The King and the Handmaiden
Love Is the Astrolabe
Masnavi I.108–119 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1926From her sore grief he perceived that she was heart-sore; well in body, but stricken in heart.Being in love is made manifest by soreness of heart: there is no sickness like heart-sickness.The lover’s ailment is separate from all other ailments: love is the astrolabe of the mysteries of God.Whether love be from this (earthly) side or from that (heavenly) side, in the end it leads us yonder.Whatsoever I say in exposition and explanation of Love, when I come to Love (itself) I am ashamed of that (explanation).Although the commentary of the tongue makes (all) clear, yet tongueless love is clearer.Whilst the pen was making haste in writing, it split upon itself as soon as it came to Love.In expounding it (Love), the intellect lay down (helplessly) like an ass in the mire: it was Love (alone) that uttered the explanation of love and loverhood.The proof of the sun is the sun (himself): if thou require the proof, do not avert thy face from him!If the shadow gives an indication of him, the sun (himself) gives spiritual light every moment.The shadow, like chat in the night-hours, brings sleep to thee; when the sun rises the moon is cloven asunder.There is nothing in the world so wondrous strange as the sun, (but) the Sun of the spirit is everlasting: it hath no yesterday.
- First attested
- 1278The text is Masnavi I.108–119. The oldest dated copy Nicholson used is the Konya manuscript, his G, "dated 677 a.h." — 1278, five years after Rūmī's death — which he judged in April 1930 "the most authoritative text of the Mathnawí". He translated Book I in 1926, before adopting G, and his 1930 volume lists in an appendix where G differs from that text. Inside this passage it changes one line, I.119, to "so wondrous strange as the Sun, the everlasting spiritual Sun which hath no yesterday". Book I carries no date of its own; Book II opens by dating its own start to A.H. 662 (1263–64), after a delay, so Book I was finished by then.
Four lines after this passage, at I.123, the Masnavi first names Shamsu'ddín, "the Sun of the Religion". Whinfield's 1887 heading has Shams "importune" Rūmī to write the poem, but Nicholson footnotes the "Soul" who "plucked my skirt" (I.125) as Ḥusámu'ddín, and Rūmī refuses him: "say no more concerning the Sun of Tabríz!" (I.142).
Nicholson 1926, Masnavi I.123–143 and the footnote to I.125 (pp. 10–11); Whinfield 1887, Book I, the heading "Shamsu-'d-Din of Tabriz importunes Jalalu-'d-Din to compose the Masnavi"
A physician promised in a dream finds that a sick girl's illness is love, and the poem turns to what love is.
The first tale of the Masnavi, Book I, lines 35–246, begun straight after the reed's lament: "O my friends, hearken to this tale: in truth it is the very marrow of our inward state" (I.35). A king buys a handmaiden and she sickens; his physicians fail because "In their arrogance they did not say, 'If God will'" (I.48). He weeps in the mosque, dreams of an old man, and a stranger-physician comes. The lines here, I.108–119, are the diagnosis — well in body, stricken in heart — where the tale gives way to love itself. The physician then takes her pulse while she names towns until Samarcand makes it jump, fetches the goldsmith she loves, has the king give her to him, and poisons him; the heading before I.222 calls the killing "(prompted) by Divine suggestion". Whinfield's 1887 abridgment tells the tale in a paragraph of prose and translates the love passage and the lines on Shams that follow it.
Light
One lovesick girl becomes the ground for saying what love is — "the astrolabe of the mysteries of God" — and the passage admits, line by line, that the saying fails: the pen splits, the intellect lies down "like an ass in the mire", and only love explains love.
Shadow
The cure is paid for by a third party. To free the girl the physician poisons the goldsmith she loves until his beauty wastes and her love goes cold; the poem calls such loves "not love" (I.205) and defends the killing by the example of "the boy whose throat was cut by Khadir" (I.224).
