I Died as a Mineral

Never Less by Dying

I died to the inorganic state and became endowed with growth, and (then) I died to (vegetable) growth and attained to the animal.I died from animality and became Adam (man): why, then, should I fear? When have I become less by dying?At the next remove I shall die to man, that I may soar and lift up my head amongst the angels;And I must escape even from (the state of) the angel: everything is perishing except His Face.Once more I shall be sacrificed and die to the angel: I shall become that which enters not into the imagination.Then I shall become non-existence: non-existence saith to me, (in tones loud) as an organ, Verily, unto Him shall we return.Know death to be (the thing signified by) what the (Mohammedan) community are agreed upon, namely, that the Water of Life is hidden in the (Land of) Darkness.Grow from this river-bank, like the water-lily, greedy and craving for death as the sufferer from dropsy.The water is death to him, and (yet) he is seeking the water and drinking it—and God best knoweth the right course.

Masnavi III.3901–3909 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1930
First attested
1278The text is Mathnawī III.3901–3909. No autograph survives. The oldest witness is the Qoniya (Konya) manuscript, which Nicholson designated G and describes as “transcribed in A.H. 677-A.D. 1278”, five years after Rūmī died. He wrote in April 1930 that his text “from Book III, v. 2836, to the end of Book IV is founded on that ancient and admirable MS.”, so these lines stand in the stretch he edited from the oldest copy. Every English phrase quoted here is Nicholson's, from his 1930 translation.
Claimed
the 1260sasserted by Book III carries no internal date. Its proem asks Ḥusām al-Dīn to “bring (into verse and writing) this Third Book” (III.1, Nicholson 1930), so it was begun after Book II, whose proem dates that book's beginning to “the year six hundred and sixty-two” (II.7, Nicholson 1926) — A.H. 662, a year that began in 1263 and ended in 1264. Rūmī died on 17 December 1273.

The ladder is spoken in character. It is the Ṣadr-i Jahān's fugitive wakīl answering friends who warn that the prince of Bukhārā will kill him (III.3874–3883), inside a speech that runs from “I am dropsical” (III.3884) to “I have hanged myself on His palm-tree” (III.3915); Nicholson's running head over it reads “The Wakíl of Bukhárá”.

Mathnawī III.3874–3915 (Nicholson 1930), vol. IV p. 219, running head.

A ladder of deaths — mineral, plant, animal, man, angel — spoken by a lover returning to a prince's anger.

Mathnawī III.3901–3909. Nicholson's English reads “I died to the inorganic state”; the Persian word is jamādī. The lines belong to the story of the Ṣadr-i Jahān's wakīl (III.3686 onward): a servant of the prince of Bukhārā falls under suspicion, flees, and after ten years' wandering is drawn back by love. His friends beg him to hide, for the prince seeks “a ten years' vengeance”, and he answers in a speech that opens “I am dropsical” (III.3884) and ends “I have hanged myself on His palm-tree” (III.3915). The ladder stands in its middle: inorganic, vegetable, animal, man, angel, and what “enters not into the imagination”, closing on the Qurʾān's “Verily, unto Him shall we return”. The chickpea's pot, 258 lines later, runs on the same ladder.

Light

It meets the fear of death with an argument anyone can follow: every change so far has been a death, and every death has left the one who died more, not less.

Shadow

Cut from its speaker it loses its danger: these are the words of a man walking back to a prince who seeks “a ten years' vengeance” on him (III.3875), and the lines after the ladder ask the reader to crave death “as the sufferer from dropsy” craves water (III.3908).

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  • Attributed toRūmīAttested

    Dictated by Rūmī to Ḥusām al-Dīn Chelebi as part of the Masnavi; this passage is in Book III, which follows Book II's resumption in A.H. 662.

  • Set againstThe Chickpea to the CookAttested

    The chickpea's pot, 258 lines later, runs on this ladder: the housewife tells the chickpea she too was once part of the earth and in the inanimate state, and was boiled before she became its teacher (III.4203–4207) — the same climb by dying, told from inside the pot.

  • Part ofThe MasnaviAttested

    Book III, lines 3901–3909, inside the story of the Ṣadr-i Jahān's wakīl, which begins at III.3686.

  • Set againstThe Embryo in the WombAttested

    Two ladders in Book III: the embryo's climbs by weaning — blood, milk, food, the hidden game (III.50–52) — and the lover's by dying; both hold that the next state cannot be pictured from inside this one, “that which enters not into the imagination” (III.3905).

  • Set againstOn the Day of My DeathA modern connection

    Both answer the fear of dying with growth, but from different grounds: the Masnavi's ladder reasons from forms already passed through (“When have I become less by dying?”), this ode from things a mourner can watch, the seed, the bucket and the setting sun.

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