Part 2

In another of Hegel's works—his valuable posthumous 'Lectures on the Philosophy of Art'—he takes up the same subject from the æsthetic point of view, and he deals with it again in a more popular, but in an essentially identical, way.[12] As the former passage has now obtained currency in our philosophical literature, it may be more useful, as well as more relevant to these pages, to reproduce the latter, the fuller and more intelligible, but hitherto untranslated, exposition. Hegel is here dealing with the Symbolical Forms of Art, and in particular with the symbolism of Sublimity, historically characteristic of Oriental Art, which thus gives expression to the consciousness of absolute subordination and the dependence of all that is individual and finite on the Universal and the Infinite. In his comprehensive historical survey Hegel, at this stage, finds occasion to deal with what he calls 'Pantheism in Art.' The profound thinker, with a vigorous grasp and original view of the historic evolution, is here singularly lucid and suggestive, as he delineates the Pantheistic Poetic Idea exhibited in the lyrical forms of 1. Indian Poetry; 2. Mohammedan Poetry; 3. Christian Mysticism. Very refreshing and sane is his representation of Indian Poetry, at a time when the uncritical enthusiasm of the Schlegels and other young Sanskrit Students, was carrying an unrestrained admiration beyond all reasonable bounds. Hegel castigates this juvenile weakness with a firm hand. He, too, has read the startling translations of the Sakuntala and the Bhagavad Gita, and he knows something of the Ramayana; but he is not dazzled or carried away. He recognises the marvellous exuberance and profusion of the Indian imagination, but it is all too fantastic as yet. While it is boundless, it is also formless, and just so far is it lacking in true Beauty. Its Sublimity is confused, chaotic, helpless; it ever struggles for a harmonious unity, for spiritual mastery of the manifold and the overwhelming, which it never attains. All this is truest insight, soundest criticism.—But a higher stage is reached in the _Persian_ Poetry. Here the form of the Poet becomes more adequate, more masterful, more refined. Beauty springing up with Sublimity, is harmoniously wedded with it, and in one great Poet the victory of Love is freely consummated; for—to paraphrase with Tennyson—

'For all the past of Time reveals A bridal dawn of thunder-peals, Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact.'

But let us hear Hegel's own grave, well-weighed judgment, as he spoke it in those days to his own Students at Berlin:

'In a higher and subjectively freer way, the Oriental Pantheism has been developed in Mohammedanism, especially by the Persians. A special relationship now comes in. The Poet longs to behold the Divine in all things, and he actually does so behold it; but he also now surrenders his own Self and gives himself up to it, while he at the same time in the same degree grasps the Immanence of the Divine in his own inner Being, when thus expanded and freed. And thereby there grows in him that cheerful inwardness, that free joy, that abounding blessedness which is peculiar to the Oriental, who in becoming liberated from his own individual limitations, sinks forthwith into the Eternal and Absolute, and recognises and feels in everything the Image and the Presence of the Divine. Such a consciousness of being permeated by the Divine and of a vivified, intoxicated life in God, borders on Mysticism. Above all others JELÁLEDDÍN RUMI is to be celebrated in this connection, of whose poetry Rückert has furnished us with some of the finest specimens, in which, with his marvellous power of expression, he even allows himself to play, in the most skilful and free manner, with words and rhymes, as the Persians similarly do. Love to God, with whom Man identifies his Self through the most unlimited self-surrender, and Whom, as the One, he now beholds in all the realms of space, leads him to refer and carry back all and everything to God; and this Love here forms the centre which expands on all sides and into all regions.'[13]

