Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

by Leonard Lewisohn

  Lines 7–8: Recognizing the Friend’s Work: Recapitulation and Conclusion

  Line 7 here, like the end of line 6, might at first appear like another simple and poignant repetition of the spiritual dilemmas first raised in the opening verse; indeed, its opening (and pointedly eschatological) banquet-imagery, at first glance, is as close to familiar and banal as one will ever find in this poet.8 And Ḥāfiẓ clearly intends for that confusion to arise, since he leaves it quite ambiguous whether we are to read line 7 simply as a continuation of the very personal and intimate voice of lines 5–6, or as a return to the more inclusive, objective, wiser voice that his readers often expect from his conclusion – the kind of all-knowing, reproaching wisdom-voice we clearly do find in the last line here. The transforming answer to that dilemma, as we might expect, comes in the second half of line 7, where we are reminded that Life itself (‘aysh, which is far more than just enjoyment) is impossible without the Friend. So this time, what is pointedly absent from this scene is the opening pretence of the lost and lonely ego. Since we have been reminded that that Friend is ‘with you all wherever you may be’ (57:4), there can be no question now of who is asking, and who is really being asked.

  The concluding line 8 of this ghazal is a particularly striking illustration of the essential double function and meaning of Ḥāfiẓ’s pen-name: both as vocative – addressed to every human being and to all the far-reaching responsibilities of our cosmic role and potential as ḥāfiẓ; and in this case also as imperative, demanding (in the intensive third Arabic verbal form) that we actively, assiduously, constantly ‘be mindful, watch out, observe, uphold and be heedful’. And both functions, of course, are unavoidably in the necessarily individual singular form.

  Beyond that telling form of address, the rest of the first half-line here appears at first as a beautiful poetic reworking of the famous ḥadīth: ‘Don’t curse al-dahr [the apparent cyclical eternity, suffering and fatality of the material world’s order, often blamed in pre-Islamic poetry], because it is among God’s Names!’9 But Ḥāfiẓ’s concluding, typically ironic formulation here – together with the rest of this ghazal – goes much deeper in offering a deeply insightful explanation of the reasons underlying that Prophetic prohibition. For as the preceding lines have made clear, it is in fact only through the transforming human Work of our own necessarily unique and individual experience of suffering, loss, distance and separation – through constantly discovering the cyclical polarities and oppositions inherent in all those divine Names that are mirrored in the fully human being (insān) – that we can ever begin to discover, appreciate, know and love that Friend whose apparent painful, arbitrary ‘absence’ (and constant guiding Presence) makes the whole drama of loss and redemption possible.

  Voice and Perspective Shifts in Ghazal 13: Surrender or Separation?

  This short, apparently simple ghazal10 well illustrates the particular challenges of interpretation that so often arise when Ḥāfiẓ leaves out some of the familiar grammatical and syntactical markers that normally signal important shifts in perspective and tone or voice. In the face of such intentional indeterminacy, each reader’s particular understanding of the shifts in question, both in voice and perspective, tends to be built – as we shall see below – on the basis of apparent allusions to connected problems, meanings and frameworks of interpretation familiar from other ghazals and from the poet’s wider cultural and literary background. In this case, for example, we are obliged to assume from the start that the pointedly contrasting perspectives, quite clearly articulated in verses 5–7, must be read back into the first half of the poem, and particularly into the two halves of the opening verse.

  Ghazal 13

  [1] What is more happy than life/pleasure, spiritual conversation, the garden, and spring?

  Where is the Sāqī? Say, what is the cause of waiting/expectation?

  [2] Take as a blessing each instant of happiness that is given to you:

  No one knows (for sure) what the outcome of the Work is.

  [3] The connection of life is tied with a single hair: Be aware/wise!

  Focus on (the cause of) your own pain – what is the pain of fate/time/the world?

  [4] The real meaning of the Water of Life and the garden of Iram:

  What is it but the edge of this flowing stream and wholesome/delicious wine?

