Poetics and Aesthetics in the Persian Sufi Literary Tradition

By Hossein M. Elahi Ghomshei

A Victorian traveler once remarked that Persia is a country where people walk on silk carpets and speak the language of poetry. In the same romantic vein, Iran has been called ‘the land of the rose and nightingale’, those symbols, of course, of the archetypes of the “Beloved and Lover”, or ‘Beauty and Love’ or, one might say, of ‘Aesthetics and Poetics’…if we interpret the symbol of the rose in the Persian literature as referring to the Aesthetics and the nightingale to Poetics. AS if following the passion of the nightingale for the Rose, the Persian Sufi poets [professed themselves to be lovers of beauty, and all their poems to be but songs and hymns in praise of that Transcendent Beloved, As Hafiz put it: Not I alone it is who surrenders the beauties of rose-cheeked ladies. All around there are a thousand nightingales that intone the same hymn.

The opening lines of another sonnet by Hafiz convey the Persian poet’s eternal message—the perpetual call of beauty to rapture, communicating the nightingale’s constant romance with the rose, as well as the mystical, poet’s ongoing aesthetic project to view all temporal beauty as a ray of divine splendor: Red roses have blossomed; Nightingales are all drunk. Everywhere, the hue and cry of ecstasy: Of Sufi, devotee of the Eternal Now!

In this article, rather than entering into elaborate and complicated scholarly theories about Aesthetics and Poetics, I will take Hafiz’s lead and play the Saqi, a Cupbearer who purveys a goblet of that wine of beauty which so intoxicated the nightingales of Persia that they never regained sobriety. It is the same wine to which Shabistari’s verse refers, inciting the lover of this Beauty to—Drink down the wine whose cup is the Beloved’s countenance; imbibe a brew whose beaker is her wine flushed, drunken eyes.

Persian Sufi poetry is animated by a vision of divine beauty—that beauty which is in the words of Keats, “a joy forever.” This beauty is also, in the theological vocabulary of the Koran, the “Light of the Heavens and the Earth.” The Truth underlying Appearance, the Absolute Being, The One Who is ‘like unto none’.  All round the world my heart has gone but like unto Him found no one” There is none like Him, none like Him, none!

The potential tale of this Beauty—who is one with Truth and Goodness—is also reflected in the art of Persian storytelling. Traditionally all stories are prefaced with this opening line drawn from the archetypal Islamic ‘creation myth’: “There was One and there was none else.” Although thus statement bears a superficial resemblance to similar phrases in other literature (such as our “Once upon a time” in English, or “Il etait une fois” in French, for instance), the Persian expression conveys a profound philosophical message as well. All Persian stories are prefaced with this phrase simply because it is recognized that all stories occur after this story. From a philosophical point of view, the phrase emphasizes the basic metaphysical premise that ‘the being of the One precedes the being of the Many’, and the existence of ‘Multiplicity’. This premise is well expressed in Maghribi’s verses: Ah, as if your face brim filled with sun is laid to plain view within both worlds every atom manifests. From the shadow downcast by the sun of your face arose all existent things. Your visage, a sun itself, cast a shadow; form that penumbra all phenomena appeared, every atom is existent through a sun; from every atom a sun is subsistent. (Maghribi 1993, p. 19, VI: 1-4)

Just as in the Islamic metaphysical thought, one speaker of the ‘One’ Being who precedes all other beings in Persian Sufi aesthetics one also refers to that Eternal Beauty which precedes all temporal beauty. The analogical relationship between metaphysical thinking and aesthetic thought in Persian Sufism is evoked by Jami in the prologue to his mystic- romantic poem “Yusuf and Zulaykha”: The heart ravishing beautiful bride was in the bridal chamber; a lovely mistress in her blissful solitude, playing the game of love with none but herself, and drinking alone the wine of her own beauty. None knew aught of her. Even the mirror had not yet reflected her countenance. But beauty cannot stand being conceited for long. Comeliness cannot bear concealment: if you close the door, she will show her face through the window. So she pitched her tent outside the sacred precincts, showing herself within the soul and throughout creation. In every mirror her theophanic features appeared; so that everywhere her tale was told. From that effulgence a flash struck the rose and the rose cast passion into the nightingale’s heart.

The Persian Sufi poets did not have mere romantic entertainment in mind in the usage of erotic imagery in passages such as these. Rather, they wished to makes a metaphysical point about creation, to allude to that Primordial Beauty who had unveiled herself on “Roof of Contingency’ so that as a result of the theology, thousands of words came into being. A beam of this Eternal Beauty struck the Rose, and the Rose reflected that Beauty to the Nightingale, filling the distraught bird with melody, frenzy, and ecstasy. This myth of aesthetic genesis…if one many so cal it—is expressed by Hafiz in a renowned verse: By grace of the rose the nightingale learnt the art of song; Else, within its splendor bill there could never be sung such lovely rhymes and tunes (Hafiz 1983, sonnet 272, v.4) In another verse—one of the most sublime expressions of the myth of genesis in all of Persian Literature—Hafiz provides a more explicitly metaphysical formulation do this doctrine: In pre-eternity, a ray of your beauty was shown through its theophany. Love appeared and set the world afire. (Ibid, sonnet 148, v .1) Both the above verses have one basic message: to show how beauty gave birth to love and how love generated existence.

As Jami in the passage cited above pointed out, this is also the central tale of artistic creation. The artist first witnesses beauty. This vision arouses love and consequently, a longing to express the beauty witnessed—through Love—in artistic creation. The Greek myth of the creation of Venus’s son Cupid chronicles this same erotic-metaphysical and aesthetic event, and in the same context Shakespeare’s words (in Romeo and Juliet), “its Cupid who rules us all”, should be taken. The metaphysical allusions of this aesthetic-metaphysical creation-myth of beauty, which then created the ‘world of romance’ through her splendor, are many and deserve our consideration.