 60 John M. MacKenzie deliberates on the Cardwell, p. 172. Bernard Blackstone resided in Lebanon and taught at the American University of Beirut during the 1970s, and the historian, John M. MacKenzi, who extensively travelled to eastern countries and interacted with their cultures. 60 Mohammed Sharafuddin. Islam and Romantic Orientalism (London: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 1994), p. x. 58 59

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impact of the East on Western artists, architects, and dramatists. He clarifies that the influence of the Orient had profound effect on both French musical Impressionism and the late Romanticism of Viennese school. Even Italian opera made expressive nods in its direction. This influence has extended through twentieth-century Modernism and into minimalism. At times the crossfertilization has seemed close to producing genuine syncretic forms. 61

Abdur Raheem Kidwai acknowledges the great impact of “Oriental” and Islamic culture on the works of the Romantics, especially those of Lord Byron. He writes that Romantic writers such as Lord Byron, Robert Southey, and Thomas Moore relied heavily on “Oriental” material because “the Orient had always its exotic appeal to excite the imagination of creative artists and to kindle the curiosity of the general public.” 62 In her Orientalist Poetics (2002), Emily A. Haddad discusses in detail the impact of the East on the nineteenth-century and confirms in her introduction: “Given orientalism’s infiltration of the nineteenth century’s poetic oeuvre, it should come as no surprise that orientalism has had an extensive and important impact on the large developments of nineteenth-century British and French poetics and poetry.” 63 Humberto Garcia explains that his “research shows that ‘our Judeo-Christian heritage’ and ‘our secular present’ are not the exclusive property of Western Europe but a shared yet too-often

John M MacKenzie. Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts (Manchester University Press, 1995), p. xvi. 62 Kidwai, p. 9. 63 Haddad, p. 2. Besides discussing the “Oriental” works of British Romantic writers, Haddad dedicates a chapter to Victor Hugo’s Les Orientales and Alfred de Musset’s “Namouna”; see, pp. 54–100. 61

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forgotten heritage” of the cross-cultural exchange between the East and West. 64 Garcia asserts that his work challenges anachronistic postcolonial readings that project a dichotomy between a superior Christian Occident and an inferior Islamic Orient onto the early modern period. … Instead, this book argues that positive (and negative) perceptions of Islam were conditioned by Anglo-Islamic encounters in India, Ottoman Europe, and elsewhere in the Muslim world. As a result, the radical Enlightenment was in constant dialectical engagement with Islam. 65

Garcia further explains that during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Eastern literary texts “served as a rich source of poetic inspiration for British authors such as Christopher Smart, John Keats, and Percy Shelley, all of whom drew heavily on the imagery, symbolism, and rituals found in the hermetic mythologies.” 66 Garcia’s reference to “Oriental” “hermetic mythologies” indicates, if anything, the rituals of the unorthodox Sufis. In his Ottomania (2010), Roderick Cavaliero employs historical facts in his discussion of the impact of the “Oriental” cultures, especially the Ottoman, on the Romantics. To nineteenthcentury readers, Cavaliero believes, the “Oriental” world represented the territory of the Romantic dream of the harem, the seraglio, the exotic and erotic, and the virgins and soft roses, all of which had been fashioned by the Arabian Nights, the Ottoman Sultans, Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, Lord Byron’s Turkish Tales, Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh, and Beckford’s Vathek, among

Humberto Garcia. Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670–1840 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), p. xiv. 65 Garcia, p. 3. 66 Garcia, p. 130. 64

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other Orientalists’ works. 67 Endorsing Byron’s genuine interest in the Orient, Cavaliero verifies that when the young poet travelled to Turkey in 1809, he “was not in pursuit of Roman remains. He wanted to see for himself what the Ottomans were like and how Greece was faring under ‘barbarous’ misrule. He had been fascinated by the Ottomans since his childhood so that the seeds of his journey to the Levant were sown in his teen.” 68 One of the recent and finest works on the vogue of Orientalism in western literature is Samar Attar’s Borrowed Imagination (2014), in which she aims at tracing the influence of The Arabian Nights on British Romantic poets and “to study specific English poems and to show how certain tales from One Thousand and One Nights [The Arabian Nights] and/or ideas from Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, by Ibn Tufayl, 69 and other Islamic sources have helped the British Romantic poets not only in finding their own voices, but also their themes, metaphors, symbols, characters, and images.” 70 She justly claims that “the romantic poets learnt from the Nights the significance of narration,” and that “Western critics, on the whole, tend to neglect the non-Western influence on troubled England during the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth-century,” and that “a new reading of the poetry of See Roderick Cavaliero. Ottomania: The Romantics and the Myth of the Islamic Orient (London: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2010). 68 Cavaliero, p. 81. 69 Hayy Ibn Yaqzan is a romance by Ibn Tufayl (c.1105–1185), whose full name is Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusi. He lived in Andalusia, Spain and wrote his romance relating religion to philosophy. For a detailed discussion of Ibn Tufayl and Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, see Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, edited and introduced by ‘Abd al-Karim al-Yafi (Damascus: Tlas Press, 1995). 70 Samar Attar. Borrowed Imagination: The British Romantic Poets and Their Arabic–Islamic Sources (London: Lexington Books, 2014), p. xvi. [Henceforth cited as S. Attar] 67

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Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, and Keats is urgently needed.” 71 S. Attar also believes that for the Romantics, “The self became a subject in their poetry. Solitary contemplation in nature led them to search for their own spiritual happiness.” 72 S. Attar’s last statement is relevant to this work because the Sufis major goal is to seek, unravel, and experience the mysteries of inner Self. From among the British Romantic poets, it was Lord Byron who displayed an utter fascination for “Oriental” cultures and literatures to the extent that he sojourned in Albania, Turkey, and Greece for two years (1809–1811). But even before he visited the Orient, he had read “Oriental” poetry and considered: “— Ferdousi, author of the Shah Nameh, the Persian Iliad—Saadi, and Hafez, the immortal Hafez, the oriental Anacreon.” 73 Lord Byron read Sir William Jones’s work and like several Romantic poets drew on the numerous English editions which included these poems in translation and some in the original. In Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author, Edward Trelawny tells Percy Shelley: “The Persian poet Hafez would have consoled you by saying, ‘You are like the shell of the ocean that fills with pearls the hand that wounds you’.” 74 Trelawny’s simile is not to be overlooked as it indicates his knowledge of the “Oriental” symbol of the shell as the prophetic voice of poetic utterance. Trelawny goes on, “He [Shelley] was delighted S. Attar, pp. 5, 6, and 18 respectively. S. Attar, p. 176. 73 Thomas Moore. The Life, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron (London: John Murray, 192; rpt. St. Clair Shores, Michigan: Scholarly Press, Inc., 1972), pp. 49–49. 74 Edward Trelawny. Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author, vol. 1 (London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1878), pp. 116–117. Later in this volume, the significance of the shell in Romantic poetry is discussed in relation to William Wordsworth’s dream of the Arab Bedouin in Book V of The Prelude. 71 72

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with the Eastern metaphors, and I repeated many others to him, talking of “Oriental” civilization, from which all poetry had originated” 75 Shelley’s interest in Arabic poetry motivated him to take up the study of Arabic in 1821, the result of which was “From the Arabic: An Imitation: Dealing with love. 76 Recently Samuel Huntington, an American political scientist, reconfirmed the immense influence of the civilizations of Islam and Byzantium on European culture. He writes: “Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, European culture began to develop, facilitated by ‘eager and systematic appropriation of suitable elements from the higher civilizations of Islam and Byzantium, together with adaptation of this inheritance to the special conditions and interests of the West’.” 77 On his part, Bryan S. Turner declares that “[f]rom the eighteenth century, the Orient has existed [in the works of the Westerners] within a literary and visual tradition which is both romantic and fantastic.” 78 In this work, I argue that amongst the numerous elements of “Oriental” matter, Eastern mysticism, better known as Islamic mysticism or Sufism, is essentially what attracted the attention of Romantic poets, adding flavour to the pivotal aesthetics of the Romantic theory of art. However, I would like to clarify that it is not my intention to prove that the Romantics were Mystics or Sufi poets per se, perhaps with the exception of William Blake, the acknowledged mystic of the Romantics and whose Orient

Ibid. See Shelley’s poem in The Complete Poetical Works Of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Thomas Hutchinson, ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1905), p. 638. [Henceforth cited as SCPW] 77 Samuel P. Huntington. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (London: Touchstone Books, 1997), p 50. 78 Bryan S. Turner. “Outline of a Theory of Orientalism.” Orientalism: Early Sources, vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 1. 75 76

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signified the Biblical East. 79 In fact, Sufi mystics lived the life of hermits and dervishes and practiced their inner world in the outer one, while the Romantics experienced mysticism mentally and spiritually. Their mystical experiences were limited to instances of inner outbursts of spontaneous “powerful feelings,” much like sublime irruptions. Again I confirm that this work’s main argument is limited to proving that the Romantics were influenced by Sufism since it suited their aesthetic purposes and goals, and that several of their works had traces of Sufi literary features and several works have parallel Sufi feature. Indeed, most scholars of Romanticism had a common attitude amongst scholars of Romanticism to overlook the impact of Sufism on the Romantics in favor of Christian and neo-Platonic mysticism. Those scholars, intentionally or unintentionally, overlooked the fact that what they call Western Mysticism had originated from the East. As such, this work intends to fill this gap and bring into brighter light the magnitude of Sufi influence on the Romantics. The gap between East and West must be destroyed as plainly stated by John William Robertson Scott: 80

“Blake’s Asia is the historic near East, bounded by Ararat at one end, and comprising Judea and ‘the garden of Eden’ (an area in modern Iraq.) But what we should think of as Asia makes an even stronger showing in ‘Africa.’ Here we not only have the garden of Eden and Ararat, but also Chaldea, Mahomet receiving ‘a loose Bible,’ and even Brama receiving ‘Abstract Philosophy’ in ‘the East’.” See Edward Larrissy. “Blake’s Orient.” Romanticism, vol. 11, no. 1 (2005), p. 4. 80 John William Robertson Scott (1866–1962) travelled to Japan with his wife, Elspet Keith Robertson Scott (1875–1956); he was a British journalist who had founded a press in Tokyo, and published a monthly bilingual (English and Japanese) propagandist magazine, The New East, during WWI; see Tamoe Kumojimap. “‘The Democracy of Art’: Elizabeth Keith and the Aesthetic of the Eastern Ordinary.” Literature, Memory, Hegemony: East/West Crossings, edited by Sharmani Patricia 79

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It is deplorable that the world should think that there is such a complete difference between East and West. It is usually said that self-denial, asceticism, sacrifice, negation are opposed to self-affirmation, individualism, self-realisation; but I do not believe in such a gap. I wish to destroy the idea of a gap. It is an idea which was obtained analytically. The meeting of East and West will not be upon a bridge over a gap, but upon the destruction of the idea of a gap. 81

In this work, I hope to deconstruct one aspect of this gap, the one binding Romanticism to Sufism. The basic questions I attempt to answer are: What elements of Sufism attracted the Romantics’ attention and why were the Romantics attracted more to Sufism and Sufi poets than to Christian Mysticism and Mystic poets? These questions are addressed in the following chapter by defining the terms “Mysticism” and “Sufism” and discussing the basic differences between Christian and Sufi mystical orders in relation to Romanticism. Subsequent chapters focus on the traces of Sufism in Romantic poetry while emphasizing perceptions of Self and Other, and Sufi ideals such as Paths of Love, Light or Illumination, and Knowledge. Though the specific purpose of this work is to acknowledge the influence of Sufism on Romanticism, it also seeks to prove that no one culture is self-generic; i.e., completely independent. The clash of cultures could be a positive one, if prompted with genuine scholarly interests. Samuel Huntington, has convincingly presented a rather negative projection of the future of world civilizations, indirectly blaming political leaders who use cultural differences to advance their political and economic interests rather than cultural commonalities which promote genuine cross-cultural communication and understanding. He emphasizGabriel and Nicholas O. Pagan (Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), p. 58. 81 Qtd., Kumojimap, p. 57.

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es that “[t]he cultures of peoples interact and overlap. The extent to which the cultures of civilizations resemble or differ from each other also varies considerably. Civilizations are nonetheless meaningful entities, and while the lines between them are seldom sharp, they are real.” 82 Cross-cultural understanding is required now more than ever to create a peaceful, nonviolent world. This is conceivable when peoples of the East and the West are aware of the fact that cultural differences are superficial or shallow and that basic human spiritual and moral principles interact, forming the backbone of one universal culture. In Sufism, one of the major literary movements in the East, there are no sharp delineated borders between cultures and peoples, between various religions, especially Judaism, Christianity and Islam, between Higher Self and Lower Self, and between Self and Other (be it human or non-human). Sufism reacts against any orthodoxy of thought and dogma; it also emphasizes solitude, recollection, contemplation, and purgation. Besides, Sufism is a spiritual and visionary pilgrimage towards the acknowledgement of divine truth and beauty and confesses the supremacy of the imagination to grasp the truth and beauty of all substance. Perhaps this is why the Romantics, who revolted against enclosure and national centeredness and sought new horizons of knowledge beyond their restricted cultural and national borders, found in Sufism intellectual and spiritual sparks that ignited deeper contemplation and stronger hopes for uniting with the Other, be it man, the world, or the Infinite.

82

Huntington, p. 3.

EASTERN MYSTICISM The mystical experience does not belong to any particular religious dogma. It is a universal constant, whose “variations can be observed to be very clearly and characteristically shaped by the several religious systems upon which they were based.” 1 Its universality verifies the fact that all mystics share common characteristics when at the same time each has his/her distinctive dogmatic background, which shapes and flavors the mystical experience. Mysticism, which may evolve from religious dogmas, might not conform to these doctrines. Thus, mystics are not altogether theologians in as much as theologians are not necessarily mystics. Mystics use similar lexicons to describe their spiritual experiences, but their conceptions of these expressions and their mystical paths may differ according to their basic dogma. For instance, though in Christianity and Islam there is one God, Christianity’s Triune Deity contrasts with Islam’s Oneness of Allah. But the inner, or esoteric, experiences of most mystics have almost the same goal, to seek knowledge, or gnosis, or the mysteries of the Absolute Divine. Besides, all mystics agree that the Divine Spirit, whether called God, Allah, Absolute, Supreme Being, Brahman, Buddha, and Tao, cannot be completely comprehended but can be experienced temporarily. Added to this, all mystics agree that the Divine Spirit constitutes the dynamic spirit of all creation; they believe that this Divine Spirit is a radiant A. J. Arberry. Sufism: An Account of the Mystics of Islam (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1972), p. 12. 1

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Light permeated with Love, Beauty, and Wisdom. The Divine Spirit is realized through gnostic insight by all mystics who tread the paths of self-annihilation, purgation, and illumination to experience bliss beyond ecstasy. The Christian mystical experience prepares the mystic for salvation and blissful life after life, but Sufi practices prepare the mystic for a joyful union with Allah, though fleetingly, before and after death. And although Far Eastern Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism lay more emphasis on a harmonious, simple, compassionate, and patient earthy life, they all acquire knowledge and illumination by acquaintance and by experiencing the spiritual presence of the Supreme Absolute. The mystical experience transcends the apparent and the physical to merge with the deeper mysteries of the Universal Soul. It is essentially the basis of spiritual sagacity and expression. John B. Carman asserts: Definitions of mysticism tend to stress one or more of the following features: (i) a particular ontology, in accord with the mystic’s insight, usually either monistic or theistic; (ii) an immediacy or intensity of experience not present in other forms of religion; (iii) a separation from the physical, or from ordinary social life, or from ordinary forms of consciousness. 2

Such general features would appeal to the Romantics, who in their search for instances of higher awareness also sought intense experiences with the Infinite and Eternal. In this respect, the Romantics were such theists who were interested in the John B. Carman. “Conceiving Hindu ‘Bhakti’ as Theistic Mysticism.” Mysticism and Religious Traditions, edited by Steven T. Katz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p 142.

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“mystica theologia” more than in theologia proper. According to Rudolf Otto, The essence of mystica theologia in distinction from the usual theologia lay in the fact that it claimed to teach a deeper ‘mystery’, and to impart secrets and reveal depths which were otherwise unknown.” 3 Although the mystic is a religious person, he/she rejects the orthodoxy of religions and their hierarchy. Thus, the mystic is endowed with a tolerant gnostic understanding of the other, as he/she dives beneath surface platforms into esoteric depths to experience essence beyond substance. In a short essay, “Mystics and Mysticism,” Samuel Coleridge defines the mystic in Aids to Reflection (1825) as a person who “refers to inward feelings and experiences, of which mankind at large are not conscious, as evidence of the truth of any opinion—such a man I call a Mystic,” and mysticism as “the grounding of any theory or belief on accidents and anomalies of individual sensations or fancies, and the use of peculiar terms invented, or perverted from their ordinary significations, for the purpose of expressing these idiosyncrasies and pretended facts of interior consciousness, … having a substance in the divine mind.” 4 Douglas Hedley believes that “Coleridge belongs to a Christian Platonic tradition which stretches from John Scot Eriugena to Hegel, which sees Jerusalem and Athens in harmony, and is inclined to identify philosophy with theology.” 5 At the same time, Hedley relates Coleridge’s mystical views to Plotinus: “Plotinus is nevertheless a model of philosophical mysticism for Rudolf Otto. Mysticism East and West: A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism (New York, 1932), p 141. 4 Samuel T. C. “Mystics and Mysticism.” Aids to Reflection. Christian Classics Ethereal Library, p. 285. Available: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/coleridge/reflection.html 5 Douglas Hedley. Coleridge, Philosophy and Religion: Aids to Reflection and the Mirror of the Spirit. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 4. 3

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Coleridge, whose philosophical mysticism is idealist and yet deeply suspicious of abstract conceptuality; a system of thought that is contemplative and yet very much a philosophy of life and experience.” 6 Plotinus’s mysticism is based on meditation which is an inward reflection enabling Soul to return to its source; only then Soul would become aware of its divinity. This view does not differ much from the Sufi process, which employs inward meditation and reflection to experience Soul’s divinity. Hedley asserts that “Plotinus’ writings are essentially a guide and invitation to mystical experience.” 7 It is also noteworthy to mention that Coleridge was aware that Prophet Muhammad was the first Muslim mystic ever. He and Robert Southey decided to write about Mohammad’s life; and between July and August, 1799, they drafted a plan to write about the “historical events that shaped Muhammad’s life,” in a work titled “Flight and Return of Mohammed,” but according to Garcia, “Coleridge’s interest in the project began to wane by the end of the year, and Southey abandoned it by July 1800.” 8 Einboden asserts that although the collaboration of both poets did not materialize, however, it “testifies to an Islamic influence on British Romanticism that intriguingly echoes earlier German receptions,” and he quotes Coleridge’s intended introduction: “The Flight” with the following verses: UTTER the song, O my soul! the flight and return of Mohammed, Prophet and priest, who scatter’d abroad both evil and blessing, Huge wasteful empires founded and hallow’d slow persecution, Hedley, p. 11. Hedley, p. 100. 8 Garia, pp. 157. See Coleridge’s and Southey’s plans in Appendices A and B, pp. 233–236. Later Southey published a fragment of “Mohamet” posthumously; see also Kidwai, A. R. “The Outline of Coleridge’s and Southey’s ‘Mohammed.’” Notes and Queries, vol. 238, no. 40 (1993): pp. 38–39. 6 7

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Soul-withering, but crush’d the blasphemous rites of the pagan And idolatrous Christians.—For veiling the gospel of Jesus, They, the best corrupting, had made it worse than the vilest. Wherefore heaven decreed th’ enthusiast warrior of Mecca, Choosing good from iniquity rather than evil from goodness. Loud the tumult in Mecca surrounding the fane of the idol;— Naked and prostrate the priesthood were laid – the people with mad shouts Thundering now, and now with saddest ululation Flew, as over the channel of rock-stone the ruinous river Shatters its waters abreast, and in mazy uproar bewilder’d, Rushes dividuous all – all rushing impetuous onward. 9

In his intended introduction, Coleridge seems to blame and praise Mohammad at the same time not only to satisfy the then popular belief in the superiority of Christianity over Islam but confirm his own religious beliefs. We must not forget that in his “Aids to Reflection” Coleridge’s aim is to give an account of the spiritual nature of man, and for Coleridge the spiritual nature of man cannot be separated from the topic of the Christian idea of God as triune. “Aids to Reflection” attempts to show that a manly, that is a virtuous, character, is only possible on the condition of participation in the divine: the life of virtue presupposes and passes over into godliness, that is, god-likeness. 10

As mentioned before, Islam does not believe in God as triune. Still some of its merits include, according to Coleridge, crushing the of the blasphemous pagans and idolatrous Christians who kept the gospel of Jesus away from the common Christians. To Coleridge and indeed to the Christian mystics, the gospel of Je9

Einboden, ebook. Hedley, p. 8.

10

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sus is the basis of inward “feelings and experiences,” which may be related to the world, nature, and the Eternal. It is the One cryptic and esoteric entity, which becomes obvious when approached and/or fused in; it is all-observant, all-knowing and all-powerful—the supreme Truth, Beauty, and Love, all of which are essential Romantic ideals. Ronald W. Hepburn, offers this general explanation of mysticism: [A] mystical experience is not the act of acquiring religious or theological information but is often taken to be a confrontation or encounter with the divine source of the world’s being and man’s salvation. An experience is not held to be mystical if the divine power is not apprehended as simply “over-against” one—wholly distinct and “other”. There must be a unifying vision, a sense that somehow all things are one sharing a holy, divine, and single life, or that one’s individual being merges into a “Universal self”, to be identified with God or the mystical One. 11

The individual spiritual self must merge with the “Universal self” to acknowledge the divine source of all existence and achieve salvation. Since mystics cannot record their accounts during their preternatural experiences, their accounts are based on recollections, and numinous experiences, which could be compared to dreams and visions. The mystics, the dreamers or visionaries, upon regaining consciousness express their recollections of their visions of the Divine Truth in a personalized diction which, in spite of a shared vocabulary, varies from one mystic to another and from one mystical order to another. Despite the mystics’ vast diversity with respect to place, time, and culture, their diction is strikingly similar and includes terminolRonald W. Hepburn. “Mysticism, Nature and Assessment of.” Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 5 (1972), p. 429.

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ogy such as self-annihilation or negation, purgation, inner and gnostic contemplation and meditation, recollection humility, chastity, love, beauty, knowledge, enlightenment, illumination, and union, among others, all of which correlate with Romantic experiences that are dependent upon subjective recollections, expressions of dreams and visions of Truth. Another definition of mysticism, of Freidrich Heiler’s, makes this correlation even more evident. He labels mysticism as “that form of intercourse with God in which the world and self are absolutely denied, in which human personality is dissolved, disappears and is absorbed in the infinite unity of the Godhead.” 12 Heiler’s use of the term “intercourse” implies, if anything, the self-containment and individuality of the exhilarating mystical experience. This individualistic feature of mysticism, then, consorts with the Romantic emphasis on the individual and on the individual experience. However, while the mystic’s Self unites in the Godhead, the Romantic’s Self fuses in the world, itself an image of the Godhead. William Wordsworth insists that this fusion of “the individual Mind” with “the external world” is the highest form of human realization and overarching: How exquisitely the individual Mind … The external World is fitted to the Mind; And the creation (by no lower name Can it be called) which they with blended might Accomplish—this is our high argument. 13 Qtd., Julia Ching. “The Mirror Symbol Revisited: Confucian and Taoist Mysticism.” Mysticism and Religious Traditions, edited by Steven T. Katz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 228. 13 “Prospectus to the Recluse,” in English Romantic Writers, edited by David Perkins (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, INC., 1967), ll. 63–71. [Henceforth cited as ERW] 12

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This poem serves as a paradigm for the writings of almost all other Romantic poets. To the Romantics, the supreme faculty of the mind is imagination, which is capable of transcending itself to merge with the Other. Discussing the visionary solipsism of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats, Charles J. Rzepka suggests, “they exhibit the poet’s tendency to identify solely with mind, and thus to make of the perceived world something unreal.” 14 In other words, self, mind, and imagination complete each other to form the literary identity of a poet. This attempt by the Romantics, contends Herbert Schueller, is intended “to transcend the mundane and the human, even though the human mind is the agency by which this transcendence must be achieved; the difficulty is that the only agency which the human mind has for transcending itself is itself.” 15 The aforementioned discussion further demonstrate the intrinsic linage of the mystical and of Romantic self-denial. Surely mere denial of the mind or the self, that is mindlessness or selflessness, does not necessarily lead to the gnostic, mystical experience—we all have our mindless moments in which our minds become vacant and idle—unless the mind, via premeditated or spontaneous rigorous meditation and/or contemplation of an Other fuses with it. Only then, do such experiences procure powerful moments of illumination and knowledge. From this standpoint, no one can deny the kinship between all forms of mysticism. Though this discussion is limited to Christian Mysticism and Sufism, it does not deny the impact of Far Eastern mysticism on Romanticism.

Charles J. Rzepka. The Self as Mind: Vision and Identity in Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1986, p. 29. 15 Herbert M Schueller. “Romanticism Reconsidered.” Prism[s]: Essays in Romanticism, vol. 1 (1993), p. 72. 14

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EASTERN CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM

Christian mysticism started with Jesus’s disciples, who left their families and earthly possessions to follow their Master and gain spiritual enlightenment in their quest to understand and experience the ecstasy of divinity, incarnated in the Son of God. Their mysticism was founded on humility, selfless love, piety, and the divine powers of Jesus Christ. They experienced the mysterious ethereal divinity of Jesus by hearing His sermons and parables and by witnessing His deeds and miracles. Their mysticism was not only the product of pure faith since it defied logic in favour of a spiritual conviction in the divinity of Christ, whom they accompanied along His pilgrimage until after His crucifixion and afterwards. Later Christian mystics experienced union with God through their devotional love, arduous prayer, contemplation, self-annihilation, and esoteric illumination, in which the sense of all corporal existence vanished and a spiritual ecstasy beyond the normal realms of man’s cognitive faculties was experienced. And perhaps some verses in the New Testament, John 4:7–4:13, summarize their mystical experience, which first and foremost was based on love. Verses 4:7, 4:8, 4:11 call the believers to love one another and all elements created by God (Universal Love). Verse 4:10 assures the believers that only through love, their sins will be forgiven (Self-Annihilation). And Verses 4:9, 4:12 and 4:13 confirm that God Dwells in those who have love in their hearts (Deification). 16 Other Christian mystics emerged “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God./He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love./In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him./ Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins./Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another./No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another,

16

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during the fourth century and were known as the Desert Fathers; they based their mysticism on selfless devotional love, which would lead to self-annihilation, purgation, and unification with God and His Son. 17 They secluded themselves in the deserts of Arabia and Persia, and especially in Egypt, 18 to live a simple life of solitude, prayers, and contemplation. In the Preface to The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh explains: They were ascetics, ruthless to themselves, yet so human, so immensely compassionate not only to the needs of men but also to their frailty and their sins; men and women wrapped in a depth of inner silence of which we have no idea and who taught by “Being”, not by speech: “If a man cannot understand my silence, he will never understand my words.” 19

To the Desert mystics, silence is a means for hearing the voice of God within their souls and hearts. A spiritual retreat is useless without moments of silence when the mystic disengages with the physical world and dives into the metaphysical one. However, silence must be preceded by prayers and contemplation of the Scriptures, which is based on love, in order to render the experience of believing an insightful one of knowledge and wisGod dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us./Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.” John 4:7–4:13. [Henceforth all quotations from the Bible are from The King James Study Bible. 2nd. Edition (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2013] 17 For brief biographies and the teachings of the Desert Father, see Benedicta Ward, trans. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Michigan, Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1975). [Henceforth cited as Sayings] 18 Saint Mark, disciple of Jesus, went to Egypt where he preached Christianity; thereafter, the Orthodox Coptic Church was established and survived to become the largest church in the country. 19 Sayings, p. xvi.

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dom. In this respect, the desert is the most appropriate setting for the Desert Mystics. Furthermore, the Desert Mystics rejected personal possessions and materialistic desires and spent most of their lives seeking the profound experience afforded by transcendence to witness the Love, Compassion, and Wisdom of God. Their mystical experiences were filled with moments of spiritual flotation during which self is annihilated in the euphoric presence of Absolute Divinity. They sought the path of purgation via intense prayers and contemplation to cleanse the body from desire and sin. The path of annihilation is thus a spiritual one which leads to the split of body from soul, to an awareness of the Divine mysteries or to what Orthodox Christianity refers to as a theosis, which is the divine transformation from a physical existence to a spiritual one through unconditional love of Christ. The Desert Mystics based their spiritual nourishment on Christ’s teachings and on the church fathers such as Irenaeus (c. 120, /140–c. 200, /203), Clement of Alexandria (150–200s), Origen (c. 185– c. 254), and Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–c. 394), who during the second and until the fourth century discussed theosis without defining the term, thus explaining Christian mysticism without really being mystics. According to Stephen Finlan and Vladimir Kharlamov, the church fathers “seem to assume that its [theosis’s] content was common knowledge in the Christian community”; and that the “term was coined by the great fourth century theologian, Gregory of Nazianzus [c. 330–c. 389].” 20 Finlan and Kharlamov consider the “closest equivalent to theosis in English is the term ‘deification’ … the transformation of believers into the likeness of God.” 21 This transformation process, the church fathers believed, is part of the Christian ritual whereby during Stephen Finlan and Vladimir Kharlamov, eds. Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2006), p. 5. 21 Finlan and Kharlamov, p. 1. 20

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the mass, true believers or those who have unconditional faith in and love for Christ take the holy sacrament, body and blood of Jesus, and become one with Him. The sacraments of especially the Eucharist and of Baptism are divinizing agents for Christians, who become enfolded with the grace of God, thus blending in His Love and becoming one with Him, who created them on His image. Kallistos Ware explains the process: “the whole God in his outgoing love has rendered himself accessible to man. By virtue of this distinction … we [humans] are able to affirm the possibility of a direct or mystical union between man and God”; furthermore through theosis or deification, Ware confirms, “man participates in the energies of God, not in his essence. … Man still remains man.” 22 Theosis, then, can be realized through passionate contemplation of and love for Godhood, both of which constitute the path of all mystics. Jeffrey Finch stipulates that “Irenaeus’ acclamation of ‘our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself provided the most compelling and often repeated form of the perennial cur Deus homo [Why did God become human?] question for generations to come, even until today.” 23 The early Christian mystics not only sought the rapture of Christ’s divine love but also tried to live His likeness. Irenaeus believes that Adam’s sin deprived him from the likeness of God when the “indwelling Spirit,” His Spirit, departed; however, through the incarnation of Christ, “He [Christ] re-established the similitude after a sure manner, by assimilating [or] (synexomoiosas) man to the invisible Father Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1995), pp. 22–23. 23 Jeffrey Finch. “Irenaeus on the Christological Basis of Human Divinization.” Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology, edited by Stephen Finlan and Vladimir Kharlamov. Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2006), p. 86. 22

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through means of the visible Word.” 24 Finch explains, “In another context, Irenaeus contends (against the Gnostics) that the human body and soul inseparably together constitute the image of God, whereas the infused Spirit establishes the likeness.” 25 Thus through unconditional love for Christ, the mystic becomes one in spirit with Him but still maintains a corporal existence. Clement of Alexandria, who was well read in Hellenistic philosophy, especially in Platonism, deems deification a medium for knowledge, which “is then followed by practical wisdom, and practical wisdom by self-control: for it may be said that practical wisdom is divine knowledge, and exists in those who are deified.” 26 Kharlamov clarifies that Clement of Alexandria “explicitly highlights the individual uniqueness and distinction, as well as essential oneness among all three members of the Trinity [when he says], ‘O mystic wonder! The Father of all is one, the Word who belongs to all is one, the Holy Spirit is one and the same for all’.” 27 The unity of the mystics with Christ, the incarnated Word of God, is then granted to human beings through their belief in the Holy Trinity. On the discourse that Man has the same substance of God, Clement of Alexandria makes a major distinction: “It is not possible to speak of the divine in its actual nature, … God does not have a natural attitude towards us … [and it is] “impertinence to say that we are a part of him and of the same substance as God.” 28 But at the same time, when the devoted Christians pracFinch, p. 88. Ibid. 26 Qtd., Vladimir Kharlamov. “Clement of Alexandria on Trinitarian and Metaphysical Relationality in the Context of Deification.” Theōsis: Deification in Christian Theology, edited by Vladimir Kharlamov. (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2012), p. 84. [Henceforth cited as Kharlamov (2012)] 27 Kharlamov (2012), p. 87. 28 Qtd., Kharlamov (2012), p. 89. 24 25

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tice divinity through contemplation and unreserved love, they may “advance in Godlike perfection.” 29 In other words, theosis is possible through union with God’s Spirit, but complete unification with God is not conceivable, as His substance is His own, and no one shares it except His Son and the Holy Spirit. One of Origen’s famous works, On First Principles (229/30), originally written in Greek and later translated to Latin and from it to English, lays down his theological views: “It is routinely described as being the first attempt at a systematic theology, laying out the theological points that are universally held as certain and speculatively developing those that remain,” writes John Behr. 30 Origen stresses the wisdom of God as the eternal light that only the righteous among human beings, those who endure the soreness of departure from flesh. He says: God is light, as John says in his epistle, God is light and in him there is no darkness. He, indeed, is that light which illumines the whole understanding of those who are capable of receiving truth, … Such, therefore, is the saying, in your light shall we see light, that is, in your Word and Wisdom, who is your Son, in him we shall see you, the Father. 31

Thus, seeing the light of wisdom through becoming one with God and His Son was the purpose of the Christian mystics; this deification depends on the worthiness and zeal of those who devote their lives in this world to willingly obey the Word of God and purify their thoughts and souls. Such mystics, says Origen, are “capable of divine Wisdom.” 32 Kharlamov (2012) discusses this ontological issue in detail; see Kharlamov (2012), pp. 90–91. 30 John Behr, ed. and trans. Origen: On First Principles. Vol. I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. xx. [Henceforth cited as Origen, Principles] 31 Origen, Principles, p. 25. 32 See Origen, Principles, p. 157. 29

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In his Against Eunomius, 33 Gregory of Nyssa is less concerned about human perceptions of the divine Wisdom and deification than Origen and more interested in correcting what he considers wrong current theological perceptions. 34 He writes: For the simplicity of the doctrines of the truth proposes that God, as he truly is, cannot be encompassed in a name or an idea or any other apprehensive concept, and remains loftier not only than human but also angelic and all hypercosmic apprehension, ineffable, inexpressible, and higher than everything words can signify, having one name identifying his own nature, that he alone is beyond every name. 35

God then cannot be comprehended unless through a full perception of the Word, the Scriptures. Radde-Gallwitz explains: “Gregory condenses biblical counsel regarding the divine nature to the ‘name above every name’ of Philippians 2:9.” 36 From his perspective, deification as full oneness with Deity is rather impossible, but deep contemplation of the scriptures unifies the mystic with His words but not with his essence.

Eunomius (c. 335,–c. 394) was a leader of the “anomoean” Arians, sometimes called Eunomians, and proponent of Arianism, which is associated with the Arian philosopher and bishop Aëtius, who established the Eunomian sect. His doctrines were criticized by St. Basil and even condemned by the Council of Constantinople in 381. For a full discussion, see St. Basil Of Caesarea Against Eunomius, translated by Mark Delcogliano and Andrew Radde-Gallwitz Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011. 34 For a detailed analysis, see Andrew Radde-Gallwitz. Gregory of Nyssa’s Doctrinal Works: A Literary Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 35 Qtd., Radde-Gallwitz, p. 133. 36 Radde-Gallwitz, p. 133. 33

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Gregory of Nazianzus 37 was father and poet. He was the first to clarify the paths of the mystic in his poetry. His views— except those related to the Holy Trinity—I believe, constitute the basic doctrines of world mystical orders, all the reason why they appeal to the Christian and non-Christian mystics, and deserve some consideration. In his Poemata Arcana (poems about mysteries), Gregory of Nazianzus writes eight poems which demonstrate his mystical views. He starts his poem, “On the first Principle,” describing the path of the mystic towards edification: I know that it is upon a flimsy raft that we set out on a great voyage, or upon frail wings we hasten towards the starry heaven. On these the mind stirs itself to proclaim a divinity which not even heavenly beings have power to worship fittingly, nor can they revere the ordinances of great divinity and its governance of the universe. Yet (for often God is pleased not with a gift from the hand of a wealthy man so much as with the offering of a humble and loving giver), I shall break into confident Speech. 38

The reference to the divinity of not only angels but also of the humble and loving nature of the seeker for deification is a main feature for the early mystics, who used to roam the deserts carrying only the most essential tools for survival. In his poem “On the spirit,” he writes: “Let us bow in awe before the mighty spirit, who is god in Heaven, who to me is god, by whom I came to know god, and who in this world makes me god.” 39 Accordingly, For a biography of Gregory of Nazianzus, see Carolinne White, ed., Trans. Gregory of Nazianzus: Autobiographical Poems (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 11–154. 38 “On the First Principl,” in St Gregory of Nazianzus: Poemata Arcana, edited by C. Moreschini and commentary and translation by D. A. Sykes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 3. [Henceforth cited as Poemata Arcana] 39 Poemata Arcana, p. 11. 37

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Gregory of Nazianzus experienced theosis and like Christian and Sufi mystics, who came after him, he sings in his poetry the rapture of deification. In his “On the Spirit,” he writes: “This is how I sum up for you the case for Godhead. But if you are astonished to hear that the Son and one who is not Son are of one Godhead and trust in neatly turned contrary arguments, God himself will come to my help in giving me utterance at this point also.” 40 In other words, when mystics seek the aid of God, He will speak through them words which will assure them of the Godhead of Christ. And in the same poem he discusses the Holy Trinity: In the Trinity I teach there is one power, one understanding, one glory, one might That is why the unity is beyond flux, possessing great glory in the single harmony of Godhead. So great is the splendour which the Trinity has revealed to my eyes, from the wings of the cherubim [angels with sex wings glorifying Christ] and within the veil of the temple, under which the sovereign nature of God is hidden.” 41

The temple, according Gregory of Nazianzus, is not the stonebuilt church but the souls of the virtuous lovers of Christ. Those have the “strength of simple and composite minds, those moving swiftly on high in heaven and others here on earth.” 42 On the Wisdom of God and the Creation, Gregory of Nazianzus confirms: All things stand before God, future, past, and presently existing…. It was Mind which brought forth the universe when later, at the right time, the fruit of travail burst into existence, the mighty Word of God revealing it. He willed to establish intelligent nature, both heavenly and earthly, a translucent mirror of the primal light. … Of the worlds, one is Poemata Arcana, p. 13. Poemata Arcana, p. 15. 42 “On the Universe,” Poemata Arcana, p. 19. 40 41

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM older, that is heaven., the place visible to minds alone, occupied by those who possess God, the world, full of light, to which the mortal, who belongs to God journeys when he leaves this world to become God, once he has cleansed mind and flesh. 43

Interesting in the above poem is Gregory of Nazianzus’s idea of “intelligent nature, both heavenly and earthly,” both of which mirror the “the primal light,” the Wisdom of God, and His grace. When mortal beings leave earthly pleasures and follow the path of God by abstaining from all desires of the flesh, they will perceive the “full light” of Wisdom, even before the journey of the flesh ends in this world and becomes dust. Gregory of Nazianzus is giving the mystic the proper path towards Truth and inner enlightenment. Then he talks about his mystical rapture as a happiness beyond happiness: Reason trembles to enter upon the beauties of the heavenly world. A mist has come upon me. I do not know whether to advance my speaking or to withdraw. I am like a traveler attempting to cross a raging stream who is suddenly borne upwards by the current and is held fast for all his eagerness to cross.” 44

Like a Sufi or Romantic poet, Gregory of Nazianzus becomes a traveler on the path towards experiencing the most sublime of heavenly beauty and wisdom. It is then pertinent to claim that he is a major of Christian mystic. It is also appropriate to assert that though the Desert Fathers followed the teachings of most of the church fathers, Gregory’s thoughts were paramount, especially those about inner wisdom. In the desert of Egypt, the mystic was called “Abba,” which is the Coptic name for “Father.” Among the Desert Fathers, Saint 43 44

“On the Universe,” Poemata Arcana, p. 21. “On Rational Nature,” Poemata Arcana, p. 29.

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Anthony the Great and Abba Macarius were sought most by Christian mystics for spiritual enlightenment. Saint Anthony the Great (251–356), also known as the “Father of Monks,” was the son of well-to-do Copt 45 peasants. One day as he was praying in church, he heard Jesus telling him: “Go, sell all you have and give to the poor and come and follow me.” 46 He left his family to live in solitude in the Egyptian desert and devoted his life to redirect every aspect of his mind, body, and soul to God. 47 His possessions were a roof of branches, a bed of reeds, a sheep-skin cover, an oil lamp, and a container of water. Although his education was limited to the Scriptures, his teachings consisted in fighting the sins of body and soul and living a life of solitude, humility, righteousness, and abstinence. One of his followers established the Macarian doctrine, which spread from the Egyptian desert to Palestine, Syria, Mount Lebanon, and even Mount Athos, the sacred mountain in Greece which up to this day is sought by Orthodox Christians from all over the world; this Abba was called Macarius (300–391), also known as “Lamp of the Desert.” Deeply influenced by Abba Anthony, Abba Macarius wrote his spiritual teachings in fifty homilies, which were attributed to him one century after his death. George A. Maloney sums up the doctrine of Macarius: “The preponderant accent is on the spiritual combat and the interiorization of one’s spiritual life, with special stress placed on the personal and intimate experience of fire and baptism in the Holy Spirit that effects a mystical one-

A Copt belongs to Egyptian Christian Orthodox Coptic Church, founded by Saint Mark during the first century, when the Jews of Alexandria were converted. 46 Sayings, p. xviii. 47 Sayings, p. xxi. 45

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ness with the indwelling Jesus Christ.” 48 The mystic must enter “into the depths of one’s soul and do the inner spiritual battle— to renounce even one’s false self.” 49 Macarius’s homilies assert that sin is not inherent in human nature, which is part of the nature of God, and that the mystic must raise an inner spiritual clash against sin and evil powers. He writes: We have received into ourselves something that is foreign to our nature, namely, the corruption of our passions through the disobedience of the first man which has strongly taken over in us, as though it were a certain part of our nature by custom and long habit. This must be expelled again by that which is also foreign to our nature, namely, the heavenly gift of the Spirit, and so the original purity must be restored. 50

According to Macarius, this inner conflict should be based on prayer, humility, inner contemplation and negation of the ego. Macarius’s teachings had a great influence on Syriac Christians and specifically mystics such as Saint Mark the Hermit of Athens (born during the fourth century), who settled in a cave on Mount Trache, in Ethiopia, to live in seclusion for ninety-five years. Macarius’s homilies also had a special impact on Saint Gregory of Sinai (1255–1346). Maloney writes that Saint Gregory’s stress on the “holistic integration of body, soul, and spirit, the feeling of God's interior presence and an abiding consciousness of, all show a definite influence from Macarius” and asserts that the Macarian doctrine was brought to Mount Athos, in Greece, by Gregory of Sinai. 51 This brings us to the Christian Mountain Mystics, also known as the Syriac spiritualists. Pseudo-Macarius. The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter, translated and edited by George A. Maloney (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), p. 12. [Henceforth cited as Fifty Spiritual Homilies] 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., p. 13. 51 Fifty Spiritual Homilies, p. 21. 48

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Like the Desert Fathers, 52 the Syriac 53 mystics escaped Roman prosecution and hid in the rocky mountainous caves and grottos of Syria and Lebanon during the fourth century. 54 They lived in isolation, poverty, humility, and abstinence; they prayed, contemplated the beauty of nature around them, which they believed represented the beauty of God, and had an enamored spiritual love for Jesus Christ. Several texts portray the Syriac hermits living humbly in caves on mountains. A famous Syriac author, Ephrem the Syrian, known as Saint Ephrem (306– 373), was a theologian and hymnographer. In stanza four of hymn number VI, he describes his vision of Paradise after reading the Scriptures: Paradise raised me up as I perceived it, it enriched me as I meditated upon it; I forgot my poor estate, for it Other known Desert Fathers include: Abba Ammonas, who was Abba Anthony's disciple and successor; Abba Abraham, who for fifty years did not eat bread or taste wine; Basil the Great (c. 330–79) and Theodore, the highly educated Abbas; Abba Ephrem, known as the mystics’ hymn writer; Amma or Sister Theodora, who was a consultant to several abbas; see Sayings and William Harmless, S.J. Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 53 Brian E. Colless explains: “We call these Christian monks ‘Syriac’ because that is the name of the language they spoke: Syriac is a Christian dialect of Aramaic, the mother tongue of Jesus and his disciples, and it became the literary and liturgical language of the churches of ancient Palestine, Syria, [Lebanon], Iraq, and Iran”; see Brian E. Colless, Trans. The Wisdom of the Pearlers: An Anthology of Syriac Christian Mysticism (Michigan: Cistercian Publications Kalamazoo, 2008), p. 1. [Henceforth cited as ASCM] 54 Traces of the early Christian mystics’ caves are still traced in the Valley of the Saints, which lies under the Cedars Mountain in Lebanon, 2,500 meters above sea level. 52

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM had made me drunk with it fragrance. I became as though no longer my old self, for it renewed me with all its varied nature. I swam around in its magnificent waves; and in the place that, burning like a furnace, had made Adam naked, I became so inebriated that I forgot all my sins there. 55

This view of heaven is perceived by the visionary inner eye, as a baptism—“I swam around/in its magnificent waves”—of the inner self which when contemplating the words of God, it is elevated to an ecstatic trance and cleanses it form sin. Ephrem’s hymns had a great influence on the Syriac monks who dedicated themselves to asceticism and to the service of the Church. During the fifth and sixth centuries, Syriac monasteries spread form Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, to reach countries on the west of the Arabian peninsula, such as Qatar, Bahrain, and Yemen. Syriac asceticism differ from the early fathers of Egypt in severity, seclusion, and mystical experience. Among the Syriac fathers, the most renowned are Saint Maron and Isaac of Nineveh. Saint Maron, 56 who was born during the first quarter of the fourth century in Cyr, north of Syria. During his early years, he left his rich family for the Syrian desert and devoted himself to solitude, prayer, and contemplation. Later he became a hermit on Taurus Mountains, north-west of Aleppo, where he lived in the open air, close to an ancient temSaint Ephrem: Hymns of Paradise, translated by Sebastian Brock (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990), p. 110. 56 For the life and teachings of Saint Maron, see Abbot Paul Namaan. The Maronites: The Origin of an Antiochene Church, translated by the Department of Interpretation and Translation, Holy Spirit University, Lebanon (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2009). 55

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ple for thirty-eight years. Though he did not leave manuscripts after his death, his monastic teachings emphasized solitude, harsh rustic life, humility, poverty and interminable love for God. He contemplated and experienced union with God and all His spiritual and physical creation, and his saintly reputation spread in Syria and Lebanon. After his death, his mystical followers escaped prosecution by moving to Mount Lebanon, where they dwelt in the high caves and grottos and protected themselves against the freezing winters and cold summers by wearing garments made from sheep wool. The hermitages of those mystics dotted the Lebanese mountains, especially those lying under the biblical Cedar Mountain to live their mystical lives in solitude and safety. 57 Isaac of Nineveh (613–700) was born in Qatar and later was consecrated as bishop of Nineveh, Iraq. But he resigned after a few months and isolated himself in the mountains of Khuzistan, Iraq, where he wrote eighty-two discourses on his spiritual experience of the visionary light of inner self, which is achieved through love, solitude, and humility. 58 He describes the mystical experience as an opening of the mind from within to gaze in wonder at divinity disregarding the demons which try to distort the gazer; however, if the gazer fixes the inner eye at the Cross and becomes saturated with the grace of Christ suddenly a fountain of delight will spring up from his heart, his limbs will slacken, his eyes will be shut, his face will be bowed down, and his thoughts will be interrupted, so that his knees are just not able to rest on the ground, because of Saint Maron’s non-mystical followers established the Maronite Church, which in modern times became the largest Christian church in Lebanon, the only Arab country whose president is a Christian Maronite. 58 See Bedjan, P. ed. Mar Isaacus Ninivita de Perfectione Religiosa (Otto Harrassowitz, Parissis, 1909). 57

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM the exhilaration from that act of grace, spreading through his whole body. Consider, man, what you are reading. Can such things be communicated through ink? Can the taste of honey be conveyed to a reader’s palate through writing. 59

Significant in the above quotation is Issac’s address to the readers to fight their inner daemons by reading the scriptures and concentrating wholeheartedly on God’s grace, which then would fill their spirits and bodies with blissful sublime feelings, which would elevate Self to the experience of deification, theosis. Another significant mystic was John the Venerable, who was born during the fourth-century in Armenia to an Orthodox Christian mother. John was completely absorbed with the love of Jesus; he left his mother and lived in solitude and died after ten years, during which he wrote about his mystical rapture in several spiritual homilies. In homily LIX, he writes: He who holds his mouth back from talking preserves his heart from passions. He whose heart is purified of passions sees God perpetually. He who perpetually meditates on God drives devils away and destroys the seed of their evil. He who fixes his gaze within himself continually, his heart will exult in revelations. He whose contemplation is collected within his mind sees there the splendour of the Father. He to whom all pleasures are contemptible will see his Lord within his heart. 60

John the Venerable lists the stages of mystical experiences, which start with silence, love, meditation, destruction of inner 59 60

ASCM, pp. 90–91. ASCM, p. 150.

