Every Moment the Voice of Love
Saʿdī's Choice, by Aflākī's Account
Dīvān-e Shams, ode IX · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1898Every 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.
- Earliest record
- 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.
Aflākī tells that Saʿdī chose this as the best ode in Persian, for the prince of Shīrāz to send the great Khān. Nicholson calls Aflākī untrustworthy in matters of fact.
Nicholson, Selected Poems (1898), note on ode IX, p. 222, citing Redhouse's Masnavi, p. 28, and Introduction p. xvi, note 1, on Aflākī; Redhouse, The Mesnevī (1881), p. 28, anecdote 14 of the extracts from Aflākī
Love's voice calls on every side: the soul came down from heaven and, led by Muṣṭafā, returns.
More context
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. His cheek is like “by the morning bright”, Qurʾān 93:1. At his 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: exile turned into homecoming.
Shadow
The tale that Saʿdī chose it as Persian's best ode is Aflākī's, and Nicholson calls Aflākī untrustworthy in matters of fact.