I Died as a Mineral
Never Less by Dying
Masnavi III.3901–3909 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1930I 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.
- Earliest record
- 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.
- Said to date from
- 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, by the Ṣadr-i Jahān's fugitive wakīl, walking back to a prince who seeks “a ten years' vengeance” (III.3875).
Mathnawī III.3686–3687 and III.3874–3915 (Nicholson 1930), vol. IV pp. 217–219, running head “The Wakíl of Bukhárá”.
A ladder of deaths — mineral, plant, animal, man, angel — spoken by a lover returning to a prince's anger.
More context
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”. 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 answers the fear of death with a plain argument: every change has been a death, and none left him less.
Shadow
Cut from its speaker it loses its danger: a man is walking back to a prince who seeks his death.