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evil, the gaze inward, and ends with the splendour of God and seeing the vision of the Lord. In another homily, he writes: “Happy is he whose thoughts are silenced by the thought of you, for the Spirit causes rivers of life to well up in him for his own delight, and for those who thirst for a vision of you. Happy is he whose cheeks are burning from the tears of your love.” 61 Likewise, Simon the Gracious, a seventh-century Syrian monk, divides the mystical path into seven stages: 1. ty;

novitiate, the struggle to show obedience to authori-

2.

change, to a life of discipline;

3. warfare, against the passions, through fulfilling the commandments, to achieve purity of heart; 4.

mental labour, to discern the providence of God;

5.

mental contemplation of the incorporeal beings;

6. contemplation and ecstasy over the mystery of Godhead; 7. divine grace works mystically and ineffably in the mind, sometimes overwhelming it with love. 62

A quick observation of the above stages indicate that most of the Syriac Christian mystics present almost similar perceptions of the spiritual journey towards deification, which the Sufis referred to as the path towards unification with God. Thought the mystical terminology may differ in Christian mysticism and Sufism, the spiritual context is almost the same, and both have the same goal, theosis or becoming one with Godhood. How far did the spiritual thoughts of the Christian fathers and mystics influence the Sufi movement is not difficult to dis61 62

ASCM, p. 165. ASCM, pp. 86–87.

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cern for several reasons: First, Christianity and Islam were born and expanded over the same regions, extending from Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan to the countries of the Arabian peninsula and the eastern African countries such as Egypt and Ethiopia. Second, both religions have their roots deeply planted in the Abrahamic doctrine. Third, Christian monastic presence in the Arabian peninsula during the seventh-century enabled the Christian monks and those converted to Islam to start discourses about both religions. Fourth, even after the Islamic expansion, several Christian monasteries remained in the East despite the fact that many monks escaped to Byzantium. Fifth, the Omayyad dynasty (650–750) showed tolerance towards the Christians. Sixth, despite the fact that during the nineth-century so many Syriac Christians converted to Islam, they maintained the spirit of Christianity in their hearts. And Last, there is no doubt that the early Sufis were in contact with Christian hermits. For all the above mentioned reasons, one can assert that the Desert Fathers and the Mountain Mystics had a great impact on Islam and especially on the Sufi mystics, who spread after the death of Prophet Mohammad from Arabia to Andalusia in Spain. It is a fact that Prophet Muhammad was acquainted with the Christian dogma through his own Christian relatives, Waraqah bin Naufal and Uthman bin Al-Huwayrieh, who were Christian cousins to Prophet Muhammad’s first wife, Khadija. In a manner similar to that of the Syrian and Lebanese mountain mystics, the Prophet of Islam retreated to Mount Hira, near Mecca to contemplate the Word of Allah and express it in the Quran. There he had a dream and heard the voice of Angel Gabriel telling him that he will be God’s Messenger and asked him to read the first Quranic revelation. The Prophet related his dream to his wife, who in turn related it to her cousin Waraqah, who advised the Prophet to lead his own people towards God. 63 Therefore, the interaction 63

The whole account of Prophet Muhammad’s first encounter with the

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between the Christians and the Muslims is a historical fact; both Christians and Muslims in Arabia and Andalusia learnt from each other about the compassionate God, who through His love has given believers and mystics of both religions the gift of interacting with Him through deification or theosis. Meanwhile, Christian mysticism developed on the Continent during the fourth century with mystics such as Saint Augustine (354–430), who admitted in his Confessions, an autobiographical record of his spiritual experiences, that he was a sinner and that his mother, Monica, guided him to be born again when she “had wept over me for many years so that I live in your [God’s] sight.” 64 He also acknowledges his indebtedness to Platonism, which insists on the superior knowledge achieved through contemplation associated with the self’s inward transcendence. He “knew—as many today do not—that the interior life of the self discloses more than a complex bundling of mental impressions, but instead betokens a deeper reality—beyond body, mind, and time—a self-grounded in the eternal and the divine.” 65 This is how Saint Augustine expresses his reverence for God: I have learnt to love you late, Beauty at once so ancient and so new! I have learnt to love you late! You were within me, and I was in the world outside myself. I searched for you outside myself and, disfigured as I was, I fell upon the lovely things of your creation. … You shed your fragrance around angel Gabriel in a dream is available in al-Tabari. Muhammad at Mecca in The History of al-Tabari, vol. 6, translated and annotated by W. Montgomery and M. V. McDonald (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1988), pp. 66–77. 64 Saint Augustine. Saint Augustine: Confessions, translated and introduced by R. S. Pin-Coffin (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1961), p. 203. 65 John Peter Kenney. The Mysticism of Saint Augustine: Rereading the Confessions (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. ix.

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM me; and I drew breath and now I gasp for your sweet odour. I tasted you, and I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am inflamed with love of your peace.” 66

Through divine intervention, Saint Augustine contemplated God’s creation and saw His Beauty; and in his innermost self, he tasted and sensed His peace. This intramural spiritual pilgrimage, initiated by prayer and guarded by divine transcendence, led him to see sparks of the mysteries of divine Love and Wisdom—such a gnostic pilgrimage is basically the essence of Islamic mysticism. In some respects, Saint Augustine’s mystical principles may have attracted the Sufis, especially those who lived in Spain during Islamic Spain (711–1492), when Christians and Jews mingled with Muslims. Indeed, major scholars of Sufism, such as Idries Shah, Afzal Iqbal, and Annmarie Schimmel, relate Saint Augustine’s Confessions to Sufism. In this vein, Arin Shawkat Salamah-Qudsi discusses the influence of Saint Augustine’s principle of rebirth in the light of God on Sufism and writes, “The symbol of a new or a second rebirth was strongly emphasized by later Sufis who made use of the ancient religious conception of man being spiritually reborn to express the idea of a disciple being reborn from his Sheikh through the harsh process of training.” 67 Another Christian mystic, Saint Francis of Assisi (1181– 1226), the Italian hermit of Fonte Colombo wrote his famous rules which centered on self-denial, poverty, humility, chastity, and purity of heart and soul. While Saint Augustin was a spiritual and intellectual theologian, Saint Francis of Assisi 68 was a Saint Augustine, pp. 231–232. See Arin Shawkat Salamah-Qudsi. “A Lightning Trigger or a Stumbling Block: Mother Images and Roles in Classical Sufism.” Oriens, vol. 39, no. 2 (2011), pp. 216–218. 68 Saint Francis was born in Assisi, Italy, in 1181. As a young man he gave the poor money, which he had stolen from his father, who held 66 67

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man of deeds. Before he established his mystical order, he was a poor wanderer preaching chastity, poverty, love, humility, while praising the love, beauty, and wisdom of Jesus. He later advised his followers to leave all materialistic desires behind and to preach by their deeds. In 1219, Saint Francis accompanied the Fifth Crusade, who fought against the Muslim forces of Sultan Malek al-Kamil in the Battle of Damietta, Egypt, and lost. The Sultan treated the defeated Crusaders compassionately, allowing Saint Francis to meet the Sultan’s Sufi teacher, Fakhr al-Dīn alFārisī. With him he discussed the Sufi mystical life and discovered that it suited his spiritual aspirations, 69 which also preached that man’s body as a source of sin, is his enemy. Saint Francis confirms: “There are many, who while they sin or receive injury, often blame their enemy or neighbor. But it is not so: because each one has in his own power (his) enemy, namely the body, through which he sins.” 70 And in his “The Canticle of Brother Sun,” he praises God for granting man all elements of Nature, such as the sun, moon, wind, water, fire and earth, all of which he calls brothers and ends his prayer, thanking God for him in the basement of their home. His mother freed him, and he fled to San Damiano remote church in Assisi, where he first heard the voice of God telling him to go and rebuild His Church. For a brief biography of Saint Francis and his teachings; see Francis of Assisi: The Essential Writings in His Own Words, translated and Introduced by John Sweeney (Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2013). 69 For Saint Francis’s acquaintance with Sufism and the correlation between his “The Canticle of Brother Sun,” and Rumi’s sun poems, see Idries Shah’s The Sufis (London: The Octagon Press, 1977), pp. 228– 234. 70 The Writings of St. Francis of Assisi, translated from the critical Latin edition of Fr. Kajetan Esser, O. F. M. (A Publication of The Franciscan Archive, 1999), p. 24. Available at: http://home.ici.net/~panther/francis. [Henceforth cited as Saint Francis, Writings]

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the mortality of body and the immortality of the spirit: “May Thou be praised, my Lord, for our sister, bodily death, whom no man living can escape. Woe to those, who die in mortal sin: blessed those whom she [sister bodily death] will find in Thy most holy desires, because the second death will do them no evil.” 71 The purgation and unification path are gnostic ones whereby all corporal existence is left behind. Saint Francis’s mysticism could be summed in his “A Salutation to the Blessed Virgin Mary,” which ends with: “Hail all you holy virtues, which through the grace and illumination of the Holy Spirit are infused into the hearts of the faithful.” 72 For Saint Francis, the Holy Spirit dwells in the hearts of mystics, who refuse all earthly luxury enjoyed by the servants of the Catholic Church. Though he deviated from their traditions, he was honored by all and came closer to the Sufi mystics, who sought a life of poverty and humility. But perhaps the Christian Mystics who were closer to the Sufis in their gnostic experiences were Saint Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) and Saint John of the Cross (1542–1591). From a well-to-do family in Avila, Spain, Saint Teresa of Avila was fascinated by the lives of the saints, and later in her life she became one. At twenty, she joined the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation, read St. Augustine’s Confessions, and became conscious of her absolute subjection to God. She resolved to reform the Carmelite convents, but received a papal sanction for her calling for absolute poverty and renunciation of all materialistic property. Her The Interior Castle, written in Spanish as El Castillo Interior in 1577, relates the inner spiritual movement from sin to union with God. She also preaches that the movement across the seven mansions of the soul demands: 1. sincere prayer and humility, 2. meditation, 3. ascetism, 4. 71 72

Saint Francis, Writings, pp. 29–30. Saint Francis , Writings, p. 103.

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virtuous life adopting the divine grace and love of God, 5. mystical contemplation, 6. self-annihilation, 7. pure betrothal and compassionate love. 73 This movement across the spiritual mansions corresponds to the Sufi inner pilgrimage, which starts with contemplation, selfless love and adoration, and illumination or an exoteric spiritual union with God. Luce Lopez-Baralt compares Saint Teresa’s seven mansions to Maqāmāt al-Qulūb (Stations of the Heart), a set of concepts enunciated by the Sufi Abul-Ḥasan Al-Nuri, 74 who preached his mystical pilgrimage through the seven castles or concentric dwellings. 75 She also refers to Farīd ad-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, 76 who succeeded in crossing the seven cita-

Saint Teresa of Avila. The Interior Castle, translated by Benedictine of Stanbrook and introduced by Benedict Zimmerman (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2007). 74 Ahmed Ibn Abu al-Hussain Al-Nuri (840–908), also known as Nuri, was a famous Sufi Persian saint and author of Maqamat alqulub (Stations of the Hearts); see N. Hanif. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Sufis (New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2002), pp. 368–369. 75 See Luce Lopez-Baralt. “Teresa of Jesus and Islam: The Simile of the Seven Concentric Castles of the Soul.” Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, edited by Hilaire Kallendorf (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), vol. 19, pp. 185–186. 76 Farīd ad-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (c. 1145–c. 1221), [Attar] was the son of a Persian chemist and pharmacist. Later Attar was attracted to the Sufi order and became a Sufi poet. He wrote two significant works, Mantiq-ut-Tayr (Arabic for “logic of the bird”), later translated as The Conference of the Birds. His Ilahi-Nama or The Book of Divine was well-known in the East and the West. Like his father, Attar became a pharmacist but later left his profession to travel to several Muslim cities in Persia and Arabia and became an acclaimed Sufi poet. At the age of 78, Attar was killed in a massacre during the attack of the Mongols on Nishapur in 1221. For a detailed biography of Attar and his works; see Farid al-Din Attar. Fifty Poems of Attar, translated by Kenneth Avery and Ali Alizadeh (Melbourne: repr. 2007). 73

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dels of the soul on his journey toward union with Allah, and ends asserting that Saint Teresa is indebted to “Sufi literature.” 77 For Saint John of the Cross, union with God is experienced through three stages stated in his Noche Oscura del Alma, or Dark Night of the Soul. The first stage is via purgativa or the purgative path, whereby the mystic in solitude contemplates, two kinds of darkness or purgation, corresponding to the two parts of man’s nature—namely, the sensual and the spiritual. And thus the one night or purgation will be sensual, wherein the soul is purged according to sense, which is subdued to the spirit; and the other is a night or purgation which is spiritual, wherein the soul is purged and stripped according to the spirit, and subdued and made ready for the union of love with God. 78

This first stage purifies the body and soul and prepares the mystic to know God. The second stage occurs via iluminativa or the path of illumination, which is a heightened blissful awareness of God’s presence and His gifts; but since God’s gifts are not God himself, the mystic experiences a dark night of the soul which generates doubt, despair, and emptiness. Here the mystic’s soul must adhere to God seeking God for God’s sake and not only for the joy of feeling God’s presence. The last stage is via unitive or the path of unity, “in order to come to this union, the soul must needs enter into the second night of the spirit, wherein it must strip sense and spirit perfectly from all these apprehensions and from all sweetness, and be made to walk in dark and pure faith, which is the proper and adequate means whereby the soul is

Lopez-Baralt, pp. 194 and 197. Saint John of the Cross. Dark Night of the Soul, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers (New York: Doubleday & Company Inc., 1959), p. 29. 77 78

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united with God.” 79 These three stages grant the Christian mystic moments of intense gnosis, love, and exultation.

ISLAMIC MYSTICISM: SUFISM

Sufism is essentially love and illumination leading to union and salvation, or as Mark Sedgwick assets: “Sufi seemed to be about belonging to a tariqa [path] and following a spiritual guide or shaykh, and involved developing Islamic practice from an obligation into an art.” 80 But before offering more definitions of Sufism, the etymology of the term “Sufi” must be clarified. According to Kubily Akman, some believe that the term “Sufi” stems from the Arabic word “Safa’” (purity), and some believe the term comes from Saff, to indicate that the Sufi holds the first rank before God in seeking Him; however, Akman explains that “if the term ‘Sufi’ comes from ‘Saff’ (rank) it would be Saffi and not ‘Sufi’,” and goes on to trace other possible sources of the term such as “Asḥāb aṣ-Ṣuffah” (Companions of the Veranda),” who detached themselves from all worldly property, followed Prophet Muhammad, and lived in the veranda (“terrace”) of the Prophet’s Mosque (Masjid an-Nabawi) in Madina AlMunawwarah (honored city) 81 to pray and study Islam. Lieutenant James William Graham, a linguist, explains the meaning of the term Sufi: In the first place the word sûfi implies wise, devout, spiritual, &c. derived from sěfã, meaning purity, clearness; hence sãf pure, clear, sincere, candid; and sëfi pure, clear, bright, just, upright, sincere. Again, by some the word sûfi is supSaint John of the Cross, p. 47. Mark Sedgwick. Western Sufism: From the Abbasids to the New Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 1–2. 81 Madina Al-Munawwarah is an Islamic holy city in Saudi Arabia. NonMuslims can visit the town, though not the sacred precincts of the Prophet’s Mosque. 79 80

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM posed to be derived from sûf, wool, on account of this peculiar order wearing woollen apparel, which evince their derision from the luxuries of the world. “The meaning of the term Sufism or sûfi in this case may be wisdom, piety, fervour, ardent devotion.” 82

And lastly Kubilay Akman refers to claims that Sufi comes from the Arabic term, Suf (wool), because the Sufi used to wear woolen garments: “In this case the etymological derivation sounds correct, as ‘Tasawwafa’ means, ‘he donned woolen dress’”; and then he ends his discussion confirming that even though the “etymological archaeology of the word” could have various sources, all those sources are possible as they seems to include basic features of Sufism and “complete the others.” 83 Although no one scholar has any doubt that “Sufi” is an Islamic term, I concur with H. A. R. Gibb and Michael Franklin, both of whom confirm that the term originates from the Arabic word Suf (wool). Gibb believes that the origin of the “term Sufi is complex, but in general connected with the wearing of undyed garments of wool (Suf)”; he refers to Ibn Sirin (d. 729) who “criticized some ascetics for wearing Süf in imitation of Jesus.” 84 Franklin writes: “Arguably, in the contrast drawn between ermine and wool there might be an allusion to the fact that Sufi derives from the Arabic Süf (wool), connoting the pious mystic

Lieutenant James William Graham. “A Treatise on Sufism, or Mahomedan Mysticism.” Transactions of Comment the Literary Society of Bombay (London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, Paternoster Row, and John Murray, 1819), p. 90. 83 Kubilay Akman. “Sufism, Spirituality and Sustainability: Rethinking Islamic Mysticism through Contemporary Sociology.” Comparative Islamic Studies (© Equinox Publishing Ltd., London, 2010), p. 3. 84 H. A. R. Gibb. Mohammedanism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 132. 82

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wool-wearer, a dervish dress of radical renunciation.” 85 Indeed, the term not only derives from the Arabic noun süf but also has a Christian origin. History informs us that during the second and third centuries, Christians fled the prosecution of the Roman Empire and sought refuge in the caves of high mountains in Iraq, Syria and, especially, in Mount Lebanon. The monks and the hermits secured their existence and dedicated their rough lives to mystical scrutiny in their eagerness to worship and communicate with God. It is thought they were the earliest Christian ascetics and mystics ever. Those hermits renounced all social and religious communes and inhabited the caves in high mountains, as they believed that the natural beauty and solemnity of those mountains represented the divine wisdom and beauty of God. Those early hermits were called sufi’yün because they wore Süf garments not only as a sign of humility but also for protection from the year-round cold mountain climate. The contacts between Christian mystics or hermits and Muslim mystics began as early as the Prophet Mohammad and continued throughout the course of the establishment and development of Sufism as the mystical dimension of Islam. In this sense, the kinship between Christian Mysticism and Sufism is a historic, incontrovertible fact. Early Muslim writers transformed their interactions with the Christian mystics of the mountains to fictitious accounts to avoid prosecution by the Muslim authorities, who, because of their belief in the Oneness of God, rejected the Christian trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In her seminal book, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, Annemarie Schimmel explains: The most significant contacts of the early Abbasid Muslims were with Christians, split into numerous groups ranging from the Nestorians to the many Monophysite sects and

85

Franklin, 349.

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM churches. 86 Christian ascetics and hermits who inhabited places in Iraq and the mountains of Lebanon are mentioned frequently in Sufi stories—and in pre-Islamic poetry there were already allusions to the light shining forth from the Christian hermit’s cell. A meeting with a Christian ascetic or with a wise monk is a fictional element in Sufi legends of early times: such a person usually explains some mystical truths to the seeker; or the disciple admires his austerity but is informed by a heavenly voice that all his asceticism will not gain him salvation since he has no faith in Muhammad. 87

Schimmel then points to the sincere admiration of the first and successive generations of Sufi writers in Jesus and the Virgin Mary—Issa and Maryam, 88 as the Muslims call them—because they symbolized “the ideal” ascetics who rejected worldly interests: Jesus, the last prophet before Muhammad according to Koranic revelation, appears to the Sufis as the ideal ascetic and Nestorianism is a Christian sect that flourished in Syria under the guidance of Nestorius, who preached that the nature of Jesus Christ is both human and divine. This sect was prosecuted by the Christian Church during the after the fifth century. A Monophysite is a follower of Monophysitism, which began in the fifth century by a monk called Eutyches, who argued that despite His human existence Jesus Christ has a divine nature. For a detailed study, see Theodore Sabo. From Monophysitism to Nestorianism: AD 431–681 (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018). 87 Annemarie Schimmel. Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 35th Anniversary Edition (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1975), p. 34. 88 The names Issa and Maryam are common Christian and Muslim names in the Arab world. In the Quran, there are many verses about both. The Quranic Surah (Chapter 19) is named after Maryam; see The Meaning of the Glorious Koran. 86

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also as the pure lover of God. A homeless pilgrim, wandering without knowing where to put his head, he instructs the devout about the importance of modesty, peace, and charity, for ‘just as the seed does not grow but from dust, so the seed of wisdom does not grow but from a heart like dust.’ It is the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount whose image is reflected in sayings of the first generations of Sufis, and he continued to be a favorite figure in later Sufi poetry as well: he and his virgin mother become exalted symbolic figures—the woman unspoiled by worldly concern, the pure receptacle of the divine spirit, and the prophet born out of the divine command, surnamed “Spirit of God,” became models of the pure spiritual life. 89

The above proves, if anything, that the term “Sufi” derives from the Arabic noun süf (wool), and that the Sufi is a wearer of wool garments; this also attests that Christian mysticism and Sufism possess similar spiritual ideals, and that their differences are merely dogmatic. As to the definitions of Sufism, it should not be considered strange that the Sufi mystics and poets rarely mention the terms “Sufi” and “Sufism” in their teachings and/or poetry, which they considered the best channel to spread their beliefs. In fact, Sufism, directly and indirectly, lead to the propagation of the teachings of the Quran, and they thought of themselves as mystics following the footsteps of their Prophet, Muhammad, whom they considered the first Muslim mystic. Without any doubt one can ascertain that Prophet Muhammad was a mystic: his strong faith (‘īmān), constant prayers and spiritual retreats (khuluwāt) and his fasting for most of his life, besides his very simple manner of living and his charity (ʾiḥsān), piety (taqwá), and his renunciation of a life of lavishness—his only possessions were a bed and a bowl of water—are sufficient proof of the mystical life 89

Schimmel, pp. 34–35.

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he led. Reynold Nicholson refers to Ibn Khaldun (1406), who sheds light on the first generation of Sufi mystics who were companions of Prophet Muhammad and who believed that the way of Truth and Salvation starts with full piety to Allah, renouncing all worldly pleasures by devoting their lives to isolation and prayer. However, the second generation of Sufis together with those of the coming generation were less strict in their practices. Nicholson insinuates “They brought out the spiritual and mystical element in Islam, or brought it in, if they did not find it there already.” 90 Nicholson is certain that the “four principal foreign sources of Sufism are undoubtedly Christianity, Neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, and Indian asceticism and religious philosophy.” 91 I strongly differ with Nicholson for using the term “foreign,” as all of the above -isms had, like Islam, the East as their domain. Among the earliest Muslim mystics and theologians, AlGhazali 92 claims in his Alchemy of Happiness that knowledge of Self is an inward process and that such awareness is key to the understanding of God. He concludes his Alchemy: If thou sayest “I know myself,” meaning thy outward shape, body, face, limbs, and so forth, such knowledge can never be Reynold A. Nicholson. A Literary History of the Arabs (Cambridge: University Press, 1969), pp. 229–230. 91 Nicholson, 230. 92 Abu Hamid Ibn Muhammad Al-Ghazali was born in 1058 in Persia, where he studied Islamic jurisprudence and later theology. After a spiritual crisis in 1095, he left Baghdad to Mecca and later began teaching. He wrote around 70 books on sciences, philosophy, theology, and Sufism. His most well-known work is Alchemy of Happiness, and his influence on medieval Eastern and Western philosophers, especially on St. Thomas Aquinas, enhanced his fame among the Muslims and Christians. For a detailed biography of Al-Ghazali; see Edoardo Albert. Imam Al-Ghazali: A Concise Life (Markfield, Leicestershire: Kube Publishing Ltd., 2013). 90

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a key to the knowledge of God. Nor, if thy knowledge as to that which is within only extends so far, that when thou art hungry thou eatest, and when thou art angry thou attackest someone, wilt thou progress any further in this path, for the beasts are thy partners in this? But real self-knowledge consists in knowing the following things: What art thou in thyself, and from whence hast thou come? 93

The Path of Knowledge, Tariq al-Hikma, is an inward pilgrimage towards unveiling the mysteries of the inner Self, the Higher Self and not only the conscious, rational self, through an inward experience of Allah. Al-Ghazali explains the above in simpler words: The first step to self-knowledge is to know that thou art composed of an outward shape, called the body, and an inward entity called the heart, or soul. By “heart” I do not mean the piece of flesh situated in the left of our bodies, but that which uses all the other faculties as its instruments and servants. In truth it does not belong to the visible world, but to the invisible, and has come into this world as a traveller visits a foreign country for the sake of merchandise, and will presently return to its native land. It is the knowledge of this entity and its attributes which is the key to the knowledge of God. 94

The function of the heart is not only to pump blood into the human body, but also to mirror divinity. The heart in Sufism cannot be discussed in isolation from knowledge. Rumi writes in “Joseph and the Mirror” that the mirror of the heart reflects the “Absolute Perfect Being”: Al-Ghazali. The Alchemy of Happiness, translated by Claud Field (London: J. Murray, 1909), pp. 20–21. [Henceforth cited as Al-Ghazali. The Alchemy of Happiness] 94 Al-Ghazali, The Alchemy of Happiness, p. 22. 93

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM He drew forth a mirror from his side A mirror is what Beauty busies itself with. 95

Al-Ghazali compares the heart to a mirror reflecting the pure and clear images beyond terrestrial existence. This mirror points to the beauty and reality of the unseen which sustains the cosmos. But for the heart to reflect the essence, it must be polished, because the materialistic heart is a rusted one, and rusted mirror will distort images of the essence. A well-known sacred tradition “ḥadīth qudsī” (sacred talk) projects God saying: “The heavens and the earth cannot contain Me, but the heart of my believing servant does contain Me.” 96 In other words, it is a pure and polished heart which can realize God’s glory and mystery. AlGhazali considers the Sufi path of knowledge a spiritual one, raising the human and worldly self onto the level of the divinity through full detachment from all sensory knowledge of the world and its substances, which distract the Sufi on his pilgrimage towards Allah. Al-Ghazali, who believes in the Islamic dogmatic perception, “Tawḥīd” or “Unity of God,” insists, as a Muslim mystic, on Ittihad or “Union with God” through Love. He explains that the “alchemy of happiness” is based on the worshiper’s knowledge of God, which is possible when selfless love reigns over physical desires. The seeker for the knowledge of God must employ the house of Love and the Soul, the heart, and not the intellect. To him “the Vision of God is the greatest happiness to which a man can attain.” 97

Rumi, “Joseph and the Mirror,” Masnavi, p. 42. “Hadīth Qudsī”, Prophet Muhammad’s statement, of which the contents are ascribed to Allah. In comparison, Hadith stands for Prophet Muhammad’s own statements. 97 Al-Ghazali, p. 125 95 96

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On the other hand, Ibn Arabi, 98 another Muslim mystic, rejects Al-Ghazali’s conviction that the seeker for gnosis should become completely oblivious of the world and its substances. He considers that existence cannot be without God and indirectly promotes the concept of Wuhdat al Wujud (the “unity of being”), which Ibn Arabi discusses as God’s Tajalli (refulgence): Some sages, especially Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, claim that one can have gnosis of Allah through disregarding the world. This is false. Indeed, the non-time pre-time is not recognised as god until that which depends on its being God is known. Thus it is a proof of Him. Then after this, in the second state, unveiling accords you that the Real Himself is the source of the proof of Himself and His godness. The universe is but His tajalli [revelation or image] in the forms of their sourceforms whose existence is impossible without Him. He assumes various forms and modes according to the realities of these sources and their states, and this is after our knowledge of Him that He is our God. 99

Ibn Arabi was born in Murcia, a city in the province of Andalusia, Spain, in 1165. He fell under the influence of his father, a well-known Sufi and friend of the mystic philosopher Ibn Rushd, known to the West as Averroes. Later in his life, Ibn Arabi visited Mecca, and most of the Arab countries. He wrote extensively on mysticism, and the significant among his works is Fusus Al-Hikam [“The Seals of Wisdom”]. For a brief biography of Ibn Arabi, see Ibn Arabi, Muhyiddin. Journey to the Lord of Power: A Sufi Manual on Retreat, a commentary by Abd Al-Karim Jili, an introduction by Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak Al-Jerrahi, and a translation by Rabia Terri Harris (Vermont: Inner Traditions International, 1989), pp. 15–22. [Henceforth cited as Ibn Arabi, Journey] 99 Ibn Arabi, Muhi-e-Din. Fusus Al-Hikam: The Seals of Wisdom, translated by Aisha Bewley (Fusus Al-Hikam Madinah Press, 1983). Fdocuments, https://fdocuments.in/document/bezels-of-wisdom-fusus-Al98

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Ibn Arabi insinuates that “Allah manifests Himself in a special way in every creature.” 100 Here one cannot but relate Wahdat alWujud to the old human belief in Animism, 101 which asserts that all substances in nature have spirits of their own and that all spirits merge with the Creator. Here, Ibn Arabi approaches pantheism in his views and departs from the orthodox Islamic perception of Allah as Creator in favour of an Allah who is all in one and everything. This would indeed appeal to the Romantics who perceive everything in the universe, animate and inanimate, as part of this Oneness called the Absolute, whose attributes are manifested in the universe and all its elements. Attar agrees with Ibn Arabi when in his poetry he states that even inanimate objects of nature have hearts which beat with blood and the inward “Light”:

hikam-of-ibn-Al-arabi-sufi-fusus-Al-hikam.html, p. 27. [Hereafter cited as Ibn Arabi, The Seals of Wisdom] 100 Ibn Arabi, The Seals of Wisdom, p. 17. 101 Graham Harvey discusses the old and modern conceptions of Animism: “The old usage of animism was entangled with Western world views that considered the myriad multiplicity evident everywhere (internally, externally, physically, mentally, naturally, culturally, microscopically, macroscopically) to be problematic. Two solutions have been proffered. The first has been to insist on the underlying unity of all that exists. Such a unity may be located in a single creative God, a yet-to-be-discovered grand unifying theory, idealism, materialism or mysticism. The second has been to dichotomise everything and treat all that we encounter as a confrontation of dualities”; see Graham Harvey. Animism: Respecting the Living World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), p. xiv.

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But Rubies that have Blood within, and grown And nourisht in the Mountain Heart of Stone, Burn with an inward Light, which they inspire. 102

Ibn Arabi asserts the significance of the imagination as a medium that looks beyond worldly affluences: “This luminous wisdom spreads its light on the presence of the imagination (khayal), and it is the first of the beginnings of divine revelation in the people of divine concern.” 103 “According to Ibn Arabi, the mystic alone can perceive God in His unity rather than in His alleged multiplicity. It could be said that, for Ibn Arabi, the relationship between God and His creatures is that of an object reflected in countless mirrors. These reflections obviously cannot exist without Him, and, in a way, they are He,” explains Rom Landau, who also asserts: “THE truths expressed in the philosophy of Ibn Arabi are those of a seer and a mystic, not of a philosopher, even though he did his best to explain them through a philosophical system.” 104 The mystic seer employs the inward eye of contemplation and vision, while the normal seer engages the biological one. H. A. R. Gibb professes: “The schools of mystics became closed circles of initiates, and the emphasis was shifted from moral self-control to metaphysical knowledge with its sequence of psychological ascent to the ‘Perfect Man’, the microcosm in whom the One is manifested to Himself. By no means all Sufis, of course, were drawn into this pantheistic religion.” 105 This special curiosity of the Sufi poets in pantheism appealed to the Romantic poets, mainly Wordsworth and ColeAttar, Farid Ud-Din. The Conference of the Birds p. 14, ll. 366–370. Available: https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/conference-of-the-birdsebook.html [Hneceforce cited as Attar, Conference of the Birds] 103 Ibn Arabi, The Seals of Wisdom, p. 40. 104 Rom Landau. The Philosophy of Ibn ‘Arabi (New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 32 and 22. 105 Gibb, p. 149. 102

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ridge who see God in everything and all. In “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth sees God as the driving force who sets everything in motion: “that impels/All thinking things, all objects of all thought,/And rolls through all things.” 106 Coleridge realizes God’s motion in the “… one intellectual breeze, /At once the Soul of each, and God of all?” 107 Both poets see in nature and its elements a dynamic Divine Oneness. This drives Nicholas V. Riasanovsky to assert that “pantheism permeated Wordsworth’s life, as well as his art.” 108 Emphasizing the infiltration of Plotinus and Platonism into Sufism, Mark Sedgwick argues that “Sufism is more than Islamic Neoplatonism, however, as it also contains Islam, asceticism, and such practices as dhikr, [remembrance]”; he confirms that Sufism stems from al-Ghazali’s, Ibn Arabi’s, and Ibn Tufayl’s study of Neoplatonism,” 109 and their reading of Plotinus’s The Consolation of Philosophy. He confirms: “Without Arab Neoplatonism in the form of Arab philosophy and of access to the Enneads, Sufism would have been something different from what it became.” 110 There is no doubt that Neoplatonism marked the philosophy of al-Kindi, Alfarabi, and Avicenna, but those were “Oriental” philosophers and not theologians. Sedgwick admits that: “Sufis generally argue for Islamic origins that legitimize Sufism, while the Islamic opponents of Sufism generally argue

“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” ll. 101–104; see Stephen Gill, ed. William Wordsworth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). [Henceforth cited as WW] 107 “The Eolian Harp,” ll. 47–48; see Ernest Hartley Coleridge, ed. The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Vol I and II (Oxford: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1912). [Henceforth cited as CCPW] 108 Nicholas V. Riasanovsky. The Emergence of Romanticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 74. 109 Sedgwick, p. 8; also see his introduction, pp. 1–68. 110 Sedgwick, p. 30. 106

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for non-Islamic origins that delegitimize Sufism.” 111 Although alGhazali and Ibn Arabi read The Theology of Aristotle and were influenced by Neo-Platonism, there is no doubt that their basic source was the Quran, which calls for piety, compassion, fasting, and simple life. Sedgwick concurs with William Chittick who says, “the vast majority of Sufis have never read Ibn Arabi, and would not understand him if they did, since they lack the necessary conceptual Training.” 112 If anything, this reaffirms that early Sufism derives from the Quran and the life of Prophet Muhammad. Sedgwick’s thesis overemphasizes the influence of ancient Greek philosopher on Muslim Sufis and Sufism, as his main purpose is to discuss a different Sufism than that which the Romantics were acquainted with, modern Western Sufism or NeoSufism. He admits in his conclusion: “Today’s transregional tariqas differ significantly from earlier Western Sufi groups.” 113 Sedgewick’s and a more recent work lay more emphasis on Sufism in the modern world than the Sufism the Romantics read about. Meena Sharify-Funk, William Rory Dickson, and Merin Shobhana Xavier’s Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture (2018), includes three parts discussing modern Sufism in the West, only sections of the second part discuss the Romantics interest in reading Islamic Works. They assert: The distinguishing aspect of the Romantic Age was the serious effort given to language study, especially Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Sanskrit. This interest in language developed in part as a requirement for colonial administration. However, it was also rooted in the Romantic movement’s concern with spiritual and emotive themes in literature. Romanticism emerged after the Industrial Revolution in Europe

Sedgwick, p. 36. Sedgwick, p. 43. 113 Sedgwick, p. 250. 111 112

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM and turned inward, emphasizing emotion as central to human experience and spirituality. 114

They also confirm that the British Romantic poets found their voices, themes, metaphors, characters, and images in Islamic works; 115 they, however, do not give examples, because as I have written above, they are interested more in modern Sufism’s inward movement than in its literary heritage, which attracted the Romantics. An eminent Persian Sufi teacher and poet, Jalaluddin Rumi, 116 considers that Sufism has three dimensions: “the Law, the Way, and the Truth; or knowledge, works, and attainment to God; or theory, practice, and spiritual realization.” 117 The Sufi “Law” is divine knowledge, the “Way” is the path the Sufi pilgrims seek to reach inward transformation and illumination of Truth, or God, and “Truth” is perception of the mysteries of the Absolute, of Allah. Rumi summarizes Sufism in a simple simile: “The Law is like a lamp: It shows the way. Without a lamp, you will not be able to go forward. When you enter the path your going is the Way. And when you reach the goal, that is the Truth.” 118 Rumi’s belief in the divinity of human beings stems from the teachings of Prophet Mohammad whose words express this divine quality: “God created us in His own form: Our description has taken instruction from His description.” 119 A perSharify-Funk, et. al., 120. Ibid. 116 Sir William Jones was the first to translate twenty-six couplets of Rumi’s “astonishing work,” Masnavi; Jones enhanced the popularity of Rumi in Europe; see Franklin, p. 273. 117 Qtd., William C. Chittick. The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), p. 11. [Henceforth cited as Chittick, Sufi Path of Love] 118 Qtd., Chittick, Sufi Path of Love, p. 10. 119 Qtd., Chittick, Sufi Path of Love, p. 61. 114 115

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spicacious authority on Sufism, Rumi declares that the sacred humanity is sacred and that all elements of nature are part of Allah; but the Sufi must purify the inner self from the lower self to perceive his/her pure essence, which is part of the divinity of God. Another Persian Sufi poet born in 1414, Jami 120 summarizes the basic ideals of Sufism in the following prayer: O God, deliver us from preoccupation with worldly vanities, and show us the nature of things “as they really are.” Remove from our eyes the veil of ignorance, and show us things as they really are. Show not to us non-existence as existent, nor cast the veil of non-existence over the beauty of existence. Make this phenomenal world the mirror to reflect the manifestations of thy beauty, and not a veil to separate and repel us from Thee. Cause these unreal phenomena of the universe to be for us the sources of knowledge and insight, and not the cause of ignorance and blindness. Our alienation and severance from Thy beauty all proceed from ourselves. Deliver us from ourselves, and accord to us intimate knowledge of Thee. 121

According to the above, Sufism entails abstaining from worldly desires, uncovering the mysteries of the world, transcending sensory knowledge of the world and its substances, seeking Nūr ad-Dīn 'Abd ar-Rahmān Jāmī, (Jami) a Persian scholar, mystic, and poet, was born in 1414, in Khorasan, Persia. He was also a mathematician, scientist, logician, and philosopher, and studied the Arabic Language. His most known poetic works are Majnun Leila and Yusuf and Zuleikha, both of which had a great influence on Lord Byron’s Oriental Tales, an influence which is discussed in details in the following chapters. For a brief bibliography and a selection of Jami’s poetry, see Frederick Hadland Davis. The Wisdom of the East, the Persian Mystics: Jami (London: John Murray, 1908). 121 Qtd., Davis, p. 55. 120

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knowledge of the Truth, unveiling the Beauty of the Beloved albeit the Creator, and liberating the lower self from its corporal prison, the body, on the gnostic path toward Love and knowledge of Allah. The first stages the Sufi must experience are at-ta’amul and at-tafakkur (“meditation” and “contemplation”). It is true these terms seem to denote a similar process of thinking, but the difference is in meditation, which involves an imaginative process of thinking about the Other to perceive its essence, and deep contemplation that engages both the imagination and love in the Other. Both stages are quite meaningful for the Sufi who is seeking the perception of the truth of Allah, the Beloved. Two of the four basic stages of Sufism are haqiqā (Truth) and mārifā (Gnosis); the other two are shariā (Religious Law) and tariqā (Mystical Path). The four stages are interrelated, and the definitive purpose of these stages is to live instances of flotation when Truth is experienced in the presence of the superior beauty and wisdom of the Supreme Being, called Allah in Islam and God in other monotheistic religions. Graham describes the four stages the Sufi undergoes to reach perfection in a remarkably figurative language: The law (Shěryät, canonical one, enjoined) [the Word of Allah] is (like) a vessel; the true path, direction (Tureegut) [the Path] is (like) the sea; the perception and truth of things Hugeequt) [the Truth] is (like) the shell; and the knowledge of the Deity himself (Mãrifut) [Knowledge] is (like) the pearl (therein); but he who wishes to obtain the pearl must first go on board the vessel,” (meaning hereby, that that knowledge is only to be obtained progressively). 122

The first stage demands an in-depth knowledge of the Quran, the second is the willingness to take action and walk the difficult path towards purification, the third is knowledge of one’s 122

Graham, p. 94.

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inner self, and the fourth is seeking knowledge of the mysteries of self and Allah. Graham goes as far as comparing the trinity of Sufism to the Christian Holy Trinity; he explains that the beloved, “Mahboob, is the Son, Love itself is the Holy Ghost; and he who loves all, Mohib, is evidently the Father.” 123 This analogy explains the Sufi perception of the unifying power of Love, which blends the Lover or Allah to the beloved or all created existence, including man through Love, the binding spirit of Allah. A proper, unblemished reading of definitions of Sufism appears therefore to imply that it does not belong to one dogma, nor does it reject any creed that is based on the divine Wisdom and Love of Godhead. The Sufi is a mystic who not only studies the words of God but also practices them. This Sufi is a gnostic pilgrim on the path of self-annihilation, self-negation, and selftransformation to unite with the One Truth: the Beloved, the Absolute, and the All-knowing God. Divine intoxication is experienced when the higher Self perceives God and His attributes; this is the stage where duality ceases and is replaced by oneness. In this connection it may be pertinent to refer to another scholar, Titus Burckhardt, who defines Sufism by offering a textual analysis of Surat al-Fatihah, the opening verses of the Quran, which are recited by all Muslims, hence the Sufist as well before their prayers: Praise to God, the Lord of the worlds, The Compassionate, the Merciful, The King of the day of Judgment. It is Thee whom we adore and it is with Thee we seek refuge. Lead us on the straight way, The way of those on whom is Thy grace,

123

Graham, p. 109.

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM Not (that of) those who suffer Thy wrath, nor of those who stray. 124

Burckhardt clarifies: “‘the straightway’” enumerates the fundamental tendencies of man; the verse between these expresses the relation between God and man.” 125 This is valid, but I must add here that in Arabic “Aṣ-ṣirāṭ Al-Mustaqeem,” which literally means the “the straightway” can also suggest the paths of compassion, love, and piety. He goes on to explain the terms “arRaḥmān” (the Compassionate) and “ar-Raheem” (the Merciful): “Being Itself is effaced before the Infinite and the Infinite is manifested by Being through the two ‘dimensions’ described above, the ‘static’ plenitude of ar-Rahmān and the ‘dynamically’ redemptive and immanent plenitude of ar-Rahim.” 126 To the Muslim and the Sufi, God’s compassion is measureless and everlasting. Then Burckhardt masterfully explains the three classes of people mentioned in al-Fatihah: “those on whom is Thy grace”, of “those who suffer Thy wrath”, and of “those who stray”… In speaking of these three tendencies the Prophet drew a cross: the “straight way” is the ascending vertical; the “Divine wrath” acts in the opposite direction, and the dispersion of “those who stray” is in the horizontal direction. 127

The ones who are blessed by the grace of God will eventually approach Him; the ones who see their existence as materialist are earthly; and those who are lost between heaven and earth and have doubts about the source and end of life. Burckhardt ends his interpretation of al-Fatihah by explaining the phrase “It Quoted by Titus Burckhardt. Introduction to Sufi Doctrine (Bloomington, Indiana: World Wisdom, Inc., 2008), p. 37. 125 Ibid. 126 Burckhardt, p. 38. 127 Burckhardt, p. 39. 124

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is Thee whom we adore” as corresponding to “extinction” or alfanā, and by considering the phrase “with Thee we seek refuge” as “subsistence” or al-baqā. 128 God, the source of love, is the Beloved, whom the Sufi seeks in the search of spiritual illumination. A. J. Arberry defines Sufism in relation to the Muslim’s belief in the oneness of God. He notes: “Sufism may be defined as the mystical movement of an uncompromising Monotheism.” 129 To the Sufi, Allah is One and only One (“La ìlah ìlla Allah”). The Prophet Mohammad does not share Allah’s Godhead, and in no way is he equal to Allah. It follows that the Muslim and the Sufi do not recognize an incarnate God, a Savior acting as a medium between Allah and his worshipers. The Prophet is only the vehicle of the Divine Message to man, and the Quran is this Divine Message. Through ardent repetition of verses from the Quran, the Sufi allows his soul to travel beyond his physical body to become one with this Divine Message thereby becoming one with Allah. The true Sufi repeats Quranic verses and practices the Islamic law (Shariā, which takes its principles from the Quran and dictates the morally acceptable behavior of a good Muslim. Sehnaz Kiymaz, a Turkish scholar, explains that the Sufis consider the Shariā a circle enclosing and organizing life on earth and that the Ultimate Truth (Haqiqā) is Allah, “the center point of this circle.” She continues that the path (tariqā) leading to Haqiqā “is the radius that connects the circle with the central point” and that there are “infinite number of tariqās [paths] that may lead to Allah. 130 On his part, Schimmel offers a detailed definition of Sufism and relates it to Christian mysticism: Burckhardt, p. 40. Arberry, p. 12. 130 Sehnaz Kiymaz. “Sufi Treatments Methods and Philosophy Behind It.” Jishim, 2, 2002, p. 10. 128 129

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM In its widest sense it may be defined as the consciousness of the One Reality—be it called Wisdom, Light, Love, or Nothing. … For the reality that is the goal of the mystic, and is ineffable, cannot be understood or explained by any normal mode of perception; neither philosophy nor reason can reveal it. Only the wisdom of the heart, gnosis, may give insight into some of its aspects. A spiritual experience that depends upon neither sensual nor rational methods is needed. Once the seeker has set forth upon the way to this Last Reality, he will be led by an inner light. This light becomes stronger as he frees himself from the attachments of this world or—as the Sufis would say—polishes the mirror of his heart. Only after a long period of purification—the via purgativa of Christian mysticism—will he be able to reach the via illuminativa, where he becomes endowed with love and gnosis. … Mysticism can be defined as love of the Absolute—for the power that separates true mysticism from mere asceticism is love. 131

The key statement in the above definition is “consciousness of the One Reality—be it called Wisdom, Light, Love, or Nothing.” Reality to the Sufi is holistic and absolute; it is “no-thing” because its real attributes are spiritual and not corporal. Since this absolute reality is divine, the path to understanding it must involve a purification of Self via holistic love, even if this love is a painful one. For the Sufi, the path of pain is desirable for the purification of the soul, after which one could enjoy that selfless love which leads to the paths of light and wisdom. Schimmel continues: “The never-ending quest for God is symbolized in the ‘Path’ on which the ‘wayfarer’ has to proceed, as in the numerous allegories dealing with Pilgrim’s Progress or the Heavenly Journey.” 132 131 132

Schimmel, p. 4. Ibid.

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Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee presents another significant definition of Sufism as: “a mystical path of love in which God, or Truth, is experienced as the Beloved. The inner relationship of lover and Beloved is the core of the Sufi path. Through love the seeker is taken to God. The mystic seeks to realize “Truth in this life and God reveals Himself within the hearts of those who love Him.” 133 The Sufi is the lover, and God is the Beloved. But God reveals himself in all substance, be it animate or inanimate, then the lover must first negate self and love the All in One, and the One in All. Again, this necessitates a purgative process, whereby the Sufi not only suppresses the ego in his lower/physical self but also detaches his soul from his body. This painful process is necessary to achieve the mystical experience, which VaughanLee elucidates as, The mystical experience of God is a state of oneness with God. This unio mystica is the goal of the traveller, or wayfarer, on the mystical path. Within the heart, lover and Beloved unite in love’s ecstasy. The wayfarer begins the journey with a longing for this state of oneness. The longing is born from the soul’s memory that it has come from God. The soul remembers that its real home is with God and awakens the seeker with this memory. The spiritual journey is a journey that takes us back home, from separation to union. We have come from God and we return to God. 134

Vaughan-Lee goes on to describe this mystical experience from a Christian perspective, referring to Saint Augustine, the major Christian mystic of the 3rd century:

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. Sufism: The Transformation of the Heart (Inverness: The Golden Sufi Center, 1995), p. 1. [Henceforth cited as Vaughan-Lee, Sufism] 134 Ibid. 133

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM The mystical journey home is a journey inward, to the very center of our being, where the Beloved is eternally present. He whom we seek is none other than our eternal nature. Saint Augustine said, “Return within yourself, for in the inward man dwells Truth.” The mystic experiences that the Beloved dwells within the mystic’s heart, not as a concept but as a living reality. In the depths of the heart there is no separation between the lover and the Beloved. Here we are eternally united with God, and the mystical experience of union is a revelation of what is always present. 135

The Sufi experience is a type of revelation; it is an inward spark of illumination leading to gnosis, which produces mental and spiritual elevation, transcending the limits of the human senses. Such moments of spiritual and mental elevation, which Wordsworth calls “spots of time,” are moments of intense awakening within the Self, and to the Sufi, they lead to repentance, or Tawbā, which lead to a state of the highest awareness and knowledge. In other terms, Tawbā is the wisdom of the humble and pure in spirit, all the reason why Sufism, according to H. A. R. Gibb appealed to the common ranks of the people because it “arose out of the ranks of the people.” 136 Indeed, this particular feature of Sufism, among several others, would appeal to the Romantics, who with the exception of Lord Byron, arose from common and middle classes. The above definitions of Sufism are significant to this work, which investigates traces of Sufism in Romanticism, especially since the Sufis and Romantics were unorthodox spiritualists and poets. Michael J. O’Neil and J. Sydney Jones are right when writing in their World Religions: Almanac (2007), that the Sufis “believed that Islam placed too much em-

135 136

Vaughan-Lee, Sufism, p. 2. Gibb, p. 135.