  [5] Since the sober [‘veiled ones’] and the intoxicated are both from one tribe,

  We, to whom should we give the Heart? What is (arbitrary) choosing?

  [6] What does the heavenly sphere know of the Secret behind the veil? Silence!

  O critic/pretender/complainer, what is your quarrel with the Veil-Keeper?!

  [7] The ascetic wants the drink of Kawthar, and Ḥāfiẓ wants the Cup (of the heart):

  So between the two, which does the Creater/Doer choose!?

  Line 1: ‘What is the Cause of this Waiting?’

  The opening verse of this ghazal sets out the two opposing metaphysical perspectives that are contrasted throughout this poem. The first half-line, a purely rhetorical question – and in reality an ecstatic exclamation of pure delight – straightforwardly articulates Ḥāfiẓ’s (and each accomplished spiritual Knower’s) immediate perception of the inherent good of the Spirit and the realized divine Presence, of the ‘Garden’ of divine proximity as already present in the purified and receptive human Heart, and in the active ‘spiritual conversation’ (suḥbat) or interaction with the Beloved that fills it. In poignant contrast – both emotionally and spiritually – the twin questions forming the second half of this opening verse raise the recurrent problem of that unconscious spiritual blindness and profound ‘veiling’ of the heart (line 5), which leave the critic/plaintiff/pretender (mudda‘ī of line 6) and piously hopeful ascetic (zāhid of line 7) feeling painfully separated from God, unhappily waiting for the imagined future coming of the divine Wine-bearer (sāqī), and desperately searching for the presumably external cause (sabab) of this difficult separation and interminable state of expectation.

  If the first half-line represents a kind of immediate, uncomplicated spiritual communication (suḥbat) between Ḥāfiẓ and each of his receptive readers, the perspective of estrangement and longing assumed in the second half-line is much more problematic, in that the relationship of the questioner and his or her intended audience assumed there can be understood on at least three distinct levels, each with very different meanings. To begin with, from the perspective of the speaker of the first half-line (whether we conceive of that voice as Ḥāfiẓ himself, or his persona of the idealized spiritual Knower familiar to his readers from many other ghazals), the two parallel questions in the second half-line are entirely ironic, perhaps even openly mocking, since that opening speaker is well aware that he or she is not waiting or expectant, and always knows (as we are told again and again in the Qur’ān and ḥadīth) that the divine Sāqī and promised Gardens are already with us and at hand. Instead, if we do assume that same opening speaker is also raising these two questions, then most charitably he can only be doing so as an initially pointed, well-intentioned challenge to that host of deeply ‘veiled’ (lines 5–6) critics, ascetics and hypocritically pious ‘pretenders’ – familiar characters in each of Ḥāfiẓ’s spiritual dramas – inquiring inwardly as to why they still find themselves waiting for that same God whose Face, as they must paradoxically admit, we all must see ‘wherever we turn’ (2:115). Finally, we can understand these two questions as reflecting the inner state of all those ‘veiled’ individuals, plaintively wondering why God still keeps them personally ‘waiting’ (until death or some other future time) to reappear and fulfil all those repeated metaphysical assurances and scriptural promises – assertions which the Qur’ān itself tellingly places in the present continuous tense, though they paradoxically insist on reading them into their own imagined or wished-for future.

  The particular word for ‘cause’ (sabab) in the second opening question here also suggests the underly
ing metaphysical issue or controversy shaping the entire poem, since in the longstanding language of Islamic philosophy and spirituality this technical term referred specifically to our mind’s grasp of the complex chains of relative, secondary, spatio-temporal ‘occasions’ for the manifest appearances in this world: or in other words, to the conception of our destiny as depicted according to the deterministic material world view of the philosopher–scientists of that time. For Ḥāfiẓ, of course, that opening analytical perspective of the ego-intellect here is dramatically contrasted to the spiritual Knower’s immediate perception of God as the One and Unique Cause, the ever-renewed Creator (kardagār) at every instant, whose Presence in the Heart is so emphatically recalled and celebrated at the very end of this ghazal (line 7).