Hegel thus deliberately gives Jeláleddín an eminent place not only among the great Poets, but among the great Thinkers of the world. He is more than satisfied with Rückert as a translator, and he is virtually at one with Jeláleddín's principle of thought. His qualification is historical rather than essential; the relation to Pantheism is the particular limiting condition of Jeláleddín's stage of development and environment; it is not a ground of reproach, nor of condemnation as more than relatively untrue, or rather incomplete. And so Hegel is at pains to vindicate the poet-thinker from the vulgar and unjust stigma commonly implied in the ascription of Pantheism. This he does in his remarks on the contributions to the subject by Dr. Tholuck, who became afterwards the eminent evangelical theologian of Halle, but who was then just entering on his distinguished career. Tholuck had quite a genius for languages, and his first intention was to devote himself to Oriental Philology. He prosecuted the study of Arabic, Persian and Turkish, with great zeal and success under the distinguished Dietz; and in 1821, at the age of twenty-two, he qualified as a University Teacher, by a learned Latin Dissertation on 'Sufism, or the Pantheistic Theosophy of the Persians.'[14] This remarkable exposition was at once recognised as of real merit, and it is still valuable. Tholuck, who was a born poet and had a rare breadth of literary appreciation, supplemented his work, four years later, by a very interesting Anthology from the Persian Mystical Poets in German verse, with an attractive introduction to the whole subject.[15] With the profoundest admiration for Dr. Tholuck's work as a theologian, and an unfading personal affection, kindled by tender and memorable student contact with him in his old age, we yet cannot dissent from Mr. Whinfield's critical judgment when he thus sums up the value of these contributions: 'Tholuck was an indifferent Persian Scholar, and many of his translations are wrong, but he grasped the meaning of Sufism and its affinity to European mysticism much more thoroughly than many who were far superior to him in mere verbal scholarship.' Hegel, who was not a Persian scholar, is generous in his recognition of Tholuck's Anthology, but he points out the weakness of Tholuck's criticism, and shews in particular that the young theologian is too perfunctory in his view of the subject generally, as merely adopting the 'current chatter about Pantheism,' and hurling it as a convenient term of reproach against the whole speculative thought of the time. This shallow popular criticism, as Hegel puts it, quite misunderstands the real principle of speculative Pantheism, confounds it with a crude view of the world which immediately identifies the object of sense with the Divine, but which no sane thinker ever really held, and it is to be rejected emphatically when applied to Jeláleddín. For, as he says, 'In the excellent Jeláleddín Rumi in particular we find the unity of the soul with the One set forth, and that unity described as Love; and this spiritual unity is an exaltation above the finite and common, a transfiguration of the natural and spiritual in which the externalism and transitoriness of nature is surmounted: in _this_ poetry, which soars over all that is external and sensuous, who would recognise the prosaic ideas current about so-called Pantheism?' No; Jelál is not to be tabooed, off-hand, and labelled merely as a Pantheist!

With Hegel's correction of Tholuck and his vindication of the speculative standpoint of the Persian Poet, we are entirely agreed; but Hegel is himself here not quite adequate. All students of philosophy know that in this very relation has lain the chief ambiguity and weakness of his own System, and it is reflected in his view of Jeláleddín. With his dominating passion for systematising the evolution of History and conforming it to a logical scheme of thought, he yet fails to see—largely owing to the limitation of his material—how practically modern and how spiritually personal Jelál really is. For, after all, Jeláleddín is no mere idle dreamy mediaeval Mystic; he _is_ essentially a modern poet and thinker, and is _not_ to be pushed back into the dim vagueness and impersonal materialism of ancient thought. He has twelve centuries of Christian life and reflection behind him, with all the dogmatic development of the ancient orthodox Church, on the one hand; all the forms of Indian pantheistic and Greek freethought on the other; and six centuries of austere restraining Mohammedan Monotheism as his central curb and check—and well and clearly he knows them all. He is at once universally eclectic and originally constructive, and he moves freely and joyously with a larger insight all his own. The East and the West meet in him again, more richly than they have done in any other for centuries, and he binds them into a new, happy harmony, the 'heavenly harmony' of poesy. He is a true Seer, like his own ancient Zarathustra, like Lao-tse, like Buddha, and much more akin to Jesus, and Paul, and John, than to the fierce, relentless, one-sided Prophet of Arabia, whose barren religion he redeems from its mechanical inhumanity and quickens with the breath of a purer and Diviner love. His intellectual kinship is with Plato and the speculative Theologians of the Christian Church, and with the deep dreamers who live in the highest vision and lose themselves sweetly and gladly in God. He is the veritable Morning Star of the new Day of the World, rising in pure brightness, afar in the East—and after barbaric crusade and mad war, heralding, in a clearer and sweeter Song of Divine Love, the triumph of the new time.

And the Nightingale thought, 'I have sung many songs, But never a one so gay, For he sings of what the world will be When the years have died away'!

In the year of Jeláleddín's death Edward I. ascended the throne of England, with the first faltering grasp of a mightier Empire; the boy Dante was catching the gleam of strange Visions in the shining eyes of the sweet-faced gentle maiden Beatrice; the mystic thrill that had run through the Middle Age was pulsing in the youth of Meister Eckhart, and preparing for Suso and Ruysbroek and Thomas à Kempis, through the mellifluous Rhythm of St. Bernard which had been sung for a hundred years; the Doctor Angelicus had all but summed up the system of Christian Theology, the well-worn pen just trembling to its fall from his wearied grasp; and the spirit of Martin Luther, whom of all religious Reformers Jeláleddín most resembles, was already beginning to breathe in William Occam and the free young thinkers of the time. Yes; Jeláleddín has both a wider relationship and a more modern significance than even Hegel has thought of.

And now we have surely cited Authorities enough to enable us to form at least a preliminary judgment, fair, reasonably informed, and impartial, concerning Jeláleddín's distinctive position and work as a Poet. We have seen him thrice crowned—in the Realms of Poetry. Philosophy, and Religion—by authoritative representatives, qualified kingmakers; and hardly any one who now knows truly of him, will dispute his right to be ranked as one of 'the great of old! The dead but sceptred sovrans who still rule our spirits from their urns.' His royal Title was proclaimed long ago in the musical name most aptly bestowed upon him when he lived and sang, and by those who knew him best: JELÁLEDDÍN, which we have already rendered literally as 'The Splendour of the Faith,' but which we prefer now to reproduce in its proper English equivalent as 'The Glory of Religion.' This designation at once strikingly expresses the Secret of his Power, the Consecration of his Genius, and the essence and end of his Humanity. To him Religion was all in all; it was the very Life-breath of his Soul; the Home and Joy of his Heart; the be-all and end-all of his Will. Of but very few others of the Sons of Men can this be said; of only One can it be said in a higher degree than of Jeláleddín, as he himself knew and confessed. He too 'sought for the healing Hand of Jesus,' and it purged his inner sight and enabled him to see all the world again, lying bright and beautiful, in the Light and Love of God. And moved by that all-compelling Law whose 'seat is the Bosom of God' and whose 'voice is the Harmony of the world,' he burst spontaneously into song, and the keynote of all his singing—exultant, jubilant, triumphant—was ever the living, loving God, 'Him first, Him last, Him without end.' Religion was the golden Thread on which, all his silvery poetic Pearls were strung, and he flung them around him in his own generous, selfless joy, with the most lavish hand. They seem to have cost him no effort of search or toil. Much more than Spinoza or Novalis was he a 'God-intoxicated man'; the prophetic fire burned in his soul, without consuming it and it must out in 'thoughts that breathe and words that burn.' And this is still our precious inheritance from him to-day, which we will do well to appreciate and cherish anew in this cold, heartless, irreligious, prosaic time. Let his ringing voice then be reverently heard even through these few, faint, far-off re-echoings of his own soul-stirring elevating strains; for the burden of all he sings, in endless variation of note and tune, his one theme as he himself caught it direct from the melody of Nature and of Man, is THE GLORY OF RELIGION!

This very general Introduction to the subject-matter of Jelál's Lyrics must here suffice, as our immediate object is merely to present some specimens of them in a form at once popular and generally intelligible. But the detail of the subject in its historical, philosophical and theological bearings, which would only be confusing here, is reserved for some subsequent discussion. Sir William Jones gave a first popular Epitome of the Mystical System of the Persian Poets, which in its own way has never been surpassed (see Note A), although the subject has been much more profoundly studied and elucidated since his time. A competent discussion of the system of 'the greatest Sufic poet of Persia' (Ethé), would be a valuable contribution to our contemporary Philosophy of Religion. Mr. Nicholson has concisely sketched the parallelism between the doctrines of Jeláleddín and Plotinus, but we must go further and even deeper than Plotinus in order to reach the root of the whole matter. Professor Browne is very helpful, and gives the best Literature, as also does Hughes in his most interesting illustrated Articles; Kremer is invaluable, as also are Professor Palmer on the one hand, and the recent translators and expounders of the early Iranian and Hindu Religion and Philosophy on the other; Whinfield gives an able, lucid Sketch.

III.

Looking now at the _poetical form_ of Jelál's Lyrics, it goes without saying that it is distinctively Persian, and always eminently so in its kind. The Persian Poets were truly 'makers'; they not only created most of the nature-imagery still current in all modern poetry, but they constructed new forms of rhythm and rhyme, in which they finely echoed the sweetest melodies of nature and gave a richer and more expressive music to human speech. Their fluent and flexible language, with its natural wealth of resonant cadences and rhymes, furnished them with a facile medium of expression, and the still richer Arabic readily lent its copious resources at need. And the Persians were always rhyming, in public and private, on great themes or small; a poetic people, ever ready to recognise and honour sweet songsters; the readiest and wittiest of 'improvvisatori.' Even yet, as Richardson tells us; 'it is a common entertainment for the great and learned men in Persia, to assemble together, with the view to an exercise of genius, in the resolving of enigmas ... and to rival one another in the facility of composing and replying to extempore verses, in which, from practice and a natural liveliness of fancy, many of them arrive at an astonishing proficiency.' Hence, as Goethe says of himself, the Persian Poets 'sang as the birds sing;' and taking that master-singer of Nature, the Nightingale, as their model, they too trilled in strains of unrivalled sweetness, range and depth of tone, and consummate florid beauty. Even the most careless reader cannot fail to be impressed by the affluence of imagery in the Persian Lyrical Poetry, and no one has dwelt more suggestively than Hegel on the spiritual significance of its characteristic profusion of metaphors, images, similes, and comparisons.[16] But while so lavishly employing the decorative forms common to all lyrical poetry, the Persian Poets, with singular constructive originality, also created new lyrical forms of their own, and carried them to their highest perfection. Chief of these are the _Gazel_ and the _Divan_, two terms which are only now being naturalised in our language, and becoming generally understood. Here, again, it may be more serviceable to quote one or two authorities, rather than to give a mere abstract definition; and as we have generally found the _older_ authorities in these matters to be the best, we start with Richardson's summary of the definitions of D'Herbelot and Revizky.

'The Ghazel or Eastern Ode—says Richardson—is a species of poem, the subject of which is in general _Love_ and _Wine_, interspersed with moral sentiments, and reflections on the virtues and vices of mankind. It ought never to consist of less than 5 _beits_ or distichs, nor exceed 18, according to D'Herbelot; if the poem is less than five, it is then called _rabat_ or quartain; if it is more than eighteen, it then assumes the name of _kasside_ or elegy. Baron Revizky[17] says, that all poems of this kind which exceed 13 _beits_ [couplets], rank with the _kasside_; and, according to Meninski, the ghazel ought never to have more than 11.—Every verse in the same _ghazel_ must rhyme with the same letter; and when a poet has completed a _series_ of such poems (the rhymes of the first class being in _alif_ [a], the second in _be_ [b], and so on through the whole alphabet), it is called a _Divan_, and he obtains the title of _Hafez_, or as the Arabians pronounce it, _Hafedh_.... The _ghazel_ is more irregular than the Greek or Latin Ode, one verse having often no apparent connection either with the foregoing or subsequent couplets. Ghazels were often, says Baron Revizky, written or spoken _extempore_ at banquets or public festivities, when the poet, after expressing his ideas in one distich, impatient of confinement, roved through the regions of fancy, as wine or a luxuriant imagination inspired.'[18]