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phasis on worldly concerns, rituals, and legalities.” 137 Indeed, the Sufis sought inner religious concerns and rituals, an inward communication with Allah through Love. Such concerns did not appeal to the orthodox Muslims, who prosecuted Sufis. For instance, Orthodox Muslims accused and condemned all those who were “the representatives of love mysticism of accepting the concept of Hulul,” 138 which is the unification of the human with the Divine through incarnation, as no one can completely know the ways of Allah, the nature of the soul or the hereafter. As such, the Sufis were considered Zanadiqā (heretics), and some, such as Al-Hallaj, were prosecuted; 139 however, their followers considered them martyrs. 140 Al-Hallaj, who symbolized the free Sufi spirit in conflict with orthodoxy came to appeal to the Romantics, who were acquainted with Sufi notions and the circumstances of Al-Hallaj’s life and prosecution through several works, the most popular amongst those was D’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque Orientale, which most Romantics possessed in their librarO’Neil, Michael J., and Sydney J. Jones. 2007. World Religions: Almanac. Vol. 2. (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007), p. 302. 138 Schimmel, p. 144. 139 Al-Hallaj, a Persian poet, was born around 858. He was 12 years old when he memorized the Quran. In Baghdad, he met the famous Sufi teacher Junayd and later went to Mecca, where he stayed for one year during which he strengthened his Sufi ideals of love and had several disciples. He visited Mecca again with 400 disciples. Back in Baghdad, Al-Hallaj proclaimed his famous statement, “I am the Truth.” He was imprisoned for nine years and finally condemned to death in 922, for claiming that the real Kaaba, a structure including a holy black stone believed to be placed there by Prophet Mohammad, lies in the Heart. For a detailed biography of Al-Hallaj, see Louis Massignon. The Passion of Al-Hallaj, Mystic and Martyr of Islam: The Life of Al-Hallaj, vol. 1, translated by Herbert Mason (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Legacy Library, 1986). 140 See Arberry, pp. 66–69, and also Annemarie Schimmel, “Sufism and the Islamic Tradition,” pp. 130–147. 137

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ies. 141 In their search for a new system, the Romantics deviated from orthodox Christianity and created their own spiritual dogmas, emphasizing their individual inner experiences. Blake’s “All Religions Are One,” Wordsworth’s pantheistic perceptions of God and nature, Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection, Byron’s Conversations on Religion with James Kennedy, Shelley’s “A Defense of Poetry” and his concern in ancient Greek religion, and Keats’s letter of 14 February to 4 May, 1819, to George and Georgiana are indicative of their personal acuities of the Christian faith. In “All Religions Are One,” Blake writes that “The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nations different reception of the Poetic Genius which is every where call’d the Spirit of Prophecy”; he confirms that “The Jewish & Christian Testaments are an original derivation from the Poetic Genius”; and explains: “As all men are alike (tho’ infinitely various)/So all Religions & as all similars have one source/The true Man is the source he being the Poetic Genius.” 142 For Blake, “Poetic Genius” is the “Spirit of Prophecy” which is the crux of poetic imagination and the source of all religions. Also in his Jerusalem, he asks: “Is God a Spirit, who must be worshipped in Spirit & in Truth, and are not the Gifts of the Spirit Everything to Man? … What is Mortality but the things relating to the Body, Which Dies? What is Immortality but the things relating to the Spirit, which Lives eternally?” 143 Wordsworth, on the other hand, inclines more to panSee Barthelamy D’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque Orientale, 2 vols. (Maestricht, 1776); this work includes entries with information about “Oriental” life and culture and discusses several Sufi poets and thinkers such as Rumi, Ferdausi, Al-Ghazali, Hafez, Al-Hallaj, Nizami, and Saadi besides several pre-Islamic poets. 142 See Principles 5–7, in The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, edited by David V. Erdman and commentary by Harold Bloom (New York: Anchor Books, a Division of Random House, Inc., New York, 1899), pp. 1–2. [Henceforth cited as BCP&P] 143 Jerusalem, BCP&P, p. 231. 141

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theistic aspirations rather than orthodox Christianity. Richard E. Matlack argues that Wordsworth’s pantheist aspiration is an indication of his rejection of orthodox Christianity, despite the fact that he respected the Bible. 144 Matlack basis his argument on Coleridge’s letter to Rev. John Prior Estlin, in which he professes that he wished Wordsworth could do more than respecting and venerating Christ and Christianity. 145 Coleridge’s affiliation to Christianity is closer than Wordsworth’s. In his Aids to Reflection, Aphorism XXV: Coleridge asserts: “He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.” 146 And in Aphorism XVI, Coleridge asserts: “The word rational has been strangely abused of late times. This must not, however, disincline us to the weighty consideration, that thoughtfulness, and a desire to bottom all our convictions on grounds of right reason, are inseparable from the character of a Christian.” 147 Coleridge considers reason the image of God in human beings; and those who have no reason may misunderstand Christianity. Lord Byron studied his Bible as a child and kept it with him in his travels; however, he protested against the divided Christian Church with all its various sects and denominations: “each envying, hating, and often reviling, at least writing, against one another. … Why do these exist to perplex and puzzle the mind?” 148 He tells James Kennedy: “you cannot expect me to become a perfect Christian at once.” 149 With Lord Byron, says Kennedy, “love must reign paramount to all laws See Richard E. Matlack, “Classical Argument and Romantic Persuasion in ‘Tintern Abby’.” SIR, 25 (1986), p. 107. 145 Matlack quotes the letter on p. 106. 146 Aids to Reflection, p. 90. 147 Ibid., p. 30. 148 Ibid., p. 104. 149 Ibid., p. 97. 144

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and principles, moral and divine.” 150 Shelley and Keats found the in the ancient mythology of Greece the religion of Beauty and Truth. In his seminal article, “Shelley and the Religion of Joy,” Timothy Webb argues that “Shelley was attracted by the Greek portrayal of divinity because of the way it contrasted with the gloomy and repressive deity of Christian orthodoxy.” 151 Shelley found in ancient Greek art (mythology, architecture, and sculpture) the pure and uncorrupted divinity of Beauty. 152 Webb then confirms that “Greek civilization which he [Shelley] valued most highly was its religion, whose charm, beauty and true spirituality he contrasts to the sanguinary history of Christianity, tragically enacted in the wars of religion and unhappily embodied in the image of a sadistic and tyrannical deity.” 153 In “A Defense of Poetry,” Shelley blames Christianity for erasing Greek poetry: “For although the scheme of Athenian society was deformed by many imperfections which the poetry existing in chivalry and Christianity has erased from the habits and institutions of modern Europe; yet never at any other period has so much energy, beauty, and virtue been developed.” 154 In his long letter to George and Georgiana, John Keats confesses that he detests Christian parsons: “They did not make me love them that day when I saw them in their proper colours. A Parson is a Lamb in a drawing room and a lion in a Vestry”; besides, they are Hippocites to the Believer and Cowards to the unbeliever. 155 In the same letter he writes: “It is pretty generally suspected that the christian scheme has been copied from the ancient persian Ibid, pp. 174–175. See Timothy Webb “Shelley and the Religion of Joy.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 15, no. 3 (Summer, 1976), p. 376. 152 Ibid., p. 360. 153 Ibid., p. 361. 154 ERW, p. 1076. 155 Selected Letters of John Keats, edited by Grant F. Scott (London: Harvard University Press, 2002). p. 257. [Henceforth cited as KSL]. 150 151

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and greek Philosophers.” 156 For Keats to make a reference to the Greek philosophers is not unexpected as he had already studied the ancient culture of Greece; however, his reference to Persian philosophers, who in fact were Sufi thinkers, tells of his awareness of Sufism. This should not mean that Keats or the Romantics were against Christianity but that each modified Christian theosophy to fit his aesthetic and spiritual goals.

THE AFFINITY OF ROMANTICISM WITH SUFISM

For the purposes of my work, I begin this section drawing upon disparities and correlations between Christian Mysticism and Sufism, and variances that may have been the basis of the Romantics’ interest in Sufism. Although it is not wrong to assume that the Romantics’ concern for Sufism was channeled via their initial interest in mystical orders such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism, 157 I am convinced their engrossment with Sufism was augmented by their interest in Orientalism. 158 One basic difference between Christian mysticism and Sufism is that the former adheres to the authority of the established church while the latter places the mystical experience above the authorities of traditional dogmas or doctrines. Commenting on the relation between Christian mystics and the KSL, p. 291. It is worth noting that Keats uses the lower case for Christian, Persian, and Greek, as if he places them all at the same level. 157 Mickael J. Franklin points to Sir William Jones, who “would link the politics of Islamic mysticism to the politics of Advaita Vedãnta (the non-duel end of the Vedas), the most intensely mystical aspect of Hinduism,” p. 212. 158 The fascination of the Romantic poets with Orientalism is discussed by Naji Oueijan. The Progress of an Image, 67–113; see also Naji B. Oueijan. “Orientalism: The Romantic’s Added Dimension.” Romanticism in its Modern Aspects, ed. Virgil Nemoianu (Wilmington: Council on National Literatures, 1998), pp. 37–50. 156

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Christian Church, H. P. Owen explains: “mystics constantly appeal to the Church’s authority in the realm of religious belief. They accept unconditionally those dogmas that the Church teaches and in which all Christians believe. Moreover, in varying degrees they show a detailed knowledge of the ways in which dogmas have been formulated.” 159 Thus, unlike the Sufi mystics, the Christian mystics were rarely considered heretics and prosecuted by the Christian church. Owen explains: Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Bernard, Suso, Tauler, Thomas à Kempis, Teresa, John of the Cross, all, though not free from tension with their respective churches, were members of holy orders, lived out their lives in regularized Christian ways, continued all their lives to participate in Christian ritual and sacramental activities, were not permanently excommunicated, and did not die outside the Church. 160

Another fundamental difference between Christian mysticism and Sufism is apparent in the Christian belief in the Holy Trinity and the Muslim notion of the oneness of Allah. Bernard McGinn attests: “Christian understanding of mystical union must be radically different from Jewish and Muslim ones, if only because union, however understood, is with the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” 161 Thus, the Christian mystic’s object of contemplation and meditation is God or God Incarnate, Jesus Christ; the Bible is not his immediate channel for achieving the mystical experience. This rather apparent difference entails Sufi features, which would appeal to the Romantics. To the Sufi, the H. P. Owen. “Experience and Dogma in the English Mystics.” Mysticism and Religious Traditions, edited by Steven T. Katz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 156. 160 Owen, p. 33. 161 See “Comments” in Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, edited by Moshe Idel and Bernard McGinn (New York: Continuum, 1996), p. 187. 159

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words of the Quran are the only means to achieve mystical fusion with Allah. Also, since the Quran clearly states, “Whithersoever ye turn, there is the Face of God” (Surah 2:115), 162 the Sufi sees Allah in man and nature as well. To love man and nature is to love Allah; this, of course, gives Sufism pantheistic aspects, which the Romantics admired. For instance, Ibn Arabi defines pantheism in a remarkable metaphor: “Nature in reality is only the breath of the Merciful [Allah]. The forms of the universe, high and low, are introduced into it by the diffusion of the breath (nafkha) in the primal substance (jawhar hayulānî), particularly in the world of bodies.” 163 That is to say that Allah’s breath is spread all around the universe as particles which rise above or sink below a scale decided by Him. But all particles, or elements of the universe and nature, come from the same source, Allah. Furthermore, the Sufi belief in the “unity of being” (“Wahdat al-Wujud”) which implies the unity of human beings and all elements of the Universe in God, and this is what I would call Islamic pantheism. These features would also appeal to the Romantics. In his The Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel clarifies: “The divine nature is the same as the human nature, and it is this unity which is intuited.” 164 William Blake endorses the mystical concept of “The Universal Man,” and “He who sees the Infinite in all things, sees God. He who sees the Ratio only, sees himself.” 165 In Sufism, the “Universal Man is the “Perfect Man” (al-insan al-kamil), who is represented by prophets, especially Prophet Muhammad. In Romanticism, the poet is a prophet, so All quotations from the Quran are from Mohammed Marmaduke Picktall, translator. The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (New York: Mentor Book, 1953). 163 The Seals of Wisdom, p. 129. 164 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The Phenomenology of Spirit, translated and edited by Terry Pinkard (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 436. 165 “There is No Natural Religion [b],” in BCP&P, p. 3. 162

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the poet is a “Perfect Man.” Both the Sufi and the Romantic tread the path of separation from all corporal desires or selfannihilation. When they reach the path of purgation and are purged, they become al-insan al-kamil, the “Perfect Man,” or the “Universal Man.” Interestingly, Wordsworth adheres to the belief in the “holy marriage” of the mind with nature and divinity, which produces the “Universal Man,” who is capable of perceiving the oneness of the universe: For the discerning intellect of Man, When wedded to this goodly universe In love and holy passion, shall find these A simple produce of the common day. 166

The common man perceives the universe and all its elements as a spectacle of the physical world. While the universal man’s vivid imagination allows the true feelings of love and inner passions to prevail. Essentially, the intellect of the universal or perfect man blends with the physical universe and its various elements to perceive what lies beyond terrestrial forms, the divine spirits which hold them together. The universal man’s intellect is consecrated by a powerful imagination capable of detecting in any object of “the common day” its spiritual essence which communicates and interacts with all creatures and elements of the universe. This spiritual venture of the intellect through the faculty of imagination is best explained by Coleridge’s reconciliation theory. In his Biographia Literaria, he discusses imagination’s power which is capable of synthesizing opposites: “This power … reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposites or discordant qualities; of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with

166

WW, The Excursion, “Prospectus,” ll. 51–54.

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the representative.” 167 That is to say, all that is abstract or spiritual mingles with all that is concrete and corporal to form a unity of all in All. This reconciliatory theory is also evident in other Romantics, such as Lord Byron as Harold Bloom explains: Byron’s social version of the Romantic term “Imagination,” for mobility also reveals itself “in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old familiar objects.” The Great Romantic contraries—emotions and order, judgment and enthusiasm, steady self-possession and profound or vehement feeling—all find their balance in the quality of mobility. 168

Lord Byron’s perception of mobility is closely related to the synthesizing power of the imagination. In Don Juan, Canto XVI, Stanza 97, he writes: “It may be defined as an excessive susceptibility of immediate impression.” 169 One can equate spontaneous excessive susceptibility with a sharp imaginative power, which sees beyond the visible in the world. In Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto III, he acknowledges the synthesis of all elements of the universe with each other and with man: … I can see Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Biographia Literaria: Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions (New York: Levitt Lord & Co., 1834), pp. 179–180. [Henceforth cited as Biographia Literaria] Also see a full discussion of Coleridge’s reconciliation theory in Alice C. Snyder. The Critical Principle of Reconciliation of Opposites as Employed by Coleridge (Ann Arbor: n.p., 1918). 168 Harold Bloom. Poets and Poems (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2005), p. 107. 169 BCPW, V, p. 769. 167

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM A link reluctant in a fleshly chain, Class’d among creatures, when the soul can flee, And with the sky—the peak—the heaving plain Of ocean, or the stars, mingle—and not in vain. 170

This “fleshy chain” connects the poet to nature and God when the soul becomes the unifying spirit merging all into One. To Shelley, it is the finite in the infinite. He even suggests the existence of deity in the harmonious unity between Man and Nature in his poems “To a Skylark,” Mont Blanc, and “Ode to the West Wind.” A. M. D. Hughes reasons that it was hard for Shelley “to curb himself in a sphere as to stop from spreading outward when he played at ducks and drakes; and his mind was ever spreading in the same way from man to nature and from nature to God; so that earth merged with heaven, is viewed as simply robe or veil of God.” 171 Likewise, to Keats it is universal harmony which blends all in one allowing only Love to reign: “we blend,/Mingle, and so become a part of it.” 172 Thus like the Sufi poets, the Romantics found the divine message in the elements of the Universe. However, to the Romantics, perhaps the most appealing and attractive feature of Sufism was the fact that it was a vehicle for higher literature, poetry. Needless to say, almost all Sufi mystics were poets; they believed that poetry was the highest form of expression. William C. Chittick considers that Rumi exteriorized “his inward knowledge and spiritual states in the form of poetry” and quotes Rumi’s verse: “My mouth was filled with

BCPW, II, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 3, Stanza 72, ll. 683–688. A. M. D. Hughes. “Shelley and Nature.” The North American Review, vol. 208, No. 753 (Aug., 1918), p. 287. 172 Endymion, Book I, ll. 810–811; see John Keats: Selected Poetry, edited by Elizabeth Cook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). [Henceforth cited as KSP] 170 171

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glorification, but now it recites only poetry and songs.” 173 Why poetry? For the Sufi, the Absolute, or God, is especially incarnated in the poets’ mystical love for the unique Other; thus glorifying man and nature through the medium of poetry symbolizes the glorification of the Divine Beloved. Rumi’s soul and heart become part of the beloved, be it human or any part of the universe: “Should a phoenix enter the world, the lover would not seek its shadow, for he is drunk with love for that famous Phoenix.” 174 Rumi asks: “‘Oh Beloved, where is the Beloved?’ Drunk, we sing ‘Where? Where?’” 175 Love for the beloved is expressed in singing and poetry. He also writes about drunkenness or intoxication in the following: “My words [poetry] are drunk, my heart is drunk, and Thy Images are drunk having fallen upon one another, they gaze.” 176 The Sufi belief in poetry as the most suitable medium to glorify God, man, and nature is strongly based on the fact that the language of the Quran is itself the intoxicating poetic language of Allah, which is the highest and most sublime form of literary expression. Though the text of the Quran, written in classical Arabic, is bereft of a poetic structure, it is endowed with an outstanding divine poetic and epigrammatic nature. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, Quranic verses were, and still are, the main objects of Sufi contemplation; consequently, it is not wrong to assume that the Sufis considered the Quran their model for literary expression. In one of his poems, Nizami 177 metaphorically explains the language of the Sufi poet: Chittick, Sufi Path of Love, pp. 7 and 3. Qtd., Chittick, Sufi Path of Love, p. 117. 175 Qtd., Chittick, Sufi Path of Love, p. 210. 176 Qtd., Chittick, Sufi Path of Love, p. 262. 177 Nizami’s name was Jamal ad-Dīn Abū Muḥammad Ilyās ibn-Yūsuf ibnZakkī, (1141–1209). He was raised and given proper education by his uncle Khwaja Umar. His education included besides Arabic and Persian literatures and mythologies, mathematics, alchemy, medicine, astrology and law. Later in his life, Nizami became a popular poet, philosopher, 173 174

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“A time will come when our die is stamped on a new coin. [The Sufi speech] does not belong to any known tongue. Under the poet’s tongue lies the key to the Treasury. The prophet and the poet are the kernel: others the shell.” 178 Idries Shah clarifies Nizami’s statements: If we look at the extract from Nizami, we see how double meaning is used to throw the ordinary literary reader off the scent. ‘Our die stamped on a new coin’ may be taken to mean a life to come, or even the possibility of reincarnation. But this automatic association is not intended thus. Following, in the original Persian, the basic knowledge that the passage is a clue, we find that the ‘key to the Treasury’ is the title of the book itself (The Treasury of Mysteries). In a secondary sense it may be taken to mean a treasury of knowledge. 179

Thus, the Sufis employed a highly metaphorical and symbolical language in their poetry as a medium to express their Sufi mystical experiences. Using prose to express such experiences would degrade them. Indeed, this poetic style is what would have attracted Romantic poets who equally included highly metaphoric and symbolic diction in their poetry. Another reason for the Sufi interest in poetry is skillfully brought out by Annemarie Schimmel, who maintains:

and gnostic. Like most Persian poets, he wrote about Majnun and Leila, Sufism and lyrical and epic poetry. His "The Treasury of Mysteries" is one of his most known works; it was translated into several languages. For a biography of Nizami, see Evgenni E. Berthels. The Great Azerbaijani Poet, Nizami: Life, Work and Times (London: Gilgamesh Publishing, 2017). 178 Qtd., Shah, p. 195. 179 Shah, p. 173.

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Indeed, one aspect of mystical language in Sufism that should never be overlooked is the tendency of the Arabs to play with words. … But this almost magical interplay of sound and meaning, which contributes so much to the impressiveness of a sentence in the Islamic languages, is lost in translation. 180

For instance, one word in Arabic might be a full sentence with a subject, verb, tense, object, number, and gender. Such inflectional words with artistic compression cannot be equated in English. Take for instance the Arabic one-word, four-syllable sentences Uhiboki and Uhibuka (I love you); in the first syllable, the subject is ‘I’ with the accompanying inflection sound /ʊ/, the second two syllables denote the verb, while the object is recognized as being female from the last syllable with the inflection sound “i” on the last letters “ka”. As for the second four syllable word, the syllabic sounds are the same as the previous word with the exception of the schwa (ə) sound in the final syllabic sound on the letters “ka” that denote that the object is a male. Besides, ahbabtu specifies the past tense; uhibo, the present; Sa-uhiboki and sa-uhiboka, the future tense; and uhibukum, the plural. This compression in diction obliges the Arabic poet to include more sounds and metaphors to complete a single rhythmic verse line. Also the terms ša’ir and ši’ir (poet and poetry) stem from the Arabic verb yaš’ur (to feel). Thus poetry for the Sufi is the best medium to express spirituality more than rationality. 181 Sir William Jones acknowledges the sublime imagery of Arabic poetry: they compare the foreheads of their mistresses to the morning, their locks to the night, their faces to the sun, to the Schimmel, p. 13. In Arabic, literature is called adab, which literately means polite expression.

180 181

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM moon, or the blossoms of jasmine, their cheeks to roses or ripe fruit, their teeth to pearls, hail-stones, and snow-drops, their eyes to the flowers of the narcissus, their curled hair to black scorpions, and to hyacinths, their lips to rubies or wine, the form of their breasts to pomegranates and the colour of them to snow. (Qtd., Franklin, p. 83)

Romantic poets are known as bards of emotional more than cognitive sensibilities. Also, the hemistiches structure and monorhyme is characteristic of various types of short and lengthy Arabic poems, such as Imru’ Al-Qais’s Mu’allaqāt; 182 establishes the overwhelming richness and complexity of Arabic diction. It has become common knowledge that the translations of Arabic poetry into English had been mostly restricted to scholarly paraphrasing of the original. However, Sir William Jones’s translations are an exception since his knowledge of the intricate Arabic structures and his experiences of the local color of Arabic are successfully expressed in the spirit, sounds, and images of his excellent translations, which immediately gained the admiration of Romantic poets who sought to imitate the style. Of course, the Romantics did not have the linguistic and inflectional privileges of the Sufi poets since the English language had long dropped the use of inflections. Yet the Romantics were equally enraptured by lyrical poetry and made revisions and alteration to enrich their poetic diction, metaphors, and rhymes, and some such as Lord Byron and Shelley, even borrowed diction and images from Eastern poetry. 183 Like the Romantic Movement, Sufism is a literary romantic and spiritual movement, which keeps growing throughout the Imru’ Al-Qais was a pre-Islamic Arab poet who lived in the sixth century and wrote one of the seven odes in the Mu’allaqāt, known in the West as the Seven Suspended Poems. 183 A discussion on images borrowed by Romantic poets from Eastern poetry is discussed later in this work. 182

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ages. Contrarily, Christian mysticism lacks this particular feature. Marion Glasscoe discusses a few major Christian mystics such as Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, the Cloud-Author, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe asserting that it was only Rolle who often expressed his mystical experiences in poetic form while the others concentrated on prose works. 184 Indeed, most of the Christian mystics used prose as a medium for their expressions, and their prose cannot be categorized as pure literature since it lies somewhere between philosophy and theology. It follows that Sufism had greatly influenced the development of poetry in Arabia, Persia and other Islamic regions in the East. At this point it is imperative to note the view of Michael Sells, who signals that for Sufi mystics, love and wine inspired the kind of poetry that was “a vehicle to express an episode of mystical union experienced independently.” 185 Indeed, wine is among the Sufi poetic symbols; it represents intuitive transcendence into the Absolute Spirit of Allah. Rumi begins his poem, “We Three”: My love wanders the rooms, melodious flute notes, plucked wires, full of a wine the Magi drank on the way to Bethlehem. 186

Sells goes on to assert that “Poetic and Sufi sensibility are most closely intertwined at the moment of union. To consider one as the vehicle of the other is to lose the resonance and power

For a detailed discussion, see Marion Glasscoe. English Medieval Mystics (London: Longman, 1993). 185 Qtd., Moshe Idel and Bernard McGinn, editors. Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (New York: Continuum, 1996), p. 90. 186 Jalaluddin Rumi. The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, A. J. Arberry, and R. A. Nicholson (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), p 130. [Henceforth cited as Essential Rumi] 184

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brought about by the interfusion of the two language worlds.” 187 Sells also presents an illuminating discussion of the different types and themes of Sufi poetry: The ode, or Qasida, the classical form that bequeathed its language, themes, and structure to Sufi literature, was divided by medieval literary critics into three major movements: (1) the nasibor or remembrance (dhikr), of the lost beloved; (2) the journey (a movement that in some way prefigures the major Islamic journey of the Hajj); and (3) the boast. Remembrance of the beloved is the wellspring of both the poetic and the Sufi voice. 188

The above proves that, if anything, Sufi and Romantic poets share common poetic concerns that entail poetic themes and forms. First, the Arabic ode, or “qasida,” is the basic form of traditional Arabic poetry. Although prosody in Arabic and English odes differs, yet their goals and themes are similar with the ode being unquestionably, one of the Romantics’ favoured poetic forms which Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats preferred over others. Second, remembrance or recollection in Sufi poetry concurs with the Romantic recollection of dreams and visions, of nostalgia for childhood and events invigorating passionate feelings and elevated sublime moments. In his Journey to the Lord of Power, Ibn Arabi advises the Sufi: “Occupy yourself with dhikr, remembrance, until the Remembered manifests Himself to you and calling Him to memory is effaced in the actual recollection of Him.” 189 Rabia Al-Basri 190 writes: “O Allah, I can’t live in this world/Without remembering You.” 191 Qtd., Idel and McGinn, p. 90. Ibid. 189 Ibn Arabi, Journey, p. 36. 190 Rabia Al-Basri, known as Rabia Al-Adawiyya, was born in 717 in Iraq. After the death of her parents, she was sold in the slave market. She performed her duties during the day and prayed during the night. 187 188

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Accordingly, in his famous “Ode” or “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” 192 Wordsworth recollects past times: There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Appareled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. 193

S. Attar claims: “Only Wordsworth, who knew the East too through books, was able to journey from the sensuous to the sublime. The Nights had opened his eyes to the beauty of the daffodils, the solitary reaper, the lovely apparition, the gliding river, the lofty cliffs, and the sounding cataract, but it was Hayy Ibn Yaqzan that had possibly made him aware of the goodness of man, of the significance of the child, and of the necessity to wed reason and imagination together. In this sense, the East has performed the role of a healing power.” 194 It is worth mentioning here that Coleridge, in his “Dejection: An Ode,” repeats almost the same phrase his friend Wordsworth creates; Coleridge writes: There was a time when, though my path was rough, This joy within me dallied with distress, One night she was absorbed in prayer; her master was surprised to see a strong light over her head. The next day, her master granted her back her freedom, so she moved to the desert where in solitude she devoted herself to prayer and devotional poetry. She became a Muslim saint, and people visited her seeking her spiritual direction and blessings. Her life is detailed in Margaret Smith’s Rabi’a the Mystic and Her Fellow Saints in Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928). 191 Rabia Al-Basri, “My Greatest Need Is You,” Poems, p. 11. 192 S. Attar p. 16. 193 WW, “Ode” ll. 1–5. 194 S. Attar, p.

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM And all misfortunes were but as the stuff Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness. 195

Coleridge’s use of the mystical term “path” should not be overlooked here, it is discussed in detail later in this work. Furthermore, memory, at times inspired by desolate natural environments, is a basic motif in both Sufi and Romantic poetry. In fact, in traditional Arabic literature “Al-Wuquf ál-átlal” (i.e., poetry stimulated by the poets’ observation of the ruins of the beloved or of people’s abodes) was a popular poetic genre. Imru’ Al-Qais proclaims: “I will grieve, somewhere in this comfortless ruin/And make a place and my peace with the past.” 196 In his Ode, Labid 197 divulges: “Sites of dwelling are these, over which, since they were last inhabited, many a long year has passed with its full tale of sacred and profane months.” 198 It is essentially the nomadic wandering of Arab tribes that contributed to the emergence of this genre, which the Sufis developed and perfected in their poetry. In Romantic poetry, Wordsworth’s “The Ruined Cottage” epitomizes this Sufi tradition. By the end of the poem, the peddler sits with the poet-narrator close to Margert’s hut and lot and recalls the deterioration of the place and its inhabitants, Margret and her child, during his five visits. In fact, the Romantic poets were fascinated by venerable ruins and their symbolical representations. Lord Byron’s and Shelley’s poetry is replete with verses depicting ruins. For instance, when Childe Harold reaches Waterloo, the narrator orders him to “Stop!—for thy

CCPW, “Dejection: An Ode,” ll. 76–79. Qtd., Kritzeck, p. 50. 197 Labid or Abu Aqil Labid Ibn Rabi’ah (c. 560–c. 661) was an Arabian poet. He was greatly influenced by the Quran, and accepted Islam. One of his odes is part of the Mu’allaqāt. 198 Qtd., Kritzeck, p. 60. 195 196

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tread is on an Empire’s dust!” 199 The same symbolism is obvious in Shelley’s “Ozymandias” that projects the ruined bust of the ancient Egyptian king. Moreover, in “Recollections of Love,” Coleridge adheres to the Sufi tradition when he emphasizes the natural setting, which recalls memories of his beloved. Lord Byron’s poetry abounds with similar recollections, especially “Stanzas to the Po” in which he reminiscences about his beloved Teresa. Third, the “Hajj” or “pilgrimage” theme inherent in Sufi poetry corresponds to similar circuitous journeys portrayed by the Romantics. Attar, a Sufi poet, depicts such a circuitous journey in his well-known allegorical epic poem, The Conference of the Birds, 200 published in 1077, and comprising 4,500 of verse BCPW, II, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 3, Stanza 17, l. 145. Attar’s The Conference of the Birds had an impact on Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Parliament of the Fowls or The Parliament of the Birds as the two works are parables with inner pilgrimages in the form of dream-visions with almost similar structures and themes. Discussing the influence of Sufism on the West, Idries Shah notes that Attar “died over a century before the birth of Chaucer, in whose works references to Attar’s Sufism are to be found,” and he confirms that the “relationship between the Canterbury Tales as an allegory of inner development and the Parliament of the Birds of Attar is another interesting item. … like Attar, Chaucer has thirty participants in his pilgrimage. Thirty pilgrims seeking the mystical bird, the Simorgh makes sense in Persian, because simorgh actually means ‘thirty birds’”; see Shah, pp. 105 and 116; see also Masoodul Hasan’s Sufism and English Literature: Chaucer to the Present Age (New Delhi: Adam Publishers & Distributers, 2007). Shah also believes that Attar’s work may have influenced John Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress: “It is interesting to note that Bunyan and Chaucer used this Sufi material, drawing heavily upon its imagery to provide a stiffening for Catholic thinking” (p. 163). Indeed although Bunyan’s work is in prose, both works entail inner spiritual journeys towards illumination, and both journeys are full of hardships, whereby some characters cannot reach their final destinations. 199 200

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lines. It recounts the pilgrimage of several birds to Mount Qaf in search of enlightenment and Divine Love. In Sufism, Mount Qaf is the abode of the Phoenix (‘anqa or simurgh), which “symbolizes the spirit of the saint or the saint himself, while Mount Qaf is his station in God’s Presence.” 201 The Hoopoe, wise leader of several kinds of birds, informs the birds of a pilgrimage that is a seven-day journey across seven valleys, namely the Valley of Quest, the Valley of Love, the Valley of Knowledge, the Valley of Detachment, the Valley of Unity, the Valley of Wonderment, and the Valley of Poverty and Annihilation to reach the dwelling place of the Simorgh, a noble and mythical bird in Persian Literature. Basically, “For Attar poverty and annihilation constitute the seventh and last vale on the Path leading to God, after the traveler has traversed the valleys of search, love, gnosis, independence, Tawḥīd, and bewilderment.” 202 On their journey, some birds suffer from thirst, heat and diseases or fall prey to wild beasts. Essentially, the traveler on the path to self-annihilation, Needs both a Lion's Heart beneath the Wing, And even more, a Spirit purified Of Worldly Passion, Malice, Lust, and Pride: Yea, ev’n of Worldly Wisdom, which grows dim And dark, the nearer it approaches Him, Who to the Spirit’s Eye alone reveal’d, By sacrifice of Wisdom’s self unseal’d; Without which none who reach the Place could bear To look upon the Glory dwelling there. 203 Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, p. 359. Rumi praises his Sufi teacher Shams al-Din saying: “His wine’s crashing waves fill the space from Mount Qaf to Mount Qaf,” which signifies a circuitous journey around the world of spirituality which starts with and ends in Mount Qaf. The verse is quoted by Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, p. 140. 202 Schimmel, p. 123. 203 Attar, The Conference of the Birds, p. 4, ll. 84–93. 201

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The traveler then must bear the consequences of leaving all “Worldly Passions” and wisdom behind to arrive at true selfknowledge. It is a path filled with upheavals and is all the reason why only thirty birds complete the journey to discover they are the Simorgh, and that the Beloved Other is both part of, and within the Self. The journey is thus a visionary one; it starts and ends within the both the Higher and Lower Selves reaching an elevated and illuminated level. The birds represent the seekers of divine light, of illumination, and the valleys the birds cross represent the difficult stages along the path of Love towards divine illumination. The implication of the birds’ journey is that not all those who attempt to tread the Sufi paths can make it to the end. This coincides with the Romantics’ belief that the path leading to a union with the beloved, whether this beloved is human, an element of nature or the Absolute Divine, is not simple since one will surely undergo hardships and suffer before divine union and illumination is reached. Although the quest motif is a traditional theme in world literatures, it is the basic dynamic force that generates movement and action in Sufi and Romantic literature. In both movements, the poet detaches himself from his traditional world order to discover another spiritual self-imbued with permanent truth. In other words, the Higher Self separates from the material world to roam in the domain of the divine and to unravel that cryptic and spiritual connection between Self and Other. In Sufism and Romanticism, separating from the corporal Self entails pain and suffering and culminates in a fusion of the spiritual self with the spiritual other. One undergoes feelings of redemption and reconciliation via the power of Love. As such, the Sufi dervish’s roaming and detachment from everything earthly represents a quest for enlightenment, for improved perception and finally a merging with the spiritual and divine Other via compassion and Love. Rumi relates in his poem “Imra’u ‘L-Qays,” how Imra’u leaves his kingdom and becomes a wandering dervish on a quest for edification via love. When the King of Tabuk visits Imra’u at night, he asks him why he left his earthly glory to become a dervish:

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM … Imraú ‘l-Qays kept silent. Then suddenly he leaned and whispered something in the second king’s ear, and that second king became a wanderer too. They walked out of town hand in hand. No royal belts, no thrones. This is what love does and continues to do. 204

The Sufi Rumi tells a story about a pre-Muslim poet, presumably a Christian convert 205 and mystic who leaves all earthly glory for the sake of true devotional love. This recalls Jesus’s disciples who left their families and earthly possessions to follow the path of wisdom and light of Jesus. The quest for wholeness then is a search for pure love which alone is capable of rendering the disagreeable, agreeable and the mysterious, clear. The best example of this quest motif in Romantic poetry is Coleridge’s The Ancient Mariner, whose seafarer acquires redemption and reconciliation via his spiritual love for the elements of nature—the water-snakes. Added to this are, Wordsworth’s The Prelude, Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Shelley’s “Alastor: Or, The Spirit of Solitude,” and Keats’s Endymion, The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream, and “Ode to a Nightingale,” all of which represent ardent quests for what lies “beyond kingdoms,” beyond the physical and materialistic desires and passions of man. This spiritual journey or quest which involves a romantic immersion into the natural is also an elemental feature of-Sufi thought. Furthermore, the concept of a literary movement applies to both Sufism and Romanticism. A literary movement indicates Essential Rumi, pp. 90–91. The Ghassasinah were the first Arab tribes converted to Christianity; it is believed that Imru’ Al-Qais was the son of a Ghassanid King, who ruled in Hira Mountain, close to Mecca. See Irfan Shahid. Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fifth Century (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2006), pp. 61–64. 204 205

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change and development in a time of fixed literary ideals. It is a trend advancing a desire to revitalize human thought in order to free it from orthodoxy and is characterized by growth and expansion in literary activities and interests. Sufism revitalized the Muslim’s view of Allah by offering an opportunity to experience Allah, rather than merely learn about or worship Him from a distance. It represented a dynamic change in man’s perception of God and the Universe as man can become one with the Universe, itself a representation of Allah; thus, Sufism altered fixed canons. Most definitions and discussions of Sufism emphasize the fact that it is a “mystical movement” with an organic power to change orthodox interpretations of God, the universe, and man. 206 Likewise, Romanticism embraces all the above characteristics. “All periods are really movements in time,” contends Howard E. Hugo, “but the exponents of Romanticism seemed unusually aware that theirs was a moment of flux, of organic change and growth, while they undertook to revolt against what they regarded as the fixed, outworn canons of preceding generations.” 207 On his part, Morse Peckham elucidates that, “the cultural development of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is properly to be regarded as a development of Romanticism, the specific values of which I classified as ‘change, imperfection, growth, diversity, the creative imagination, the unconscious’.” 208 Thus movement, signifying change and growth, seems to be the A. J. Arberry discusses Sufism as a mystical “movement dominating the minds and hearts of learned and earnest men. Yet its mark lies ineradicably athwart the pages of Muslim literature; the technical vocabulary of the Sufis, with all the psychological subtlety of its terms, can scarcely be eliminated from the language of modern philosophy and science”; see Arberry, p. 133. 207 Howard E Hugo. The Portable Romantic Reader (New York: The Viking Press, 1975), p. 2. 208 Morse Peckham. “Toward a Theory of Romanticism: II. Reconsiderations.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 1, no. 1 (1961), p. 1. 206

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hidden force driving both Sufism and Romanticism along parallel courses. It could be argued that another appealing characteristic to the Romantics is the subjectivity of the Sufi mystical experience that contributed to the diversity of its orders or ranks. The most influential Sufi orders were the Qädirïs and the Suhrawardïya in Persia, the Shädhilïya in Arabia, and the Mevleviya in Turkey. They possessed the same starting points; however, each order suited the aspirations of the Sufi sage behind it. Similarly, Romanticism is characterized by individuality and diversity. That is, in as much as all Romantic poets shared a common unorthodox basis, each poet emphasized private or personal manners of expressing it. Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s poetic diction and structures differed though they both generated the Romantic poetic theory in their Lyrical Ballads. As for Byron and Shelley, they deviated from the Romantic perceptions of their contemporaries and established the revolutionary Romantic spirit prevalent in most of their works. With respect to Keats, he sought perfection and Truth through Beauty and thus claimed his own poetic autonomy. Sufism also attracted the attention of the Romantics because of its difference or originality. Literary difference signifies new modes of expression involving new morphological, lexical, and syntactic components, which produce peculiar literary intertextuality; i.e., the sense of artistic coherence between the thoughts and the forms contributing to the wholeness and the beauty of a literary work. Literary variances emerge from differences in cultural backgrounds and settings. These distinctions, rarely transmitted via translations, are appreciated and perceived by those literary figures who have sufficient knowledge of “Oriental” languages. In the case of the British Romantics, none had such knowledge, with the exception of Lord Byron, who learned, besides Greek and Armenian. He visited the small island first on November 27, 1816. In one of his letters to his publisher John Murray, Lord Byron writes: “I am studying daily, at an Armenian monastery, the Armenian language. I found that

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my mind wanted something craggy to break upon: and this—as the most difficult thing I could discover here for an amusement.—I have chosen, to torture me into attention. It is a rich language, however, and would amply repay any one the trouble of learning it. I try, and shall go on;—but I answer for nothing, least of all for my intentions or my success.” 209 Father Paschal Aucher, librarian of the convent at the Armenian Monastery on San Lazzaro, Venice, was Byron’s tutor. Arpena Mesrobian confirms that after a few months, Lord Byron translated some Armenian religious texts such as “‘A Synodical Discourse by St. Nierses of Lampron,’ twelfth-century Armenian theologian and renowned orator, and two selections from the Armenian apocrypha, ‘The Epistle of the Corinthians to St. Paul the Apostle’ and ‘Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians’.” 210 These translations may have left their impression on Lord Byron, who considered the convent a place of solitude where he used to sit alone under an olive tree—later called the Byron Olive Tree—and resume working on Manfred and the fourth canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. 211 Lord Byron also studied some Arabic words 212 and could speak a few words and swear in Turkish besides participating in Eastern life and culture during his residence in the Orient. Moreover, to avoid ambiguity, Sir William Jones’s translations included transliterations of the original languages along with the

BLJ, V, p. 130. Arpena Mesrobian. “Lord Byron at the Armenian Monastery on San Lazzaro.” The Courier, vol. 11, no. 1 (1973): p. 31. 211 See ibid., p. 32. 212 According to Leslie A. Marchand, Lord Byron bought an Arabic grammar before he set on his tour of the Orient and took some lessons in Arabic from a monk; see Leslie Marchand. Byron: A Biography. Vol. I. (New York: 1957), p. 198. 209 210

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English translations. 213 These transliterations would exhibit original sounds while the translations would present original metaphors and views. Such a difference, which was quite observant in Sufi poetry, did certainly attract the Romantics. The Romantics also perceived in Sufism a literary movement based on one of the three Abrahamic faiths, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity As a movement based on Islam, Sufism’s spiritual basis was identical to that of Judaism and Christianity. Yet, one must not forget that the Romantics were rebuked by authorities of Christian orthodoxy since they were more imaginative and spiritual in their perceptions of God, nature, and man than Christian authorities would allow. Shelley, for instance,

See an example of Sir William Jones’s transliteration of two verse lines from a poem by Mir Muhammed Husain, an Arab Philosopher and poet: ‫�اء ت ا�ي ��� ��ر‬ ‫ �� ا�� ال�ي‬،��‫ما ا‬ �‫والقلب طار به ا��ع‬ ‫النوم اثقل جف��ا‬ Jones’s transliteration: ma Insa ma Insa allati Jjaat ila:ga. dlal bqdhar alnaumu athkala jefnaha walkalbu t'ara bihi aldhadr 213

Jones’s translation: Never, oh! never shall I forget the fair one Who came to my tent with timidity: Sleep fat heavy on her eye-lids, And her heart fluttered with fear. Qtd., Lord Teignmouth. The Works of Sir William Jones, with the Life of the Author. 12 volumes (London: Printed for John Stockdale, Piccadilly and John Walker, Paternoster-Row, 1807), vol. 3, pp. 300–302.

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was expelled from Oxford University for portraying radical and unorthodox views. 214 Thus, much like the Sufi thought, Romantic ideals dealt with religious subjects in an unorthodox manner. Their spiritual perceptions of the universe complied more with the Sufi than with orthodox Christian perceptions. Leonard Lewisohn demonstrates: “on the anagogic 215 level the theological, religious and cultural distinctions that otherwise separate the Persian Sufi from the English Romantic poets evaporate and leave not a rack behind.” 216 Therefore, the kinship between Romanticism and Sufism not only rests on their identical spiritual visions but also on the fact that their poetry was considered religiously immoral due to their vivid reflections of love in all its spiritual fervor. The Romantic and the Sufi perceptions involved basking in the torpid joys of nature and all its elements to experience the frissons and ecstasies of absolute Beauty and Truth. In their search for truth they looked beyond the terrestrial, and produced highly personal poetry characterized by rich affective diction and figurative language that mirrored their inner emotional and spiritual feelFor a full discussion of Shelley’s radicalism, see Daniel J. MacDonald. The Radicalism of Shelley and Its Sources (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Education Press, 1912). 215 The term “anagonic” means mystical and spiritual interpretation detecting allusions to the afterlife. 216 Leonard Lewisohn. “Correspondences Between English Romantic and Persian Sufi Poets—An Essay in Anagogic Criticism.” Temenos Academy Review, vol.12 (2009), p. 197. [Henceforth cited as Lewisohn, “Correspondences”] Lewisohn discusses in details six anagogic themes in Sufi and Romantic poetry: Annihilation and Mystical Death (al-fanā), the Earthly Mirror of Divine Beauty in the Eternal Feminine, and the Unity of Religions—and an attempt will be made to disclose some of the allusive anagogic correspondences between the two poetic traditions”; see pp. 198–226. 214

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ings and revealed their deep loyalty to the divine Other. Accordingly, what M. H. Abrams writes about the Romantics’ addiction to figurative language also applies to the Sufis, for whom, “Of the elements constituting a poem, the element of diction, especially figures of speech, becomes primary; and the burning question is, whether these are the natural utterance of emotion and imagination or the deliberate aping of poetic conventions.” 217 Abrams goes on to confirm that their poetry is true to nature, is related to mankind at large, and is genuine and sincere to the emotional and intellectual situation of the poet. He also affirms that for the Romantic poets, poetry is a vehicle reflecting the poet’s innermost soul to the reader: “the mirror held up to nature becomes transparent and yields the reader insights into the mind and heart of the poet himself.” 218 Ultimately, Sufism, like Romanticism, is the transparent mirror of the heart. In this respect, it is quite legitimate to claim that the first romantics ever were the Sufi poets, while the second generation of Romantic poets were the early nineteenth century British Romantics and their contemporaries on the Continent. In a sense, to fully understand the universality of British Romanticism and Romanticism in general, the remaining chapters of this work will further elaborate and discuss Sufism and its imprints on Romantic figures and works.

217 218

Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp, p. 13. Ibid.

ROMANTICISM AND THE SUFI PATH OF LOVE “Love is the annihilation of the lover in His attributes and the confirmation of the Beloved in His essence.” 1

The above quotation by Junayd recapitulates the Sufi path of love and self-annihilation. When one loves truly and passionately, one is immersed in emotion to the extent that he/she loses all sense of physical existence and becomes one with the beloved— in the case of the Sufi, the beloved is Allah, the source and end of Love. To the Sufi, Love is Allah, and Allah is Love. The lover’s spiritual consummation enables the physical to dissolve into the abode of the Supreme Being. Consequently, the basic Sufi path to unite with the godhead is the path of Love, which is generated by a dynamic inner force enabling the Sufi to free the body from selfhood or egocentricity. It is a process of selfannihilation, of complete surrender of body and soul, of sacrifice through an intrinsic and amorous contemplation of the Other, be it God or any other being or creature. Reynold Nicholson contends: “The keynote of Sufism is disinterested, selfless devotion, in a word, Love.” 2 A Sufi is capable of fixing her/his “amorous gaze” upon the Other and dissolving in it, through Love. Moreover, a Sufi can reach an ecstatic consummation of the body and soul in movements of complete devotion and ultimately reach 1 2

Junayd, qtd., Schimmel, p. 134. Reynold A. Nicholson, p. 231.