  Lines 2–3: The ‘Instant’ and its Demands

  In these following verses, it is not immediately clear whether the speaker and intended audience (apparently an undetermined singular ‘you’, effectively identified with each engaged reader) is the same as the opening voice (= Ḥāfiẓ’s own persona?) at the very beginning of the poem. Certainly the tone of confidence and particular emphasis of its spiritual teachings in these two lines closely echo the advice of the wise pīr, Magus, and related spiritual guide-figures familiar from so many other ghazals. What more particularly distinguishes this mature voice of wisdom here is its immediate, careful correction – first theoretical, and then intensely practical – of the recurrent human illusions underlying those two initial pained questions offered by the critic/ascetic/pretender at the end of the opening line. The Sufi, according to a famous traditional phrase, is the ‘child of the present instant’ (of the Heart’s waqt or ‘eternal now’ that tellingly opens line 2 here), and his spiritual Work is to remain attentive in the Heart with God, filled with the awareness of each new instant of the ever-renewed creation – the essential point with which Ḥāfiẓ concludes this poem. For the ‘veiled’ ones (in lines 5–7), of course, all the meanings and realities described in scripture are envisaged as ‘elsewhere’ and in an imagined ‘another time’ than this real now – an illusion (and self-delusion) so profound that the sad ascetic of this ghazal’s final line would happily trade wilful suffering and self-imposed separation for his imagined future reward.

  The next line 3 then moves on to the more practical spiritual consequences of this initial metaphysical reminder: ‘Be conscious!’ and closely attentive to that subtle life-connection (‘a single hair’) of the Spirit-breath always connecting the human Heart and its Creator at every instant. (Essentially, this command suggests the same meaning and central human responsibility conveyed by the Arabic verbal imperative form ḥāfiẓ, as explained earlier in this chapter.) Above all, the second half of line 3 reminds us that this inner spiritual attentiveness, that quintessential human ‘Work’11 and duty just highlighted in line 2, quickly reveals the ways that the real hidden cause of our apparent separation from the Beloved – answering the poignant initial query at the end of line 1 – lies nowhere but in our own distractions, expectations and deeper veils of self-delusion.

  Line 4: Here and Now

  Whatever its speaker and audience, line 4 provides perfectly balanced and centrally situated aesthetic continuation of this ghazal’s beatific opening half-line, which is recalled and reaffirmed yet again in the contrasting terms of the poem’s closing comparison (line 7). It is certainly possible to read this central verse as a direct continuation of the same voice in lines 2–3, poignantly – and no doubt somewhat provocatively – expressing the natural consequence of those preceding lines’ emphasis on the immediacy of the Heart’s direct Knowing of the divine theophanies. For the divine Presence is certainly to be found exclusively in each human soul’s unique ‘here’, just as it can be found solely in the Heart’s unique present instant (lines 2–3). But the apparent coincidence between the poet’s opening self-described idyll and these particular ostensible scriptural–symbolic correlates – only valid if we assume that the speaker is indeed still the same here and in the ghazal’s opening half-line – also suggests a naive and highly problematic attitude. It is almost as though Ḥāfiẓ were instead ironically reminding his less perceptive readers of the recurrent dangers and classic misunderstandings that flow from such symbolic attempts to communicate the most essential spiritual realities to unprepared audiences. For such naively literalist (if not forthrightly stupid) readers might well read this middle line, like the opening verse, as though the poet were actually speaking only of this particular outward wine and stream of Shīrāz – rather than of that Wine and Stream and spiritual Conversation of ever-renewed creation, which fills each human heart at every moment. In that case, one might imagine this line being spoken instead, with heavy implicit irony, by a rather gullible and uncritical, easily tempted and already intoxicated adolescent listener, who is excitedly responding to his own fantasy image of this poem’s three opening lines.