This is excellent, and thoroughly intelligible. But let us take from Rückert's most learned work, the more authoritative concise statement of the 'Heft Kolzum': 'The Ghazel is a poem of several Beits, which have all one measure and one rhyme. According to some, there should not be more than 11 Beits, according to others 12; but some are found having as many as 19.'[19]

The term Gazel has now secured its place in our great Dictionaries, and none gives it better than Professor Whitney's New York 'Century Dictionary': 'Gázel (also Ghazal, Pers. _ghazal_, Ar. _ghazel_, _ghazal_, a Love Poem). In Persian Poetry, a form of verse in which the two first lines rime, and for this rime a new one must be found in the second line of each succeeding couplet, the alternate line being free.'—Dr. Murray's Oxford New English Dictionary defines thus: 'A species of Oriental lyric poetry, generally of an erotic nature, distinguished from other forms of Eastern verse by having a limited number of Stanzas, and by the recurrence of the same rhyme.' And most concise of all, Funk's Standard Dictionary: 'A Persian lyric poem, amatory ode, drinking song, or religious hymn, having alternate verses riming with the first couplet.' 'The _ghazel_ consists usually of not less than five, or more than fifteen Couplets, all with the same rhyme.'—W. R. Alger, Poetry of the East, p. 66.—Before leaving the Dictionaries, be it noted briefly, that the word _gházǎl_ (originally Arabic, and to be distinguished from _gházāl_, a young Fawn, _our_ Gazelle, through the French), derived from a root signifying to _spin_, means in Persian, a thing _spun_, _twined_, _twisted_, as out of a thread; and so it designates an ode, a short poem, a sonnet' (Steingass), 'never exceeding 18 distichs, nor less than 5, _the last line of every couplet ending with the same Letter in which the first distich rhymes_.' (Richardson's Persian, Arabic and English Dictionary, _s.v._).

All this is surely enough to elucidate the form and structure of the Persian _ghazel_, but we may further quote a completing phrase or two from that conscientious and much lamented Oriental Scholar, Mr. E. J. W. Gibb, who has treated it most fully and accurately in his valuable works on Ottoman Poetry. The Ghazel, he says, is 'the most typically Oriental of all the verse-forms alike in the careful elaboration of its detail and in its characteristic want of homogeneity. It is a short poem of not fewer than four and not more than fifteen couplets. Such at any rate is the theoretical limit, but Ghazels containing a much larger number of couplets may occasionally be met with; this, however, is exceptional, from five to ten being the average number.... If we employ the alphabetical notation usually adopted when dealing with rhyme sequences, we get the following for a Ghazel of six couplets: A.A : B.A : C.A : D.A : E.A : F.A.... In point of style the poem should be faultless; all imperfect rhymes, uncouth words questionable expressions must be carefully avoided, and the same rhyme-word ought not to be repeated. It is the most elegant and highly finished of all the old poetic forms.... Hence perhaps the extraordinary popularity of the form.... What the sonnet was to the Italian, the Ghazel was to the Persians and Turks.'[20]

This will surely suffice to explain the structure and laws of the Gazel. The Shakesperian Sonnet comes nearest its form in our poetical versification, and can by comparatively slight modification be adapted to it. Imagine the final rhyming couplet of such a sonnet placed first, and the same rhyme carried on through each of the succeeding couplets in the alternate even-numbered lines, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, while the other odd lines (3, 5, etc.) are left unrhymed, and we would have a regular Gazel which, however, might extend to 18 couplets in all. Or, taking another familiar instance: let the Quatrain, as in Fitzgerald's 'Omar Khayyám,' be _extended_ by adding further couplets (within the limits laid down) to the _second_ couplet, all corresponding to it in form and rhyme, and the Quatrain passes into a regular Gazel. The Fifty examples here given are all in regular form within legitimate variation, and the structure and rhyme in any of them may be seen at a glance, even in those with an added recurring refrain in such as were generally adapted to accompany mystic dancing. Simple as the structure of the Gazel itself is, it is practically more difficult to construct it in English than in Persian, from its relative paucity of suitable rhymes.