117

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the “unity of being,” with the Eternal through Love. Idries Shah confirms, “Love is the great theme which runs through the ocean of Sufi poetry and the personal teachings of the masters alike. Love is essentially what instigates states of mystical experience, which are themselves referred to as ‘gifts’.” 3 Such experiences of gnostic Love are based on the lover’s capability of perceiving beyond physical beauty,—“it is transmuted into the self’s inclination to viewing the beauty of the essence (dhat)— not the form,” 4 and this demands a great emotional sensibility that illuminates the lovers paths after going through several stages, starting by the gradual elimination of selfishness for selflessness and self-annihilation. It is a path that ends with a sense of bliss that surpasses that experienced through physical ecstasy since the lover becomes one with the beloved spiritually and experiences that ultimate state of illumination called tajalli. In Sufism, the lover’s path is paved with pain and agony, but once the Sufi reaches his/her spiritual connection with the Beloved, the pain is compensated for in a profoundly rewarding spiritual ecstasy. In Romanticism, Love is a prerequisite for repentance, abstinence, renunciation, and reconciliation as it is a prerequisite for knowledge of Self and Other. In his “A Defense of Poetry,” Shelley writes: “The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own.” 5 In other words, self-annihilation through Love—pure spiritual Love—induces the separation of the personal physical self from the pure/inner Self; i.e., it allows an individual’s Self an escape from material and spatial boundaries and limitations, from selfcenteredness, to achieve unification with the Eternal Essence. Shah, pp. 280–281. Ibid. 5 ERW, “A Defense of Poetry,” p. 1076. 3 4

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For the Romantics, self-completion involves some degree of selfimmersion approaching self-negation; in other words, egonegation and selflessness. The destruction of the ego or Self is a painful process, but it is necessary for reaching that blissful immersion and merging of the higher self with the Beloved or God as creator. As an individual’s love for the Other develops, the ego gradually wastes away until the body seems almost afloat from weightlessness in a state called self-illumination. Shelley’s Alastor is saturated with the love of the Arab poetess because of her wisdom, charm, and sensuality. He negates his self for the sake of love when in the real world he seeks the Arab poetess, whom he has perceived in a dream. In the process, he loses himself. One may think because Alastor’s dream entangles sensual and intellectual interaction with the poetess, his quest for ideal wisdom and beauty diverts it spiritual path to satisfy his insatiable egos, which in reality he cannot placate; accordingly, his demise becomes inexorable. However, Elham Nilchian justly postulates: In Alastor, the Poet’s infatuation with the ideal veiled maid of his vision indicates a mystic thirst for idealisation of the other. The desire of the subject to idealise the other is not an urge to eliminate the identity of the other in a narcissistic fashion but rather it is a desire to move toward a sort of spiritual perfection through the annihilation of one’s own self and not the other’s. 6

Indeed, Shelley seems to say in his poem, once the mysteries of the human self are revealed by the imaginative faculty of the mind, the knowledge gained serves to free the egoistic self from “the web of human things,” 7 as corporal existence becomes void. Elham Nilchian. “Shelley’s Quest for Persian Love.” The Comparatist, vol. 40 (October, 2016), pp. 225. 7 “Alastor: Or, The Spirit of Solitude,” l. 719; see The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Vol. III, edited by Donald H. Reiman, Neil Fraistat, 6

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This notion harmonizes with Nilchian’s plausible suggestion of the Sufian double death of Alastor: the figurative and the real: Although the Alastor Poet’s experience of fanaa, that led him to see the light “within his soul” was transient, yet it served as inspiration for him to complete the rest of his journey. The subsistence of the ideal maid’s attributes after the Poet’s fanaa parallels the Sufi notion of baqaa or the subsistence of the beloved’s attributes in the lover’s character after the state of fanaa. … Whereas the figurative death is one of the highest states in the Sufi quest for love and involves the dissolution of the self in the other, the actual death of the subject is an outcome of the excess of grief or melancholy afflicted on him by the pain of lost love. The Poet of Alastor experiences both types of death. 8

So, like Majnun (“Madman”) or Qais—celebrated in Arabic and Persian Sufi poetry—who falls madly in love with Leila and dies when she is wedded to another man. Alastor falls deeply in love with an inward dream image of the Arab poetess with whom he cannot bond except in-dreams, and so despairs and dies. In other words, what Alastor experiences in a dream al-baqā, or the blissful light of love, and then loses in the real world dooms him to al-fanā, or a state in which death of the corporal self gives way to a spiritual trance. Here, I must profess my suspicion that Shelley may have adapted the famous story of Qais, which is celebrated by Rumi among several other Sufi poets. Falling in true love “dissolved his [Qais’s] king-self” and renders him a dervish who roams the East until he arrives in Tabuk, where the king Nora Crook (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021). [Henceforth cited as SCP] 8 Nilchian, p. 238. For a detailed discussion of the Sufi attributes of “Alastor: Or, The Spirit of Solitude,” see Elham Nilchian. “Shelley’s Quest for Persian Love,” The Comparatist, vol. 40 (October, 2016), pp. 222–224.

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asks Qais for the reason that might drive a King of the Arabs to become a wanderer. Qais whispers some words into the ears of the King of Tabuk, who soon after becomes a wanderer himself. No one knows what the whispered words are, but it is highly probable that he told the King of Tabuk the great mystery of Love, which is worth leaving everything for, to follow the path of Love, which in Sufism is a selfless and spiritual attraction to the beloved, whose attributes are irresistible to such an extent that the lover’s ego dies and divine love becomes the only religion to pursue and worship. In one of his poems, Ibn Arabi tells about a love experience which makes his heart sick because his is devotional love: My love for thee is whole, O thou end of my hopes, and because of that love my heart is sick. Thou art exalted, a full moon rising over the heart, a moon that never sets after it hath risen. May I be thy ransom, O thou who art glorious in beauty and pride! for thou hast no equal amongst the fair. Thy gardens are wet with dew and thy roses are blooming, and thy beauty is passionately loved: it is welcome to all. Thy flowers are smiling and thy boughs are fresh: wherever they bend, the winds bend towards them. Thy grace is tempting and thy look piercing: armed with it the knight, affliction, rushes upon me. 9

Despite Ibn Arabi’s love, which gives him so much torment, like Alastor, he sees his beloved as “whole,” implying a perfect selfless love which perceives all elements of nature blending in her beauty. The beauty and the grace of the beloved reflects the beauty and grace of God. Love turns into a spiritual attraction whereby the mystic perceives the blending of All, God, in one 9

Qtd. Landau, p. 118.

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and one in All—for Alastor and Ibn Arabi, this one is the beloved. Love then not only unites all creation of God, but also blends all religions. Ibn Arabi affirms: “Love is the faith I hold.” 10 Abul’ Ala’ 11 also claims in his well-known Luzumiyat: A church, a temple, or a Kaba Stone, Korans and Bibles—even a martyr’s bone, All these and more my heart can tolerate, For my religion’s love and love alone. 12

In another stanza of his Luzumiyat, Abul’ Ala’ notes that when he is asked about his creed, he responds that his is love of mankind, and that the temple of this faith is in the desert caravanserai, 13 which was a desert lodge with a wide open yard for travelers and pilgrims. His faith is not dogmatic but pure and selfless, and its temple is that of “Love.” Such a faith has a reconciliatory power which directs the Sufi towards higher states of awareness exceeding the subjective perception of man; thus it acts as an agent capable of bringing all pilgrims belonging to various creeds and religions to interact in Love’s temple. There is no denying the fact that Sufism belongs to the Islamic tradition because it started and developed within the domain of Islam. However, S. B. Bushrui and J. M. Munro confirm: Ameen Rihani, translator. The Luzumiyat of Abul ‘Ala. (Beirut: Albert Rihani, 1978), p. 21. [Henceforth cited as Luzumiyat] 11 Abul’ Ala’ Al-Ma’arri was born in 973, in the town of Ma’arra, close to the Syrian city Aleppo. He lost his eyesight early in his childhood and started writing poetry at a very early stage of his life and lead an ascetic lifestyle in seclusion. He had a great influence on his students and became a respected poet and teacher of Sufism, which he expressed in his famous poem Luzumiyat. A brief biography of the poet is available by Ameen Rihani, Luzumiyat, pp. 21–37. 12 Luzumiyat, p. 77. 13 Luzumiyat, p. 85. 10

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“The Sufi does not belong to any one religion or sect; he accepts all religions, [and] is bound by no religious dogma. Indeed, he rejects everything that may seem to suggest doctrinal conformity, and he is at one with the spirit of all religions.” 14 Along the same line of thought, William Blake confesses in “All Religions Are One,” that all religions have one source, which is Love, which rouses poetic genius. 15 The Romantics, like the Sufis, considered Love their only religion and rejected doctrinal conformity. Indeed, Romantics poets emphasized the Sufi concept of selfless and holistic Love in their theories and works.

THE PATH OF LOVE

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the Romantics perceived that the drastic materialistic world is a source of human disintegration and self-centeredness. The Industrial Revolution continued to plague human beings and rendered their lives unbearable as rural communities slowly turned into urban ones and separated people from one another. The Romantics felt that materialistic interests crushed all that remained of brotherhood and Love S. B. Bushrui and J. M. Munro. “Introduction.” Ameen Rihani. A Chant of Mystics and Other Poems, edited by S. B. Bushrui and J. M. Munro (Beirut: The Rihani House, 1970), p. 19. 15 BCP&P, “All Religions Are One,” pp. 1–2. For a discussion of Blake’s acquaintance with Islam, see Angus Whitehead. “‘A Wise Tale of the Mahometans’: Blake and Islam, 1819–26.” Blake and Conflict, edited by Sarah Haggarty and Jon Mee (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 27–47. Whitehead maintains that “Parallels might be drawn between Muhammad’s and Blake’s conceptions of themselves as ‘prophets’, their reported encounters with the angel Gabriel and the form and polysemous content of the prophecies dictated to them,” p. 42. See also Humberto Garcia. “Blake, Swedenborg, and Muhammad: The Prophetic Tradition.” Religion & Literature, vol. 44, no. 2 (Summer 2012), pp. 35– 65. 14

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and of man’s close contact with nature. It was mostly the poets of the age, especially William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Keats who sought new and better realities in the innocent, primitive, and rural. It was in nature that they found Love embedded in all its the elements, and so resorted to contemplation as a means of escape through the mind, the power of the imagination. Their complete devotion to the natural world was strengthened by the cohesive power of “Love” as they realized that the path of happiness starts with loving and leads to knowing. Howard E. Hugo argues: The Romantics suggested, as had Dante, that love was a route by which the time-bound individual might learn a vision of ultimate truth, a glimpse of that world which stands behind or above our meager existences. Hence love was a state of being that was eagerly to be coveted, not for the purposes of physical satisfaction, but rather because the attraction of one soul for another was a guarantee that the entire universe was permeated with similar energy and spirit. 16

There is no doubt that Hugo’s telling statements could be included in any serious work discussing the Sufi concept of “Love.” To Goethe, “the breath of that universal love sustains us, as we float in an eternal bliss.” 17 But is not flotation an underlying Sufi goal? Indeed, it is. It occurs when pure love intoxication dissociates the Sufi from the physical world. This experience is referred to by the Sufi masters as spiritual drunkenness; it is prompted by an intense experience that lifts the soul out of its ephemeral house, the flesh, thus producing a state of ecstatic flotation.

16 17

Hugo, pp. 7–8. Qtd., Hugo, p. 78.

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The full submission (islam) of the soul to “Love” in its purest form is a full submission to the Divine Being; this cannot take place unless the soul soars high above its body. The Sufi terminology that summaries this process is fanā. When the soul achieves bliss and perceives the Truth, then it can be considered to have performed its highest function. One loses touch with the physical Self or sensations of the flesh and consciousness when engulfed in a pure state of love and happiness at having perceived glimpses of Love, Beauty, and the Truth of God. Rumi writes: “Love is a quality of God. Fear is an attribute/of those who think they serve God … You have read in the text where they love him/blends with He loves them.” 18 He also declares: If I kept talking about love, a hundred new combinings would happen, and still I would not say the mystery. The fearful ascetic runs on foot, along the surface, Lovers move like lightning and wind. No contest. Theologians mumble, rumble-dumble, necessity and free will, while lover and beloved pull themselves into each other. 19

As a mystic, Rumi reasons with Love at the back of his mind. The lover cannot be a hypocrite who hides his/her real self behind dogmas and philosophies; love frees the material self from absolute thoughts and ideologies allowing the lover to move freely like lightening and wind, while the ascetic remains imQtd., James Fadiman and Roger Frager, editors. The Essential Sufism (San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1997), p. 179. [Henceforth cited as Essential Sufism] 19 Essential Sufism, p. 180. 18

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prisoned within theological thought. To Rumi real love crosses all boundaries to unite with Allah. While the theologian’s love is prompted by obedience, the mystic’s love is driven by a spiritual power to dissolve all contraries and conflicts. Rumi also considers theologians as ignorant of love when they attempt to explain it through reason because it is unexplainable; its source is the heart and not the mind. Rumi’s teacher and guide, Shams-i Tabrizi, 20 professes in his “Ode XXXI” that he does not recognize himself as a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew, and even negates his belonging to the East or to the West, going so far as to admit: I am not of Nature’s mint, nor of the circling heavens. I am not of earth, nor of water, nor of air, nor of fire; I am not of the empyrean, nor of the dust, nor of existence, nor of entity. … I am not of this world, nor of the next, nor of Paradise, nor of Hell; I am not of Adam, nor of Eve, nor of Eden and Rizwan. 21 My place is the Placeless, my trace is the Traceless; ‘Tis neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul of the Beloved. 22 A Persian Sufi poet, Shams-i Tabrizi, born in the 1180s in Tabriz, Persia, had a passion for Sufism ever since his childhood. Later he became a wandering dervish and traveled widely pretending to be a salesman. He met Rumi and became his spiritual guide. He wrote Maqalat, a set of prose essays about spirituality, philosophy and theology. He also wrote Sufi poetry and his own autobiography, which later Rumi published. Shirazi had a deep knowledge of alchemy, astronomy, theology, philosophy and logic. For a detailed life of Shams-i Tabrizi, see his own autobiography which Rumi collected and published as Me & Rumi: The Autobiography of Shams-i Tabrizi, translated by William Chittick (Louisville, Kentucky: Four Colour Imports, Ltd., 2004). 21 “Rizwan” is an Arabic term meaning the custodian of Paradise. 20

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In a state of weightlessness and illumination, Tabrizi loses sense of his conscious self and soul—of his physical existence and identity—when he becomes one with “the Beloved” or Allah. Such utter negation allows him existential space through which to experience the divine presence that will lift him above time and place to become physically absent to the measurable world. When the universal soul of Allah wraps him in His Love, nothing makes sense but His presence. As Rumi puts it, the “Universal Soul had connection with the Partial Soul.” 23 Love is a mysterious feeling no words can describe as it carries the truth of God and Al-Ghazali confirms: the “highest function of the soul is the perception of truth” through Love. 24 In his search for truth, he writes: I next turned with set purpose to the method of mysticism (or Sufism), I knew that the complete mystic “way” includes both intellectual belief and practical activity; the later consists in getting rid of the obstacles in the self and in stripping off its base characteristics and vicious morals, so that the heart may attain to freedom from what is not God and to constant recollection of Him. 25

In a remarkable poem entitled, “Emptiness,” Rumi asserts: Ignorance is God’s prison. Knowing is God’s palace. We sleep in God’s unconsciousness. We wake in God’s open hand. We weep God’s rain. Shams-i Tabrizi, “Ode XXXI,” in Rumi’s, Divani Shamsi Tabriz, edited and translated by Reynold A. Nicholson (San Francisco: The Rainbow Bridge, 1973), p. 79. 23 Rumi, “The Falcon and the Owl,” Masnavi, p. 67. 24 Essential Sufism, p. 59. 25 Ibid. 22

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM We laugh God’s lightning. Fighting and peacefulness Both take place within God. Who are we then In this complicated world-tangle, That is really just the single, straight Line down at the beginning of Allah? Nothing. We are Emptiness. 26

Rumi’s poem seems like a riddle, but a close reading reveals that emptiness is the end of those who cannot experience the existence of God in one’s heart and creation. The title and the last word of the poem is an “emptiness” that designates the vacuity of life, of existence, when a person is incapable of recognizing that God is the source and end of life. In the first two verse lines, Rumi states that professing to have knowledge or reason in effect indicates ignorance;-this is merely an illusion of knowledge as such people are imprisoned within the boundaries of the physical world. On the other hand, in lines three to eight Rumi affirms that it is only those who have love or God in their hearts who are the wise ones; they are capable of acknowledging the existence of God in all creation. He then poses the question which has confused the ignorant ever since “existence”: “Who are we then/In this complicated world-tangle…?” “Nothing./We are emptiness.” Rumi implies that God has given us the choice of two paths: that of ignorance and of knowledge, and the culmination of both paths is emptiness unless the traveler is saturated with love. 26

Essential Sufism, p. 28.

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In effect, a Sufi believes that existence without Love begets desire for matter and not its essence. Rumi says: “A lover’s food is the love of bread,/not the bread.” 27 Considering Saadi’s “Tale XXXV,” when a Sufi is asked about “his opinion of consecrated bread,” he replies: “If they receive it in order to compose their minds, and to promote their devotions, it is lawful but if they want nothing but bread, it is illegal. Men of piety receive bread to enjoy religious retirement, but enter not into the cell of devotion for the sake of obtaining bread.” 28 That is to say that one need not eat bread to love it; the love of bread can nourish the soul even more than actually eating it as the end of love is love and not the object of love. God thus subsists in the love of all existence and not in the mere desire for existence. This Divine love wraps the lover and the beloved in the mold of the Divine Soul, which in turn binds the lover to all. It is at this point that the mystic reaches the level of flotation, the bliss of selfless love, since what lies beyond the physical objects is euphoric Love, Beauty, and Truth, all of which mirror the Beloved. To the Sufi, Divine Love originates in the soul and gives the various ephemeral objects and subjects a sense of their divinity, hope, and beauty. On their part, the Romantics were capable of flotation because they could experience that ecstatic selfless love that gives them a glimpse of what lies beyond the surface objects of the world, their divine soul, their Beauty and Truth. As such, when contemplating nature, beauty and the creative mystery, Wordsworth experiences glimpses of flotation, or what he calls “spots of time.” He is aware that love felt for a flower is analogous to the love for Divine Beauty and Truth: “And then my heart with

27 28

Essential Sufism, p. 29. Saadi, “Tale XXXV,” in Gulistan, or Rose Garden, p. 205.

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pleasure fills,/And dances with the daffodils.” 29 As for Coleridge in his “On Poesy or Art,” he ponders: What is beauty? It is, in the abstract, the unity of the manifold, the coalescence of the diverse in the concrete, it is the union of the shapely (formosum) with the vital. … The sense of beauty is intuitive, and beauty itself is all that inspires pleasure without, and aloof form, and even contrarily to, interest. 30

Coleridge goes a step further in his mystical ecstatic experience when he perceives pure love as a binding force for all the elements of nature. For instance, it is love that blends the strings of his Aeolian harp with the playful wind: Methinks, it should have been impossible Not to love all things in a world so filled; Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air Is Music slumbering on her instrument. 31

The harp symbolizes the heart which, when touched by the wind brings alive the music representative of the spirit of God. The melodies produced reflect the spirit of God and arouse love for all creation and that ecstatic joy resulting from the union between a lover and beloved. The joy is euphoric to the extent that it causes the soul to soar in a sensation of flotation. In Lord Byron’s The Bride of Abydos, this sensation of physical lightness is what results from the sublime love that unites the souls of Selim and Zuleika as in the Sufi myth of the Rose and the Nightingale. The Rose represents the beauty of Zuleika and thus the Beauty of God, and the Nightingale’s singing signifies the hymn played by a lover in the worship of God. The Nightingale or bulbul also represents the Divine voice of God, the sound of His WW, “I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud,” ll. 17–18. ERW, “On Poesy or Art,” p. 493. 31 CCPW, “The Eolian Harp,” ll. 30–33. 29 30

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breath, which carries the wonders of his Beauty and Love. Nilchian suggests that even Shelley might have been influenced by the nightingale of the Sufi fable in his “Defense of Poetry,” when he considers the poet “a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.” 32 That is, the poet enjoys his solitude when he writes his songs. She also refers to the second stanza of “In the Indian Girl’s Song” stating that Shelley compares the poet’s love for the beloved to the nightingale’s love of the rose. She adds that Jones’s translation of Jami’s poem, “The Muse Recalled: An Ode of Jami,” may “have inspired Shelley to write his poem.” 33 Indeed, in his “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” the poet idealizes the “Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate/With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon” 34; and in his “Ode to the West Wind,” he asks the wind: “Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!/I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed.” 35 Here Shelley’s ode echoes Rumi’s: I form a cloud over the ocean And gather spillings. When Shams [Sun] is here, I rain. After a day or two, lilies sprout, The shape of my tongue. 36

Rumi and Shelley become nature’s mouthpieces, especially when Shelley asks the wind: “Make me thy lyre,” whose beautiful music lies in “thy mighty harmonies.” 37 Flotation for Rumi and Shelley is union with nature through love; it is also the loss of corporal existence along the process of elevating thoughts exNilchian, p. 230. Ibid. 34 SCP, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” ll. 13–14. 35 SCPW, “Ode to the West Wind,” ll. 53–54. 36 Essential Rumi, “The Shape of My Tongue,” p. 43. 37 SCPW, “Ode to the West Wind,” ll. 57 and 59. 32 33

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pressed in poetry. Here one cannot but recall Keats who, reflecting upon the aesthetic quality of the engravings on an Urn is uplifted by the Truth and Beauty of Art declaring boldly: “‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’,—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all you need to know.” 38 Flotation, then, in Sufism and Romanticism cannot be separated from the amorous experience of writing and reading poetry. Their focal purpose is to achieve a state of blissful illumination. It is therefore no coincidence that Shelley’s and Keats’s definitions of “Love” echo the Sufi ones. The former believes that it is “that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive” while the latter asserts that “Love” in its sublime form is “creative of essential Beauty.” 39 M. H. Abrams, who considers Romantic poets as “primarily poets of love,” 40 has dedicated a section to the discussion of the Romantics’ conception of “Love” in his seminal work, Natural Supernaturalism. He contends that, for the Romantics “essential evil” separates man from all that is beautiful, and “Love” is that force which “pulls the sundered parts together.” Abrams maintains that this view is shared by Hegel, Schiller, and the British Romantics. He quotes Hegel’s revelation that “Genuine love excludes all opposition … In love the separate does still remain, but as something united and no longer as something separate,” 41 and William Blake’s assertion that, “Selfhood” is annihilated as “Man subsists by Brotherhood & Universal Love” and “liveth not by Self alone but in his brothers face.” 42 Abrams also refers to Keats for whom self-love vanishes when selfhood disappears as it identifies with sensuous objects KSP, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” ll. 49–50. Qtd., Hugo, pp. 105 and 557. 40 M. H. Abrams. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1971), pp. 294–295. [Henceforth cited as Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism] 41 Qtd., Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, p. 294. 42 BCP&P, The Four Zoas, “Night the Ninth,” p. 402, ll. 22 and 25. 38 39

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outside itself, 43 to Coleridge who believes that love is the essential ingredient to make “the whole one Self!” 44 and to Wordsworth, who writes: Love, now a universal birth, From heart to heart is stealing. From earth to man, from man to earth. 45

Added to this, in “Love’s Philosophy,” Shelley writes that Love is a fusing agent which brings all elements of nature into a oneness via a divine law: The fountains mingle with the river, And the rivers with the ocean; The winds of heaven mix forever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single; All things by a law divine In another’s being mingle. Why not I with thine? 46

The poem is a clear statement that in the universe love is a divine rule decreed by God, who dictates the blending of every existing element with the other. The poet continues by arguing that since the mountains, waves, flower, the sunlight, and the moon beams kiss heaven, each other, the earth and the sea, why would his beloved violate this universal law by refusing to kiss him: “What is all this sweet work worth/ If thou kiss not me?” 47 It therefore cannot be doubted that for both Sufism and RomanAbrams, Natural Supernaturalism, p. 296. Qtd., Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, p. 296. 45 WW, “Lines: Written at a Small Distance from my House, and Sent by My Little Boy to the Person to Whom They are Addressed,” ll. 21–23. Sometimes this poem is titled “To My Sister.” 46 SCPW, “Love’s Philosophy,” ll. 1–8. 47 Ibid. 43 44

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ticism Love is a divine agent that binds human beings in a universal togetherness. It is essentially Love that attracts human beings to all elements of nature in universal oneness. In his poem “Imru’ ‘Al-Qais,” Rumi declares “Don’t ask what love can make or do!/Look at the colors of the world.” 48 The “colors of the world,” here represents the celebratory mingling of human beings with all the elements of nature. For Rumi, the true humane human is one who is ready to renounce the self’s physical and material satisfaction for the sake of a spiritual fulfilment achieved through the essence of love. When someone asked Rumi where love exists, he responded, “Be lost in me, …You’ll know love when that happens,” or “Say I/am you.” 49 Henry Corbin argues that at the climax of Sufi love occurs when, the lover has become the very substance of love, he is then both the lover and the beloved. But himself will not be that without the second person, without the thou, that is to say without the Figure who makes him able to see himself, because it is through his very own eyes that the Figure looks at him. 50

The lover then sees the beloved as a mirror reflecting the single image of both lover and beloved. Such a perception of Love is not only Sufi but also Romantic. In one of his poems, Coleridge writes: All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, Essential Rumi, “Imru’ Al-Qais,” p. 92. like “Byron, Imru’ al-Qays, was often considered to be the hero of his own poems,” p. 152. 49 Essential Rumi, “The You Pronoun,” and “Say I am You,” pp. 274 and 276 respectively. 50 Henry Corbin. The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, translated by Nancy Pearson (New York: Omega Publication, 1994), p. 9. 48

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And feed his sacred flame. 51

To this effect, he also asserts in his Biographia Literaria that “the love of nature, and the sense of beauty in forms and sounds” is the only agent capable of diffusing his bodily pains. 52 Furthermore, though recent studies have elaborated on Lord Byron’s “Oriental” scholarship; 53 however, most of them have concentrated and discussed Lord Byron’s genuine interest in and authentic references to elements of the “Oriental” culture without investigating the congenital aspects of this culture, which flavored several of his works, particularly Sufism. In fact, Byron’s kinship to Sufism is only briefly expressed by Bernard Blackstone, who notes in “Byron and Islam: the Triple Eros,” that Byron’s Eastern heroines represent the “allegorical mistresses or youths of Sufi poetry, symbolizing noesis, mystical realization.” 54 Blackstone also makes several brief but insightful references to Lord Byron’s interest in Sufism in Byron: A Survey (1975). He points at the poet’s interest in “a time-hallowed Sufi tradition,” at his “whole ‘doctrine of love’ with his Sufic affinities,” at his concern in the spiritual death of the Sufi when “the death to self [is] brought about by unselfish love,” at his sense of Dante’s “other roots in the Islamic, Sufic civilisation,” at his CCPW, “Love,” ll. 1–4. Biographia Literaria, p. 12. 53 Such works include: Harold S. L. Wiener. “The Eastern Background of Lord Byron’s Turkish Tales.” Diss. Yale University, 1938; Anahid Melikian. Lord Byron and the East (Beirut: The American University of Beirut, 1977); Marilyn Butler. “The Orientalism of Lord Byron’s Giaour.” Lord Byron and the Limits of Fiction, edited by Bernard Beatty and Vincent Newey (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1988), pp. 78–96; Naji B. Oueijan. “Lord Byron’s Eastern Literary Portraits.” Lord Byron and the Mediterranean World, edited by Marius Byron Raizis (Athens: The Hellenic Lord Byron Society, 1995): 93–103; and Naji Oueijan. The Progress of an Image: The East in English Literature (New York: Peter Lang, 1996). 54 Blackstone, “Byron and Islam,” p. 327. 51 52

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“Sufic world of ascents and descents, of love human and divine intermingling in an iconography of nightingales and roses,” at his “Sufic demands of self-forgetfulness in a love beyond love,” that is boundless love, and finally, at “Byron’s Sufic imagery.” 55 Einboden discusses briefly Leila’s beauty relating it to the Sufi tradition when Byron compares her eyes to the “jewel of Giamschid, … a standard of Persian poetry.” 56 Blackstone’s and Einboden’s brief but telling points, are unquestionably geared at motivating further investigation of Lord Byron’s Sufic affinities. In Sufism, Love generates a union with all Others, or creation, be they human or non-human, to the point that the very idea, image or thought of an Other ceases to exist. It is a pure spiritual desire to become one with all and with the beloved—in the medieval ages, British mystical writers referred to this experience as devotional love. Taken as a mystical order and as a literary movement, Sufism cannot be detached from the organic power of unconditional, self-less love, which is the basic path towards enlightenment. Indeed, “Love” liberates the physical Self from the intrinsic, soulful, spiritual self; it is thus that the lover approaches the ecstatic stage of oneness. Love is thus the only “path” for elevated wisdom; as the centre that paves the way for other sublime emotions such as repentance, abstinence, forgiveness, and reconciliation, it resolves all tensions. This path toward morality through divine transcendence is what appealed to Romantic poets, who refused to adhere to conflicts among social, dogmatic, or philosophic systems. Furthermore, Romantic poets share the Sufi poets’ belief and affirmation that that the Bernard Blackstone. Byron: A Survey (London: Longman, 1975), pp. 49, 78, 142, 174, 196, 206, and 348 respectively. In his Eastern Tales, The Gaiour and The Bride of Abydos, Lord Byron skillfully uses the images of the bulbul (Arabic and Persian for nightingale) and the rose, the most significant Sufi imagery implying pure and devotional love. Such imagery is discussed in the following sections and chapters. 56 Einboden, ebook. 55

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knowledge acquired from personal experience outweighs the one which is acquired from books or through didactic instruction. Knowledge should be sought via spontaneous or willed participation and mingling in the outside world, with the unfamiliar other, until the mysterious and inaccessible ceases to be so when the soul or inner being transcends itself to merge with the beyond. This is the basic belief that urged Sufis to wander on all lands and participate with and experience various levels of existence. This is also the reason why all Romantic poets were wanderers who traversed foreign lands seeking uplifting experiences. However, this wandering experience is incomplete and unattainable without the emotion that connects the wanderer to his surroundings and unites the beholder with the beheld – basically, love. At the moment when the inner being becomes blissfully conscious and aware of the Other, the two are united as One. Naturally, this cannot happen without loving the other first, selflessly appreciating, adoring the essence of the other human or non-human. In this respect, Lord Byron’s passionate fusion with difference, be it different humans or elements of nature, carries his poetic expressions to the level of a private theosophy reflecting his most sublime and mystical insights in a kind of therapeutic experience between the self and the intellect. In Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, one can detect echoes of Sufi poets when he says: I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture. 57

A few stanzas later, Lord Byron reaffirms his individual, mystical experiences with the elements of nature when he confesses: Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part 57

BCPW, II, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 3, Stanza 72, ll. 680–683.

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM Of me and my soul, as I of them? Is not the love of these deep in my heart With a pure passion? 58

When the above Byronic verses are compared to Rumi’s poem “Say I am You,” the kinship of Lord Byron to Sufism surfaces: I am dust particles in sunlight. I am the round sun. … I am morning mist, and the breathing of evening. I am wind in the top of a grove, and surf on the cliff. … I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches. Silence, thought, and voice. The musical air coming through a flute, a spark of a stone, a flickering in metal. Both candle, and the moth crazy around it. Rose, and the nightingale lost in the fragrance. I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy, the evolutionary intelligence, the lift, and the falling away. What is, and what isn’t. You who know Jelaluddin, You the one in all, say who

58

BCPW, II, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 3, Stanza 75. ll. 707–710.

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I am. Say I am You. 59

The above lines imply, if anything, that in a state of pure and passionate love, selfhood and otherhood vanish. Rumi tells his listeners or readers that God is within all creation, and embracing God involves recognizing and acknowledging His reflected image in all His creation. In Rumi’s eyes God is the “circling galaxy,/the evolutionary intelligence,” and the following lines may seem to the reader a blasphemy: “You [God]/who know Jelaluddin [Rumi], You/the One in all, say who/I am. Say ‘I am You’.” But one must not forget that Rumi starts his poem by asserting that he is “dust particles in sunlight” at the outset confirming God’s existence in his soul and the created world. Rumi here also refers to a “Sufic” image, that of the rose and nightingale, both of which are parts of God’s fragrance, and also to the flute’s music “a spark of a stone, a flickering in metal,” which translates as the geometric truth of poetry in terms of structure and prosody. Consciously or unconsciously, Lord Byron seems to advance the Sufi ideal of Wahdat al-Wujud, (the “unity of being”), which the self cannot approach or perceive unless it is purged by the divine power of Love. Like the Sufi poets, Lord Byron finds in nature the very principles of gnosis. Here he is a contemplative traveler and a lover who sets on a pilgrimage toward perfection and gnosis and finds forms in nature, which represent the Godhead, or Truth. Nature, then, becomes a vast book of Divine Wisdom. Lord Byron’s obsession with elements of nature as representations of eternal truth is quite often noted by Byron scholars and also tactfully observed by his contemporary, John Galt, who personally experienced the Eastern world and its culture. Galt contends:

59

Essential Rumi, “Say I am You,” pp. 275–276.

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM In the air and sea, which have been in all times the emblems of change and similitudes of inconstancy, he [Byron] has discovered the very principles of permanency. The ocean in his view, not by its vastness, its unfathomable depths, and its limitless extent, becomes an image of deity, by its unchangeable character! 60

For the Sufi, much as for Lord Byron, nature is a source of spiritual nourishment and a retreat from materialistic life. Indeed, Lord Byron’s poetic pilgrimages are aimed at redeeming man’s self-centeredness and it seems only natural for Lord Byron to relate his spiritual nourishment to his mystical fusion with nature. He blends with the external world and the beyond through his mental and imaginative sensibilities, which uplift him to experience the sublime in nature. Take for instance the verses mentioned above: “I live not in myself, but I become/Portion of that around me; and to me.” Here, Byron’s verses echo Rumi’s in “A Bowel”: The universe and the light of the stars come through me. I am the crescent moon put up Over the gate to the festival. 61

Another aspect of Sufi selfless love, which binds a lover to a beloved in an eternal spiritual bond, is clearly manifested in some of Lord Byron’s major works, especially his Eastern Tales. Such love defies worldly desires, overpowers death, and enables the lovers to enjoy the ecstasy of their union with the Almighty. Perhaps the following verses are the ones that sharply express Lord Byron’s connection to the Sufi expression of selfless love: ‘Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven; A spark of that immortal fire John Galt. The Life of Lord Byron (London: Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1911), p. 361. 61 Essential Rumi, “A Bowel,” p. 138. 60

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With the angels shared, by Alla given, To lift from earth our low desire, Devotion wafts the mind above, But Heaven itself descends in love; A feeling from Godhead caught, To wean from self each sordid thought; A ray of him who form’d the whole; A glory circling round the soul! 62

After his separation from Leila, the Giaour, the speaker of the above lines, uses symbols that point to his illumination following the “glory circling round the soul” that is experienced by whirling dervishes, and renders him capable of explaining the divine source of selfless love. He does not need to be a Muslim or an “Oriental” character to recognize love as heaven’s light that paves the way for wisdom through the repudiation of earthly desires and the elimination of all repugnant thoughts. Love is God’s means of engulfing the soul with joy and wisdom. Thus, like a Sufi, Giaour affirms that true love is man’s source of divine illumination, which invigorates elevated moments of cosmic awareness. Rumi declares: This is Love: to fly heavenward, To read, every instant, a hundred veils. The first moment, to renounce life; The last step, to fare without feet. To regard this world as invisible, Not to see what appears to one’s self. 63

The above lines correspond to Lord Byron’s affirmation in Don Juan, that the love between Haidèe and Don Juan is that “… in which the mind delights/To lose itself, when the old world

62 63

BCPW, III, Giaour, ll. 1131–1140. Qtd., James Kritzeck, p. 227.

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grows dull,/And we are sick of its hack sounds and sights.” 64 Love, then, leading to the illuminating ecstasy of the mind, floats beyond the physical elements surrounding it. The spiritual fusion of the lover and the beloved—the mingling of the two selves in one—eliminates all sense of “sounds and sights”; i.e., of time and space. Rumi also asserts that when the lover and the beloved are “so dissolved into love, all qualities of doingness disappear.” 65 In this respect, “doingness” denotes a physical action, which when wrapped with pure love turns into a spiritual interaction or blending whereby body vanishes and souls mélange with each other. As such, selfless love generates the mystical experience, which other Sufi poets like Jami and Saadi celebrate in their poetry. Indeed, both Saadi and Jami emphasize that physical beauty may be a means to discover the beauty of Truth but only if accompanied by passionate and selfless love. Whosoever has no passionate love, which is ignited by physical separation, punishment, and pain, says Jami, has no heart; thus, to set oneself free and enjoy everlasting happiness, one must carry selfless love in his heart. 66 Also, according to Saadi, such an ideal love is the only way towards achieving the awareness of everlasting Truth; i.e., God. In this sense, and much like the Romantics’ circuitous journey from outside inward, that is from physical separation, to guilt, punishment, redemption, and reconciliation, experiencing pure, absolute love involves an inward journey into the primal Truth of the world; in this way, man’s soul is purified, brought closer to God and rendered immortal. 67 In the fine texture of his The Bride of Abydos, Lord Byron maintains that Zuleika and Selim’s passionate and pure feelings BCPW, V, Don Juan, Canto 4, Stanza 17, ll. 131–134. Essential Rumi, p. 174. 66 Muhammed Ghounaimy Hilal. Leila and the Mejnoun in the Arabic and Persian Literature (Beirut: Dar Al-Awda, 1980), pp. 260–261. 67 Ibid. 64 65

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break the chains of physical reciprocity and embody the highest form of spiritual love. Their detachment from sensuality and sexuality brings them close to Sufism, which proclaims the pure spiritual adoration of the beloved as one of the means to reunite with the Almighty. Commenting on the Bride of Abydos in a letter to Dr. Clarke, Lord Byron wrote that he tried to preserve Zuleika’s purity. 68 Also, one must not forget Lord Byron’s note to Lady Blessington: “When I attempted to describe Haidèe and Zuleika, I endeavoured to forget all that friction with the world had taught me.” 69 Such a detachment from the physical world is a characteristic of Sufi poets. Rumi professes in “Music Master,” “Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere./They’re in each other all along.” 70 This, however, is not to suggest that, in his Bride of Abydos, Lord Byron was a Sufi poet, but that he wrote like one. In a section titled “The Seal of the Unique Wisdom in the Word of Muhammad,” Ibn Arabi discusses man’s insight of women in Allah as both active and passive: When man witnesses Allah in women, his witnessing is in the passive; when he witnesses Him in himself, regarding the appearance of woman from Him, he witnesses Him in the active. When he witnesses Him from himself without the presence of any form from him, his witnessing is in the passive directly from Allah without any intermediary. So his witnessing of Allah in the woman is the most complete and perfect

George Gordon, Lord Byron. Byron’s Letters and Journals, edited by Leslie Marchand, 12 vols. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1973–1982), vol 3, p. 199. [Henceforth cited as BLJ] 69 Ernest J. Lovell, Jr., editor. Lady Blessington’s Conversations of Lord Byron (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 196. 70 Essential Rumi, “Music Master,” p. 106. 68

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM because he witnesses Allah inasmuch as He is both active and passive. 71

Ibn Arabi’s condition for such a perception of women is Love, a true devotional and spiritual one, not the love of body for its sake but for the sake of God, who is not so much the Creator as the Beloved. The sexual relationship between man and woman in Sufism is an act of spiritual and physical union permitted by Allah when prompted by the love of God. In fact, several Sufi poets consider that Allah has no gender, although linguistically God is referred to as a “He” and not a “She.” His sovereignty signifies masculinity, while His spiritual Beauty and attraction represent femininity. In Sufism, the “earthly woman” bears an esoteric name, that is to say, has a name in Heaven (a name in the supra-sensory world which is the world of the Guide and of the personal master), indicating, in a manner that is as discreet as it is eloquent, what celestial love essentially implies: the perception of a beautiful being in her heavenly dimension, through senses which have become organs of light; precisely, the organs of the “person of light.” 72 In other words, beauty is both physical and spiritual. And what is sensed as beautiful for its own sake and as a representation of the beauty of God becomes a source of light or wisdom, whereby desire for the spirit of beauty over rides the beauty of matter. For instance, Majnun’s love of Leila is based on her inner beauty and represents the spiritual beauty of God. When the Khalifa tells Leila that he does not understand why Majnun sees her beautiful when she is not fairer than other females, she responds: “Be silent; thou art not Majnun!” If thou hadst Majnun’s eyes, The two worlds would be within thy view. 71 72

Ibn Arabi, The Seals of Wisdom, p. 128. Corbin, p. 87.

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Thou art in thy senses, but Majnun is beside himself. 73

The two worlds Leila talks about are the spiritual and the physical, which are unified via the power of a lover who sees not only the outward but also the inward beauty of the Other. The true love for Allah therefore starts the with painful relinquishing of earthly desires. Following this, one’s inner being is able to flow and lose itself in the inner being of the beloved to unite with it. Thus, essentially, the love of man and woman for each other must begin with a passionate and devotional love— “whoever has no passionate love,” says Jami, “has no heart; and whoever has no pain in his heart is like still water; so, to set oneself free and enjoy everlasting happiness, one must carry the pains of pure and devotional love in his heart.” It is worth mentioning here that Lord Byron had confessed his admiration of Jami, whose poetry he had read in Sir William Jones’s translations. 74 In his transformation to English of “Ode of Jami,” Jones skillfully preserves the colorful Persian imagery, structure, and prosody: How sweet the gale of morning breathes! Sweet news of my delight he brings; News, that the rose will soon approach the tuneful bird of night he brings. 75

Maulana Jalalu-’d-din Muhammad Rumi. The Masnavi I Ma'navi of Rumi, translated by E. H. Whinfield (Forgotten Books, 2008), p. 10. Available on: www.forgottenbooks.org. [Henceforth cited as Masnavi] 74 See Hilal, pp. 260–261, and Naji B. Oueijan, The Progress of an Image: The East in English Literature (New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 1996), p. 94. 75 See the translation of the full poem in Lord Teignmouth. Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Correspondence of Sir William Jones. 2nd Edition (London: n.p. 1806), p. 519. 73

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The above verses carry the local colour of Persian imagery: a refreshing and delightful morning breeze blends in a mystical manner with elements of nature to carry the “sweet news” of the bird, or bulbul, to the rose, or gul. The structure is loyal to the Persian qasida form explained above, and the rhyme of the original poem, “delight” and “night,” is maintained within the second section of each verse. Such a translation would strongly stimulate Lord Byron’s poetic muses to employ original Eastern amorous imagery in his Eastern tales and major poems. In the first stanza of The Bride of Abydos, Lord Byron, like Jami, plays with the imagery of the gul and nightingales to decorate the setting with beauty and love: Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine; Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume, Wax faint o’er the gardens of Gul in her bloom; Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, And the voice of the nightingale never is mute. 76

In all probability, Lord Byron is echoing Jami’s imagery of the love and happiness of the gul and the nightingale in this natural setting, which warrants an eternal spiritual fusion between both lovers and between them, on the one hand, and Allah as reflected in nature, on the other. This paradise-like setting reflects the ideal divine love between Selim and Zuleika, who are represented by the Sufi symbols of the bulbul and the gul. Rumi also hints at the rose and the nightingale: Oh Thou whose Face is like a rose and whose tresses are sweet marjoram! My spirit is joyful when I am in heartache over Thee! Oh, my spirit is joyful over Thee may my spirit never be without Thee! 76

BCPW, III, The Bride of Abydos, Canto 1, ll. 4–10.

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My spirit gave its heart to Thee and sits together with Thy heartache. Heartache for a person’s sake is bitter, but this heartache of Love is like sugar. Look no more at this heartache of Love as if it were heartache! 77

The poet is a nightingale addressing his beloved and comparing her to a rose. The lovers suffer “heartache” from being physically detached and yet the realization that they connect and blend on the spiritual level, the heart, eases their pain making a bittersweet source of joy, “like sugar;” for the Sufi lover, love is a reflection of divine love for the absolute God. On a certain similar note, Lord Byron’s Selim and Zuleika carry the pains of pure love deep in their hearts. At the end of the tale, the bulbul, the spirit—“Invisible his airy wings,”—of Selim, sings a powerful and sweet song to the rose, the spirit of Zuleika, which “Hath flourish’d; flourisheth this hour,” and will flourish forever. 78 This verse recalls Attar’s couplet: “The Rose I love and worship now is here;/If dying, yet reviving, Year by Year.” 79 The “Bulbul” and the rose then, represent the highest state of eternal synthesis between lovers in a manner similar to that of the Sufi’s selfless and divine love, as evident in Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: His love was passion’s essence—as a tree On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be Thus, and enamoured, were in him the same. But his was not the love of living dame, Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams, Qtd., Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, p. 244. BCPW, III, The Bride of Abydos, Canto 2, ll. 690–732. 79 Attar, The Conference of the Birds, p. 8, ll. 216–217. 77 78

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM But of ideal beauty, which became In him existence, and o’erflowing teens, Along his burning page, distempered though it seems. 80

Even Rousseau, whom Lord Byron describes as a “self-torturing” poet, expresses love in such a transcendental and illuminating manner in poems in which his intense Love, pregnant with passion and desire for beauty, loses its corporal sensuality as it invades the heart and mind of the beholder. 81 This type of ideal love as exalted above, is first excited by the senses but then lifted above terrestrial attraction when spiritual love warps it; it is Romantic in the sense that it starts as an egoistic, earthly attraction and develops into a representation of the divine and ideal love. The attachment of the rose to the nightingale 82 is again alluded to by Lord Byron in The Giaour. He makes it clear in a preliminary note that “the attachment of the nightingale to the rose

BCPW, II, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 3, Stanza 78, ll. 737–742. BCPW, II, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 3, Stanza 77, l. 725. 82 Elham Nilchian believes that in the pre-Orientalist English literature, images of the rose and the nightingale were employed by several writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer in his “The Tale of Sir Thopas”, by John Milton in Comus, and by Edmond Spenser in Faerie Queene; she then states “The romantic relationship of the rose and the nightingale, however, exclusively belongs to Persian Sufi poetry” (232–233). Nilchian is partly right as during the fifteenth century Orientalist literature was quite popular. In an interesting study, Louis Wann surveys the Elizabethan plays dealing with “Oriental” matter and reveals that between 1558 and 1642, British dramatists produced forty-seven plays dealing with Oriental history and culture, it is quite possible that the fable of the rose and the nightingale was known before the 17th and eighteenth centuries when Orientalist literature became very popular; for a detailed study; see Louis Wann’s “The Oriental in Elizabethan Drama.” Modern Philology, no. 12, 1915, pp. 423–447. 80 81

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is a well-known Persian fable.” 83 The myth, celebrated by most Sufi poets besides Rumi, is referred to by Jami, in Yusuf and Zulaykha, 84 and by Saadi, in his tale of Majnun and Leila. Samar Attar offers a literary account of the “Oriental” poets who wrote about Majnun: The twelfth-century Persian poet Nizami had already claimed her in his long narrative poem Layla and Majnun. … The eleventh-century Persian poet al-Firdausi had a different epic on two other lovers: Yusuf and Zulaikha, while Petrarch’s contemporary, the Persian Hafiz, glorified love in all of its varieties. … Furthermore, the tales of the Arabian Nights had furnished the Romantic poets with various interpretations of love that either incite to lust, or elevate to heavens. 85

And it so seems that Lord Byron’s borrowings of the names of his heroines from popular Eastern tales celebrated by Sufi poets, coincides with his thematic purposes and asserts, if anything, his keen learning and understanding of the Sufi ideals, especially the path of Love. There is no doubt that Lord Byron’s personal life was fragmented, and that his personal love relationships were traumatic to a degree driving him to self-exile; but this must have triggered his interest in some kind of synthesis, which he sought in his poetry. His morbid personal affairs drove him to seek ideal selfless love in several of his poetic works. Besides, in some of his letters 86 he notes that the Eastern tales were written to divert BCPW, III, p. 416. The poem is translated by Ralph T. E. Griffith; see a section of his translation in James Kritzeck, pp. 314–318. 85 S. Attar, p. 174. 86 For instance, in a letter to William Gifford, Lord Byron writes: “––It [The Bride of Abydos] was written––I cannot say for amusement nor ‘obliged by hunger and request of friends’ but in a state of mind from 83 84

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his mind from his turbulent relationships. Such a willed detachment from the physical world, as mentioned before, is a characteristic of the Sufi poets. It thus seems that in the selfless love between the poet and nature and between Giaour and Leila, Selim and Zuleika, or even between Don Juan and Haidèe, Lord Byron takes love to a level beyond the temporal and spatial, to a height which defies the physical and sensuous and which moulds the souls into an everlasting union with the divine being capable of diffusing physical pain and of creating the divinely harmonious “colors of the world.” Lord Byron was not a Sufi poet; but when in a profound meditative state, he wrote like one. As seen above, while Lord Byron was interested in Love between individuals and nature and between lovers and their beloved, his contemporaries clearly expressed their individual love and binding devotion to nature and Divinity. William Blake considers Love as a unifying agent of all in One. In a beautiful metaphor of the first stanza of his “Song” in Poetical Sketches, he compares the intertwining souls of human beings to the roots of trees which through, Love and harmony combine, And around our souls intertwine, While thy branches mix with mine, And our roots together join. 87

Furthermore, in one poem from Songs of Innocence, Blake, like a Sufi poet, transcends the physical world and is illuminated to perceive the Divine Image in all creation until he senses what the Sufis call the “unity of being” or “Wahdat al-Wujud”—an circumstances which occasionally occur to “us youth” that rendered it necessary for me to apply my mind to something––anything but reality”; see BLJ, III, p. 161. 87 BCP&P, “Song,” p. 413, ll. 1–4.