  Line 5: Divine ‘Veiling’, Wisdom and Surrender

  Line 5 marks the essential turning-point in this ghazal, in that the speaker (who may still be the same sage in these concluding lines as in lines 2–3) now reminds his readers – and simultaneously includes them all, in the sudden emphatically repeated ‘We’ at the very beginning of the second half-line – that our common humanity means that we all find ourselves, from time to time, in the contrasting states of sober uprightness and befuddled intoxication, of painful ‘veiling’ (the underlying Qur’anic meaning of mastūr), and of spiritual illumination and union. We have already noted Ḥāfiẓ’s repeated allusions in so many other poems (including the preceding ghazal just discussed here) to the spiritual necessity, in the divine school of each soul’s earthly life, of experiencing and passing through the constant cyclical phases and oppositions of the different divine Names, before we can reach the realized state of insān, of the fully human being’s theomorphic perfection. Likewise here, the radically opposed perspectives, expressed in the preceding and concluding lines by the fully enlightened sage (the inspired spiritual Knower) and the self-centred, egoistic complaints and hypocritical manipulations of the critic/pretender/ascetic, are brought together in such a way that Ḥāfiẓ’s readers – as an integral part of this ‘one tribe’ of Adam – are obliged to recognize those dimensions and polarities within themselves.

  Even more pointedly and controversially – since the remaining lines continue to elaborate this point – Ḥāfiẓ forcefully reminds us here (following strict and repeated Qur’ānic precedents) that all the transformations and states of our Heart, at each stage of our path, are inevitably and ultimately in God’s hands, not solely the result of our own illusion of ‘arbitrary choosing’ (ikhtiyār). For in reality they are always guided and determined by the ineluctable and all-Wise divine Will (khwāsta/irādat), highlighted in the final words of this ghazal. From that perspective, once again, the ‘We’ significantly beginning the second half-line here refers not simply to our common humanity, but to the two dramatically contrasting possibilities which that human state always offers us. For to the extent that the ‘We’ in question is the loving dyad of I and Thou, of our true self in surrendered harmony with the Spirit and the Beloved’s Intention (the ‘amorous glance’, ‘ishva, in all its infinite and constantly changing forms), then there is no illusion of arbitrary or random willing (ikhtiyār), where our choice and God’s are already the same. This is the familiar ‘spiritually intoxicated’ state of inner trusting surrender (taslīm/islām) and proximity already beautifully conveyed by so many of the earlier lines here – and a state which even Ḥāfiẓ’s most recalcitrant readers may have experienced from time to time.

  The other way of understanding and experiencing this ‘We’ is, of course, at least as familiar to every reader. Instead of the human soul and Spirit in union and surrender, we can also focus on the constantly struggling and competing tendencies, tropisms and aversions of our ego-self (nafs), whose complexities and deep-rooted contrariness readily give rise to our common illusion o
f arbitrary wilfulness (ikhtiyār), and to the endless oppositions, complaints and fruitless hidden scheming (makar) of the critic/plaintiff/pretender (mudda‘ī) and pious ascetic (zāhid) alike. That illusion – and the pathways to its eventual dissolution – are the subjects of the following line.

  Since the theme of God’s ‘veiling’ of the normally ‘sober’ human soul (mastūr, in the first half of line 5) – understood here and throughout Ḥāfiẓ not as some sort of deserved punishment or arbitrary destiny, but as the most essential metaphysical precondition for our spiritual growth and perfection – is what most essentially connects lines 5 and 6 here (and, indeed, ultimately unifies all the verses of this ghazal), it is absolutely essential to refer back at this point to the underlying Qur’ānic description of this situation at verses 17:45–53. Not only is the inner state of those who are momentarily veiled beautifully described at this point (see the partial translation immediately below), but, more significantly, the Qur’ān here goes on to describe their railing and carping, blindness and illusions, and constant bitter questioning of God and the Prophet, in such vivid and dramatic terms that it is immediately clear that this whole ghazal can be seen as a beautiful poetic, orchestral transposition of that long scriptural passage. Here are the first two verses of that decisive Qur’ānic section, which also pointedly highlights the ultimate divine responsibility for all the states of the human Heart, the ongoing reality that Ḥāfiẓ so forcefully emphasizes in this line and throughout this ghazal: