Every Moment the Voice of Love

Saʿdī's Choice, by Aflākī's Account

Every moment the voice of Love is coming from left and right.We are bound for heaven: who has a mind to sight-seeing?We have been in heaven, we have been friends of the angels;Thither, sire, let us return, for that is our country.We are even higher than heaven and more than the angels;Why pass we not beyond these twain? Our goal is majesty supreme.How different a source have the world of dust and the pure substance!Tho’ we came down, let us haste back—what place is this?Young fortune is our friend, yielding up soul our business;The leader of our caravan is Muṣṭafā, glory of the world.This gale’s sweet scent is from the curl of his tresses,This thought’s radiance is from a cheek like “by the morning bright.”By his cheek the moon was split: she endured not the sight of him;Such fortune the moon found—she that is an humble beggar.Behold a continual “cleaving of the moon” in our hearts,For why should the vision of that vision transcend thine eye?Came the billow of “Am I not?” and wrecked the body’s ship;When the ship wrecks once more is the time of union’s attainment.Mankind, like waterfowl, are sprung from the sea—the sea of soul;Risen from that sea, why should the bird make here his home?Nay, we are pearls in that sea, therein we all abide;Else, why does wave follow wave from the sea of soul?’Tis the time of union’s attainment, ’tis the time of eternity’s beauty,’Tis the time of favour and largesse, ’tis the ocean of perfect purity.

Dīvān-e Shams, ode IX · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1898
First attested
1372The oldest manuscript Nicholson lists for it is B, British Museum Or. 2866, dated 1st Jumādā ’l Ākhir, 774 A.H. (late 1372). He printed the ode from the Vienna manuscript (V), dated 845 A.H.; the foot of the Persian on p. 32 lists B, Cowell's manuscript C, the Leyden manuscript L, the Lakhnau edition, the Tabriz edition and V, and his Appendix III places it in the Tabriz edition at p. 143 and the Lakhnau at p. 41.

Nicholson's note gives Aflākī's story, in Redhouse's translation: the poet Saʿdī sent this ghazal to Shamsu’ddīn Hindī, prince of Shīrāz, who had asked him “to select the best ode, with the most sublime thoughts, that he knew of as existing in Persian” for presentation to the great Khān of the Moguls.

Nicholson, Selected Poems (1898), note on ode IX, p. 222, citing Redhouse's Masnavi, p. 28; Redhouse, The Mesnevī (1881), p. 28, anecdote 14 of the extracts from Aflākī

Love's voice calls from left and right: the soul came down from heaven and, led by Muṣṭafā, is going back.

Ode IX, printed here in its first twelve couplets of twenty. Love's voice calls every moment; the speakers have been in heaven as friends of the angels, are higher than both, came down, and must haste back. The leader of their caravan is Muṣṭafā — in Nicholson's note, Mohammed, whom the Ṣūfīs identify with Universal Reason — whose cheek is like “by the morning bright”, Qurʾān 93:1, and at whose sight the moon split, the Prophet's famous miracle, now a continual “cleaving of the moon” in the heart. The billow of “Am I not?”, the Qurʾān's covenant question, wrecked the body's ship; mankind are waterfowl sprung from the sea of soul, and pearls within it. Aflākī's anecdote, in Redhouse's translation, has Saʿdī send it to the prince of Shīrāz as the best ode in Persian. Nicholson printed the ode from the Vienna manuscript (V) and lists five other witnesses, among them the British Museum copy dated 774 A.H.

Light

It gives the soul a pedigree higher than the angels' and a guide it can name: the ode is exile turned into homecoming, sung by a caravan already on the road, with the Prophet at its head.

Shadow

The story told about it, that Saʿdī chose it as the best ode in Persian, comes from Aflākī's Manāqib, which Nicholson calls valuable as a thaumaturgic record but not to be trusted in matters of fact. And the ode's claim to be “more than the angels” is made conditional in his note, by a ḥadīth attributed to ʿAlī: man is above them if he subdues lust and anger and strives for perfect knowledge.

Sources and verification5 sources · 4 links

Primary source

Scholarship

  • Reynold A. Nicholson, Selected Poems from the Dīvāni Shamsi Tabrīz, notes to ode IX, 1898, pp. 222–224The Saʿdī story, from Redhouse's Masnavi, p. 28; on couplet 3, the ḥadīth attributed to ʿAlī on angels, beasts and man; on couplet 5, Muṣṭafā as Mohammed, “whom the Sūfīs identify with Universal Reason”; on couplet 6, Kor. XCIII. 1; on couplet 7, the splitting of the moon as “a famous miracle of the Prophet's”; on couplet 8, the Dabistān's reading of it as renunciation of the external for the internal; on couplet 9, the covenant of “Am I not your Lord?”.

    to select the best ode, with the most sublime thoughts, that he knew of as existing in Persian

The tradition itself

Further reading

Linked entries

  • Attributed toRūmīAttested

    An ode of the Dīvān that Nicholson printed as Rūmī's from the Vienna manuscript, listed in five other witnesses; Aflākī's anecdote has Saʿdī choose it as the best ode in Persian.

  • Part ofThe Dīvān-e Shams-e TabrīzīAttested

    Ode IX of Nicholson's forty-eight selections, twenty couplets, in the Tabriz edition at p. 143 and the Lakhnau at p. 41 by his table.

  • Derives fromReynold A. NicholsonAttested

    The English is Nicholson's 1898 prose; his note on the opening couplet sets aside Redhouse's rendering of its second line (“not as Redhouse”).

  • Set againstThe Song of the ReedA modern connection

    The reed that opens the Masnavi mourns being cut from its bed; here the exiled soul has already set out for home, and the caravan is on the road.

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