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elevated experience—through “Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love.” 88 Even in “The Garden of Love,” he sees flowers representing the souls of all those who have died and whose souls have become free to unite together and with Divinity after leaving their physical desirous bodies, which tempt humans to forsake “Brotherhood and Universal Love [while] in selfish clay.” 89 A few lines later, Blake speaks through one of the Eternals who professes the wish, That Man subsists by Brotherhood & Universal Love. We fall on one another’s necks, more closely we embrace. Not for ourselves, but for the Eternal family we live. Man liveth not by Self alone, but in his brother’s face, Each shall behold the Eternal Father & love & joy abound.” 90

Blake sees the hidden spirit of love in the face of his brother which at once becomes a reflection of his inner love. In poems that abound with mystical visions which reveal the crux of the harmonizing and coalescing levy of Love, the poet perceives the “Eternal Father and Love and joy” analogous to the Sufi “unity of being.” Like Blake, Wordsworth considers the universality of Love as a unifying agent, as he clearly asserts to his sister, Dorothy: Love, now a universal birth, From heart to heart is stealing, From earth to man, from man to earth; —It is the hour of feeling. One moment now may give us more Than years of toiling reason: One mind shall drink at every pore The spirit of the season. 91 BCP&P, “The Divine Image,” p. 12, l. 1. BCP&P, The Four Zoas, “Night the Ninth,” p. 401, l, 13. 90 BCP&P, The Four Zoas, “Night the Ninth,” p. 402, ll. 22–26. 88 89

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Here again Wordsworth contends how a single moment in time can exalt an eternal moment of universal love. He favors moments of intense emotions over years of “toiling reason” to convey the impression that the mind may be a source of despondency, while uplifting moments of universal love are sources of joy. It is also obvious that Wordsworth trusts the love of nature more than the love of human beings, and clarifies this in the introductory stanzas of his “Book VIII” of The Prelude, which he subtitled: “Retrospect—Love of Nature Leading to Love of Man.” He writes: For me, when my affections first were led From kindred, friends, and playmates, to partake Love for the human creature’s absolute self, That noticeable kindliness of heart Sprang out of fountains, there abounding most, Where sovereign Nature dictated the tasks And occupations which her beauty adorned. 92

And in “Book IX,” he confirms: Love cannot be; nor does it thrive with ease Among the close and overcrowded hunts Of cities, where the human heart is sick, And the eye feeds it not, and cannot feed. 93

Here he deviates slightly from the Sufi perception of Love, which encompasses each element in nature and the world as WW, “Lines: Written at a Small Distance from my House, and Sent by My Little Boy to the Person to Whom They are Addressed,” ll. 21–28. 92 The Prelude, Book VIII, ll. 121–127; see The Poems of William Wordsworth, edited by Jared Curtis, Vol. III (Humanities-Ebooks, 2009), pp. 202–206. Available: http://www.portcity.edu.bd/files/636444711587206708_thepowerofwi llamwordsworth.pdf. [Henceforth cited as PWW, The Prelude] 93 PWW, The Prelude, Book IX, ll. 201–204. 91

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constituting the Godhead or Infinite Love. The Sufi does not distrust or abhor any element of the universe over another as all hold within them an element of the Godhead; in other words, all existing substance is equal in importance and function to maintain the unity of existence. Besides, in the Sufi “Wahdat alWujud,” aversion is nonexistent, and injuring the simplest element of the universe impairs the whole. Essentially, “Wahadat al-Wujud,” is based on Love and only Love. This is clearly manifested in Samuel Coleridge’s “The Ancient Mariner,” 94 for when the mariner kills the Albatross, the harmonious unity of the entire universe is disturbed and death reigns. Notice a similar inclination in the opening verses of Rumi’s poem entitled “Father Reason:” “The universe is a form of divine love,/your reasonable father.” 95 As such, the Albatross is part of the universe and subsequently a mirror of divine love. The Mariner’s shooting of the Albatross is a selfish act devoid of any concern for the universe or divine love, so he must bear the abysmal consequences of his unethical act. The mariner’s healing begins when his love for elements of nature is restored in a spontaneous manner motivated by the beauty of living nature, represented by the sea-snakes. Love then becomes the mariner’s spiritually healing agent which mends his disrupted connection to other beings and subsequently to the divine. With respect to Wordsworth, like Rousseau, he holds nature and its elements in high esteem since they are not only pleasing and effective mentors but also have spiritual and mental healing S. Attar confirms that “Many tales of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments had found their way consciously, or unconsciously, to the making of Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner.’ But there is no doubt that the tale of ‘Sinbad the Sailor’ is one of the most important models used by Coleridge,” p. 30. S. Attar then quotes a letter (October 9, 1797), by Coleridge in which he confesses that the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments made him a “dreamer”; see S. Attar, p. 28. 95 Essential Rumi, “Father Reason,” p. 145. 94

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properties by virtue of their direct connection to the divine presence and to the beauty and sensation of pure love. He proclaims in his “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”: For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. … Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being. 96

The poet confirms that nature is a mentor and man is its apprentice. However, the human drive for physical and material pleasure has diverted attention from the real tutor, Nature. It is the reason why when the poet is still a child, he could still hear the “sad music of humanity,” and the illuminated ones are those who carry these early emotions into adulthood. This drives Wordsworth to assert his trust in nature as an ethical guardian and guide of the human heart and soul. He also affirms the central role of the senses “eye, and ear,” in stimulating the contemWW, “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” ll. 88–93 and 103–112.

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plation of meadows, woods, and mountains, and initiating the love of their Creator in their forms and sounds. In this way, Wordsworth’s perception of nature echoes the Sufi belief in God and nature as the mentors of all existing substances, including humans. For Wordsworth, love of nature leads to love of man; and for the Sufi, love of any existing substance leads to love of God, and love of God leads to love of each and all existing substance. In her allegory, “The Holy Water,” Rabia Al-Basri, an eminent female Sufi saint and poet meditates: Differences exist, but not in the city of love. Thus my vows and yours, I know they are the same. I have just peeled the skin from the potato and you are still contemplating its worth, sweetheart; indeed there are wonderful nutrients in all, for God made everything. 97

The potato skin, to Rabia, is an essential part of the potato which God created to protect its inner substance. Hence, one must love both the outer and inner substance of all elements of nature; their crusts are merely their observed matter and not the essence. From a Sufi perspective, one should reach a state of “kashf” or “unveiling” whereby it is possible to vividly perceive the inner matter of substances or elements in the search for Truth. Ibn Arabi writes in his Fusus Al-Hikam; The Seals of Wisdom: “The eye only sees of creation/that its source is Allah.” 98 This would certainly appeal to the Romantic poets whose gazes extended beyond the external matter of the elements of nature. In Samuel Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the Mariner does not see God in the Albatross, so he shoots it. In Rabia Al-Basri. Poems. The World’s Poetry Archive (2012), p. 40. Available: PoemHunter, poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pdf/rabia_al_basri_2012_5.pdf 98 The Seals of Wisdom, p. 44. 97

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Rabia’s words, the mariner destroys the outward and inner beauty of the Albatross at a time he had no need of either; and by doing this he denies both the existence of and need for God, making plain why he and his sailors start decomposing while still alive. His shooting of the albatross is an act devoid of love, thus his substance starts a process of degeneration. Later, when the Mariner spontaneously perceives the beauty and need of the water snakes, he perceives the beauty and need of God: Beyond the shadow of the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, And when they reared, the elfish light Fell off in hoary flakes. Within the shadow of the ship I watched their rich attire: Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and swam; and every track Was a flash of golden fire. O happy living things! no tongue Their beauty might declare: A spring of love gushed from my heart, And I blessed them unaware: Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I blessed them unaware. 99

The key line in the above quotation is “And I blessed them unaware.” The beauty of the snakes rekindles the Mariner’s Love, his universal love. Plotinus, who was admired by Coleridge, states that universal love is granted by the universal Soul and that “individual souls each have their own Love. And to the extent that each soul relates to the universal Soul by not being cut off, but embraced by it, so that all souls are one, so, too, each 99

CCPW, “The Ancient Mariner,” Part 4, ll. 272–288.

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Love will relate to the universal Love.” 100 Rumi believes that “Snakes and scorpions will be your intimate friends, for your imagination will transmute copper into gold” 101 and ends his poem, “Rough Metaphors,” by laying emphasis on love as an agent of purgation: In reality, with he or she so overcome, so dissolved in into love, all qualities of doingness disappear. 102

As for Coleridge, universal love is a healing agent and a means for redemption, salvation, and reunification with the One absolute, with God: The self-same moment I could pray; And from my neck so free The Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea. 103

The mariner becomes spontaneously aware of the beauty of the creatures of the sea; love wraps him; and he becomes aware of his and the snake’s existence as parts of this universal chain that holds all in One by the power of love; at this point illumination is experienced by the mariner. “This seeing light, this enlightening eye, is Reflection. It is more, indeed, than is ordinarily meant by that word; but it is what a Christian ought to mean by it, and to know too, whence it first came, and still continues to come—of

Plotinus. The Enneads, edited by Lloyd P. Gerson, translated by George Boys-Stones, John M. Dillon, Lloyd P. Gerson, R.A.H. King, Andrew Smith, and James Wilberding. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 297. 101 Qtd., Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, p. 254. 102 Essential Rumi, “Rough Metaphors,” p. 174. 103 CCPW, “The Ancient Mariner,” Part 4, ll. 277–291. 100

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what light even this light is but a reflection. This, too, is THOUGHT. 104 Another of Coleridge’s dream visions, “The Eolian Harp,” epitomizes the Romantic ideal of “Universal Love.” The poet sits with his beloved wife, Sara, close to their cottage at Clevedon, Somersetshire, and hears the harmonious love music played by the “desultory breeze” as it gently caresses a “Lute” to pour out “Such a soft floating witchery of sound.” This enlivens his imagination, and he experiences the universality of Love, Which meets all motion and becomes its soul, A light in sound, a sound-like power in light, Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere— Methinks, it should have been impossible Not to love all things in a world so filled; Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air Is Music slumbering on her instrument. 105

The blending of the breeze with the harp produces beautiful images, sweet sounds and light, and implies the fusion of man with all elements of nature through Love. In Biographia Literaria, Coleridge writes: But if, in after time, I have sought a refuge from bodily pain and mismanaged sensibility in abstruse researches, which exercised the strength and subtlety of the understanding without awakening the feelings of the heart; still there was a long and blessed interval, during which my natural faculties were allowed to expand, and my original tendencies to de-

Coleridge, Samuel. Aids to Reflection, edited by John Beer (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1994), pp. 15–16. [Henceforth cited as Aids, 1994] 105 CCPW, “The Eolian Harp,” ll. 26–33. 104

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velop the selves; my fancy, and the love of nature, and the sense of beauty in forms and sounds. 106

As the self is immersed in intellectual discourse with the universe, Coleridge finds through his “fancy, and love of nature” a sense of comfort, as a direct result of his ability to perceive the “Harp” as uniting opposites: the intellect and spirit—the “intellectual breeze” and the soul—and the inanimate and the animate; these opposites blend together to draw images of God: And what if all of animated nature Be but organic Harps diversely framed, That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the Soul of each, and God of all? 107

The poem may have been evoked by Plotinus, who in his Enneads creates a similar metaphor while discussing prayer: But there is no question of the sun, or another heavenly body, hearkening to a prayer. What happens in accordance with the prayer does so because one part has come to be in sympathy with another, as in the case of a single string that is tensed; for when it has been touched at the lower end, it vibrates at the upper end, too. And often when one string is touched another experiences a sort of sense-perception of that due to their being in concord and being tuned to a single scale. But if in one lyre a vibration can be transmitted from another, to the extent that they are in sympathy, so, too, in the universe is there a single harmony, even if it be composed of opposites; yet it is composed of things that are all the same and akin, even when they are opposites. 108

Biographia Literaria, p. 16. CCPW, “The Eolian Harp,” ll. 44–48. 108 Plotinus. The Enneads, pp. 462–463. 106 107

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The above views are at the crux of Sufi features. In “Story VI” of Masnavi, Rumi advances his definition of true love and its healing effects that unite the opposites. He tells about a slave called Luqman, who is liked by his master for his wisdom and piety. One day the master offers his slave a watermelon, which Luqman eagerly eats. His master tastes it and finds it bitter, so he inquires why his slave had not warned him. Luqman says that for him it tasted sweet. Rumi ends his story, “Thus though to outward appearance a slave, Luqman, showed himself to be a lord” and writes “Love endures hardships at the hands of the Beloved”: Through love thorns become roses, and Through love vinegar becomes sweet wine. Through love the stake becomes a throne, Through love reverse of fortune seems good fortune. Through love a prison seems a rose bower, Through love a grate full of ashes seems a garden. Through love burning fire is pleasing light. Through love the Devil becomes a Houri. 109 Through love hard stone becomes soft as butter, Through love soft wax becomes hard iron. Through love grief is a joy, Through love Ghouls turn into angels. Through love stings are as honey, Through love lions are harmless as mice. Through love sickness is health, Through love wrath is as mercy. Through love the dead rise to life, Through love the king becomes a slave. 110

109 110

In Islam, houri is a beautiful female residing in Paradise. Masnavi, pp. 70–71.

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Here again the stone image reappears in Sufi poetry to signify that love can transform the rigidity of the stone to mellow butter. The scope of Love, to Rumi, encompasses the whole creation of God. It is the vibrant force that keeps all created elements, including human beings, bound to one another despite their differences. Through self-annihilation, humans are capable of perceiving the cohesive power of love. Basically, the healing agent of Love is infinite; it can diffuse the self’s ego, wipe away the distorting films from the eyes and the mind, and purge the inner soul of the seeker for Beauty and Truth, or the Beauty of Truth. With respect to Percy B. Shelley, Thomas Medwin notes that he perceives Beauty as the paradise of Love. 111 In his essay “On Love,” Shelley echoes the Sufi definition of Love as a powerful attraction towards all we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another’s; if we feel, we would that another’s nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own; that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart’s best blood. This is Love. 112

To Shelley, Love prompts attraction towards what could be feared and loved at the same time. It awakens a human understanding of that which lies within oneself and stimulates the lover’s imagination and vision of the beloved. In a sense, Love burns “with the heat’s best blood.” This definition in effect bears Thomas Medwin. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 2 (London: Thomas Cautley Newby, 1847), p. 26. 112 ERW, p. 1070. 111

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resemblance to the Sufi perception of Love. Shelley goes on to elevate the experience of solitude to a higher level binding the human to all the spirits of elements of nature: Hence in solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings, and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. 113

As solitude is to the Sufi, so it is for the Romantic poet who deems it a source of contemplation and union with Other. In “Alastor: Or, The Spirit of Solitude” Shelley’s poet is doomed because he is unsatisfied with inward Beauty and Love. In the preface to his poem, Shelley writes: It [the poem] represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications a variety not to be exhausted. So long as it is possible for his desires to point toward objects thus infi-

113

ERW, “Alastor: Or, The Spirit of Solitude,” p. 1071.

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nite and unmeasured, he is joyous, and tranquil, and selfpossessed. 114

But when this youth, also a poet, diverts his search form gnostic beauty to personal self-fulfillment, he, like Coleridge’s mariner, rushes towards his ruin. Shelley asserts that the “poet’s selfcentred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin.” 115 What Shelley suggests here is that an individual with the deepest knowledge and widest imagination cannot approach or achieve genuine happiness if he/she is self-possessed or holds his lower self in high esteem. Shelley believes that the Beauty of love lies in its selflessness; self-centeredness obstructs the seeker’s path for real illumination of Beauty and Truth. He begins his “Alastor: Or, The Spirit of Solitude” with a prayer approaching the supplication of a Sufi poet and asks for the forgiveness of “Mother” Nature, which blends all her elements—earth, ocean, air, moon, and sun—in an amorous brotherhood, and asks her to fill his soul with natural piety to feel her love at all times and during all seasons. The prayer ends thus: If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast I consciously have injured, but still loved And cherished these my kindred; then forgive This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw No portion of your wonted favour now! 116

Although Shelley’s verses lay emphasis on universal love and brotherhood, ideals essential to Sufism and the conditional “If” do not exist in Sufism, which transcends condition to action. The Sufi loves for the sake of Love, a pure devotional action devoid

SCP, “Alastor: Or, The Spirit of Solitude,” p. 5. Ibid. 116 SCP, “Alastor: Or, The Spirit of Solitude,” ll. 13–17. 114 115

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of egocentricity and narcissism. Also in Sufism, Love accelerates the process of complete fusion with the beloved. Rumi claims: Strange is the prayer of the mad (lovers); tell me, is it correct to say prayers like this in complete disregard of time and space? … How strange, I recited a sura 117 without a tongue! How can I knock at the door of God, since I have neither heart nor hand? Since you have taken away my heart and hand, give me protection, O Lord! 118

Rumi’s poem serves as a paradigm of the lovers’ loss of time and place or the defeat of the ego, when bodily existence, the tongue, becomes an illusion and the recitation of a Sura from the Quran is no more a mere verbal utterance. Only then the worshiper’s heart and body dissolve in God’s amorous protection. In this sense, Shelley’s prayer lacks this Sufi selfannihilation. Still, I believe, it is intended to warn the reader about fully sympathizing with Alastor’s conditional love, which ultimately leads to the poets’ doom. As such, Shelley projects the prayer of a narcissist as self-destructive, while prayers stimulated by selfless love are capable of eliminating differences and conflicts. As mentioned earlier, Rumi defines true and selfless love as an agent capable of fusing opposites. Here, I cannot but recall Coleridge’s perception of the “Reconciliation of the Opposites,” a view repeated in a more detailed manner in Biographia Literaria, in which Coleridge communes with the Sufi poets when he asserts that the poet’s main goal is to reach reconciliation with One of the chapters of the Quran. Afzal Iqbal. Life and Work of Jalaluddin Rumi (Islamabad: Pakistan National Council of the Arts, 1991), p. 140. 117 118

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God. Coleridge asserts that the imagination “diffuses a tone and spirit of unity that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of imagination.” 119 The power of imagination, to Coleridge, is capable of controlling the reconciliatory balance of discordance; it can blend and harmonize “the natural and artificial still subordinates art to nature; the manner to the matter; and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry.” 120 Coleridge’s reconciliatory balance accords with Wordsworth’s definition of poetry, which M. H. Abrams explains in his discussion of the “expressive theory of art”: Poetry is the overflow, utterance, or projection of the thought and feelings of the poet; or else (in the chief variant formulation) poetry is defined in terms of the imaginative process which modifies and synthesizes the images, thoughts, and feelings of the poet. This way of thinking, in which the artist himself becomes the major element generating both the artistic product and the criteria by which it is to be judged, I shall call the expressive theory of art. 121

The above resembles Ibn Arabi’s belief that the poet dwells upon images of beauty and harmony via the overflow of emotions: And if you do not stop with all of this, He reveals to you the world of formation and adornment and beauty, what is proper for the intellect to dwell upon from among the holy forms, the vital breathings from beauty of form and harmony, and the overflow of languor and tenderness and mercy in all things characterized by them. And from this level comes

Biographia Literaria, p. 179. Biographia Literaria, p. 180. 121 M. H. Abrams. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 21–22. 119 120

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The poet with a burst of Love and imagination assumes the figure of the All-Creative, concocting something novel out of some matter or phenomenon; such is the organic beauty and truth of poetry, consisting of nothing less than a violent gust of Love. To the reader of Romantic poetry, love for the beloved may seem selfish when it is selfless. Take for instance Keats’s Madeline who rushes to her bedroom heedless of the music and of the cavaliers attempting to court her and sleeps with her face upward and prays to see her beloved, Porphyro, who risks his life sneaking into her chamber on St. Agnes’s Eve: Awakening up, he took her hollow lute,— Tumultuous,—and, in chords that tenderest be, He play’d an ancient ditty, long since mute, In Provence call’d, “La belle dame sans mercy” 123: Close to her ear touching the melody;— Wherewith disturb’d, she utter’d a soft moan: He ceas’d—she panted quick—and suddenly Her blue affrayed eyes wide open shone: Upon his knees he sank, pale as smooth-sculptured stone. 124

It is significant here to hint at Porphyro’s playing of an “ancient ditty, long since mute,” “La belle dame sans mercy.” The word ancient is emphasized to point to Keats’s awareness of Eastern beliefs and especially the Sufi sources of Amor Courtois, or Courtly Love. In his “The Oriental Sources of Courtly Love,” AbMuhyiddin Ibn Arabi. Journey to the Lord of Power, translated by Rabia Terri Harris (Vermont: Inner Traditions International, 1989), p. 43. 123 In English, “La belle dame sans mercy” is the beautiful lady with no mercy. 124 KSP, “The Eve of St. Agnes,” ll. 298–396. 122

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dulla Al-Dabbagh traces the sources of amatory devotional love to three “Oriental” sources: “Ibn Hazm’s Tawq al-Hamama (The Dove’s Neck Ring), Ibn Sina’s Risala fi‘l-‘Ishq (Treatise on Love), and the general Sufi outlook, particularly the works of Ibn Arabi and Rumi.” 125 Al-Dabbagh also quotes Robert Graves, who pointed out: “Sufism exercised a great influence on mediaeval Celtic literature, one of the main tap-roots of English poetry. And Chaucer, through his patron, John of Gaunt, came under the direct influence of the Persian poets Rumi and Attar.” Graves also asserts that Chaucer borrowed his “Pardoner’s Tale” from Attar. 126 The connection of Porphyro’s song to Sufism and other Eastern sources is further confirmed in the following lines: Her eyes were open, but she still beheld, Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep: There was a painful change, that nigh expell’d The blisses of her dream so pure and deep At which fair Madeline began to weep, And moan forth witless words with many a sigh; While still her gaze on Porphyro 127 would keep; Who knelt, with joined hands and piteous eye, Fearing to move or speak, she look’d so dreamingly. 128

Abdullah Al-Dabbagh. “The Oriental Sources of Courtly Love.” IJAES, vol. 3 (2002), p. 21. 126 Al-Dabbagh, p. 27. 127 The name “Prophyro” is a variation of Porphyry who was born in Tyre in Phoenicia, in 234 AD was also known as “Porphyrius.” He studied in Athens rhetoric, mathematics and philosophy with Longinus, and later migrated to Rome and became a Plotinian Platonist. But later he wrote about Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Pythagoras. See Porphyry. Porphyry Introduction, translated with a Commentary by Jonathan Barnes. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), pp. ix-xxvi. 128 KSP, “The Eve of St. Agnes,” ll. 289–306. 125

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True devotional love blends Madeline’s reality with the “blisses of her dream so pure and deep” such that even “wide awake, the vision of her sleep” was all that she could see. The wishes of both lovers’ are fulfilled when the impossible becomes conceivable. Madeline’s weeping rests at the matrix of her pain and joy. Such an amorous Sufi “unveiling,” having her wish fulfilled by seeing Porphyro in a vision that suddenly becomes reality, is caused by Madeline’s intense love and fear for her lover’s life. Here Porphyro and Madeline resemble Sufi prototypes of lover and beloved whose spiritual selves merge allowing divine power to transparently shine through. This poem recalls a letter which Keats wrote on October 13, 1819, to his beloved, Fanny Brawne: My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you. I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again—my Life seems to stop there—I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving—I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love. . . . I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion—I have shudder’d at it. I shudder no more—I could be martyr’d for my Religion—Love is my religion—I could die for that. I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet. You have ravish’d me away by a Power I cannot resist; and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no more—the pain would be too great. My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you. 129

129

KSL, p. 390.

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Two phrases in the above quotation echo Sufi love poems: “though I was dissolving,” and “love is my religion.” The first phrase is poetized in Keats’s: “Into her dream he melted, as the rose/Blendeth its odour with the violet,” 130 which recalls the Sufi myth of the rose and the nightingale; and the second phrase represents the basic ideal of Sufism affirmed by Ibn Arabi: “Love is the faith I hold,” 131 and Abul Ala’ Al-Ma’arri who contends: “For my religion’s love and love alone.” 132 It should be noted that although Keats writes that his love is selfish, it is indeed selfless because he endures the pain of not seeing his beloved, forgets himself—being completely absorbed by her—and is a martyr of love unable to exist without her. Another attribute of Keats’s poetry is his insight into Beauty, a consequence of Love, summarized in the first verse line of Endymion: “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” 133 “A thing” indicates each and every element joined to another in a harmonious entity to embody the attributes of Beauty, be it abstract or physical. This harmonious blend is a source of eternal happiness and is further expressed in a verse that clearly indicates the Sufi experience of exhilaration and ecstasy: Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks Our ready minds to fellowship divine, A fellowship with essence; till we shine, Full alchemized, and free of space. Behold The clear religion of heaven! 134

Keats contemplates the source of happiness and locates it within the higher self, that subliminal connection that leads to an amorous fellowship with the essence of divinity; only then are huKSP, “The Eve of St. Agnes,” ll. 320–321. Luzumiyat, p. 21. 132 Luzumiyat, p. 77. 133 KSP, Endymion, Book I, l. 1. 134 KSP, Endymion, Book I, ll. 777–781. 130 131

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man beings free to “shine,” or become happy and lose all sense of space or existence as they behold “the religion of heaven.” Keats seems to say that happiness lies in one’s experience of the spirit of Beauty and Love. The above verses from Keats’s Endymion bear resemblance to another of his poems, “Ode to a Nightingale.” In Sufism the nightingale or bulbul is a symbol of eternal Beauty and Love. The poet expresses a wish to fly with the bird and become one with it to unite with beauty and love as he flies on the spiritual wings of poetry: Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards. But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light. Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 135

By wishing to fly with the bird, Keats seeks to blend with the mysterious heavenly creature through its immortal song and its beauty as it sings away into the moon-lit night. What light there is at night is unintentionally blown towards the planet on breezes that reflect the soul of the Divine. Keats, however, is fully aware of this temporary state of fusion with the Divine and Its Beauty, especially when at the poem’s end he writes: “Was it a vision, or a waking dream?/Fled is that music: —Do I wake or sleep?” 136 His aspiration for flight is therefore a contemplative attempt to connect with the Divine in an attempt to uncover or unveil the mystery of divinity, of existence. In her “A Flight 135 136

KSP, “Ode to a Nightingale,” ll. 31–40. KSP, “Ode to a Nightingale,” ll. 79–80.

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Within: Keats’s Nightingale in Light of the Sufis,” Hend Hamed Ezzeldin asserts that Keats’s ode, … provides a good example of a Sufi inner journey through which the poet was able to reconnect and reunite with God in a transcendental world that totally abjures the physical world and dissociates with all of its precepts. Through the palpable contrasts between the world of the nightingale and the real world, the speaker manages to showcase the differences between the world we live in and the world we should be living in. 137

Ezzeldin clarifies that unlike other Romantic poets, Keats “never acknowledged reading Arabic or Persian works,” but that he was influenced by the works of the Orientalists. 138 She then comprehensively discusses “Ode to a Nightingale” emphasizing the poet’s desire to unite with the bird in a visionary quest to lose all consciousness of the corporal and materialistic and to reach a full intoxication on his “transcendental odyssey” towards purgation, beauty, and bliss. The Nightingale, Ezzeldin asserts, is the poet’s soul seeking oneness with divine beauty that incites happiness in the inward soul; her view is made clear at the end of her discussion when she reaffirms that Keats’s spiritual quest is “A pure Sufi experience, the speaker aspires to reunite with God through divine intoxication, as step one, followed by self-loss or annihilation, as the second step. After finally getting united with the soul (God), the speaker begins his odyssey within aided by his quintessential sensations of beauty and truth.” 139 Ezzeldin’s main purpose meets with that of this work which seeks to exHend Hamed Ezzeldin. “A Flight Within: Keats’s Nightingale In Light of the Sufis.” Advances in Language and Literary Studies, vol. 9, no. 3 (May, 2018), p. 126. For an interesting discussion of the influence of Sufism on Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”; see Ezzeldin, pp. 121–127. 138 Ezzeldin, p. 124. 139 Ibid., p. 126. 137

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pose the parity between Romanticism and Islamic mysticism despite their ideological differences. The Romantic poet is a worshiper of inner beauty of self and the universe which represents Divinity, and the Sufi seeks inner Beauty which is Divinity. In his “Preface to Lyrical Ballads,” Wordsworth contends that the poet’s art, “is an acknowledgement of the beauty of the universe, an acknowledgement the more sincere, because not formal, but indirect; it is a task light and easy to him who looks at the world in the spirit of love.” 140 With respect to Rumi, the poet is a lover inspired by Love for the beloved who, for Sufis, is God: “Oh Thou who inspirest my spirit with poetry from within! Should I refuse and remain silent, I fear I would break Thy command”; “When I seek a rhyme for my poetry, He eases the way for my mind”; and “If you want every one of your parts to speak and compose poetry, then go, silence your speech!” 141 Peter Russell elaborates on the significance of silence on human consciousness: “When the mind is silent, when all the thoughts, feelings, perceptions and memories with which we habitually identify have fallen away, then what remains is the essence of self, the pure subject without the object”; The “essence of self,” he goes one, “is not a being who is conscious. You are consciousness.” 142 Basically, both Sufi and the Romantic poets value their solitude and listen to the sound of silence when stimulating transcendence and illumination. Discussing several of Wordsworth’s poems such as “The Solitary Reaper” and The Prelude, Robert Pack writes: The voice of silence in Nature as it speaks to Wordsworth is not to be separated from the silence out of which WordsWW, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads,” p. 67. Qtd., Chittick, Sufi Path of Love, pp. 347, 234, and 271. 142 Peter Russell. From Science to God (Novato: New World Library, 2004), p. 81. 140 141

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worth speaks to himself. Nature’s symbols are there to be read with both eyes and ears, so that in reading them man may confront his own nature whose mystery passes back into silence. 143

In “Frost at Midnight,” Coleridge sits solitary in his cottage with his sleeping baby when all have left him: “‘Tis calm indeed! So calm, that it disturbs/And vexes meditation with its strange/And extreme silentness.” 144 Coleridge’s verses recall Lord Byron’s stanza 27 from Childe Harold Pilgrimage II: More blest the life of godly eremite, Such as on lonely Athos may be seen, Watching at eve upon the giant height, Which looks o’er waves so blue, skies so serene, That he who there at such an hour hath been, Will wistful linger on that hallowed spot; Then slowly tear him from the witching scene, Sigh forth one wish that such had been his lot Then turn to hate a world he had almost forgot. 145

Lord Byron wishes to be this eremite who lives not in full solitude with all the virgin elements of nature and away from the world of the crowds. Byron must have felt this eremite’s sigh of joy and sadness: joy because the eremite in his solitude contemplates the Beauty and Love of God, and sadness because the world of the crowds cannot perceive solitude and silence as elevating experiences. Mount Athos must have left a great impresRobert Pack. “William Wordsworth and the Voice of Silence.” New England Review, vol. 1, no. 2 (Winter, 1978), p. 172. 144 CCPW, “Frost at Midnight,” ll. 8–10. 145 BCPW, II, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 17. Lord Byron did not visit the sacred mountain, but His Lordship must have seen Mount Athos from his ship the Salsette on his return from Constantinople to Athens in July, 1810. 143

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sion on Lord Byron, who later wrote, “A Fragment of a Poem: ‘Monk of Athos’,” in three stanzas, in which he reiterates the beauty and piety of the Mount, which is “unspoiled by sacrilegious hands” to crown the mountain, where Full many a convent rears its glittering spire, Mid scenes where Heavenly Contemplation loves To kindle in her soul her hallowed fire, Where air and sea with rocks and woods conspire To breathe a sweet religious calm around, Weaning the thoughts from every low desire. 146

Byron’s description of the convents and their settings infers a wish to drift away from the worldly desire and live the pious life of the Christian mystics who can “breathe” the “sweet religious calm,” which stimulates elevated thoughts. The poem ends with Byron’s faith in joyful solitude “to share/The happy foretaste of eternal Peace,/Till Heaven in mercy bids your pain and sorrows cease.” 147 For Al-Ghazali, silence reveals more than words do: “Go, and: seek such a man, the visitation of whom wilt bring God to thy remembrance and infix His fear in thy heart, and he will give thee that counsel which is conveyed by silence and not by speech.” 148 Thus, the Romantics and the Sufis seek solitude to allow silence to speak to them, to provide answers to the mystery of their existence; of course, for Sufis and Romantics alike, this desire for solitude is a product of Love. Those who do not love and long for the beloved in silence cannot reach a state of illumination expressed so beautifully in poetry. Another feature that attracts the Romantic poets to Sufism is their perception of Love as a universal religion that seeks to The poem was published in Noel Roden, the Honble. Life of Lord Byron (London: Walter Scott, 1890), p. 207. 147 Ibid. 148 Al-Ghazali, p. 95. 146

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connect humanity with all creation, animate or inanimate, and with the Divine Absolute. In fact, this is the basis of the Sufi and Romantic poets’ pantheistic aspirations. It is essentially through love within the heart, the organ of divine consciousness, that an individual’s spiritual body is awakened to seek the “unity of being.” What strengthens the connection between Sufism and Romanticism is their emphasis on the supremacy of the imagination to perceive and experience the Absolute and all Its attributes. Their spiritual venture has a main purpose: to give the Self over to the Other through love and to experience the exhilarating poetic sublime of self-annihilation when they blend with the absolute Being. This explains what was mentioned earlier about Sufism being one of the earliest forms of Romanticism.

SELF-ANNIHILATION

The following line by Lord Byron beautifully highlights the role of the Self in Romantic literature: “I live not in myself, but I become/Portion of that around me.” 149 The similarity to Sufi belief is undeniably clear here. Indeed, Romantic literature is replete with examples of the Self versus Other, especially the orthodox Other. This section will therefore reveal how instances of selflessness are essential features of Romantic literature. I also claim that definitions of Romanticism which deny or ignore the concept of selflessness risk misguiding readers of the best Romantic works, which sometimes are being falsely accused of egotistical bombast, as is the case with Lord Byron. Of more academic concern is whether selflessness is or proves to be a necessary concept to understanding Romanticism and its kinship to the Sufi doctrine of al-fanā, or self-annihilation? It is necessary to first explain what al-fanā is.

149

BCPW, II, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 3, ll. 680–681.

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In his seminal article, “Principles of the Philosophy of Ecstasy in Rumi’s Poetry,” Leonard Lewisohn explains Junayd’s 150 three stages of the doctrine of al-fanā; he affirms: In his doctrine of annihilation of the selfhood (Jana’) [alfanâ] in the divine, Junayd explains how wajd and wujad belong to the final degree of three stages of annihilation. The first stage involves passing away from egocentric qualities and habits; the second, from all sense of personal pleasure in obedience to God; but “the third annihilation (Al-fana’ Althalath) is from beholding any reality in your ecstasies (mawjadika) before the mysterium tremendum [“awe-inspiring mystery”] of witnessing God’s consciousness of you. Here, in the midst of abiding in God you are annihilated, finding real existence (mawjad) in your annihilation—through the Existence of the (divine) Other. 151

Along the same line of thought, Afzal Iqbal explains: “When the ‘Self’ has ‘passed away’ (fanā), it persists (baqā), not as individual, but as the Universal Spirit, the Perfect Man, bearing the ‘Mark of God’s feet on his dust’.” 152 Iqbal continues: But mystics who know God to be Love and themselves one with Him are not “compelled”; on the contrary, they enjoy Junayd is Abu Al-Qasim ibn Muhammad (ca. 830–910). He was one of the earliest Persian Muslim mystics and saints. He lived in Baghdad, where he studied law and mysticism. He believed that the mystic order is intended only for those who were devoted to the teachings of the Quran. Junayd became a well-known teacher with several disciples, one of whom was Al-Hallaj, who was executed for his deviance from Islamic orthodoxy. 151 Leonard Lewisohn. “Principles of the Philosophy of Ecstasy in Rumi’s Poetry.” The Philosophy of Ecstasy: Rumi and the Sufi Tradition, edited by Leonard Lewisohn (Bloomington: World Wisdom, Inc., 2014), p. 42. [Henceforth cited as Lewisohn, “Principles”]. 152 Iqbal, p. 205. 150

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the unconstrained rapture of self-abandonment and the perfect freedom of feeling and acting in harmony with the will of God. By dying to self (fana’) the mystic returns, as it were, to his original state of potential existence as an idea in God’s consciousness, and realises the Unity of the Divine Essence, Attributes, and Action. 153

The above spells out Junayd’s and Rumi’s belief in selfannihilation as a path for fusing with the everlasting Self, itself a part of the Divine Self. Schimmel also explains: The only means of drawing near to the divine beloved is by constant purification and, in exchange, qualification with God's attributes. Junayd has defined this change brought forth by love: ‘Love is the annihilation of the lover in His attributes and the confirmation of the Beloved in His essence’; … For death means the annihilation of the individual qualities, the lifting of the veil that separates the primordial beloved from the lover created in time. 154

As for Rumi, he believes: “Such a non-existent one who hath gone from himself is the best of beings, and the great (one). He hath passed away (fanā) in relation to (the passing away of his attributes in) the Divine attributes, (but) in passing away (from selfhood) he really hath the life everlasting (baqā).” 155 Selfannihilation then, entails a spiritual transcendence beyond the body, or a form of physical death that leaves the spirit alive and free to roam beyond the material world; a state referred to as albaqā, the state of ecstatic fusion of the spirit with the Divine. In this respect, Schimmel clarifies: The goal of the mystic attained, sometimes, through constant meditation is fana, annihilation, and subsequent perseverIqbal, p. 253. Schimmel, pp. 134–135. 155 Qtd., Iqbal, p. 255. 153 154

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM ance in God. This final experience is always regarded as a free act of divine grace, which might enrapture man and take him out of himself, often in an experience described as ecstatic. In Sufism, the term generally translated as “ecstasy” is wajd, which means, literally, “finding,” i.e., to find God and become quiet and peaceful in finding Him. In the overwhelming happiness of having found Him, man may be enraptured in ecstatic bliss. 156

In other words, al-fanā is a path for the purification of the Self from all its physical confinements and is what leads to al-baqā, when the Sufi is spiritually transported to the realm of divinity. Rom Landau explains that the spiritual path for self-purification, al-fanā, of Ibn Arabi involves seven stages: 1. Passing away, from sin. This Ibn Arabi does not interpret in the usual Sufi manner as the abandonment of all sin, but as a realization that all actions are right (not in a moral sense but as coming from God). That which is sin, is to regard one’s actions as coming from oneself. 2. Passing away from all actions in the realization that God is the agent of all actions. 3. Passing away from all attributes of the “form” in the realization that they all belong to God. As Ibn Arabi puts it; “God sees Himself in you through your own eye and, therefore, He really sees Himself: this is the meaning of the passing away of attributes.” 4. Passing away from one’s own personality in the realization of the non-existence of the phenomenal self, and the endurance (baqā) of the eternal substance which is its essence.

156

Schimmel, p. 178.

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5. Passing away from the whole world in the realization of the real aspect which is at the bottom of the phenomenal. 6. Passing away from all that is other than God. The mystic ceases to be conscious of himself as contemplator, God being both the contemplator and the object of the contemplation. (This is very different from the common Sufi view of the disappearance of consciousness which Ibn Arabi defines as mere sleep.) 7. Passing away from all Divine attributes. The universe ceases to be the “effect of a cause” and becomes a “Reality in appearance.” This seventh stage represents the fullest realization of the oneness of all things, and must be the final aim of all mystical endeavour. 157

The Romantics’ circuitous journey 158 reiterates Ibn Arabi’s stages of al-fanā. Coleridge’s mariner’s shooting of the Albatross stops all actions of God; thus the wind seizes to blow and death prevails because the mariner neither realizes that God sees through him nor that He is the essence of exitance. The mariner’s knowledge of the world and himself is superficial. Coleridge asserts that “there is one knowledge, which it is every man's interest and duty to acquire, namely self-knowledge” 159 Then when the mariner “seizes to be conscious of himself,” he delves inwards and realizes his superficial awareness of the world and himself; his inner contemplation leads to the mariner’s realization “of the oneness of all things.” Ibn Arabi and Coleridge seem to say that al-fanā is a liberating agent through which baqā becomes possible. In Sufism, this spiritual liberation is the source of utmost contentment despite the fact that liberation of the Rom Lanau, pp. 52–53. Abrams discusses the circuitous journey; see Natural Supernaturalism, pp. 197–323. 159 Aids, 1994, p. 10. 157 158

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spirit is temporal as the body is bound to awaken from its sleep, or temporary death, and re-experience the pain of sensory realization. Still during the state of al-baqā, a state of spiritual and intellectual elevation, the spirit and the intellect experience senselessness, spacelessness, and timelessness; at this spiritual nowhere, the Sufi becomes “the child of this moment,” 160 which fuses past, present, and future in one illuminating experience. When the Sufi mystic regains sensory realization this exhilarating experience becomes mere memory, or what the Romantics call recollection. Similarly, the Romantics were eager to abandon their corporal Self to fuse with Other in a Sufi manner. However, while the Sufi seeks al-fanā through the repetition of verses from the Quran and deep contemplation, the Romantic empties the Self of that which binds it to its physical frame through the Self’s contemplation of the Other, be it the Beloved, God and/or His created universe. This condition is induced in order to unravel what Wordsworth calls “the burthen of the mystery.” 161 It is no surprise that both poets use the terms “burthen” and “burden” in referring to the path of self-annihilation or spiritual journey, since it is an excruciating experience which both the Sufi and Romantic poets undergo in order to unravel the mystery of existence. Besides, once knowledge of this mystery is grasped, the burden of holding on to it and expressing it exhausts the poet’s spirit and intellect. Thus, for both the Sufi and the Romantic, the search for that which lies inside and outside the domain of the ego or the Self is the means for inducing the Self’s quest for selflessness. Blake’s concept of “Selfhood,” Wordsworth’s “spots of time,” Coleridge’s monistic self-reconciliation, Lord Byron’s selfalienation, and Shelley’s “visitations of the divinity,” all embody 160 161

See Rumi’s poem, “The Long String,” Essential Rumi, p. 82. WW, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” l. 39.

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certain measures of mysticism, or rather Sufism, since they generate immediate sensitivity and concern for and in all Others as a means of redeeming the Self in order to be as close to the Beloved or to divinity as possible. In this respect, Romantic ecstatic experiences reverberate with Sufi mysticism since they eliminate the selfish ego in favor of the mystical self. This is what allows them to express their divine knowledge as perceived through their main object of deep contemplation, in simple thoughts and language. George Poulet introduces his seminal article, “Timelessness and Romanticism,” with a pivotal note: “Romanticism is first of all a rediscovery of the mysteries of the world, a more vivid sentiment of the wonders of nature, a more acute consciousness of the enigmas of the self. Now there is nothing so mysterious, so enigmatic, so wonderful as Time.” 162 Poulet’s definition and sequencing has deliberately excluded “Space” from the equation with the Self or ego whose thoughts are determined by perceptions of “Time” and “Space.” For the Romantics and the Sufis “Time” or “Space” together imprison the Self. Josephine A. McQuail confirms that William Blake’s mysticism is clear in his emphasis on “the spirit over the body” in his Songs of Experience. 163 In his Milton, Blake focuses on the superiority of the spirit over the body when Milton calls Jesus to deliver him from the corruption of the body: When will the Resurrection come to deliver the sleeping body From corruptibility: O when, Lord Jesus, wilt thou come? Tarry no longer, for my soul lies at the gates of death. I will arise and look forth for the morning of the grave: George Poulet. “Timelessness and Romanticism,” Prism[s]: Essays in Romanticism, vol. 2 (1994), p. 25. 163 Josephine A. McQuail. “Passion and Mysticism in William Blake.” Modern Language Studies, vol. 30, no. 1 (Spring, 2000), p. 123. 162

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM I will go down to the sepulcher to see if morning breaks: I will go down to self annihilation and eternal death, Lest the Last Judgment come & find me unannihilate And I be seiz’d & giv’n into the hands of my own Selfhood. 164

In the above excerpt, the poet calls upon Jesus to come absolve him from his egoistic self before his imminent death and Judgment Day. In general, Milton is a call upon the spirit of the poet to return and instruct the intellectualists and artists of the eighteenth century to stop idealizing their avaricious world and to launch a quest for the divine and transcendent aesthetics of Art and thus restore fullness of life and obliterate the inherent evil in the lower self. Frederick E. Pierce goes a step further and explains that Blake “would mean that rationalism in the eighteenth century had seized the intellectual leadership from earlier and better hands, with disastrous results for all forms of intellectual life, and that the world needed Milton’s spirit as a redeemer.” 165 This is quite obvious in Blake’s preface to the poem in which he calls upon painters, sculptures, and architects to abandon their drive for materialistic gains and divert their lives to the study of the gospel and to faith in Christ and his apostles. Blake ends asserting that we should not follow the “Greek or Roman Models if we are but just and true to our own Imagination, those Worlds of Eternity in which we shall live forever in Jesus our Lord.” 166 He thus wants his contemporaries to vanquish human physical desires which disturb the path towards purgation and salvation. On the other hand, in his first stanza of “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” Wordsworth infers that when the soul of man as-

BCP&P, Milton, Book I, p. 108, ll. 17–24. Frederick E. Pierce. “The Genesis and General Meaning of Blake’s “Milton.” Modern Philology, vol. 25, no. 2 (November, 1927), p. 171. 166 BCP&P, “Preface,” Milton, p. 95. 164 165

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sumes a physical abode; it creates a distorted existence measured by time and space: There was a time when meadows, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and freshness of a dream. 167

In his Ode, Wordsworth recollects the joys of childhood in nature, which is a reflection of the incorruptibility of the mind, when bird, lamb, sun, moon, sky, and rainbow are seen as celestial lights. As an old man, he contemplates childhood’s innocent times, when the mind and soul are one with nature, for what remains for the old poet are sparks of recollections that reflect real existence as part of the cosmic light, the light of the Spirit Divine. These sparks are timeless and spaceless; they govern eternal subsistence through fanā, or self-annihilation, and beget baqā or eternal illumination. In the above expressive lines, Wordsworth has reiterated the Sufi-like self-annihilation, which he reconfirms in letter to Mrs. Clarkson: The poem [the Ode] rests entirely upon two recollections of childhood, one that of a splendor in the objects of sense which is passed away, and the other an indisposition to bend to the law of death as applying to our particular case. A Reader who has not a vivid recollection of these feelings having existed in his mind cannot understand that poem.” 168

Wordsworth’s phrase “splendour in the objects,” is a repetition of his phrase “splendour in the grass”; 169 the brilliance of the WW, “Ode,” ll. 1–5. ERW, p. 280. 169 WW, “Ode,” l. 181. The phrase “Splendour in the Grass” was chosen as a title for a movie written by William Inge, directed by Elia Kazan, and lead-acted by Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood. 167 168

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grass is that of all elements of nature—even the simplest rose gives the poet “thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.” 170 This splendor does not burst from somatic entities but from their spirits. To Wordsworth, remembrance of corporal substances may die, but for a contemplator endowed with imagination, the recollection from childhood of the vivid spirits of substance does not fade away. Reminiscing on such distant moments recharges the poet’s love of nature and soothes his spirit. Like a Sufi poet, Wordsworth finds joy in nostalgia, much like the aging man does when he blends youthful memories with the painful conditions of the present. Elsewhere in the poem, Wordsworth explains: Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home. 171

Wordsworth’s reflection on the source of man’s soul is Platonic, but his implication that the soul does not exist “in entire forgetfulness” and nakedness and perceptions of the are possible, strongly confirms the Sufist kenosis, which in Sufi mysticism are timeless and spaceless flashes yielding union with Allah and His creation. In this state, the Sufi Self turns into a non-being. Schimmel discusses Junayd’s process of unification with God through an identical state of self-annihilation: “Unification means, for Junayd, “the separation of the Eternal from that which has been originated in time by the Covenant”; it also 170 171

WW, “Ode,” l. 206. WW, “Ode,” ll. 58–65.

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means “to go out of the narrowness of temporal signs into the wide fields of eternities.” 172 To a Sufi, ephemeral physical existence could not be measured except by units of time and space, but his spiritual existence—in a constant search for the Infinite, for Truth and Beauty—is eternal. Al-Ghazali argues in his The Alchemy of Happiness: Not only are man’s attributes a reflection of God’s attributes, but the mode of existence of man’s soul affords some insight into God’s mode of existence. That is to say, both God and the soul are invisible, indivisible, unconfined by space and time, and outside the categories of quantity and quality; nor can the ideas of shape, colour, or size attach to them. 173

Al-Ghazali considers the body of man as the prison of his soul, when it is essentially the soul that can reflect God’s being, and thus should be allowed to transcend the body. He goes on to assert: In order to find out the real contents of the heart these streams [physical ones] must be stopped for a time, at any rate, and the refuse they have brought with them must be cleared out of the well. In other words, if we are to arrive at pure spiritual truth, we must put away, for the time, knowledge which has been acquired by, external processes and which too often hardens into dogmatic prejudice. 174

Knowledge acquired only through corporal existence is lacking and diverts the seeker for truth from mystical and divine existence. To Al-Ghazali, gnostic truth is real truth. Thus, to the Sufi, a state of timelessness is a state of abandoning the physical and releasing the soul for the search of Infinite Truth. To Ibn Arabi, time is body, timelessness is soul: “a human being, both in time Schimmel, p. 58. Al-Ghazali, The Alchemy of Happiness, p. 35. 174 Ibid., p. 28. 172 173

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[in body] and before time [in spirit], an eternal and after time organism”; he goes on “We say that the knowledge of Allah is in non-time and the knowledge of man is in time.” 175 In other words, space is ephemeral and spacelessness is spiritual. It seems that Ibn Arabi has been unquestionably influenced by AlGhazali, who, according to T. J. De Boer, “declines to credit Nature with the likeness to God,” and considers that God “can limit his own [human beings and nature] both in Space and Time, so that this finite world has only a definite duration.” 176 But De Boer believes that to Al-Ghazali, the mystics can “see God in everything, —Him, and Him alone—, and in Nature just in the life of their own Soul; but they see Him best in the Soul, for although it is not Divine it has at least a likeness to the Divine” and that whatever is an outward thing becomes a part of the Soul, when it becomes conscious of its union with God through Love. 177 Such an inward consciousness is spaceless and timeless. From a Romantic perspective, M. H. Abrams affirms: “Many Romantic writers testified to a deeply significant experience in which an instance of consciousness, or else an ordinary object or event, suddenly blazes into revelation; the unascertainable moment seems to assert what is passing, and is often described as an intersection of eternity with time.” 178 However, eternity is timeless and spaceless. Poulet himself clarifies that liberating the Self from the limitations of Time encourages the untying of the enigmas of the Lower Self; he writes: “As we are living in duration, it is not permitted to us to have anything but glimpses, disconnected reminiscences, of this immense treasure stored in a remote place in our soul.” 179 Such glimpses of self-awareness Ibn Arabi, The Seals of Wisdom, pp. 4 and 6. T. J. De Boer. History of Philosophy in Islam, translated by Edward R. Jones (New York: Dover Publications, 1967), p. 161. 177 De Boer, p. 166. 178 Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, p. 385. 179 Poulet, p. 37. 175 176

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represent images of pre-existence and eternity, of the Universal and the Eternal, of God. Shelley confirms that “A Poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and number are not.” 180 These illuminating Romantic instances—timeless and spaceless—are Selfless, and what is Sufism other than a process of achieving Selflessness? Rumi explains in a poem, “If You Could Get Rid of Yourself”: If you could get rid Of yourself just once, The secrets of secrets Would open to you. The face of the unknown, Hidden beyond the universe Would appear on the Mirror of your perception. 181

To the Sufi, selflessness animates the mirror in man’s transcendental experience through which he is able to perceive the Other or the Beloved as creator. In his The Conference of the Birds, Attar uses the mirror as an image to expresses self-annihilation: For this I say: if, looking in thy Heart, Thou for Self-whole mistake thy Shadow-part, That Shadow-part indeed into The Sun Shall melt, but senseless of its Union: But in that Mirror if with purged eyes Thy Shadow Thou for Shadow recognise, Then shalt Thou back into thy Centre fall A conscious Ray of that eternal All.’ 182

ERW, “A Defense of Poetry,” 1073. Qtd., Essential Sufism, p. 23. 182 Attar, Conference of the Birds, pp. 22–23, ll. 617–624. 180 181

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Self-Annihilation clears the eyes sufficiently in order to initiate the perception of the eternal light of Allah. Essentially, the Sufist perception of man rests on the following principle: God gave man body, soul, and spirit, and although the three work together and serve each other in full cohesiveness, each has a special function. The body perceives the world’s concrete images, the soul perceives its abstract realities, and the spirit controls the functions of the body. The self of man embodies the oneness of the three, and that which produces this oneness is proof of Divine existence. Therefore, this oneness represents nothing but the oneness of God. To the Sufi, God created the world for humanity, without whom the world has no existence. Thus, the world exists in man’s perception and not by itself. Man is Microcosm—“All that constitutes your [man’s] features is unified/The planets and moons in you rise and set” 183— and God the Macrocosm. In this respect, man can fuse with Divinity when the body and the soul are detached from each other; to allow the soul the freedom to rise above and beyond the tangible and to perceive Absolute Truth in the presence of the Absolute Himself. The Romantic and Sufi yearning to bond with the Eternal and Infinite then starts through the elimination of all physical distractions to pave the way for transcendence, for going beyond Time and Space, both of which hinder selflessness. For both the Sufi and the Romantic this is provoked by the self’s spontaneous contemplation and recognition of the beauty and love of the divine as projected by an object outside the Self. For the Romantics, this object could be an element of nature that is determined by a specific space and time. The object, its inner and outside wholeness attracts and captivates the beholder until his/her gaze transcends time and space and reaches an ecstatic peak A Sufi verse line quoted by Muhammad Al-Adlouni Al-Idrisi in The Dictionary of Sufi Philosophic Terms (Al-Dar Albaidā: Dar Al-Sakafa, 2002), p. 35. [Translation is mine] 183

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with the synthesis of Self and absolute Other. The result is a state of immanence or illumination, a fullness of being engulfed by the wholeness of the divine Other; this new state represents the wholeness of God. In his first book of The Excursion, “The Wanderer,” Wordsworth tells the story of a mountain boy, a child of nature capable of ecstatic visitations when he fuses with elements of nature, through God: From early childhood, even, as hath been said, From his sixth year, he had been sent abroad In summer to tend herds: such was his task Thenceforward ’till the later day of youth. O then what soul was his, when, on the tops Of the high mountains, he beheld the sun Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked— Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth And ocean’s liquid mass, beneath him lay In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touch’d, And in their silent faces did he read Unutterable love. 184

These verses resonate with the first stanza of “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” and the incorruptibility of a mind saturated with the love and beauty of nature. For the Romantics, the “naked” peak represents the elevated wisdom of nature which springs from the celestial light of the sun that engulfs the world in the Beauty and Love of God. In such a miraculous harmonious sight, silence reigns, as the spectacle is not only sensed by the eye and ear but also conceived by the spirit of the amorous heart: … Sound needed none, Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank 184

WW, The Excursion, “The Wanderer,” ll. 215–226.

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM The spectacle: sensation, soul, and form, All melted into him; they swallowed up His animal being; in them did he live, And by them did he live; they were his life In such access of mind, in such high hour Of visitation from the living God, Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired. 185

This boy’s spiritual ecstasy, his experience of love, dissolves his physical existence and sparks that spiritual connection that that binds him to all surrounding objects. Such is the experience “[o]f visitation from the living God,” which becomes timeless and spaceless, or bodiless, because “[i]n such access of mind” thought expires, and ecstasy persists though for brief moments. This represents Coleridge’s belief that true love burns desire, which “is the reflex of our earthly frame.” 186 Desire then is a carnal urge that hinders the approach of that unique uplifting celestial light that eliminates all that is physical as it blends the Self with the divine beloved. In his “On Poesy or Art,” Coleridge confirms that nature itself is to a religious observer the art of God; … the union and reconciliation of that which is nature with that which is exclusively human. It is the figured language of thought, and is distinguished from nature by the unity of all the parts in one thought or idea. … [this] thought is at once present in the whole and in every part. 187

Here Coleridge considers Art as that which holds together this whole and its parts. This selfless unification of the physical parts with the whole is similar to the religious and contemplative Sufi practice of self-loss during the process of writing, of creating WW, The Excursion, “The Wanderer,” ll. 226–234. ERW, “Desire,” ll.1–4. 187 ERW, p. 492. 185 186

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Art. Time and place dissolve in the illuminating presence of the Divine which enables the Sufi poet to express the beauty of nature and fullness of Self in the most exquisite sensual poetry. In his “To a Skylark,” Shelley calls upon the bird to lift him up onto the clouds, to guide him till he finds “That spot which seems so to thy mind!” 188 Shelley perceives the bird as a messenger from “Heaven, or near it/Pourest thy full heart/In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.” 189 This agrees with the Sufi belief that man and all the elements of the world are but reflections of God. Thus, Jami maintains: Therefore He created the verdant fields of Time and Space and the life-giving garden of the World, That every branch and leaf and fruit might show forth His various perfections. 190

In a similar way, William Blake sees God in all dimensions of nature: The Pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The Lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of women is the work of God. 191

In the features of nature, the perfections of God are revealed in blurred images to someone who does not see the beauty of the peacock in its pride, the abundance of the goat in its desire, the wisdom of the lion in its fury, and the purity of women in their nudity. Although these images exist in the temporal and spatial objects of nature, it is only through the ecstatic mystical experience, which starts with the submission of the Lower Self and ends in divine unification, that they achieve clarity. SCPW, “To a Skylark,” ll. 1–7. SCPW, “To a Skylark,” ll. 1–5. 190 Qtd., Gibb, p. 150. 191 BCP&P, “Proverbs of Hell,” Plate 8, p. 36, ll. 22–25. 188 189

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In short, in Sufism and Romanticism there is a perfect balance between love and knowledge. Intoxicated with Spirit Divine, love’s spiritual intellect transcends discourse and thought and reason is annihilated. This Spirit Divine enables the Sufi and the Romantic poets to share attributes which emerge from the fusion of the lover with the beloved/Allah/God be it through human or non-human connections. This fusion generates a sense of ecstasy that transcends temporal physical joy and invades the heart, the house of Love. Al-Ansari 192 summarizes Selfannihilation in two statements: “Know that when you learn to lose yourself, you will reach the Beloved. There is no other secret to be learned, and more than this is not known to me.” 193 The Romantic, like the Sufi poet, thrives in the orbit of Love, and ego-negation is imperative for ecstatic fusion with the ideal Other. The process is painful in that the lover must be detached from all that binds the Self to carnal and materialistic pleasures. In this respect, Sufi and Romantic poets, both lovers of Beauty and Truth, spontaneously traverse the path of Love and egosuppression, which ends with deep mystical revelation and enhanced knowledge of the Self and divine absolute.

“Abdullah Al-Ansari, (1006–1089), known as one of the major Persian sages of mystical literature. His Munajat, [“intimate conversations with God,” in which Al-Ansari writes about his devotion to God, is wellknown among the students of Sufism. Al-Ansari, who is known to have said, “I have been killed by the sword of longing for Thee,” became blind during the last eight years of his life. For a brief life about AlAnsari, see Schimmel, pp. 89–91. 193 Qtd., Chittick, Sufi Path of Love, 188. 192

ROMANTICISM AND THE SUFI PATH OF KNOWLEDGE In Sufism, the experience of illumination is possible when a mystical union initiates a state of Divine wholeness. The Sufi theory of mystical union is based on the mystical fusion of man with God and entails the development of two states of mystical union: partial fusion and full fusion. In the first phase, the Sufi’s Love for Divine creation makes him lose touch with the sense of time and space until he becomes one with the loved subject or object. In such a phase the seeker of truth experiences the pantheistic “unity of being” in which he is only aware of what is directly within his sight and unaware of what lies beyond his direct line of vision. In Romanticism, this phase resembles Coleridge’s theory of secondary imagination which will be explained later in this work to reveal how outer forms vanish and only the essences of perceived objects are unveiled. As for the second phase, the Sufi moves beyond the perceived subject or object to merge with the universe and unite with its creator, Allah. At this point, the Lower Self loses all sense of its physicality and is uplifted to a state of intoxication where the Sufi glimpses or perceives the mysteries of the Divine and the cosmos. Interestingly, those fleeting glimpses of flotation cannot be measured by units of time and space as the ego completely vanishes during the presence of the Infinite. When the Self is revived to reality and worldly existence, the Sufi recalls and expresses those spiritual moments of absolute Beauty and Knowledge in a text or a poem. To the Sufi, these glimpses into the beyond are instances of illumination which hold perfect, divine light of Absolute Wisdom emanating from Allah/the Beloved. On their part, the Romantic 193

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path to illumination is akin to the Sufi’s partial fusion than to the full fusion of the mystic with God. For the Romantics, the perception of the “unity of being” is an end in itself; on the temporal scale, their moments of illumination or sublimity are less frequent than those of the Sufi poets. Yet, both the Romantics and the Sufis eagerly and passionately seek these ecstatic glimpses of illumination and when they do reach the height of spiritual blending, they experience the metaphysical knowledge of existence and become tolerant as they appreciate the conditions of real existence.

THE DIVINE MESSAGE AND NATURE

It is important to draw attention to the fact that the stages leading towards the Sufi path of knowledge start with reading, understanding, and appreciating the Quran. In Islam, the Angel Gabriel revealed and dictated Allah’s divine message to His messenger, the Prophet Muhammad who relayed these revelations in the Holy Quran in classical Arabic. It is believed that the divinity of the Quran arises not only from its teachings, which follow those of previous prophets such as Abraham, Noah, David, Moses, and Jesus—in fact Islam gives the highest reverence to the prophet Jesus, son of Mary—but also because of its miraculously beautiful, lofty, and graceful poetic language. Indeed, no Arabian poet or writer was ever capable of elevating language to the literary level of the Quran. Reading the Quran does not only give its reader knowledge of God but also an awareness of the wisdom and wonder of His miraculous Divinity. To Ibin Arabi, if a Sufi seeks divine knowledge, true knowledge, he should start by reading the Quran and subsequently “follow the path of the great masters and dedicate himself to retreat and invocation. Then God will give direct awareness of that to his heart.” Furthermore, “Unveiling comes to them in their retreats when the divine lights dawn within them,

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bringing sciences purified of corroding stains.” 1 Retreating to a secluded place, prayer, or repeating verses from the Quran, lead to opening the mysteries of knowledge. Ibin Arabi further explains that knowledge of the wholeness of the cosmos or the “unity of being” occurs when the heart and the mind identify with and realize their connection with all the elements and all creation which are themselves connected to each other and all humans and non-humans: In its root, the existence of the cosmos is tied to the Being who is Necessary through Himself. Hence each part of the cosmos is tied to every other part, and each is an interconnecting link on a chain. When man begins to consider the science of the cosmos, he is taken from one thing to another because of the interrelationships. But in fact, this only happens in the science of the Folk of Allah. Their science does not follow the canon of those of the learned who know only the outward appearances of phenomena. The canon of the Folk of Allah ties together all parts of the cosmos, so they are taken from one thing to another, even if the scholar of outward appearances sees no relationship. This is knowledge of God. 2

For Ibn Arabi, knowledge of the cosmos begins with reading the book revealed by Allah to his messenger, Prophet Mohammad. The spirituality earned by the “Folk of Allah” from reading His message is different from that acquired by those who merely recite verses from the Quran to enhance their social standing through ego-centric worship; these lack in-depth knowledge of religion with no awareness of its essence. The Folk of Allah are witnesses to God’s all-pervading Being and part of an existential William C. Chittick. lbn al-Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination: The Sufi Path of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), p. xii. [Henceforth cited as Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge] 2 Ibid. 1

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chain that binds all Allah’s creation to one another and to Him. In this respect, it is not only the Sufis who are followers of Allah but all mystics whatever be their religion. Ibn Arabi confirms: “you who seek knowledge of the things as they are in themselves that you will never gain this knowledge unless God acquaints you with it from yourself and lets you witness it in your own essence.” 3 Knowledge of Allah then requires inward prayers and contemplation for the seeker of knowledge to be able to perceive beyond “the outward appearances of phenomena.” Ibn Arabi also considers the Folk of Allah as people of the kernel or essence: “the kernel (lubb) of the rational faculty is that which becomes the food of the rational thinkers,” and the Folk of Allah are “possessors of the kernels” and “in contrast to the ‘men of rational faculties,’ who are the people of the shell (qishr).” 4 For the Sufis, reason is reached and employed after the seeker of knowledge accepts everything coming from within and from God. Chittick offers a discussion of Ma’rifah, or gnosis: One of the terms often used in the classical texts to designate what I call “Sufism” is ma’rifah … a term that literally means “knowledge” or “recognition”. However, the term connotes a special, deeper knowledge of things that can only be achieved by personal transformation, and hence it is often translated as “gnosis”. The goal and fruit of this type of knowledge is commonly explained by citing the Prophet’s saying, “He who knows himself knows his Lord.” As the Hadith 5 suggests, this sort of knowledge demands a simultaneous Qtd., Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, p. 245. Qtd., Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, p. 238–239. 5 “Hadīth,” is an Arabic term that literarily means sayings. The Hadīth refers to Prophet Mohammad’s sermons and teachings and is considered by the Sunni Muslims next only to the Quran in sanctity. The Prophet’s companions wrote his sayings and preserved them; then several Muslim scholars studied and collected the Prophet’s sayings in various volumes, 3 4

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acquisition of self-knowledge and God-knowledge. The texts tell us repeatedly that it cannot be found in books. Rather, it is already present in the heart, but it is hidden deep beneath the dross of ignorance, forgetfulness, outwardly oriented activity and rational articulation. Access to this knowledge comes only by following the path that leads to human perfection. 6

Al-Ghazali, says Nicholson, “saw that the higher stages of Sufism could not be learned by study, but must be realized by actual experience, that is, by rapture, ecstasy, and moral transformation.” 7 According to Gibb, the Sufis have “one way to knowledge—not the rational and second-hand ‘knowledge’ (‘ilm) of the schools, but direct and personal ‘experience’ (ma’rifah) culminating in momentary union or absorption into Godhead.” 8 In Sufism, the personal experience and interaction of the seeker of knowledge with the word of God, the Quran, must be comprehended and interiorized through Love before the state of illumination becomes conceivable. However, the Sufi deductive syllogism goes like this: God is Truth; Nature represents God; therefore, Nature represents Truth. However, “The nature of the the most trusted of which is Imam Muhammad Al-Bukhari’s collection, completed in 846 AD. “The saying and doings of the Prophet not only complement the Quran, but, being the authentic record of the Prophet's life, they lead his followers to the source of revelation and provide them access to the inner, spiritual dimension of the Prophet’s teachings”; see Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi. “Relevance of the Hadith of the Prophet to Religious and Social Life in the Modern Times.” The Place of Hadith In Islam: Proceedings of the Seminar on Hadith. The Muslim Student Association of the U.S. & Canada (Tomah Park, Maryland: International Graphics Printing Service, 1977), p. 8. 6 William C. Chittick. Sufism: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2000), p. 32. 7 Nicholson, Essential Rumi, p. 382. 8 Gibb, p. 137.

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truth is such that it is beautiful.” 9 Here, the Romantics consider nature as the book they must read to achieve a perception of the cosmos and its Creator. On his part, M. H. Abrams quotes Christopher North who believes that the Romantics, “who ponder on the ‘living Book of Nature’ … behold in full the beauty and sublimity, which their own immortal spirit create, reflected back on them who are its authors.” 10 Nature and all its elements embody this breathing book which holds divine wisdom. Yet such wisdom is unavailable for those who see the celestial world a creation to be tamed, subdued, and abused by human beings, such as advocates of the Industrial Revolution and those who exploit this world in the name of science and man’s well-being. In effect, the Romantics, especially William Wordsworth, strongly believe that the wisdom of nature exceeds that which is found in books: Books! ‘tis a dull and endless strife: Come, hear the woodland linnet, How sweet his music! on my life, There’s more of wisdom in it. And hark! how blithe the throstle sings! He, too, is no mean preacher: Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your Teacher. 11

To analyze the above lines, I refer again to Abrams, who clarifies that the Romantics believed that “God has declared himself in two manifestations, in the Holy Scriptures, and also in the

Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Islamic Studies: Essays on Law and Society, the Sciences, and Philosophy and Sufism (Beirut: Librairie Du Liban, 1967), p. 109. 10 Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp, pp. 60–61. 11 WW, “The Tables Turned,” ll. 9–16. 9

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great book of nature.” 12 So as the Romantics study the “living Book of Nature,” they learn about God, His power and beauty, which is partly manifested in the power and beauty of nature. Shelley, according to A. M. D. Hughes, “can read and mark Nature or as well as any if he needs to do so, and he does so by the way. But the scheme of his vision is far too large for more than a chance few of the minuter observations.” 13 Hughes also confirms that to Shelley, nature represents the Spirit of Beauty and that man’s inmost experience is “the visitation of the Spirit in his own heart, … if in himself he can see it deep, it is only in earth and sky that he sees it wide.” 14 Hughes believes that Shelley appreciates in nature the “living robe of God.” 15 Along the same line of thought, Samuel Coleridge affirms that nature possesses its own distinctive wisdom that is quite different from that of human beings: “The wisdom in nature is distinguished from that in man by co-instantaneity of the plan and the execution; the thought and the product are one, or are given at once; but there is no reflex act, and hence there is no moral responsibility.” In other words, nature’s wisdom, dynamic beauty and force are spontaneous and unlike the human mind, which rationally designs and plans decisions and choices to be made. it is generally acknowledged that Coleridge’s intimate friend, Wordsworth, derived his belief in the spontaneity of poetry from nature. Coleridge explains that the Romantic poet’s spontaneity reveals the mystery of poetic genius, which pours out of the intellect like the “mighty fountain” and bursts out from within mother earth to form “the sacred river,” 16 which represents the Romantic poetic genius that synthesizes rather than analysis nature’s elements “to make the external internal, Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp, p. 240. Hughes, p. 292. 14 Hughes, p. 288. 15 Hughes, p. 294. 16 CCPW, “Kubla Khan,” ll. 12–24. 12 13

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the internal external, to make nature thought, and thought nature,—this is the mystery of genius in the Fine Arts. Dare I add that the genius must act on the feelings, that body is but a striving to become mind,—that is mind in essence!” 17 Accordingly, when Coleridge’s Mariner sympathizes with and blesses the snakes, he spontaneously regains his “mind in essence,” becomes a part of All and is redeemed by the mercy of the Supreme Being. Coleridge clarifies this process in his Religious Musings: ‘Tis the sublime of man, Our moontide Majesty, to know ourselves Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole! … ‘tis God. 18

To know oneself is to dive deep into the self and discover that it is made of dualities, such as body and spirit in addition to countless contradictory emotions and thoughts all blending to form an individual’s personality. In his Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes explicates the Latin term nosce teipsum as “read thyself,” which is similar to know yourself; he disregards the perception of his contemporaries of nosce teipsum: “to countenance either the barbarous state of men in power towards their inferiors, or to encourage men of low degree to a saucy behaviour towards their betters”; he goes on to explain that the reading of self involves discovering the similitudes that bind all human beings. He believes that they “are the same in all men,—desire, fear, hope, etc.,” and are “harder than to learn any language or science; yet, when I shall have set down my own reading orderly and perspicuously, the pains left another will be only to consider if he also find not the same in himself.” 19 This kind of cognitive ERW, “On Poesy and Art,” pp. 493–494. CCPW, “The Ancient Mariner,” ll. 127–131. 19 Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan or the Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill (London: Printed for Andrew Crooke, at the Green Dragon in St. Pauls Church-yard, 1651), p. 8. Prepared for 17 18

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empathy is the basis of seeing and connecting the Self with all Others and occurs when all contradictions within and without disappear. Thus, a reconciliation of opposites, of the external with the internal, and the conscious with the unconscious, is the essence of knowledge of the Beauty of Truth, which only the contemplative poet could experience. Contemplation is the essence of the poet’s mind, which is capable of seeing and feeling the unseen in much the same manner as John Keats, who sees Beauty as Truth and Truth as Beauty, and feels that both mirror God. The revelation of Beauty and Truth, to Keats, is accessible through a sensual fusion between the sensuous objects and spiritual essence of nature, especially when the main ingredient for this fusion is Love: … But there are Richer entanglements, entanglements far More self-destroying, leading by degrees, To the chief intensity: the crown of these Is made of love and friendship, and sits high Upon the forehead of humanity. . . . till in the end, Melting into its [love’s] radiance, we blend, Mingle, and so become a part of it. 20

Thus, like to the Sufi, the Romantic asserts that man’s highest state of self-awareness is the experience of his familial participation in the One. Also, for the Romantics, the otherness of God, the universe, nature, and man yields an estrangement with the self and constitutes their unpardonable sin. For Coleridge as well the McMaster University Archive of the History of Economic Thought, by Rod Hay. Available: https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/hobbes/ Leviathan.pdf 20 KSP, Endymion, Book I, ll. 797–802 and 809–811.

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as for the Sufi poet, self-sufficiency is evil, and self-annihilation is a virtue. 21 In other words, selflessness is a virtue, and is possible when, The whole one Self! Self, that no alien knows!… Self, spreading still! Oblivious of its own, Yet all of all possessing! 22

Therefore, the movement away from a sensuous reality to a vision of Truth is a movement from an illusionary reality to genuine reality: When the illusion of the separation between the soul and the Divine Self is removed, we realize that there is but one Principle dominant in every mode of manifestation, and that the reality we had according to secularism as a competing principle with religion, has been no more than the reality of fantasies of a soul not yet awakened from the dream of negligence and forgetfulness. 23

The contemplative traveler toward perfection and gnosis uncovers forms in nature which represent his inner state as these represent the truthful forms of nature. In this way, nature a vast book of Divine Wisdom. The Prelude of Wordsworth, the Odes of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, and the poetic pilgrimages of Lord

The practice of virtue is to Plotinus the source and end of the interior sight of the intelligible mystical experience. In his Ennead, he writes: “it is by virtue that we are assimilated to god, are we assimilated to one who has virtue?”; “Virtue in the process of being purified would be less complete than in the state one is in once having been purified, for having been purified is in a way already a completion. But to have been purified is the elimination of something alien, whereas that which is good is different from this.” pp. 55 and 58–59 respectively. 22 CCPW, “Religious Musings,” ll. 154–56. 23 Nasr, p. 24. 21

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Byron are aimed at reading profoundly into this vast book and at redeeming man’s self-centeredness. In his Prelude, Wordsworth reads deep into this book of nature: Wisdom and Spirit of the universe! Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought That givest to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion, not in vain By day or star-light thus from my first dawn Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me The passions that build up our human soul. 24

The poet sees eternal wisdom in the spirit and soul of the universe and not in its somatic being. That is, the self’s immersion in the spirit of the universe ever since childhood offers the human soul an everlasting breath of experience unavailable in printed books. Wordsworth then asserts that nature is a sanctifying agent of human emotions in which “we recognize/A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. 25 For Wordsworth, nature is a ruling force which purifies the self through the beautiful moments of thrilling joy and fear, through the elevating experience of the sublime that bring forth the most insightful awareness of existence in the world. According to Evan Radcliffe, early in Wordsworth’s life, nature fosters love by associating its beauty and grandeur with human experience; later, it prevents too close a connection with human misery. Similarly, literary tales promote human emotion by providing situations that invite sympathy while keeping these experiences at an aesthetic distance. 26 PWW, The Prelude, Book I, ll. 401–407. PWW, The Prelude, Book Book I, ll. 413–414. 26 Evan Radcliffe. “Saving ideals: revolution and benevolence in ‘The Prelude.’(by William Wordsworth).” The Journal of English and Germanic 24 25

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Wordsworth maintains that an individual’s present and future are part of “Nature’s self, which is the breath of God,/Or His pure Word by miracle revealed.” 27 In other words, the seeker of knowledge can read in nature the mysteries of the Absolute and His creations. Nature becomes a teacher revealing the essential realities of the human mind. In keeping with Wordsworth’s line of thought, Coleridge in his “Frost at Midnight” addresses his own child: But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters, who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and all things in himself. Great universal Teacher! he shall mould Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask. 28

Nature to Wordsworth and Coleridge is more like a spiritual teacher with an educative spirit mirrors the Divine One, and only those who can transcend the sensory parts of nature through their imaginative sensibility are capable of perceiving the spirit of nature and learning from it. For Lord Byron, in nature he is able “To mingle with the Universe, and feel/What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.” 29 As such, Byron not only venerates nature as a source of utmost joy and knowledge, Philology, vol. 93, no. 4 (October, 1994). Available: https://gogale.com.neptune.ndu.edu.lb:9443/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=ndul&id= GALE%7CA15949983&v=2.1&it=r&sid=summon 27 PWW, The Prelude, Book V, ll. 223–224. 28 CCPW, “Frost at Midnight,” ll. 54–64. 29 BCPW, II, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, 4, Stanza I78, ll. 1601–1602.

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but also considers it a loyal companion and the source of his deepest feelings and thoughts. Along similar lines, Shelley considers the “delight of love and friendship, the ecstasy of the admiration of nature, the joy of the perception and still more of the creation of poetry, is often unalloyed.” 30 Likewise, Keats’s various odes reveal the poet’s belief that nature is the most significant source of inspiration and knowledge. Thus, nature as a book of inspiration and knowledge coincides with Sufi perceptions. For the Sufi, as much as for the Romantic, nature is a source of spiritual nourishment and retreat from materialistic life. The spiritual travail itself, which enables the Sufi and the Romantic to gain a vision of the profound beauty and mystery of nature, is focused on eliminating all physical, materialistic obstacles. Truth then represents the supreme mercy of God, which embraces all beings, both visible and invisible matter. The Supreme Being, while the origin of all universal existence, embraces all beings. In “The Sea of Being,” Jami proclaims, Being’s the essence of the Lord of all; All things exist in Him and He is all; This is the meaning of the Gnostic phrase; ‘All things are comprehended in the all.’ 31

Jami asserts that God is the source of all existence and can be realized only if the mystic seeks the essence of beings rather than the outer appearances of beings. To Ibn Arabi, true knowledge entails lifting the veils from the eyes; those veils that prevent the seeker from discerning essence or the divine spirit beyond the substance of nature. Since essence is part of God, then real knowledge demands an imaginative power conveying the seeker from visible reality to real imaginative authenticity. 30 31

ERW, “A Defense of Poetry,” p. 1083. Qtd., Nasr, p. 143.

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Accordingly, human knowledge requires the employment of the faculty of the imagination, which is considered by both the Sufi and Romantic poets as a supreme faculty of the mind, which perceives that all rudiments of nature, animate and inanimate, are interconnected and completing each other via Love. In this sense, both the Sufi and the Romantic experience in their union with other humans and non-humans the joy of unification and revelation. Thus, blending with Others stimulates an understanding of God, the Only and One omnipresent Reality.

IMAGINATION AND VISIONS

Ibn Arabi clarifies: “One of the effects of strength is the creation of the World of Imagination [by Allah] in order to make manifest within it the fact that it brings together all opposites [spirit and substance] … It is impossible for sense perception or the rational faculty to bring together opposites, but it is not impossible for imagination.” 32 Chittick explains the significance of imagination, or khayal, to Ibn Arabi: For Ibn al-’Arabi the term “imagination” (khayal) designates a reality or presence that becomes manifest in three different loci: In the cosmos as such, where existence is identical to imagination; in the macrocosm, where the intermediate world between the spiritual and corporeal worlds is imaginal; and in the microcosm, where the human soul considered as a reality distinct from spirit and body pertains to imagination. He also uses the term in a still narrower sense, to designate the “faculty of imagination” considered as one of the several faculties of the soul, along with reason, reflection, and memory. Ibn al-’Arabi sometimes distinguishes clearly among these meanings, but he is more likely to discuss imagination in general terms or in one or more of these meanings 32

Qtd., Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, p. 115.

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without making specific reference to the distinction among them. Ibn al-’Arabi names imagination in its widest sense “None limited Imagination” [al-khayal al-la’mahdoud], since it designates the situation of all existence. 33

According to Chittick, the Sufi “World of Imagination” has several levels: the lowest “determines the form in which images present themselves to the consciousness,” and the highest level is acquired through visions received “on the spiritual path… for it subsists on a higher ontological plane” than the rational mind. 34 In other words, the lower levels of imagination perceive physical forms and colors in a state of consciousness, which Rumi considers “thought” or fikr, that is, part of imagination or “image.” However, Chittick claims that “we must keep in mind that Rumi views the world within the mind, the world of the spirit, even if it is only that of the animal spirit or ego.” Chittick also asserts: There are at least three universal levels of spirit higher than the ego: the human spirit, the angelic spirit, and the spirit of sanctity. All of these levels are populated by forms which may be perceived by “imagination.” But just as there is an almost infinite distance between the ego and the spirit of sanctity, so also there is such a distance between the thought and imagination of ordinary men and the thought and imagination of the saints. 35

To the Sufi, imagination is the poet’s powerful gift that endows him, according to the above quotation, with saintly features. In fact, though the tendency to imagine is a natural human feature, for the Romantic poets, this goes beyond normal ordinary fancies. Imagination is deep, vivid, and transcends the physical to Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, pp. 116–117. Chittick, Sufi Path of Love, p. 249. 35 Chittick, Sufi Path of Love, pp. 249–250. 33 34

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enter the realm of the spiritual and the divine. In this regard, Sufi and Romantic poets belong to the inward people, or the people of the heart who possess the humble and “angelic spirit” with insight to behold divine symbols beyond ordinary objects. As such, the aforementioned emphasis on the lower and higher levels of the imagination resembles the Romantics’ belief in the significance of imagination in their perception of knowledge, which lies beyond common awareness of the mater. It is no surprise therefore when Shelley perceives the poet as a prophet. For the Romantics, imagination is the supreme faculty of the human mind capable of perceiving the sensory world in a manner that blends polar opposites and presents the world as interrelated and in synthesis. Samuel Coleridge explains this fundamental faculty in Chapter XIII of his Biographia Literaria and classifies the imagination into primary and secondary, as representing analyses and synthesis respectively: The IMAGINATION then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates [opposites], in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. 36

The primary imagination is innate in all human beings, who were created with the ability to perceive, rather spontaneously the parts and the whole of the received sensory images together with related abstract thoughts and ideas. It is creative in as 36

Biographia Literaria, p. 172.

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much as it is capable of imposing some kind of order on all that is perceived, and involves analyzing, synthesizing, and bringing the human mind to act on preserving the welfare of body and soul, themselves conceived as essential to the development of humanity. However, though the creative capability of the primary imagination is finite or limited to the perceived order of what is physically real, Robert J. Barth writes: “Were it not for primary imagination, the world around us would be: perceived as chaos: a mass of swirling atoms, a blur of colours, shapes and sounds. There is a deep underlying unity among them. to be sure, for they all share, each in its own way, in the reality of God’s being.” 37 As for the secondary imagination, it activates primary imagination’s sensations and impressions, which are recreated to become objects of metaphysical and original beauty elevated above their exterior attraction. Sufis refer to this profound human perception of the amalgamated parts of nature as a “phenomenon of ‘reflection’ of ‘the finite mind . . . in the infinite’ as tafakkur: [or] contemplative meditation on visionary reflection.” 38 Secondary imagination thus reveals the unity of spirit and substance, and of the Absolute Being or the Necessary Being, who is universal matter and spirit in One. With respect to Coleridge’s perception of imagination, Keats proclaims in a letter to his friend Benjamin Bailey: “I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination—What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth— whether it existed before or not for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty.” 39 Mustapha Bala Ruma explains that the Sufi perception of knowledge is revolutionary: Robert J. Barth. “Theological Implications of Coleridge’s Theory of Imagination.” Studies in the Literary Imagination, vol. 19, no. 2 (Fall, 1986), p. 23. 38 Lewisohn, “Correspondences,” pp. 202–203. 39 KSL, p. 54. 37

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM One of the revolutionary theses of Sufi epistemology is the contention that knowledge or mode of apprehending Reality is of two kinds, Exoteric and Esoteric, and that there is a sharp distinction between the two. In this regard, the Sufis believe that exoteric knowledge is an ordinary knowledge that is only needed for everyday ritual and worship. This knowledge is usually available to every Muslim believer and it is the knowledge upon which Shariah is derived. Esoteric knowledge on the other hand, is associated with the hidden and the mysterious. It is the kind of knowledge that is available to a select few and is usually reserved for those who are initiated.” 40

The above terms “Exoteric” and “Esoteric” are correlative to Coleridge’s primary and secondary imagination; while the first is an outward knowledge perceived by common sense, the second is inward knowledge perceived by the soul of the mind, the imagination. Afzal Iqbal testifies that for Rumi, reason is blind and unimaginative, and argument at best is a weak support. Sense-perception does not carry us far and is certainly no equipment for probing the deep realities of Nature. And revelation is nothing but the eternal spirit of man himself. The characteristic of all that is spiritual is its knowledge of its own essential nature. We cannot treat life and consciousness mathematically, scientifically and logically, for how can we depend upon our senses which do not carry us very far? Knowledge is and must remain a vision of reality, a Weltanschauung, [Perspective of reality] an intuition. 41

It is can thus be claimed that for both the Sufi and the Romantic, imagination is a dynamic force capable of understanding and perceiving the inner beauty of creation as a reflection of the 40 41

Ruma, p. 48. Iqbal, p. 280.

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Divine. In a sense, their imagination allows them to become images of the creator themselves through their ability to produce aesthetic art; hence, the seeker for knowledge employs the power of the imagination to recognize how different parts can be beautifully blended into one. Seyyed Hossein Nasr affirms: “The oneness of Being, which has often been misconstrued as pantheism, implies the essential unity of all things with each other and with their Divine Cause”; he goes on to assert that it “is through the realization of this doctrine that the Sufi [and the Romantic] is able to see in nature a determination of a higher state of being and a domain which not only veils but also reveals the divine essences. 42 This revelation is experienced in dreams and visions stimulated by the seeker’s desire for knowledge about the cosmos and its creator. Dreams and visions, then, cannot be discussed in isolation from imagination which, according to Ibn Arabi is a gift from Allah to the animate world, especially to humanity, to enable the seeker of truth to experience glimpses of the mysteries of Self and Other. Ibn Arabi explains that the world of dreams and visions gives humanity the privilege of realizing: There is another world similar to the sensory world. Through the speed of the transmutation of the imaginal form He calls the attention of intelligent dreamers to the fact that in the sensory world of fixed engendered existence there are transmutations at every instant, even though the eyes and the senses do not perceive them, except in speech and movement. 43

Ibn Arabi substitutes imagination or khayal with dream and offers three types of dreams: The first perceives symbols of reality and their meanings (primary imagination). The second is far 42 43

Nasr, p. 59. Qtd., Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, p. 119.

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more significant than the first one because it identifies things that come from the “Universal Soul” and its archetypal ideas (between the primary and secondary imagination). And the third, “is not symbolical but a direct revelation of Reality. Imagination does not enter into it, and the ‘inward eye’ reproduces the exact reflection of the impression received. In such a dream, the Universal Soul (with its archetypal ideas) reveals itself direct to man’s soul without any distortion [secondary imagination].” 44 Like the Sufis, the Romantics considered visions and dreams sources of wisdom and knowledge. Wordsworth’s dream of the Arab Bedouin in Book V of The Prelude, Coleridge’s poetic dreams in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and “Kubla Khan,” Shelley’s poet’s dream in Alastor and Keats’s visions in The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream are the best manifestations of a process that sets the poet on a visionary pilgrimage towards an elevated consciousness. Even more so, in Book V of The Prelude; or Growth of a Poet’s Mind, Wordsworth falls into a dream-like vision, which transfers him to the Arabian desert where he encounters an Arab Bedouin carrying the books of knowledge to bury and save them from an approaching deluge. It is worth mentioning that at the beginning of Book V, Wordsworth makes clear that Truth “lodge[s] in shrines so frail” meaning books, and confirms that in the elements of nature Truth is everlasting. He then turns his gaze toward the wide sea and contemplates “poetry and geometric truth,/And their high privilege of lasting life.” 45 His conscious gaze transforms into pensive contemplation, which becomes a dream-vision of the Bedouin clutching the stone of geometric truth and the shell of prophetic voice, or the truth of philosophy and spirituality. As the dreamer seeks

Rom Landau presents a full explanation of Ibn Arabi’s theory; see pp. 41–42. 45 PWW, The Prelude, Book V, ll. 65–66. 44

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the guidance of the Bedouin, he envisions the shell and the stone as the true books of knowledge: He seemed an Arab of the Bedouin tribes: A lance he bore, and underneath one arm A stone, and in the opposite hand a shell Of a surpassing brightness. At the sight Much I rejoiced, not doubting but a guide Was present, one who with unerring skill Would through the desert lead me; and while yet I looked and looked, self-questioned what this freight Which the new-comer carried through the waste Could mean, the Arab told me that the stone (To give it in the language of the dream) Was “Euclid’s Elements;” and “This,” said he, “Is something of more worth;” and at the word Stretched forth the shell, so beautiful in shape, In colour so resplendent, with command That I should hold it to my ear. 46

Several Romantic scholars have discussed in detail the symbolism of both the stone or “Euclid’s Elements” and the shell as representing science and poetry. 47 Theresa M. Kelley believes the PWW, The Prelude, Book V, ll. 77–93. See for instance: Geoffrey H. Hartman, Wordsworth’s Poetry, 1787– 1814 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 228 and 231; Raymond F. Havens, The Mind of a Poet, 2 vols. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1941), 2, pp. 410–411; Mary Jacobus, “Wordsworth and the Language of the Dream. ELH, vol. 46 (Winter, 1979), p 642; John A. Hodgson, Wordsworth’s Philosophical Poetry, 1797–1814 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), pp. 145–147; Jane Worthington Smyser, “Wordsworth’s Dream of Poetry and Science: The Prelude, V,” PMLA, vol. 71 (March, 1956), pp. 269–275; Newton P. Stallknecht, “On Poetry and Geometric Truth,” KR, vol. 18 (Winter, 1956), pp. 1–20; and Yousef Tarawreh, “Islamic Reflections, Revisionist Portrayals of Arab

46 47

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stone “represents not science in general but that traditional knowledge which is sustained by rigid logic and resists change. However, the shell embodies a new kind of knowledge which is at once geometric and poetic.” 48 Kelley also sheds light on Wordsworth’s opposition to the stiff formalistic representation of knowledge during the eighteenth century in contrast to the new simple poetic expression which offers knowledge in a geometric scale that is as natural as the symmetry found on the beautiful shell. She then explains: “the projective capacities of the shell as a natural object whose form is created according to principles which its organism knows, in the sense that it might be said to share in the divine knowledge of Nature as God’s more legible ‘Book.’ As an emblem for the poet, the shell demonstrates how the mind intuits form.” 49 “The divine voices of the shell whose ode the dreamer understands even though it is uttered in an ‘unknown tongue,’ implicitly teach the dreamer that their voices are echoes of his own spirit.” 50 And since spirit is created by God, then it is not wrong to claim that in the vision, Wordsworth, like the Sufi, becomes one with God. It is interesting to add here that the poet’s dream takes place unconsciously in the Arabian Desert, a mystical locale where materialistic existence is minimal and where silence and solitude reign; this is also a suitable locale for the Sufi mystics’ contemplation, self-annihilation, and illumination. Even more and like the Christian and Sufi mystics, Wordsworth’s vision, takes place in a “rocky cave.” “This simple setting,” says TimoCivilization with Particular to Wordsworth, Pope, Cervantes, and Dante.” International Journal of Islamic and Arabic Studies, vol. 4 (1987), pp. 55–74. 48 Theresa M. Kelley. “Spirit and Geometric Form: The Stone and the Shell in Wordsworth’s Arab Dream.” Studies in English Literature, 1500– 1900, vol. 22, no. 4 (Autumn, 1982), p. 565. 49 Kelley, p. 574. 50 Kelley, p. 578.

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thy Bahti “contains within it several implicit aspects, prefigurative of the dream to come. The time is of what could be called ‘blankness’: there is no sound, no voice, and being noon, there are no shadows, were there anything that would cast them. … It is as if mind or consciousness had been placed in this cave, and was looking out at the world as if it were a blank page.” 51 When “blankness” enfolds the mystic, corporal existence is superseded and spiritual existence is become all-embracing. Wordsworth loses sense of forms and turns to a solitary hermit, a “dweller in the desert, crazed by love and feeling, and internal thought Protracted among endless solitudes.” 52 Only then he perceives “geometric truth” as that of God, the absolute Creator of geometrical universe. Theresa M. Kelley reminds us that “Newton declared that God was the supreme Geometer.” 53 The stone then represents the universe, the shell signifies the prophet-mystic, and the Arab Bedouin is none but Wordsworth. Bahti confirms that “Wordsworth and the Arab are ‘two in one,’ different yet the same. … Wordsworth-persona in the dream and the Arab are functioning as the two aspects of the Wordsworth-poet who writes this text: as the reader of his own writing, and the writer of its own meaning.” 54 Bahti asserts: “The dream of the Arab, then, is not a dream ‘like any other dream,’ but is rather at once Sufi generis, ‘like’ imaginative experience, and related to the discovery and reading of ‘texts-and is itself a text’.” 55 In his dream, the poet is overtaken by the Bedouin’s treasures; he holds the shell close to his ear and listens attentively, Timothy Bahti. “Figures of Interpretation, the Interpretation of Figures: A Reading of Wordsworth’s Dream of the Arab.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 18 (1979), p. 615. 52 Bahti, 613. 53 Kelley, p. 550. 54 Bahti, p. 617. 55 Bahti, p. 609. 51

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM And heard that instant in an unknown tongue, Which yet I understood, articulate sounds, A loud prophetic blast of harmony; An Ode, in passion uttered, which foretold Destruction to the children of the earth By deluge, now at hand. 56

The shell signifies the voice of a prophet predicting a flood that will annihilate everything except the stone and the shell, which the Arab Bedouin hurries to preserve and protect. According to Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch, the Arab Bedouin is one of a nation of preservers and transmitters who rescued Greek science and metaphysics from oblivion by translating Aristotle and Hippocrates, Archimedes, Ptolemy’s Almagest and Euclid’s Elements, and who thereby laid the groundwork for the Renaissance in Europe. … The Arabs, moreover, were innovators as well as conservers, in astronomy and geology, in mineralogy, in medicine and chemistry (or rather alchemy), and especially in mathematics and speculative philosophy. As every child knows, they invented the decimal system and they became the founders of modern arithmetic and algebra. 57

Bernhardt-Kabisch also confirms that Wordsworth knew deep in his subconscious the creative wealth of Arab culture, itself the source of inspiration for Western civilizations. He then makes a remarkable metaphor when he compares Wordsworth’s stone to “Coleridge’s Dome of Xanadu as the symbol of unity and mensuration, the shell corresponds to the river and its caves with their sound and fury and ghostly prophecies of war, as well as to the PWW, The Prelude, Book V, ll. 94–99. Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch. “The Stone and the Shell: Wordsworth, Cataclysm, and the Myth of Glaucus.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 23, no. 4 (Winter, 1984), p. 472. 56 57

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‘symphony and song’ of the Abyssinian damsel.” 58 But there is more than the prophetic “symphony and song” in Coleridge’s abrupt shift from the “mighty fountain” to the Abyssinian damsel. Much like the Arab Bedouin is the holder of prophetic wisdom, the damsel is holder of pure and uncorrupted Christianity of the earliest Coptic and Syriac fathers. Nigel Leask explains that the Abyssinian Maid and Mount Abora represented “‘essentialised’ Orient,” which to the seventeenth and eighteenth century Lutherans signified the uncorrupted Christian church, especially after the publication of the Lutheran Hiob Ludolf’s Historia Aethiopica (1681) and Jerome Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia (1735). 59 Such works, Leask contends, seemed to provide the key to an early Gnostic strain of Christianity, and we have it on record that both the doctrines of the primitive Christian church and the Gnostic canon were of great interest tothe Unitarian Coleridge in the 1790’s, whose writings in this period are a sustained critique of the idolatrous “corruptions of a [Catholic] Christianity.” 60

Since the song of the Abyssinian Maid is a spiritual and mystical one, it is not wrong to assume that she is a mystic singing of Mount Abora, a mystical mountain that is believed to be Mount Bernhardt-Kabisch, p. 478. Leask, Nigel. “Kubla Khan and Orientalism: The Road to Xanadu Revisited.” Romanticism, vol. 4, no, 1, (1998), p. 14. [Henceforth cited as Leask (1998)]. 60 Leask, (1998), pp. 14–15. Leask quotes Lobo’s account of the Abyssinian Church: “No country in the world is so full of churches, monasteries, and ecclesiasticks, as Abyssinia; it is not possible to sing in one church or monastery without being heard in another … They sing the psalms of David, of which as well as the other parts of the Holy Scriptures, they have a very exact translation in their own language,” p. 14. 58 59

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Amba, in north modern Ethiopia, where early Christian mystics lived. Besides, hearing the song, Coleridge is filled with a rapture close to the bliss felt by the mystics in their visions. Indeed, Wordsworth’s dream of the Bedouin and Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” are dream visions with prophetic voices predicting the apocalyptic destruction of Orthodox traditions to be placed by new systems of thought stemming from the inward self outward and not the opposite. Wordsworth’s vision, constructed through the complex arena of a deep desire for unfolding inner mysteries of the human mind, translates his desire to find “the Man who could explain to [him how] there can be oneness, there being infinite Perceptions.” 61 In this sense, Wordsworth’s dream represents the Sufi flotation, when self goes beyond its corporal existence to become one with divinity. The poet dreams; and when what the poet dreams of gets hold of him, the aura of knowledge wraps him, and sparks of intelligences glow inside him to project, though momentarily, some mysteries of real existence. Only then does the poet’s vision reveal a secret doorway to the inward Self, which locates symbols of Truth such as the shell and stone. To Wordsworth, those books of knowledge unlock the mysteries of the world. Also to the poet, this dream is one of the “spots of time,” which elevates Self to the level of divinity. Wordsworth explains the “spots of time,” in Book XII of The Prelude: There are in our existence spots of time, That with distinct pre-eminence retain A renovating virtue, whence—depressed By false opinion and contentious thought, Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight, In trivial occupations, and the round Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Notebooks, edited by Kathleen Coburn (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul LTD., 1957), vol. 1, p. 565.

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Of ordinary intercourse—our minds Are nourished and invisibly repaired; A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced, That penetrates, enables us to mount, When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen. This efficacious spirit chiefly lurks Among those passages of life that give Profoundest knowledge to what point, and how, The mind is lord and master—outward sense The obedient servant of her will. Such moments Are scattered everywhere, taking their date From our first childhood. 62

It is worth mentioning here that most of Wordsworth’s spots of time are based on actual experiences during his childhood and even adulthood such as marked in The Prelude, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” and “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.” Michael Wiley suggests that Wordsworth’s “spots of time,” first appeared in the 1799 two-part Prelude, and that they “emerge from decade-long contact with representations, conceptualizations, and theorizations of space and the precursors of space-time.” 63 Representations are signs generated by experiences of intense emotional and mental instances, which are inwardly grasped at particular times in particular places that leave lasting marks on human beings. In Wordsworth’s case the spots are episodes which thrill the inner self and endure in the memory. The phrase, “spot of time,” writes Wiley “was introduced during the PWW, The Prelude, Book XII, ll. 208–225. Michael Wiley. “Wordsworth’s Spots of Time in Space and Time.” Wordsworth Circle, vol. 46, no. 1 (Winter, 2015), p. 53. For a discussion of Wordsworth’s “spots of time,” also see Jonathan Bishop. “Wordsworth and the ‘Spots of Time’.” Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 12 (Bell and C. MacFarquhar, 1797). 62 63

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seventeenth century by the Presbyterian clergyman John Flavel, who used it in religious context as a “golden Spot of Time,” or “opportunity.” 64 In other words, Flavel calls upon his readers to take full opportunity of the precious moments one enjoys in the presence of the all benevolent God. 65 But one may ask: Why are “spots of time,” sparks of illumination beyond normal perception more frequent in childhood than in adulthood? The answer lies in Wordsworth’s belief that childhood is the purest, most innocent phase of human life. Wiley refers to Jonathan Bishop’s listing of incidents involving “spots of time” such as “the Stolen boat episode, the meeting with the Discharged Soldier, the sight of the Drowned Man, the encounter with the Blind Beggar, the crossing of Simplon Pas, and the ascend of Mount Snowdon”; in such episodes, Wiley attests that Wordsworth often loses sense of place and time “as when he and Robert Jones learn that they have unwittingly crossed Simplon Pass, leading Wordsworth to say, ‘I was lost as in a cloud’,” 66 much like when in the dream of the Arab Bedouin, the poet was lost and misguided. Such “spots of time” are moments of sublime experiences caused by an overflow of joy and/or fear. Wiley and Bishop, however, overlook what I believe is the most representative and memorable of Wordsworth’s “spots of time,” the dream of the Arab Bedouin in Book V of The Prelude, a spot which is distinctive as it resembles moments of flotation of the Sufi, when all sense of the space and time is lost and moments gleaming with elevated awareness of the mysteries of self and other are experienced. In the poem above, the spots of time are moments when self is recharged through recollection, when the mind is nourished, or repaired, lifts up the spirit of the atrocities of the common day. Lis Møller Wiley, pp. 53–54. See The Whole Works of the Rev. Mr. John Flavel. 6 vols. (London: Baynes and Son, 1820), vol. 4, p. 25. William Wordsworth refers to Rev. John Flavel in a note to a poem titled “Confirmation Continued.” 66 Wiley, p. 57. 64 65

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says: “A spot of time is an experience lifted out of the flow of clock and calendar time and preserved in memory.” 67 The “spots of time” are timeless and spaceless; in this respect, they are unearthly moments of spiritual awareness of the mysteries of gnostic life. In his Introduction to “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” Wordsworth confesses: “I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature. Many times while going to school have I grasped at a wall or a tree to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality.” 68 And indeed, the poem authenticates his feeling of loss of childhood idealism when he looks backwards and recalls how nature was full of beauty and glory beyond the sensory images. And although the poet acknowledges the beauty of the elements of nature such as the flowers, moon, and sun, he senses deep inside a feeling of the loss of a stage in his life that he will not be able to experience anymore. This loss of the ideal beauty in the present recalls him from the “abyss of idealism” and back to the reality of adulthood. Still, Wordsworth seeks the essential beauty of nature as he recollects spontaneously childhood’s visionary gleams, which during adulthood are lost. The “celestial light” is the light of illumination, of intelligences, which shine during brief moments or spots, and they abound in childhood, when according to Wordsworth, the soul is the closest to its source, to God. But for Wordsworth, illumination is possible when the poet contemplates the “individual Mind” and its fitness to the “external World.” In the “Prospectus” of The Excursion, the poet calls on the “prophetic Spirit” that inspires the “Soul of universal

Lis Møller. “The Metaphor of Memory in Wordsworth’s Spots of Time.” Orbis Litterarum, vol. 69, no. 2 (2014), p. 98. 68 WW, Note to “Ode,” p. 764. 67

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earth” to bestow upon him a “gift of genuine insight” so he may write his song: … —And if with this I mix more lowly matter; with the thing Contemplated, describe the Mind and Man Contemplating; and who, and what he was— The transitory Being that beheld This Vision; when and where, and how he lived; Be not this labour useless. If such theme May sort with highest objects, then—dread Power! Whose gracious favour is the primal source Of all illumination,—may my Life Express the image of a better time, More wise desires, and simpler manners;—nurse My Heart in genuine freedom:—all pure thoughts Be with me;—so shall thy unfailing love Guide, and support, and cheer me to the end! 69

One may ask: What is Wordsworth’s song? Is it his poetry or something beyond words and metaphors that draw images of the inner feelings and thoughts—“On Man, on Nature, and on Human life,/Musing in solitude” 70—but still fall short of expressing them? Sometimes language fails its user when wrapped with the uncorrupted aura of extreme bliss or sadness, so the user seeks the aid of “the prophetic Spirit,” and the outcome is poetic diction brimming with key Sufi words and phrases which when put together in one sentence: “Mind and Man/Contemplating,” “The transitory Being,” in a “Vision,” of “the primal source/Of all illumination,” which “nurse/My Heart with genuine freedom,” “pure thoughts,” and “unfailing love,” to become my “Guide,” makes so much unveils the mystery of creating real 69 70

WW, The Excursion, “Prospectus,” ll. 93–107. WW, The Excursion, “Prospectus,” ll. 1–2.

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poetry stemming from the main source of “all illumination,” or God. To Wordsworth as to the Sufi, instances of “celestial light” are given to prophets by the Supreme Being; such illuminating experiences shine in dreams and visions, which in Sufism are called instances of inkhitaf, or flotation. Ibn Arabi professes that this light of enlightenment transcends the mere wisdom of sages and invades the visions and dreams of prophets: Prophets are visionaries. By nature they tend to see strange visions which do not fall within the capacity of an ordinary man. These extraordinary visions are known as “veridical dreams” [genuine and reliable dreams] … and we readily recognize their symbolic nature. We ordinarily admit without hesitation that a prophet perceives through and beyond his visions something that is ineffable, something of the true figure of the Absolute. In truth, however, not only such uncommon visions are symbolic “dreams” for the prophet. To his mind everything he sees, everything with which he is in contact even in daily life is liable to assume a symbolic character. Everything he perceives in the state of wakefulness is of such a nature, though there is, certainly, a difference in the states. The formal difference between the state of sleep (in which he sees by his faculty of imagination) and the state of wakefulness (in which he perceives things by his senses) is kept intact, yet in both states the things perceived are equally symbols. 71

Ibn Arabi asserts that the visions of prophets are overwhelmingly reliable and unfailing, and that what they see in visions or in reality are symbols representing God as the Absolute Truth. In states of consciousness and subconsciousness, wakefulness and dream-visions, all their perceptions of images sensed or envisioned reflect the physical and spiritual existence as representa71

Qtd., Halligan, pp. 286–287.

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tive of God, their creator. Thus, sparks of knowledge, or the “celestial light[s]” are symbols that invade the cognitive perceptions and visions of prophets, who according to Shelley are also poets or “poet-prophets,” able to see beyond the outer shells, that is their visions transcend exterior shapes, forms, and colours. The Sufi poets, therefore, consider sparks of spiritual knowledge as ultimately products of the higher world of the imagination. Hence, without the supreme faculty of the mind, imitation rather than creation reigns, and awareness of sensory substance cannot subsist. Besides, it is the realm of higher or secondary imagination that stimulates visions and dreams beyond matter and allows the mind to encounter images in the ontological aura of spiritual being. What is grasped is not matter as such, but forms of energy in which the essence of existence or the spiritual and the divine are fathomed. According to Rumi, a corporal form is, something’s outward aspect, as opposed to its “meaning” or inward aspect. Hence “form” can be applied to anything that exists in the material world, as well as to anything that becomes differentiated and distinct from other things on any level of existence, not just the material level. So an idea or an angel may be referred to as a “form.” However, when the word “form” is used, it immediately calls to mind the “meaning” that lies beyond it and bestows existence upon it. 72

For the neo-Platonists thoughts and feelings are expressed in speech and actions, the outer effects of which are Forms. To clarify this notion of Forms, John Gregory explains that to the neoplatonists, the universe “is composed of ideal forms from beginning to end, first Matter informed by the elements, then other forms upon these forms, then again further forms” and further 72

Qtd., Chittick, Sufi Path of Love, p. 249.

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elucidates that the “universe is form, and all its parts are forms, as its archetype is form; and its creation is silent, effected by nothing but Being and Form.” 73 This Neoplatonic view is related to that of Rumi, who asserts that inward mental and emotional states can take various outward forms; that is, that perception of the material universe takes various forms shaped by individuals’ inwards perceptions and that the imagination transcends Forms—stone and shell—to reveal their profound meanings. In other words, outward observations are perceived by reason, while inward insights are revealed by the imagination, which ignites visions and dreams. It is this world of visions and dreams that the pilgrim on the path of knowledge must seek through the power of higher or secondary imagination God or Allah has endowed on the Sufis and the Romantics.

INTELLIGENCES

Though intelligences is the plural of intelligence, in Romanticism and Sufism this rule is broken. The term “intelligence” holds several connotations, the most common being those that concentrate on the ability to immediately grasp, analyze, acquire, and apply the learnt knowledge and store it properly for later use. Thus, an intelligent person is one with high reasoning and recollecting skills. To the Romantic and Sufis the term “intelligences” refers to the construction of Soul identity, which forms a strong relation with Other and the divine Absolute. John Keats defines intelligences by comparing them to “Soul Making” or growth: “I say Soul Making, Soul as distinguished from an intelligence—There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions—but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. I[n]telligences are atoms of perception—they know and they see and they are pure, in short John Gregory. The Neoplatonists: A Reader. 2nd Edition (London: Routledge, 2014), p. 72. 73

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they are God.” 74 These intelligences see through the eye of the mind and the soul. They perceive Truth through the process of identity, which is achieved only through gnosis, when sudden illumination reflects Truth. In his Keats: A New Life, Nicholas Roe writes: Dismissing the Christian idea of a “vale of tears” from which we are “to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to Heaven”, he gives us a “vale of Soulmaking” where “intelligences or sparks of the divinity” acquire identities “by the medium of a world like this”: “Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul?” 75

The above view meets with the Sufi’s abandonment of all worldly pleasures and attachment to a life of pain caused by detachment from the world to contemplate in solitude. Roe explains that the “figure of a solitary monk illuminating manuscripts and fingering beads is a first sketch of the Beadsman in ‘The Eve of St Agnes,’ who patiently tells his rosary while others ‘coil and wrangle’ in ‘argent revelry’.” 76 To Keats, intelligences demand a departure from the outer world to the inner soul; only then they become sparks from divinity. Wordsworth clarifies intelligences as sparks from heaven, which shine within human beings during the formation of one’s identity, especially during childhood when humans are closer to the source of these intelligences that glow from the divine Absolute. As the child grows, the mind builds its own “prison-house,” and gradually begins the process of shedding the celestial light and separating from the divine source as he/she matures into adulthood; the stage dominated KSL, “To George and Georgiana Keats,” February 14–May 3, 1891, p. 290. 75 Nicholas Roe. Keats: A New Life. (London: Yale University Press, 2021). Ebook. 76 Roe, ebook. 74

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by matter rather than spirit. Wordsworth makes the enlightening confession: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy. 77

The child grows up to be “Nature’s priest,” the worshipper of Nature and its mouth-piece who is in awe of the divinity of the creator. Wordsworth’s allusion to Christianity is implied in the child’s turning to the East, where the “vision splendid” rises and guides the child along the journey of growth to become a “Man,” after he “perceives it dies away;” and so the vision fades away as he faces the reality of everyday life. The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature’s priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. 78

In his ode, Wordsworth perceives intelligences at their best during childhood. As humans become older, their acumen is retained and maintained through recollection. The divine light to which they were close becomes distant and shines to guide the poet during brief moments when particular emotions are stirred. In other words, childhood intelligences invade man’s subconscious mind and are revived through profound imagination, which is more vivid and flamboyant during childhood. In “My WW, “Ode,” ll. 67–71. WW, “Ode,” ll. 71–76. In fact Christian priests always turn to the East during their worship as all church alters are built facing the East, the birthplace of Jesus.

77 78

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Heart Leaps Up,” Wordsworth’s notion of childhood intelligences is implied in the following lines: My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. 79

The rainbow reminds the poet of his childhood, and his feelings of the spiritual beauty of Nature is triggered and revived. Here the poet sets a condition for his old age, either to maintain such recollections and feelings or lose hope in life and wait for death. The thrilling sense of childhood sensations is a consequence of such sparks of intelligences which the poet is particularly concerned about. Wordsworth is implying that human faculties are better equipped to sense nature and its Creator during childhood, and all that remains during old age are recollections and remembrances prompted by what has been preserved from childhood intelligences. Wordsworth’s famous verse, “The Child is father of the Man” strengthens the bridge suspended between childhood and manhood, a bridge made from “natural piety,” or from childhood’s divine and fresh intelligences. It is this bridge which fashions the man to be and maintains the connection to divinity. To a certain extent, this above view accords with Rumi’s who credits teaching the Quran from childhood onwards and learning from educators the joy of embracing the Word of Allah,

79

WW, “My Heart Leaps Up,” p. 264.

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who “holds in hand the writing of the whole of existence,” 80 and whose presence is intensely felt in childhood. In a poem titled “An Awkward Comparison,” Rumi classifies intelligences into two types, affirming that both are essential for Man’s intellectual and spiritual growth: There are two kinds of intelligences: one acquired, As a child in school memorizes facts and concepts From books and from what the teacher says, Collecting information from the traditional sciences As well as from the new sciences. 81

This first type of intelligences provides the child with information which is essential for the growth of the perceptive mind. Rumi’s view here concurs more with Coleridge’s theory of the Primary Imagination than with Wordsworth’s views, but its religious perspective diverts from that of both Romantic poets since to Rumi, the principle book the child must first learn is the Quran. However, Rumi’s second type of intelligences are analogous to Coleridge’s theory of Secondary Imagination, which Rumi describes as a “tablet” preserved within man: A spring overflowing its spring box. A freshness In the center of the chest. This other intelligence Does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid, And it doesn’t move from outside to inside Through the conduits of plumbing-learning. This second knowing is fountainhead From within you, moving out. 82

Again here, one cannot but recall Coleridge’s fountain of intelligences in “Kubla Khan,” and Wordsworth’s “overflow of powerRumi, “The Arab and his Wife,” Masnavi, p. 39 Essential Rumi, p. 178. 82 Ibid. 80 81

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ful feelings,” which burst from within to form intelligences revealing mysteries of existence and the creator. Such intelligences are dynamic forces that nourish the heart and come forth from inside out. In his Aids to Reflection, Coleridge differentiates between intelligences and attentive learning: “We may learn arithmetic, or the elements of geometry, by continued attention alone; but self- knowledge, or an insight into the laws and constitution of the human mind, and the grounds of religion and true morality, in addition to the effort of attention, requires the energy of thought.” 83 This energy of thought is contemplative thinking or intelligences. Rumi deems inward knowledge a consequence of the hearts’ inner intelligences; such knowledge is mystical and guided by divine love. By adopting religion as the basis for teaching children, Rumi again differs from Wordsworth who holds Platonic views that lay forward a philosophy of life before and after man’s physical worldly existence; it is a philosophical insight of life that deems sensory life as a mere reflection or a copy of the real one. The poet contemplates: Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home. 84

The divine spirit takes the human body as its habitat upon birth and this explains why the child is close to the source. However, this divine star gradually fades away, leaving only traces in adulthood as spiritual awareness gives way to worldly matters 83 84

Aids, 1994, p. 15. WW, “Ode,” ll. 58–76.

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ad concerns. The light of Divinity—the sparks of intelligences the child sees and feels—is thus gradually lost; this light cannot be experienced during adulthood and/or old age unless humans detach their physical or lower selves from their upper selves through arduous recollection and contemplation prompting visions of their inward divinity. Here lies the significance of visions and dreams for the seeker of truth. In “Alastor: Or The Spirit of Solitude,” Shelley gazes inward through the medium of dreams. The poet-dreamer is also a traveler seeking wisdom and beauty, experienced in a dream within a dream; in the first dream, the poet-dreamer abandons his homeland to “seek strange truth in undiscovered lands” 85 in the land of Arabia and Persia and meets an Arab maiden who, from an Eastern point of view, signifies selfless love; it is all the reason why she falls in love with the poet, tends to him, and asks for nothing in return; however, oblivious of her, he leaves and roams the East until he arrives at a valley in Cashmere, India, where he experiences a spark of intelligences in a second dream and meets a veiled Eastern maid-poet who, Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones, Her voice was like the voice of his own soul Heard in the calm of thought; its music long, Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held His inmost sense suspended in its web Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues. 86

Struck by her musical voice that sings the enchanting melodies of Nature’s “streams and breeze,” which is in tune with “the voice of his own soul,” he retreats into his inmost self and experiences the most illuminating moments of enlightenment: “truth and virtue.” Hearing her song, or poem, incites in his soul, her 85 86

SCP, “Alastor: Or, The Spirit of Solitude,” l. 77. SCP, “Alastor: Or, The Spirit of Solitude,” ll. 15–156.

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“lofty hopes of divine liberty.” 87 Enraptured by her song and the divine unity she has inspired, he eventually awakens from his vision and resolves to search for this veiled maid in the real world. In the end, his obsession with her beauty, wisdom, and divinity leads to his doom, since he fails to find in reality what he has experienced in a dream. The Eastern poetess, to Shelley, is a prophetess, whose intelligences transcend all sensory realizations. In his “Defense of Poetry,” Shelley claims that poets are “legislators, or prophets,” because they behold “intensely the present as it is” and discover “laws according to which present things ought to be ordered,” and at the same time can behold “the future in the present.” 88 In this respect, when Shelley’s poet catches a glimpse of the poetess, he foresees his future, and his “bright silver dream,” or his inward revelation, precipitates his mystical union with her. Thus, what starts as a normal dream ends as an inward prophesy flashing with the “thrilling secrets of the birth of time,” 89 and the exhilarating truth of intelligences. In Sufism this elevated state of the self is gnosis as it transcends the illumination of Truth to include intense emotions and a spiritual connection and interconnectedness to all creation; it is the type of gnosis endowed only to great sages, prophets, and saints, or what would be classified under the “Perfect Man,” who is gifted with the “Universal Reason,” explained by Rumi as someone who is “inspired by Divine wisdom, of which the prophets, and especially Universal Reason, or the Prophet Muhammed, are the channels.” 90 Amongst the Romantics, it is Shelley who believes that self and other become part of an inseparaSCP, “Alastor: Or, The Spirit of Solitude,” ll. 158–161. ERW, “A Defense of Poetry,” p. 1073. 89 SCP, “Alastor: Or, The Spirit of Solitude,” p. l29. 90 Rumi, “The Anecdote of the Raven and Cain,” Masnavi, p. 165. 87 88

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ble, intimate whole, as all existence has a single comprehensive design, a universal unity representing “Universal Truth,” perceived only by sparks of intelligences. Wordsworth also clarifies that to acquire gnosis man has to unite with the outer universe in “holy passion”: For the discerning intellect of Man, When wedded to this goodly universe In love and holy passion, shall find these A simple produce of the common day. 91

Here again Wordsworth revives the “spots of time” as moments when the human intellect is overflowing with selfless love. These spots, in my view, are parks of intelligences, which are spaceless and timeless and reside eternally in the abode of mental recollections. Allan Chavkin considers these spots as Wordsworth’s manifestations of “heightened moments of illumination … around which the meditation revolves.” 92 He also explains Wordsworth’s stance on these spots as being meditative instances whereby imagination adopts a “nonhuman force and allows the poet’s self-consciousness to dissolve.” 93 These spots generate a gnostic awareness, which Shelley believes is divinely controlled by a holy marriage that unites all in a “harmonious soul”: Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul, Whose nature is its own divine control,

WW, The Excursion, “Prospectus,” ll. 51–54. Chavkin, p. 454. 93 Chavkin, p. 426. Alan Richardson argues that Wordsworth’s “spots of time” are intense and dynamic experiences of childhood recollected in the poet’s later life; see “Wordsworth at the Crossroads: ‘Spots of Time’ in the ‘Two-Part Prelude’,” The Wordsworth Circle, vol. 19, no. 1 (Winter, 1988), pp. 15–20. 91 92

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In Sufism, this “one harmonious soul” is congruent with the “unity of being,” Wahdat al-Wujud, which when perceived by the intelligences the soul is capable of acknowledging its source and final destination. Blake also conceives knowledge of the universe as possible when man and all elements of nature mystically unite: “All Human Forms identified even Tree Metal Earth & Stone. All/Human Forms identified, living going forth.” 95 In praise of Blake, Coleridge describes him as, “a Mystic”; i.e., “a man who was receptive to esoteric doctrines, as Coleridge himself had been and continued to be.” 96 Discussing Sufism, Nasr notes that Sufis believe that real existence gives a substance reality distinguishing it from other substances; “but existence itself plunges in Being. In turn this Being is and possesses at the same time the attributes of Light and Knowledge. Likewise, all things are united by their existence as they all unite in this Being; however, each is distinguished by its own particularities.” 97 Existence, then, is part of its creator, the Absolute Being, whose “Oneness” or “Wholeness” is acknowledged by the soul when the particularities of the corporal and spiritual of all existence are diffused in the self of the contemplative mind; only then, illuminating sparks of intelligences are attainable. Glimpses of self-illumination are described by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) as “the sudden brightening and illumination of consciousness,” by Goethe as “the flash of now… the center,” and by Wordsworth as “attendant gleams” or “spots of time.” Likewise, Coleridge regards them as visionary moments, Lord Byron as “The

ERW, Prometheus Unbound, 4, ll. 400–402. BCP&P, Jerusalem, Plate 99, p. 258, ll. 57–58. 96 Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, p. 165. 97 Nasr, pp. 135–137. 94 95

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bodiless thought? The Spirit of each spot,” 98 while Shelley sees them as “visitations of divinity” or “evanescent visitations,” and Keats considers them flashes of “Beauty and Truth”. In Endymion, Keats writes: Feel we these things?—that moment have we stept Into a sort of oneness, and our state Is like floating spirit’s. 99

These glimpses of spiritual flotation, Keats writes, are “selfdestroying,” or moments of selflessness, when the intensity of love “sits high/Upon the forehead of humanity,” and a “steady splendour” of Love reigns and “we blend,/Mingle, and so become a part of it—”. 100 Accordingly intelligences and love cannot be discussed in separation, as the former are generated by insightful love, and the latter wrapped with sparks of spiritual insights. To Keats, as to all Romantics and Sufi poets, these glimpses are the sources of inward happiness and awakening. From a Platonic and Coleridgian perspective, these moments of illumination are generated when “The infinite Power of the universe transcends the mechanical, the physical, the sensuous; [and] man is in mystical harmony with the universe, and through this harmony he in security derives a knowledge of the universe which is its truth.” 101 He asserts this in his Aids to Reflection: “Last and highest, comes the spiritual, comprising all the truths, acts and duties that have an especial reference to the Timeless, the Permanent, the Eternal: to the sincere love of the True, as truth; of the Good as good: and of God as both in one. 102 To Coleridge Truth may not be reached at unless one has sincere love to the ultimate good, which is God. This attempt by the BCPW, II, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, III, Stanza 74, l. 705. KSP, Endymion, Book I, ll. 797–799. 100 KSP, Endymion, Book I, ll. 810–811. 101 Schueller, p. 72. 102 Aids, 1994, p. 40. 98 99

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Romantics to perceive Truth, according to Herbert Schueller, is intended “to transcend the mundane and the human, even though the human mind is the agency by which this transcendence must be achieved; the difficulty is that the only agency which the human mind has for transcending itself is itself.” 103 Apparently, this process is Sufistic, except that the Sufi initiates it willfully, while the Romantic experiences it spontaneously. The Sufi begins this process through mental meditation, contemplation, and repetition of prayer (dhikr) or through physical exertion—the whirling dance of the Sufi Dervishes, 104 accompanied by repetition of phrases from the Quran or from their spiritual master’s teachings. For instance, while the whirling Dervish is dancing, one of the phrases he keeps repeating is: “Beat the heart and the neglectful (faculties) behave (correctly).” 105 This expression means that the Sufi must stimulate the Ibid. Rumi founded the Order of the Whirling Dervishes in the 13th century. Idries Shah explains: “In his teaching system, Rumi used explanation and mental drill, thought and meditation, work and play, action and inaction. The body-mind movements of the Whirling Dervishes, coupled with the reed pipe music to which they were performed, is the product of a special method designed to bring the Seeker into affinity with the mystical current, in order to be transformed by it. Everything which the unregenerate man understands has a use and a meaning within the special context of Sufism which may be invisible until it is experienced. ‘Prayer,’ says Rumi, ‘has a form, a sound and a physical reality. Everything which has a word, has a physical equivalent. And every thought has an action’.” See Shah, p. 118. For instance, while the whirling Dervish is dancing he repeats the phrase: “Beat the heart and the neglectful (faculties) behave (correctly),” Shah, p. 116. This slogan is symbolic and implies that the Sufi must stimulate the heart (qalb), assumes a central position in Sufism, because it is the habitat of divine sparks and leads to spiritual divine realization. See also Sidgwick, pp. 71–131, in which he discusses modern dervishes. 105 Shah, p. 116. 103 104

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heart (qalb), the abode of love which, as the habitat of divine sparks that lead to spiritual realization, assumes a central position in Sufism. In the case of the Romantics, the innermost insight is in most cases accidental and realized by the observer’s sensibility and imagination as sensory perceptions turn inward through contemplation. Then what begins as an outward spectacle turns an inward insight capable of transcending the observed to realize and appreciate its essence. The Persian thinker and scientist, Ibn Sina, 106 claims there is a Necessary Being which cannot be two, and that it is all Truth, “then by virtue of His Essential Reality, in respect of which He is Truth, He is United and One, and no other shares with Him in that Unity; however the all-Truth attains existence, it is through Himself.” Thus, “His whole cosmology depends upon the correspondence between the microcosm, man, and the macrocosm, the Universe, so that the constitution of the one corresponds to the constitution of the other.” 107 The Universe, subsequently, is a great existence, and man is but a little universe. Essentially, the Sufi studies nature not as much to analyze it as to gather insights about himself through the analogy existing between the microcosm and the macrocosm. By exploring the inner self and the immediate realities of the natural world, man comes to know God, or perfect Love. The Sufi holds on to Ali Ibn Sina was born in 980, in the vicinity of Bukhara (modern Uzbekistan) is known in the West as Avicenna). From his youth he was interested in sciences and philosophy. Avicenna spoke the Arabic language and read the Quran before he was 10 years old. Later he studied the fiqh (law) of Islam and about Sufism. Avicenna also studied medicine and became well known at the age of 18. One of his most read works is Al-Mamu (Compendium), and had a lot of students. For more details about Avicenna’s life and works, see Soheil M. Afnan. Avicenna: His Life and Works (London: Ruskin House, George Allen & Unwin, 1958). 107 Qtd., Nasr, p. 46. 106

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the task of synthesizing these various natural realities into a unified vision of things. The principal task of the human mind, of its intelligences, is to analyze the contents of its experiences before attempting a synthesis. Jami writes in his Lawa’ih (“Flashes of Light”): Being, with all its latent qualities, Doth permeate all mundane entities, Which, they can receive them, show them forth In the degrees of their capacities. 108

The spiritual capacities of the Sufi mystics correspond to those of the Romantics’ whose deep contemplation is a process of the brain whereby Self invades itself or an Other, be it another animate or inanimate object of nature, in search for the wholeness of knowledge. But deep contemplation cannot be treated in isolation from visions and dreams, for the transcendence from the inner Self to that of the Other eliminates all conscious contacts with the material world. That is, deep contemplation becomes a vision or a dream detached from all conscious realities. Among the Romantics, William Blake was the most meditative and visionary poet. Ever since his childhood, he reported to his father visions of bright angels in the green world and on branches of trees. He even reported talks with spirits. Later in his life, Blake spoke of his poetry and engravings as dictated to him by his visionary world. In 1787, after the death of his youngest brother, Robert, Blake wrote in a letter to his patron William Hayley (May 6, 1800), that he had witnessed his brother’s spirit and communicated with him almost daily for more than a fortnight:

Nur-Ud-Din Abd-Ur Rahman Jami. Lawaih: A Treatise on Sufism, translated by E. H. Whinfield and Mirza Muhammad Kazvini (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1906.), Flash 27. 108

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Thirteen years ago I lost a brother, and with his spirit I converse daily and hourly in the spirit, and see him in my remembrance, in the regions of my imagination. I hear his advice, and even now write from his dictate. Forgive me for expressing to you my enthusiasm, which I wish all to partake of, since it is to me a source of immortal joy, even in this world. By it I am the companion of angels. 109

For Blake, as for all Romantic poets, deep contemplation is stimulated by genuine feelings of love, which in Romanticism and Sufism is believed to be the medium for perceiving Truth through sparks of intelligences. Samar Attar stipulates that “Blake is more akin here to the Persian Sufi al-Hallaj who once declared, ‘I am the Truth” 110; she quotes al-Hallaj’s pantheistic poem: I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is I. We are two souls dwelling in one body. When thou seest me, thou seests Him: And when thou seests Him, thou seests us both. 111

Ibn Arabi, who was influenced by al-Hallaj, explains: “When the mystery—of realizing that the mystic is one with the Divine—is revealed to you, you will understand that you are no other than God, … your actions to be His actions and all your attributes to be His attributes and your essence to be His essence, though you do not hereby become He or He you, in either the greatest or the least degree.” 112 “Blake’s characters might not have reached this point of annihilation with God,” S. Attar writes, “but they seem William Blake. The Letters of William Blake Together with a Life by Fredrick Tatham, edited by Archibald G. B. Russell (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), pp. 68–69. 110 S. Attar, p. 106. 111 Qtd., S. Attar, p. 106. 112 See Landau, pp. 83–84. 109

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forever striving for the divine within themselves.” 113 Perhaps Blake’s best perception of the visionary world is expressed in his essay, “A Vision of the Last Judgment”: “Vision, or Imagination, is a Representation of what Eternally Exists, Really & Unchangeably”; he asserts: The Nature of my Work is Visionary or Imaginative; it is an Endeavour to Restore what the Ancients call’d the Golden Age. This world of Imagination is the World of Eternity; it is the Divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the Vegetated body. This World of Imagination is Infinite & Eternal, whereas the world of Generation, or Vegetation, is Finite & Temporal. There Exist in that Eternal World the Permanent Realities of Every Thing which we see reflected in this Vegetable Glass of Nature. All Things are comprehended in their Eternal Forms in the Divine body of the Saviour, the True Vine of Eternity. 114

Blake’s visionary sensibility renders him a Romantic mystic and poet. He is naturally addicted to the world of “Imagination,” which is the faculty which perceives realities of eternal existence and would not be separated from the eternal existence of God, or God incarnated. In his philosophical argument, “There is no Natural Religion,” Blake reiterates the same notion: “He who sees the Infinite in all things, sees God. He who sees the Ratio only, sees himself only. Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is.” 115 113 114

ly. 115

S. Attar, p. 106. BCP&P, “A Vision of the Last Judgment,” pp 553 and 555 respectiveBCP&P, “There is no Natural Religion,” p. 3.

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Both Sufi and Romantic poets see the image of the eternal God in themselves since when their intelligences are stimulated they see the “Infinite” in everything including themselves. Blake approaches Sufist thought and beliefs even more when he writes: “As all men are alike (tho’ infinitely various), So all religions, and as all similar, have one source. The true Man is the source, he being the Poetic Genius.” 116 Blake shares the Sufi poets’ conviction in the wisdom of the poet who is aware of the whole as including the all, the interconnectedness of all creation, and of his being a part of the “unity of being” or “Wahdat al-Wujud.” In a poem from his Songs of Experience, Blake addresses the fly: Little Fly, Thy summer’s play My thoughtless hand Has brush’d away. Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou’ A man like me? 117

Blake’s verses imply his ontological and metaphysical outlook on nature and its objects and recalls John Donne’s well-known poem, “The Flea,” in which Donne argues that the insect which bites both his beloved and him is symbolic of the holy trinity. The metaphysical undertones of both the poems imply the interconnectedness of all creation, where even the smallest creatures in nature are a part of man, man is a part of all creatures, as all are part of the universe, and thus related to the divine Being. The Sufi ideal of the universality of man is represented in Blake’s “Night the First,” in The Four Zoas in which he confirms: “Perfect Unity,/Cannot exist but from the universal Brotherhood 116 117

BCP&P, “All Religions Are One,” Principle 2nd, p. 1. BCP&P, “The Fly,” p, 23, ll. 1–8.

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of Eden,/The universal Man.” 118 Love then is the basic stimulus of the “Eden” of universal brotherhood of which Wordsworth also preaches in several of his insightful poems namely, “Lines: Written at a Small Distance from my House, and Sent by My Little Boy to the Person to Whom They are Addressed,” in which he asserts that, “Love, now a universal birth,/From heart to heart is stealing.” 119 Wordsworth acquired his visionary powers from his mother and from Nature. From his mother, he inherited his love for nature and from Nature he perceived the presence of a Supreme Being in each and all. His vivid portrayal of this divine presence and his connection with the elements of nature are prevalent qualities of his poetry, especially The Prelude. In Book II Wordsworth maintains that conversing with Nature is a habit he had never grown out from the time he was seventeen years old. It is a habit that provided him with happiness and “the power of truth/Coming in revelation, did converse/With things that really are.” 120 To Wordsworth nothing is more impressive and imposing than the truth acquired by sparks of intelligences that bared the profound emotions from the heart. Real poetic communication should take place between the individual’s soul and the spirit of the truth of eternal subsistence. Consequently, the soul, which adores the truth of all existence, becomes a “blessing spread around me [the poet] like a sea.” 121 In such a sublime state Wordsworth feels the, … sentiment of Being spread O’er all that moves and all that seemeth still; BCP&P, The Four Zoas, “Night the First,” pp. 300–301, ll 4–6. WW, “Lines: Written at a Small Distance from my House, and Sent by My Little Boy to the Person to Whom They are Addressed,” ll. 21– 22. 120 PWW, The Prelude, Book II, ll. 394–395. 121 PWW, The Prelude, Book II, l. 396. 118 119

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O’er all that, lost beyond the reach of thought And human knowledge, to the human eye Invisible, yet liveth to the heart; O’er all that leaps and runs, and shouts and sings, Or beats the gladsome air; o’er all that glides Beneath the wave, yea, in the wave itself, And mighty depth of waters. Wonder not If high the transport, great the joy I felt, Communing in this sort through earth and heaven With every form of creature, as it looked Towards the Uncreated with a countenance Of adoration, with an eye of love. 122

For Wordsworth, the visible and the invisible, heard and unheard sounds, and perceived and ignored organic forces, all are a source of heavenly joy as are all forms of creations in Nature. When all are beheld with love, the “eye of love,” and sensed by the heart, the poet’s gaze comes to reflect the love that comes from the heart as it merges with a reflection of the divine Creator. Wordsworth deems that nothing in nature exists independently from everything else; all human and non-human creations exist by the will of God whose essence is the infinite Absolute Spirit. This confession forms Wordsworth’s basic philosophy of the visionary power of a young man capable through Love and flights of imaginations to commune and converse with all elements of Mother Nature and her Creator. Much like Blake, whose visionary power enabled him to converse with his dead brother, Wordsworth’s visionary gift allowed him to communicate “With every form of creature.” What is important is that Love is the main stimulus for both poets. Wordsworth’s spiritual insight is pronounced in the note to “Ode,” in which he confesses: “I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as some122

PWW, The Prelude, Book II, ll. 402–415.

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thing not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature.” 123 Later in his life, in Book V of The Prelude, Wordsworth portrays the earth and heaven as mirror images of man’s “prime teacher,” who is Established by the sovereign Intellect, Who through the bodily image hath diffused, As might appear to the eye of fleeting time, A deathless spirit. 124

In other words, for those possessing a visionary or spiritual nature that offers them glimpses of the divine, nature becomes their prime tutor and source of elevated knowledge. Wordsworth lays down the basis of his theory of such visionary power in the following lines: Nature that exists in works Of mighty Poets. Visionary power Attends the motions of the viewless winds, Embodied in the mystery of words. 125

From a Sufi point of view, “the mystery of words,” is the mystery of God, whose divine word, according to the Bible, marks the beginning of creation: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” 126 As Muslims, the Sufis venerate the Quran as voicing the divine Word of Allah. Mostafa Shahiditabar, et. al., assert that “one of the most important aspects of God’s blessings is the power of speech and language,” and believe that the language of the Quran reveals four essential features:

WW, “Note to “Ode,” p. 764. PWW, The Prelude, Book V, ll. 15–18. 125 PWW, The Prelude, Book V, ll. 597–600. 126 King James Bible, John, 1:1. 123 124

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1. The importance of language as language itself in the Quran, 2. The importance of language as a sign of God, 3. The importance of language as an irreducible gift from God 4. The importance of language, because of its effective ‘orders of discourse’.” 127

Basically, when revelations of divine Truth are experienced, they require a suitable and effective medium of expression. In which case, the most appropriate language to express revelations is classical Arabic which is the language of the Quran. As a sign, language is revered even by God, who in turn is respected and elevated to the highest level as the major source of an illuminating experience. From a literary point of view, Hugh Sykes Davies believes that the above section of Wordsworth’s poem is: remarkable not only for its use of these two words from the cluster, but also because it is attempting to describe in verse the feeling of the power of words, used poetically the power of words as things which Wordsworth strove to express in his prose writings on imaginative language. As so often with him, the verbal texture of the passage actually illustrates the processes he is trying to describe. And the same is true of the other passage, from Book VI [of The Prelude], in which he describes, in very similar terms, the power of Imagination. 128 Mostafa Shahiditabar, et. al. “The Place of Language in the Holy Quran as a Linguistic Heritage,” Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, vol 4, no. 4 (2017), pp. 291–300. 128 Hugh Sykes Davies. Wordsworth and the Worth of Words, edited by John Kerrigan and Jonathan Wordsworth (London: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 84. 127

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Davies believes that Wordsworth’s imagination is expressed in words that project the wonder and mystery of creation and are inspired by the intensity of his emotions. In this respect, I believe that Wordsworth’s use of the phrase, “the mystery of words,” has religious and literary connotations; the poet’s creativity is a mirror image of that of the Creator with poetry being his creative expression of the mysterious divine whose essence is love. In fact, in the preface to “The Thorn,” Wordsworth confirms that words cannot be measured by the space on paper but by their “balance of feelings,” and by “the history and science of feelings” the poet’s words convey. He also verifies that words have limitations or deficiencies while inferring that poetic, rhythmic repetition not only reflects “symbols of the passion but as things, active and efficient, which are themselves part of the passion.” 129 The emphasis on “things” endows words with the sense of the mystery of love that is beyond description; love is the dynamic force or “part of the passion” of the poet who projects the love of the Absolute. Wordsworth’s conviction of the flow of divine light in poetic words or verses is expressed thus: Even forms and substances are circumfused By that transparent veil with light divine, And, through the turnings intricate of verse, Present themselves as objects recognised, In flashes, and with glory not their own. 130

The above verse is a clear declaration that words are representatives of flashes of intelligences, or visionary powers that are the anchor of great poets who manipulate, mold and forge “words” in a manner that portrays the mystery and wonder of the beyond, of creation, and of the abundant and glorious love of the Supreme Being. In “To My Sister” Wordsworth confirms: 129 130

WW, note to “The Thorn,” p.728. PWW, The Prelude, Book V, ll. 603–607.

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Love, now a universal birth, From heart to heart is stealing, From earth to man, from man to earth; —It is the hour of feeling. 131

Love is the essence, the “universal birth” that is divinely, lovingly, transferred from the Absolute to Nature and subsequently to the hearts of humans. Feelings expressed in poetry are therefore elevated sentiments pregnant with those elevated thoughts produced in those transient moments of iridescent truth, when the poet’s intelligences are highly strung. In “Lines Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth further reiterates this conception in a more philosophical manner that accords with the rapture experienced by a Sufi poet: And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. 132

When feelings overflow, love induces a strong awareness of the “presence” and connection of all creation to the One, and brings forth elevated thoughts and wisdom which are themselves sources of great delight and satisfaction. Through the spirit of WW, “Lines: Written at a Small Distance from my House, and Sent by My Little Boy to the Person to Whom They are Addressed,” ll. 21– 24. 132 WW, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” ll. 94– 103. 131

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love which acts upon all existence, “all things,” all creation is deemed as bound together. It is ultimately, the intelligences, or the visionary gleams, that endow an individual with such a divine, universal truth. As for Coleridge, his perception of visionary gleams is based on his studies of literary works, after which he concludes: Thus the true system of natural philosophy places the sole reality of things in an ABSOLUTE, which is at once causa sui et effectus [the cause in the effect], in the absolute identity of subject and object, which it calls nature, and which in its highest power is nothing else than self-conscious will or intelligence. In this sense the position of Malebranche, 133 that we see all things in God, is a strict philosophical truth; and equally true is the assertion of Hobbes, of Hartley, and of their masters in ancient Greece, that all real knowledge supposes a prior sensation. For sensation itself is but vision nascent, not the cause of intelligence, but intelligence itself revealed as an earlier power in the process of selfconstruction. 134

Causa sui et effectus is the basis of all knowledge; that is, it is enough to identify the cause to understand the effect. Knowledge cannot originate from nowhere, but it must come from “prior sensations,” or feelings which invade the soul and the mind and motivate visions of the divine and the mystery of creation. Coleridge makes clear that the objects we think of lose Nicolas Malebranche was a celebrated French philosopher of the fifteenth century. He was fascinated by St. Augustine and wrote on metaphysics, theology, and religion. In his Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion, Malebranche exposes his view that matter can be seen through ideas in God who is the real cause of all existence. See Nicolas Malebranche. Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion, translated by N. Jolley and D. Scott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 134 Biographia Literaria, p. 161. 133

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their material properties and turn into the “ghost,” or the soul of the object. In other words, the cause of existing substance is the spirit which energizes it. Contemplative thinking searches for the immaterial in the material and “places us in a dream-world of phantoms and specters.” This accordingly generates “motion in our brains” that allow us “… to explain thinking, as a material phenomenon, it is necessary to refine matter into a mere modification of intelligence, with the two-fold function of appearing and perceiving. 135 Here Coleridge is restating the functions of the Primary and the Secondary Imagination, whereby the former recognizes the concrete form and the idea of a substance while the latter contemplates the spirit which energizes it. Thus, the appearance of any substance does not constitute its truth if its cause is not perceived. Coleridge goes on to explain that thought “presupposes” the existence of images in the mind that refer or symbolize an existing element that is part of the “external world”; but that this “world exactly correspondent to those images or modifications of our own being, which alone (according to this system) we actually behold [and this] removes all reality and immediateness of perception, and places us in a dreamworld of phantoms and spectres, the inexplicable swarm and equivocal generation of motions in our own brains” 136 Coleridge believes that visions empowered by the imagination are responsible for generating inner thoughts, or sparks of intelligences, which recognize a divine soul in all that is perceived. This notion is evident in “The Eolian Harp,” the impressive poem in which his contemplations manifest visions of the “Wisdom” of the Divine Soul residing in both the harp and the breeze, in all aspects of nature, and in the poet and his beloved. As the breeze blends with the chords of the harp, it produces a divine melody that nourishes the soul with the joy of love and the sparks of 135 136

Biographia Literaria, p. 33. Biographia Literaria, pp. 33–34.

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divine intelligences which connect the lovers with all creation and with the Soul of the Creator. This is embodied in the following verse: O! the one Life within us and abroad, Which meets all motion and becomes its soul, A light in sound, a sound-like power in light, Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every where— Methinks, it should have been impossible Not to love all things in a world so fill’d; Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air Is Music slumbering on her instrument. 137

Notice how the poet’s acute hearing becomes aware of what is beyond the sensory melodies produced by the breeze and the harp: “A light in sound, a sound-like power in light; such are the sparks of intelligences in the creative imagination of the poet, as in his poetry a dynamic force is generated by the breath of God, the breeze, which gives life to the harp, the poet. The “one Life within us and abroad” is the spirit of the eternal Creator descending from the heavens to imbue the creative soul of the poet, whose rhythmic words, like the music of the breeze and the harp, blend with divine love to reach the level of extreme exhilaration. Coleridge’s awareness of life’s wholeness is also reaffirmed in the verses: And what if all of animated nature Be but organic Harps diversely fram’d, That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the Soul of each, and God of all? 138

137 138

CCPW, “The Eolian Harp,” ll. 26–33. CCPW, “The Eolian Harp,” ll. 44–48.

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The poet wishes all active elements of nature, to be like “Harps” emanating dynamic thoughts, which recognize individual wholeness and an interconnectedness with human or nonhuman others. Here I cannot but recall the Sufi poet Attar who writes in one of his poems: “The heart gives the song of our parting to the wind./In sleep the soul has the dream of our union.” 139 The wind is Spirit Divine, which dances with the wings of nightingales and the leaves of roses. Most of the points initiated by Coleridge are interestingly featured also in Rumi’s The Masnavi, “Prologue of Book I”; the reed flute complains that its “plaintive notes” have moved listeners to tears of sorrow or of joy as each “interprets my notes in harmony with his own feelings,/But not one fathoms the secrets of my heart.” Although the secrets of the reed flute’s heart “are not manifest to the sensual eye and ear,” it confesses that, “Body is not veiled from soul, neither soul from body, Yet no man hath ever seen a soul.” This plaint of the flute is fire, not mere air. Let him who lacks this fire be accounted dead! ‘Tis the fire of love that inspires the flute, ‘Tis the ferment of love that possesses the wine. The flute is the confidant of all unhappy lovers; Yea, its strains lay bare my inmost secrets. 140

Individuals who are controlled by bodily desires disregard the perfect unity of body with soul. They overlook the truth and source of this fire—the love of the Divine that burns in the hearts of lovers who must love profoundly to realize its secrets. The quest to discern, cognize, and satiate our insatiable egos is fraught with deceit and can divert the seeker from the illuminating path. Rumi also seems to provide reassuring advice when he 139 140

Farid al-Din Attar. Fifty Poems of Attar, p. 20. Rumi, Masnavi, p. 1.

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states that though unveiling the mysterious demands insight as well as a strenuous and painful effort, but the disclosure of the uniting power of love is insightfully rewarding. According to Fazel Asadi Amjad, Rumi “equates the song of the reed with a life giving fire and love with truth … that is produced by the interaction of the reed and wind.” 141 The melodies produced by this interaction project an image of the Spirit Divine and are the reason why Sufi poets, like the Romantics, relate natural melodies to the loving spirit of God. John Renard notes that though some Sufi orders have not given music such significance as they “prefer unaccompanied forms of singing, in keeping with the long-standing practice of ‘a capella’” recitation of the Quran, there are many Sufi groups who have developed elaborate traditions of group music comprising a wide variety of string, wind (especially flutes and other woodwinds), and percussion instruments.” 142 Indeed, the significance of music in Islam is such that, even the daily five-time call to prayers is recited in a rhythmic manner by the muezzin (the caller for prayer). Unaccompanied by musical instruments, the solemn voice of the muezzin blends with the melodic verses of the Quran to create a serene mood inciting solemnity and deep contemplation. With respect to the Sufi orders, they have a unique tradition of mixing musical instruments, such as the reed pipe and percussion instruments with reciting verses from the Quran in synchrony with whirling as a kind of ritual dance. Fazel Asadi Amjad. “The Reed and the Aeolian Harp: Coleridge’s ‘The Aeolian Harp’, Rumi’s ‘The Song of the Reed’ and Jubran’s AlMawakib and Imaginal Perception.” Mysticism Studies, vol. 5 (SpringSummer, 2007), p. 23. 142 John Renard. The A to Z of Sufism (Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press, Inc, 2009), p. 165. For the significance of music and musical instruments in Sufism, see Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali’s “Emotional Religion in Islam as Affected by Music and Singing.” JRAS (1901), pp. 195–252 and 705–748. 141

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Shah writes that Rumi “projected his mystical teachings through artistic channels. Music, dancing and poetry were cultivated and used in the dervish meetings. Alternating with these were certain mental and physical exercises designed to open the mind to the recognition of its greater potential, through the theme of harmony.” 143 In his book entitled, Ihya Ulum al-Din, 144 AlGhazali, “defended the special use of music to elevate the perceptions” of the Sufi dervishes. 145 Concerning this defense, Shah writes: Ghazali next turns in his Alchemy to the question of music in its psychological aspects. He notes the mechanism whereby music and dancing can be used for excitatory purposes. Music can be a method of producing emotional effect. He maintains, however, that there is an innocent function of music, in which it does not produce the pseudo-religious sentiments used by undiscriminating cults. 146

Thus, for both the Romantic and the Sufi poets, music, and the melodies of nature excite emotions and the intellect, and through love, are able to discern the sparks of intelligences reflecting sublime universal and divine harmony. One must also not ignore the music of the mind, the fruit of inner contemplation and meditation which penetrates the mind and the heart when silence reigns. This silent type of music is comparable with the harmony from nature’s melodies, which stimulate and energize the sparks of intelligences to reveal the universality and divinity of Love, of the Creator, of Allah, or of God. Shah, p. 134. A book written by Al-Ghazali; see Suad Al-Hakim. Al-Ghazali’s The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya Ulum al-Din) for the 21st Century, edited by Syed A. H. Zaidi (Chicago: Library of Islam, 2020). 145 Shah, p. 155. 146 Shah, p. 158. 143 144

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To elucidate, the basic theme of Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is the universality and divinity of love. This narrative poem is a mental vision which projects the worst and the best in man; the worst when man detaches himself from the universe and its elements through thoughtless egoistic reactions, and the best when he reunites with the chain holding and encompassing all creation through love. This message is poetically implied in the following two lines: “He loved the bird that loved the man.” 147 When the Mariner listens to the solemn music of his heart, his sparks of intelligences start flashing, and he unconsciously blesses the sea snakes. Only then does he perceive the divine mystery and the source of the fountain of love which unites all and each element of nature in a harmonious mélange. This fountain appears in “Kubla Khan” when it bursts out from within the depths of the earth to the light and takes on the shape of a stream, and at the end of its destination returns to its mysterious, clandestine source. This divine invisible fountain of intelligences flowing from the mysterious recesses of nature bursts forth in a visible object-stream and returns to the bowels of nature at the end of its journey. Here, Coleridge contends that human life is like the detectible stream; it is perceived in all its physical exterior splendor while at the same time remains in tune with its invisible mysteries. Much like man, nature itself has its own visionary, mysterious world which once invaded, its soul and spirit float to reveal the wisdom of its Creator. Since nature is the mirror reflecting God’s wisdom, Sufis realize that the wisdom of the Creator is an innate part of nature. Chittick argues that for the Sufi, “Nature is darkness, since that which acts upon it is either God through His command (amr) or Word (kalimā) or the spirit [of divine creation], and these are Light. Yet, the Shaykh [The Sufi Sheikh or Master] insists that Nature at root is also a kind of light,” and continues 147

ERW, “The Ancient Mariner,” l. 404.

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stating that, “Nature is the ‘highest and greatest mother,’ who gives birth to all things, though she herself is never seen. She is the receptivity that allows the existent things to become manifest.” 148 The word, spirit, and light are symbols of the Divine wisdom or intelligences Mother Nature holds within. Perhaps the best Sufi prayer for the illuminating confrontation, the light of wisdom or intelligences a Romantic poet experiences, is Coleridge’s “Hymn before Sun-Rise, in the Valley of Chamouni,” in which the poet’s gaze at the silent mountain turns into deep contemplation and gradually becomes a vision filled with sparks of the poet’s intelligences through which he perceives and worships the “Invisible” God: O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer I worshipped the Invisible alone. 149

To Coleridge, the beauty of the Mount reveals the visible Beauty and invisible Wisdom or Heart of God. This is analogous to AlGhazali’s belief that self-knowledge encompasses knowledge of an outward shape, called the body, and an inward entity called the heart, or soul. By “heart” I do not mean the piece of flesh situated in the left of our bodies, but that which uses all the other faculties as its instruments and servants. In truth it does not belong to the visible world, but to the invisible, and has come into this world as a traveller visits a foreign country for the sake of merchandise, and will presently return to

Qtd., Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, p. 140. CCPW, “Hymn before Sun-Rise, in the Valley of Chamouni,” ll. 13– 16.

148 149

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TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM its native land. It is the knowledge of this entity and its attributes which is the key to the knowledge of God. 150

Al-Ghazali further elaborates: “That is to say, both God and the soul are invisible, indivisible, unconfined by space and time, and outside the categories of quantity and quality; nor can the ideas of shape, colour, or size attach to them.” 151 Such is the heart of nature, or the mountain, and of man; it is the soul which empowers all visions of beauty and truth. Coleridge not only sees external, physical beauty but also the beauty of the heart or soul beating deep within the mountain. His lonely prayer culminates in verses that call upon all elements of nature to join him in worshiping the Creator: Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle’s nest! Ye eagles, play-mates of the mountain-storm! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the element! Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise! 152

The flowers blend with the frost through their living souls, the wild goats play among the eagles, who play with the stormy wind while the lightning lights the clouds, and the poet exaltedly these wondrous elements of nature to sing their praises in worship of the creative mystery. The visionary power of the solitary poet stimulates his connection with the whole natural world, and he joins the elements in their worship and their joy at the ecstasy of God. This vision, or the poet’s sparks of intelligences, perceive the beauty, divinity, and profound wisdom of

Al-Ghazali, The Alchemy of Happiness, p. 22. Al-Ghazali, The Alchemy of Happiness, p. 35. 152 CCPW, “Hymn before Sun-Rise, in the Valley of Chamouni,” ll. 64– 69. 150 151

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all the elements of the universe as they participate in praising the Divine Absolute. For the Sufi and Romantic poets, the heart holding the divine intelligences turns into a spring of spiritual awakening. The intoxication of love corresponds to sparks of intelligences, which correspond to knowledge of God. Essentially, the compassionate heart is also the source of divine love that paves the way to the spiritual recognition and union with the Absolute. In their search for enlightenment, the Sufi and the Romantics firmly perceive the perfect harmonious relation of all objects of existence. That is, the wonder of the universe and other forms of existence interact with each other in a spiritual perception that fosters awareness of the unified order of the universe. For both Sufism and Romanticism, the main source of spiritual awareness, of intuitive and transcendental wisdom, is a compassionate heart saturated with love. While for the Sufi, spiritual intelligences are sparked by deep contemplation expressed through the words of Allah and by esoteric practices, for the Romantic spiritual intelligences are triggered by the spontaneous sensory observation of nature, which turns on the intuitive activity of the heart. Illumination and ascendancy are the goal and end for adherents of both movements. Both are spiritual pathfinders for what lies beyond this sensed world. In his The Seals of Wisdom, Ibn Arabi writes, “The people of the core who stumble onto the secret of divine laws and wisdoms” are with spiritual intelligences beyond normal people. 153 Thus, the spiritual sentiments of the Sufi poets place them on higher perceptive platforms than common people. Their poetry is a mirror of metaphysical truth, and although they experience and express this truth in simple poetic lexicon, their verses are highly symbolic. With respect to the Sufi and Romantic poetic sensibility or poetic genius, it is like-

153

The Seals of Wisdom, p. 88.

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wise synonymous with sparks of intelligences, divine gifts mirroring the beauty, wisdom, and truth of the Supreme Being.

CONCLUSION As mentioned in the introduction of this work, one of my purposes is to suspend a bridge between the cultures of the East and the West so that the gap is deconstructed. Will this gap completely disappear to be replaced by a true affinity between both cultures? In the introduction of an edited work, Sharmani Patricia Gabriel creates a dream-like vision: “Reimagined…, East/West is the space of crossings—dialogic transactions, overlaps, comparisons, hybrid identities, cultural transfers, entanglements, and productive confrontations.” 1 During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this imagined East/West space crossing became real when Sufism crossed the borders of the East and spread to various countries in the West. The malleability of the numerous Sufi orders with most spiritual and religious orders enthused an interest in Sufism. David Westerlund declares: “Today there are about two hundred ‘mother [Sufi] orders’, but since smaller and bigger branches have continuously grown from the trunks, the total number of tariqa [the spiritual path] organisations is much bigger than that.” 2 Though he also postulates that the immigration of secularized Muslims to Europe and America, is due to the

“Introduction.” Literature, Memory, Hegemony: East/West Crossings, edited by Sharmani Patricia Gabriel and Nicholas O. Pagan (Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), p. 17. 2 David Westerlund, ed. Sufism in Europe and north America (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), p. 3. 1

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unstable political situations in some Eastern countries, 3 it should be clarified that their presence has had a positive impact in developing Western spiritual awareness. One basic reason for this direction is the materialistic nature of capitalist societies obsessed with technological development to the extent that they objectified people’s lives and deprived them of emotional and spiritual peace and harmony. The abundance of electronic media and cyberspace accelerated the integration of the spiritual Eastern culture into Western ones. What also enthused this interest are seventeenth and eighteenth century Orientalists’ translations that made Sufi books for the first time available for a wider Western readership. Among the works of Sufi poets, it is Rumi’s that sold millions of copies in the West. In the United States of America, his poetry and teachings are considered apolitical in their promotion of peace and love. In the Washington Post of January 18, 2017, Alexander C. Kafka writes: How wonderful it is that Rumi, the 13th-century Muslim versifier, has become the best-selling poet in the United States! He might enjoy knowing that Trump’s America is snapping up translations of his homoerotically tinged work even as the country toys with banning Muslims and rolling back gay rights. 4

More importantly, after referring to the Islamic fundamentalists’ horrible crimes against humanity, Phillip Perkins, professor of Religion at Baylor University and author of Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History, admits: “To look at Westerlund, p. 14. Alexander C. Kafka. “Rumi: America’s favorite poet, from Persia, with love.” The Washington Post (January 18, 2017). Available: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/rumiamericas-favortie-poet-from-persia-with-love/2017/01/17/240ccc82d77f-11e6-9f9f-5cdb4b7f8dd7_story.html 3 4

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Islam without seeing the Sufis is to miss the heart of the matter.” He also adds: However startling this may seem, these very Sufis—these dedicated defenders and evangelists of mystical Islam—are potentially vital allies for the nations of the West. … Around the world, the Sufis are struggling against violent fundamentalists who are at once their deadly foes, and ours. … But the Sufis are much more than tactical allies for the West: they are, potentially, the greatest hope for pluralism and democracy within Muslim nations. … They have no fear of music, poetry, and other artistic forms—these are central to their sense of the faith’s beauty—and the brotherhoods cherish intellectual exploration. Progressive Sufi thinkers are quite open to modern knowledge and science. … This openmindedness contrasts with the much harsher views of the fundamentalists, who we know by various names. 5

Perkins’s above statements are to be taken seriously as they imply the necessity of studying Sufism in modern times. Indeed, the spirit of Sufism left its mark on famous Western singers and artists. Before an opera concert on October 20, 1998, Andrea Bocilli sat alone in a room and later noted: “no one can imagine how dear to me, in the solitude of this room, is the music of silence.” 6 Also in the trailer of a movie about his life, The Music of Silence, Bocilli admits: “Love is the wonderful symptom of every beating heart. It is the divine music that whispers to us in every

Philip Jenkins. “Mystical Power.” Boston.com (January 25, 2009). Available: http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/25/my stical_power/?page=full 6 Andrea Bocilli. The Music of Silence: A Memoir (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001), p. 135. 5

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moment of silence.” 7 Solitude, silence, and love are the beating heart of Sufism and Romanticism. According to Edward F. Kravitt, modern Romanticism “centers on the artist’s estrangement from society and consequent reactions: to turn within. This theory regards nature, mysticism, and other such subjects as avenues of escape.” 8 This would imply that it is not only Sufism but also Romanticism that is sought to vindicate the spiritualization of modern life. In this respect, Postmodernism is not completely isolated from Romanticism which has taken up several names, such as Virtual Romanticism, Technoromanticism, and Quantum Romanticism. In his article “Virtual Romanticism,” Fred Botting argues: Not only is Romanticism (as a particular literary-historical encounter) increasingly recognized in its contemporary recurrence, it also provides a way of thinking that informs discussions of contemporary cultural change. That Romanticism structures the way that subjects in the present present the present to themselves is evinced in both Utopian and dystopian representations of that digital revolution called cyberculture: … scientific humanism celebrates new technologies as the materialization of powers previously only imagined Romantically. 9

Richard Coyne further confirms the significance of imagination when he advances the term, “Technoromanticism,” to assert that modern digital and technological culture promote and depend The Music of Silence Trailer, 2018: Available: https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/The_Music_of_Silence?id =7G9ZbCrtAAY&hl=en_US. 8 Edward F. Kravitt. “Romanticism Today” The Musical Quarterly, vol. 76, no. 1 (Spring, 1992), pp. 93–109. 9 Botting, Fred. “Virtual Romanticism.” Romanticism and Postmodernism, edited by Edward Larrissy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 98–100. 7

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upon the power of the imagination. 10 Christine Kenyon-Jones confirms that modern science fiction has an affinity with the Romantic biofiction of Mary Shelley, and notes that: “Romanticism and postmodemism are the two ends of an arch celebrating human individualism which has spanned two centuries” (55). 11 Ian Greig also explains that Quantum Romanticism emerged from the enlistment of Eastern spiritual philosophies as heuristic aids in understanding the holistic inferences of physics to a gnostic desire to apprehend and experience the absolute, in quantum mysticism the romantic sublime surfaces in Neoplatonic mode, conspiring with notions of ekstasis [mysticism] and a unity beyond the realm of the material that reflects a desire not to apprehend the universe as real but, as Plotinus put it, as ‘one living organism.’ 12

All of these theories reverberate with the most basic features of Romanticism and Sufism. The mysteries of Timelessness and Richard Coyne. Technoromanticism: Digital Narrative, Holism, and the Romance of the Real (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999). 11 Christine Kenyon Jones. “SF and Romantic Biofictions: Aldiss, Gibson, Sterling Powers.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 24, no. 1 (March, 1997), pp. 47–56. Jones refers to William Gibson’s Neuromancer, to William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s The Difference Engine, and to Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates; at one point she hopes “to show that the small handful of Romantic biofictions share with the much more extensive and widely-read volumes of cyberculture novels an involvement with the organization and disorganization of self, a compulsion to explore the nature of their authors' contemporary postmodern world, and a desire to reflect upon the texture and meaning of science fiction itself: a preoccupation of late-20th-century writers,” p. 51. 12 Ian Greig. “Quantum Romanticism: The Aesthetics of the Sublime in David Bohm’s Philosophy of Physics.” Beyond the Finite: The Sublime in Art and Science, edited by Roald Hoffmann and Iain Boyd Whyte (New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2011), p. 121. 10

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Spacelessness still attract the attention of modern scientists, artists, and poets, all of whom seek the power of the imagination to create new dreams and visions in virtual computer games, movies, and songs to help modern people discharge the atrocities of their materialistic world and to provide them with illuminating moments in preparation for the inner experience when Time and Space cease to exist. Fundamentally, Sufism and Romanticism suspend bridges between the past and the present, the lower and the higher Self, man and nature, and Self and Divinity. Modern man needs inward contemplations, visions, and dreams, to be elevated to the level of divine spirituality; and this is realized in both the visionary Sufi dervishes and the Romantic pilgrims on the paths of Love, Beauty, Truth, and Illumination. Their inward journeys are circuitous and involve, as Abrams explains in his Natural Supernaturalism, 13 separateness, renunciation, torment, patience, repentance, abstinence, trust in the divine, union, and gnostic illumination. In a nutshell, they transcend terrestrial desires by negating the ego, to unveil the truth that Self is part of all others, especially the Creative Other. Like the Sufis and the British Romantics, the modernists sought personal pilgrimages into the inner recesses of the mind in an attempt to discover their immediate states of existing, body and soul, in a world that has become a global village inhabited by various races, ideals and cultures. The Sufis and Romantics roamed worldwide, some in foreign western lands and others in Eastern domains seeking knowledge of Self and Other. They sought the mystical experience in their pursuit of an ascetic moral discipline that agrees with and corresponds to all races and cultures. For both the Sufis and the Romantics, the mode for the self’s expression of altruism was and still is “To make the external internal, the internal external, to make nature thought, 13

Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, pp. 197–323.

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and thought nature, …—this is the mystery of genius in the Fine Arts.” 14 To modern Western artists, scientists and thinkers, the Near East and its cultures represent an Other which, according to Nasr “brings to mind the whole Ishrāqi or Illuminationist”; he also confirms: We know that in European languages ‘orient’ contains the double meaning of East as well as turning to the correct direction. In reality, this East is not as much to a geographic direction as the “Orient of Light” which is the spiritual world transcending the world of material forms. It is also the abode of that spiritual light which illuminates us and through which we receive true knowledge… It means also a penetration within ourselves and a reintegration. Applied to Islamic philosophy, this manner of thinking means then a representation into its spiritual and inner contents and an absorption of its essential truths. 15

Romantic poets willingly studied the “Oriental” or the Near Eastern cultures, particularly because one of their purposes was to create a new literary movement deviating from mere cognitive, objective observations of the eighteenth century world. In Sufism, they found an amenable literary movement, which repudiates selfishness in favor of selflessness on the paths to spiritual revelation and self-illumination. No doubt the Sufis and Romantics reacted against orthodox thoughts and developed new ones via the power if contemplation and the imagination. Escaping the distortions and complexities of contemporary material life, the West found in the works of the Sufis and the Romantics remarkable and overwhelming presence of spirituality that revitalizes the realization of the essential layers of human nature and identity. 14 15

Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, p. 169. Nasr, p. 108.

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It can be surmised that the relationship between Sufism and Romanticism warrants further consideration and investigation in these times where peace, love, harmony, tolerance—garners of the heart—are needed more than ever before. The more modern people open to Other the better life becomes. Knowledge and research are so indefinite that the more one reads the more one apprehends how frail one’s knowledge is. Accordingly, there is no finale to research and elucidations; each end is a new beginning. Knowledge through reading and researching are extremely intricate and confusing, but here lies its beauty. And because knowledge produces more knowledge through opening to and researching affinities of Self with Other, the question one may ask is: “Where does one stop reading and researching?” Despite the fact that there are no definite responses, it is best to stop when one thinks the work with its precincts and deficiencies would stimulate readers and scholars to generate more knowledge.

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Owen, H. P. “Experience and Dogma in the English Mystics.” Mysticism and Religious Traditions, ed. Steven T. Katz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983, pp. 148–62.

Pack, Robert. “William Wordsworth and the Voice of Silence.” New England Review, vol. 1, no. 2 (Winter, 1978), pp. 172– 190.

Peckham, Morse. “Toward a Theory of Romanticism: II. Reconsiderations.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 1, no. 1 (1961), pp. 1–12.

Perkins, David, editor. English Romantic Writers. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1967.

Pickthall, Mohammed Marmaduke, translator. The Meaning of the Glorious Koran. New York: Mentor Book, 1953.

Pierce, Frederick E. “The Genesis and General Meaning of Blake’s “Milton.” Modern Philology, vol. 25, no. 2 (November, 1927), pp. 165–178.

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Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. The Emergence of Romanticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

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Roden, Noel, the Honble. Life of Lord Byron. London: Walter Scott, 1890.

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Ruma, Mustapha Bala. “Crossing Frontiers: English Romanticism and Sufism as Literary Movements.” Literature, Memory, Hegemony, edited by Sharmani Patricia Gabriel, Nicholas Pagan. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 37–54. ——. Me & Rumi: The Autobiography of Shams-i Tabrizi, translated by William Chittick. Louisville, Kentucky: Four Colour Imports, Ltd., 2004.

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Saint Augustine. Saint Augustine: Confessions, translated and introduced by R. S. Pin-Coffin. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1961.

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Salamah-Qudsi, Arin Shawkat. “A Lightning Trigger or a Stumbling Block: Mother Images and Roles in Classical Sufism.” Oriens, vol. 39, no. 2 (2011), pp. 199–226.

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INDEX GENERAL INDEX

Abba Anthony, 53, 55 Abba Macarius, 53 Abrams, M. H., 116, 132–133, 165, 179, 186, 198–199, 234, 264, 265, 267 Abul’ Ala’, 122, 169 Afnan, Sohei M, 237 Akman, Kubilay, 67–68, 267 Al-Adlouni Al-Idrisi, Muhammed, 188, 267 Al-Ansari, 192 Albania, 11, 5–6, 30 Al-Basri, Rabia, 104–105, 155, 267 Al-Bukhari, Imam Muhammad, 197 Al-Dabbagh, Abdullah, 167, 267 Aleppo, 12, 56, 122 Al-Ghazali, 6, 72–75, 90, 127, 174, 185–186, 197, 252, 253, 256, 267 Al-Hallaj, 89–90, 176, 239 Ali Nadwi, Ayed Abul Hasan, 197, 267 Alizadeh, Ali, 65, 268 Al-Nuri, Abu l-Hasan, 65 Al-Qays, Imru, 6 Al-Tabari, 267

285

Al-Yafi, Abd al-Harim, 29, 275 Amjad, Fazel Asadi, 252, 268 Annihilation, 108, 115 Antarah Ibn Shaddad, 7, 18 Arabia, 6, 11, 18, 44, 60–61, 65, 67, 103, 112, 231 Arberry, A. J., 35, 85, 89, 103, 111, 268, 281 Aristotle, 79, 167, 216 Armenia, 6, 58 Asceticism, 86 Asiatic Society of Bengal, 11 Attar, 6, 26, 29–30, 65, 76–77, 105, 107–108, 147, 149, 153, 167, 187, 239–240, 251, 268 Attar, Samar, 22 Averroes, 75 Avicenna, 78, 237 Avery, Kenneth, 65, 268 Baaklini, Samir S., 9 Bahti, Timothy, 215, 268 Barks, Coleman, 103, 281 Barnes, Jonathan, 167, 280 Barth, J. Robert, 209, 268 Barth, Robert J., 209 Basil the Great, 55 Beatty, Bernard, 135, 269 Beatty, Warren, 183

286

TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM

Beckford, William, 4, 8, 28 Bedjan, P., 57 Beer, John, 158, 270 Bernhardt-Kabisch, Ernest, 216–217, 268 Bewley, Aisha, 75, 274 Bible, 32, 44, 91, 94, 244 bin Salma, Zuhayr, 18 Bishop Aëtius, 49 Bishop, Jonathan, 219–220, 268 Blackstone, Bernard, 11, 7, 26, 135–136, 268 Blake, William, 3, 5–6, 30–32, 90, 95, 123–124, 132, 150– 151, 180–182, 191, 234, 238–241, 243, 269, 272, 276, 278–279, 284 Bloom, Harold, 90, 97, 269 Bocilli, Andrea, 261, 269 Bohm, David, 263 Boswell, James, 14, 269 Botting, Fred, 262, 269 Boys-Stones, George, 157, 279 Brawne, Fanny, 168 Brock, Sebastian, 56, 271 Buddhism, 36, 93 Bunyan, John, 107 Burckhardt, Titus, 6, 83, 84, 85, 269 Bushrui, S. B, 122–123, 280 Butler, Marilyn, 135, 269 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 3, 5–7, 10–11, 22–30, 81, 88, 90–91, 97, 102, 106, 110, 112–113, 124, 130, 134– 150, 173–175, 180, 203– 204, 234, 268–272, 275– 284

Cardwell, Richard, 25, 26 Carman, John B., 36, 269 Cavaliero, Roderick, 26, 28–29 Champion, Joseph, 21 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 107, 148, 167, 273 Chavkin, Allan, 233, 269 Chew, Samuel C., 22, 270 Ching, Julia, 41, 270 Chittick, William, 79–80, 98, 99, 108, 126, 147, 157, 172, 192, 195–197, 206– 207, 211, 224, 254, 255, 270, 280 Circuitous journey, 108, 179 Clarke, J. D., 19–20, 47, 143, 270, 276 Clement of Alexandria, 45, 47, 276 Coburn, Kathleen, 218, 270 Cochran, Peter, 22, 24, 25–26, 270 Coleridge, Ernest Hartley, 78, 270 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 3, 5– 6, 20, 23, 30, 37–39, 42, 78, 90–91, 96–97, 104–107, 110, 112, 124, 130, 133– 134, 153, 155–159, 163, 164–165, 173, 179–180, 190, 199, 200,–202, 204, 208–210, 212, 216–230, 234–235, 248–252, 254– 256, 268, 270, 276, 281 Colless, Brian E., 55 Conant, Martha, 22, 271 Contemplation, 5, 34, 41–46, 48–49, 54, 56, 58–59, 61, 65, 77, 82, 99, 117, 124,

INDEX 162, 179–181, 188, 196, 214, 231, 236–239, 252, 255, 257, 265 Cook, Elizabeth, 98, 271 Coote, Stephen, 271 Corbin, Henry, 134–144, 270 Coyne, Richard, 262–263, 271 Crook, Nora, 120 Curtis, Jared, 152, 271 D’Herbelot, Barthelamy, 6, 89– 90, 271 Dacre, Charlotte, 20 Daniel, Norman, 22, 271 Davis, Dick, 12, 271 Davis, Frederick Hadland, 81 De Boer,T. J., 2, 186, 271 de Musset, Alfred, 27 Edification, 43, 45–51, 58–59, 61, 272, 276 Delacroix, 22, 282 Delcogliano, Mark, 49 Desai, Anita, 2, 278 Desert Fathers, 44, 52, 55, 60, 283 Desert Mystics, 45 Dickson, William Rory, 79 Diderot, 19 Dillon, John M., 157, 279 Divine Being, 125 Divine Love, 4, 108, 129 Divine Truth, 40 Edoardo, Albert, 72 Egypt, 24, 28, 44, 52, 56, 60, 63 Einboden, 38 Einboden, Jeffrey, 19, 39, 136, 271 El Samad, Soha, 9

287 Enlightenment, 41, 43, 52, 53, 108–109, 136, 223, 231, 257 Ephrem the Syrian, 55, 271 Erdman, David V., 90, 269 Eriugena, John Scot, 37 Ernst, Carl W., 281 Esser, Fr. Kajetan, 63, 281 Eunomius, 49 Extinction, 85 Ezzeldin, Hend Hamed, 171, 272 Fadiman, James, 125, 272 Fakhr al-Dīn al- Fārisī, 63 Father Paschal Aucher, 113 Field, Claud, 73, 267 Finch, Jeffrey, 46–47, 272 Finlan, Stephen, 45–46, 272 Firdausi, 12, 18, 23, 90, 149 Fisher, Sidney Nettleton, 2, 25, 272 FitzGerald, Edward, 12, 268 Flaubert, 23 Flavel, Rev. Mr. John, 220, 272 Frager, Roger, 125, 272 Fraistat, Neil, 119 Francis of Assisi, 62–63, 94, 272, 281 Franklin, Michael J., 9, 13, 20, 68–80, 93, 102, 272 Gabriel, Paricia, 276 Galland, Jean Antoine, 2 Galt, John, 139, 140, 272 Garcia, Humberto, 26–28, 38, 123, 272 Garland, Cannon, 2, 16, 272 Gerson, Lloyd, 157, 279

288

TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM

Gibb, H. A. R., 68, 77, 88, 191, 197, 273 Gibson, William, 263 Gifford, William, 149 Gill, Stephen, 78, 273 Gladwin, Francis, 4, 7–8, 21, 281 Glasscoe, Marion, 103, 273 Gnosis, 35, 67, 75, 86, 88, 108, 139, 196, 202, 226, 232– 233 Goethe, 6, 17–19, 124, 234, 271, 278, 283 Graham, Harvey, 76 Graham, Lieutenant James William, 67, 68, 76, 82–83, 273 Greece, 6, 11, 29–30, 53–54, 92–93, 248 Gregory of Nazianzus, 45, 50– 52, 284 Gregory of Nyssa, 45, 49, 280 Gregory, John, 45, 49, 50–52, 54, 224, 225, 273, 278, 280, 284 Greig, Ian, 263, 273 Griffith, Ralph T. E., 149 Haddad, Emily A., 22, 26, 27, 273 Hafez, 6, 12, 16–19, 23, 30, 90 Haggarty, Sarah, 123, 284 Hajj, 104, 107 Halligan, Fredrica R., 223, 273 Hanif, N., 65 Harmless, William, 55, 273 Harris, Rabia Terri, 75, 166, 274 Hartman, Geoffrey H., 213 Harvey, Graham, 273

Hasan, Masoodul, 22, 107, 197, 267, 273 Hatifi, 12–13 Havens, Raymonda F., 213 Hay, Rod, 201, 274 Hayley, William, 238 Heavenly Journey, 86 Hedley, Douglas, 37, 38, 39 Hegel, 37, 95, 132, 274 Heiler, Freidrich, 41 Hemans, Felicia, 20 Hepburn, Ronald W., 40, 274 Herbert Harington, John, 21 Herder, Johann Friedrich, 16, 17, 19, 274 Higher Self, 34, 73, 109 Hilal, Muhammed Ghounaimy, 142, 145, 274 Hilton, Hilton, 103 Hinduism, 36, 93 Hobbes, Thomas, 200, 248, 274 Hodgson, John A., 213 Hoffmann, Ronald, 263, 273 Hudduck, Kevin Edward King, 9 Hughes, A. M. D., 98, 199, 274 Hugo, Howard E., 27, 111, 124, 132, 274 Hugo, Victor, 27, 124 Hume, 15 Humility, 41, 43, 53–55, 57, 62–64, 69 Huntington, Samuel, 31, 33– 34, 274 Hutchinson, Thomas, 31, 282 Ibn Arabi, 6, 75–79, 95, 104, 121–122, 143–144, 155, 165–167, 169, 178–179,

INDEX 185–186, 194–196, 205– 206, 211–223, 239, 257, 273–274, 276 Ibn Sirin, 68 Ibn Tufayl, 29, 78 Idel, Moshe, 94, 103–104, 275 Illumination, 4, 5, 21, 36, 41, 42, 43, 64–67, 80, 88, 107, 109, 118–119, 127, 141, 157, 163, 172, 174, 183, 189, 193–194, 214, 220– 223, 226, 232–235, 264, 265 Imru’ Al-Qais, 17–18, 102, 106, 110, 134 India, 6–7, 11, 14, 16, 20–23, 28, 231, 282 Industrial Revolution, 5, 79, 123, 198 Inge, William, 183 Iqbal, Afzal, 17, 19, 62, 164, 176–177, 210, 275, 281 Iraq, 24, 32, 55, 57, 69–70, 104 Isaac of Nineveh, 56–57 Jack, Malcolm, 2, 278 Jacobus, Mary, 213 Jahiliyyah, 17–18 Jami, 6–7, 12, 81, 131, 142, 145–146, 149, 191, 205, 238, 271, 275 Jassim Ali, Muhsin, 2, 275 Javadi, Hasan, 22 Jenkins, Philip, 261, 275 Jili, Abd Al Karim, 75 John of Gaunt, 167 John of the Cross, 94 John the Venerable, 58

289 Johnson, Samuel, 4, 8, 14–15, 269 Jones, Edward R., 2, 271 Jones, Sir William, 2–4, 6–8, 11, 13–18, 20, 30, 80, 88, 93, 101–114, 131, 145, 186, 220, 263, 272, 275– 276, 283 Jones, Sydney J., 89, 279 Judaism, 2, 7, 34, 94, 103, 114 Julian of Norwich, 103 Junayd, 6, 89, 117, 176–177, 184 Kafka, Alexander C., 260, 275 Kālidāsa, 16 Kallendorf, Hilaire, 65, 277 Karam, Savo, 9 Katz, Steven T., 36, 41, 94, 269–270, 275, 279 Kazan, Elia, 183 Kazvini, Mirza Muhammad, 238, 275 Keats, George, 226 Keats, Georgiana, 226 Keats, John, 5, 3, 6, 25, 28, 30, 42, 90, 92, 93, 98, 104, 110, 112, 124, 132, 166, 168–171, 201–202, 205, 209, 212, 225–226, 235, 271–272, 277, 280, 281– 282 Kelley, Theresa M., 213–215, 275 Kennedy, James, 90–91, 275 Kenney, John Peter, 61, 276 Kharlamov, Vladimir, 45–48, 272, 276 Khayyam, Omar, 12 Khuzistan, 57

290

TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM

Kidwai, Abdur Raheem, 7, 9, 11, 26–27, 38, 276 King of Tabuk, 109, 121 King, R. A. H., 9, 44, 110, 157, 279 Kiymaz, Sehnaz, 85, 276 Koehler, W., 19, 281 Koran/Quran, 3–4, 8–9, 12, 60, 70–71, 79, 82–83, 85, 89, 95, 99, 106, 164, 176, 180, 194–197, 228–229, 236– 237, 244–245, 252, 282, 279 Kravitt, Edward F., 262, 276 Kritzeck, James, 106, 141, 149, 276 Kumojimap, Tamoe, 32–33, 276 Labid, 106 Landau, Rom, 77, 121, 178, 212, 239, 276 Landor, Water Savage, 20, 23, 26 Larrissy, Edward, 32, 262, 269, 276 Leask, Nigel, 22–23, 26, 217, 276 Lebanon, 9, 24, 26, 53, 55–57, 69–70, 278 Levant, 2, 29 Lewisohn, Leonard, 115, 176, 209, 277 Lopez-Baralt, Luce, 65–66, 277 Lord Teign mouth, 2 Lovell, Ernest J. Jr., 143, 277 Lowe, Lowe, 11, 23, 277 MacDonad, Daniel J., 115 MacKenzie, John M., 22, 26– 27, 277

Mackintosh, Sir James, 14–15, 277 Malbranche, 19 Malebranche, Nocolas, 248, 277 Maloney, George A., 53–54, 280 Marandi, Seyed Mohammed, 24–25, 277 Marchand, Leslie, 113, 143, 269, 277 Margery Kempe, 103 Matisse, 22, 282 Matlack, Richard E., 91, 277 McDonald, M. V., 61, 268 McGann, Jerome J., 11, 269 McGinn, Bernard, 94, 103, 104, 275 McQuail, Josephine A., 181, 278 Mecca, 39, 60–61, 72, 75, 89, 110, 267 Meditation, 38, 41–42, 58, 64, 82, 94, 173, 177, 209, 233, 236, 253 Medwin, Thomas, 161, 278 Mee, John, 123, 284 Melikian, Anahid, 278 Mesrobian, Arpena, 113, 278 Milton, John, 148, 181, 182, 279 Mir Muhammed Husain, 114 Møller, Lis, 220, 221, 278 Mommsen, Katharina, 17, 278 Monophysitism, 70 Monotheism, 85 Montagu, Lady Mary, 2, 4, 6– 7, 9–11, 20, 23, 30, 278 Montaigne, 19

INDEX Montesquieu, 19, 23 Montgomery, M. V., 61 Montgomery, W., 267 Moore, Thomas, 20, 23, 26, 27–28, 30, 278 Moreschini, C., 50, 278 Mount Lebanon, 57 Moyne, Johb, 103, 281 Munro, J. M., 122–123, 280 Mystical Fusion, 95 Mystical Path, 82 Mysticism, 3, 5–7, 13, 31–33, 35, 36–38, 40–55, 59, 61– 62, 64, 68–71, 75–76, 86, 89, 93–94, 103, 127, 172, 176, 181, 184, 252, 262, 263, 267, 269–270, 273– 274–276, 278–279 Namaan, Abbot Paul, 56, 278 Napoleon, 28 Narcissism, 164 Nasr, Syyed Hossein, 198, 202, 205, 211, 234, 237, 265, 278 Nemoianu, Virgil, 93, 279 Neoplatonism, 78 Nestorianism, 70 Newey, Vincent, 135, 269 Nicholas, Pagan O., 33, 276, 259 Nicholas, Roe, 226 Nicholson, Reynold, 72, 103, 117, 127, 197, 278, 281, 283 Nilchian, Elham, 119–120, 131, 148, 278 Nizami, 90, 99, 100, 149 O’Neil, Michael J., 88–89, 279 Oneness, 35, 69, 76–78, 234

291 Orientalism, 3, 5, 11, 9, 11, 15, 18–20, 22, 24–27, 31, 93, 135, 217, 269, 270, 276, 277, 279, 28–283 Origen, 45, 48–49 Otto, Rudolf, 37, 279 Oueijan, Naji B., 1, 5–7, 11, 24, 93, 135, 145, 279 Oueijan, Nicolas B., 2, 9 Owen, H. P., 94, 279 Owenson, Sydney, 20 Pack, Robert, 172–173, 279 Pagan, Gabriel, 33, 60–61, 123, 259, 272, 280 Pagan, Nicholas, 280 Pantheism, 6, 13, 76–78, 95 Path of Knowledge, 3, 73, 195– 196, 206, 207, 211, 255 Path of Love, 5, 87, 117 Pearson, Nancy, 134, 270 Peckham, Peckham, 111, 279 Peers, E. Allison, 66, 281 Perfect Man, 77, 95–96, 176, 232 Perkins, David, 41, 260–261, 279 Persia, 6, 12, 44, 65, 72, 81, 103, 112, 126, 231, 260, 275 Phoenicia, 167 Pickthall, Mohammed Marmaduke, 95, 279 Pierce, Prederick E., 182, 279 Pin-Coffin, R. S., 61, 281 Pinkard, Terry, 95, 274 Platonism, 47, 61, 72, 78, 79 Plotinus, 37, 38, 78, 156, 157, 159, 202, 263, 279 Pope, Alexander, 10, 13, 214

292

TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM

Porphyry, 167, 280 Poulet, George, 181, 186, 280 Powers, Tim, 263 Pseudo-Macarius, 54, 280 Purgation, 21, 34, 36, 41, 44– 45, 64, 66, 96, 157, 182 Qatar, 56–57 Radcliffe, Evan, 203, 280 Radde-Gallwitz, 49, 280 Raizis, Byron, 279 Reconciliation, 96–97, 109, 118, 136, 142, 164, 180, 190, 201 Redeüber die Mythologie, 282 Reiman, Donald H, 119 Renard, John, 252, 280 Repentance, 88, 118, 136, 264 Riasanovsky, Nicholas V, 78, 280 Rihani, Ameen, 122–123, 280 Roden, Noel, 174, 280 Roe, Nicholas, 280 Rolle, Richard, 103 Romanticism, 1, 3, 17, 19, 27, 32–33, 38, 42, 78, 88, 93, 95, 109–112, 115–116, 118, 132, 172, 175, 181, 192– 193, 216–217, 225, 239, 257, 262–264, 266, 268– 269, 271, 273, 276–280, 282, 283 Rousseau, 19, 148, 153 Ruma, Mustapha Bala, 209, 210, 280 Rumi, 5–6, 17–18, 63, 73–74, 80–81, 90, 98–99, 103, 108–110, 120, 125–129, 131, 134, 138–143, 145– 146, 149, 153, 157, 160–

161, 164, 167, 172, 176– 177, 180, 187, 197, 207, 210, 224–225, 228–230, 232, 236, 251–253, 260, 268, 270, 275, 277, 280– 281, 283 Russell, Archibald G. B., 172, 239, 269 Russell, Peter, 172, 281 Rzepka, Charles J., 42, 281 Saadi, 4, 6, 12, 16, 18, 21, 23, 30, 90, 129, 142, 149, 281 Sabo, Theodore, 70 Said, Edward, 22, 24, 26, 281 Saint Anthony the Great, 53 Saint Augustine, 61–62, 87–88, 281 Saint John of the Cross, 64, 66–67, 281 Saint Mark, 44, 53–54 Saint Maron, 56–57 Saint Teresa of Avila, 64–66 Salamah-Qudsi, Arin Shawkat, 62, 281 Sale, George, 3, 6, 8–9 Salvation, 72 San Lazzaro, 113 Schimmel, Annemarie, 19, 62, 69–71, 85–86, 89, 100, 101, 108, 117, 177, 178, 184– 185, 192, 281 Schlegel, Friedrich, 16–17, 19, 282 Schlosser, Heinrich, 17 Schueller, Herbert, 42, 235, 236, 282 Schwab, Raymond, 22, 282 Scott, Elspet William Robertson, 32

INDEX Scott, Grant F., 92, 282 Scott, John William Robertson, 32, 277 Scott, Jolley D., 248 Sedgwick, Mark, 67–79, 282 Self-transformation, 83 Self-annihilation, 3–4, 36, 41, 43–44, 65, 83, 108, 117– 118, 161, 175, 180, 183– 184, 187, 188, 202, 214 Self-negation, 83, 119 Sells, Michael, 103, 104 Sfeir, Maria, 9 Shah, Idries, 6, 62–63, 100, 107, 118, 236, 253, 282 Shahid, Irfan, 110, 282 Shahiditabar, Mostafa, 245, 282 Sharafuddin, Mohammed, 22, 26, 282 Sharify-Funk, Meena, 79–80, 282 Sharmani, Patricia, 32, 259, 272, 276, 280 Shelley, Percy Byssehe, 3, 5–6, 13, 20, 25, 28, 30–31, 90, 92, 98, 102, 104, 106–107, 110, 112, 114–115, 118– 120, 124, 131–133, 161– 164, 180, 187, 191, 199, 202, 205, 208, 212, 224, 231–233, 235–263, 274, 277–278, 282–283 Simon the Gracious, 59 Smart, Christopher, 28 Smith, Andrew, 15, 157, 279, 282 Smith, Margert, 105 Smith, Wilford Cantwell, 282

293 Smyser, Jane Worthington, 213 Solitude, 34, 44, 53, 56–58, 66, 105, 113, 131, 162, 173, 174, 214, 222, 226, 261 Sourozh, Metropolitan Anthony of, 44 Southey, Robert, 23, 26, 276 Spenser, Edmond, 148 spiritual illumination, 4 St. Augustine, 64, 248 St. Basil, 49 St. Nierses of Lampron, 113 St. Paul the Apostle, 113 Sterling, Bruce, 263 Stevens, Mary Anne, 22–23, 282 Subsistence, 85, 120, 183, 242 Sufism, 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 31–35, 42, 62–63, 67, 68, 69, 71–73, 78–83, 85, 87– 89, 93–95, 98, 100–103, 107–118, 121–122, 125– 129, 132–136, 138, 143– 144, 163–164, 167, 169– 171, 17–175, 178–179, 181, 187, 192–193, 196–198, 223, 225, 232–234, 236– 239, 252, 257, 259, 261– 268, 270, 272–273, 275, 278, 280–283 Sulivan, Stephen, 20 Sultan Achmet III, 10 Sultan Malek al-Kamil, 63 Suphan, B., 16, 274 Suso, 94 Swedenborg, 123, 272 Sweeney, John, 63, 272 Swift, Jonathan, 4, 8 Sykes, D. A., 50, 245, 271, 278

294

TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM

Sykes, Davis A., 245 Synexomoiosas, 46 Syria, 12, 24, 53, 55, 56, 57, 60, 69, 70 Tabrizi, Shamsi, 6, 126, 127, 280, 283 Taoism, 36, 93 Tarafa, 18 Tarawreh, Yousef, 213 Tauler, 94 Taurus Mountains, 56 Teignmouth, Lord, 3, 114, 145, 283 Theosis, 45–46, 48, 51, 58, 59, 61 Thomas à Kempis, 94 Trelawny, Edward, 30, 283 Tufayl, 29, 275 Turkey, 5––7, 9, 11, 29–30, 112 Turner, Bryan S., 31, 283 Tyre, 167 Unification, 44, 59, 64, 89, 118, 184, 190–191, 206 Union with God, 74 Unity of Being, 4, 75, 118, 139, 150–151, 193–195, 234, 241 Universal Love, 43, 151, 158 Universal Man, 95, 96 Universal Self, 40 Vaughan-Lee, Llewellyn, 87, 88, 283 Veit, Walter, 18–19, 283 Venice, 113

Voltaire, 9, 19, 283 von Hammer, Josef, 18 von Hammer-Purgstall, Josef, 18 Wann, Louis, 148, 283 Ward, Benedicta, 44, 283 Ware, Kallistos, 46, 283 Webb, Timothey, 92, 283 Westerlund, David, 259–260, 283 Whinfield, E. H., 145, 238, 275, 281 White, Carolinne, 50, 284 Whitehead, Angus, 123, 284 Whyte, Iain Boyd, 263, 273 Wiener, Harold, 135, 284 Wilberding, James, 157, 279 Wiley, Michael, 219–220, 284 Wood, Natalie, 183 Wordsworth, Jonathan, 271 Wordsworth, William, 5, 30, 41–42, 77–78, 90–91, 96, 105–106, 110, 112, 124, 151–155, 165, 172–173, 180, 182–184, 189, 198– 199, 202–204, 212–216, 218–226–230, 233, 242– 247–269, 271, 273, 275, 278–280, 284 Xavier, Merin Shobhana, 79 Yohannan, John D., 15,–16, 284 Zaidi, Seyed A. H., 253 Zimmerman, Benedict, 65

INDEX OF ARABIC, ISLAMIC AND SUFI TERMS

ʿanqa (simurgh) 108 ʿilm (knowledge) 197

ʿīmān (faith) 71

INDEX tawḥīd or (to call for the Unity of God) 74 al-wuquf ál-átlal (observation of the beloved or people’s abodes) 106 aṣ-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqeem (the straightway) 84 ahbabtu (I loved/past tense) 101 al-baqā (subsistence) 85, 120, 176, 177–178, 180 al-fanā/fanaa (extinction) 85, 115n, 120, 125, 175, 176 al-insan al-kamil (perfect human), 95–96 al-la’mahdoud (with no limits) 207 amr (command) 254 ar-Raḥmān (the Compassionate) 84 ar-Raheem (the Merciful) 84 Asḥāb aṣ-Ṣuffah (Companions of the Veranda/terrace) 67 at-ta’amul (meditation) 82 at-tafakkur (contemplation) 82 bulbul (nightingale) 136n, 146– 147, 170 dhat (beauty of the essence) 118 dhikr (remembrance) 78, 104, 336 fi‘l-‘Ishq (on love) 167 fikr (thought) 207 gul (rose) 146 haqiqā /hugeequt) (Truth) 82, 85 ḥadīth qudsī (sacred talk) 74 hajj (pilgrimage) 107 hulul (human unification with God) 89 inkhitaf (flotation) 223 islam (submission to God) 125 ittihad or “Union with God” 74

295

jawhar hayulānî (primal substance) 95 kalimā (the Word of God or the spirit of divine creation in Islam) kha-yal (imagination) 77, 207 La ìlah ìlla Allah (Allah is One) 85 lawa’ih (flashes of light) 238 lubb (kernel) 196 mārifā/mãrifut) (Gnosis) 82 mahboob (the loved or the Son of God) 83 Majnun (mad or the name of someone madly in love) 7, 7n, 12, 14n, 81n, 100n, 121, 144, 149 Mohib (God) 83 muezzin (the sheikh calling for Muslim prayer) 252 munajat (intimate conversations with God) 192n nafkha (breath) 95 qalb (heart) 237 qasida (an Arabic form of poetry) 104, 106 qishr (shell) 196 risala (a letter) 167 shariā/ Shěryät (religious law) 82, 85, 210 ša’ir (poet) 101 and poetry) 101 sa-uhiboki (I will love you) 101 safa/sěfã (purity) 67 saff/sãf (rank) 67 saffi/sëf (pure) 67 šiʾir (petry) 101 sûf/suf/süf (wool) 68–69, 71 sûfi (Sufi) 67 sufi’yün (plural of Sufi)

296

TRACES OF SUFISM IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM

Surat al-Fatihah (the opening verses of the Quran) 83, 85 tajalli (refulgence) 75 taqwá (piety) 71 tariq al-hikma (the path of knowledge) 73 tariqa/tureegut (path) 67, 79, 82, 85, 259 tasawwafa (to become a Sufi) 68 tawbā (redemption) 88 uhiboki (I love you used for females) 101

uhibuka (I love you used for males) 101 uhibukum (I love you; used for the plural) 101 Wahdat al Wujud (the Unity of Being) 75–76, 95, 139–140, 150 yaš’ur (to feel) 101 zanadiqā (heretics) 89 iḥsān, (charity) 71