Part 8

One reason we know so little of him is that, with him, thought took place of action. Verse was his way of leading an active life. An idea was action. The eyes of his fellow men might not make this interpretation. His real name was Schems-eddin-Muhammed. Hafiz is his proud poet’s name of praise, meaning Mighty in Memory. It is fabled indeed that he knew the Koran by heart.

He was born in Shiraz, which is situated in the fertile valley of the Roknabad, a river he likens to the River of Paradise. Here life was pleasant just as it was with Heine in the merry Rhineland, and with Tu Fu in his youth, in the marvelous palaces of Ch’ang-an, amid moonlight carven jade and gold. The time was the early fourteenth century, making him for a little while a contemporary of Dante, Hafiz’ youth and the Italian’s old age coinciding. In his youth, or perhaps early manhood, (We are reasonably sure 1389 approximates the date of his death.) there must have been a season of peace in the valley of the river, even if it were breathing space in midst of wars.

The Mongolian power had fallen. Persia was coming to her own. Sultan Sedscha, son of the conquering Mosaffer, was friend and companion poet of Hafiz. During this lull in war’s alarms each gave himself to the joy of living, and life in the blessed city of Shiraz was good to remember. He says that nowhere did roses bloom so luxuriantly. And we are glad to believe him. Sultan Sedscha was the man to value Hafiz. He, too, liked better flower-faced, almond-eyed beauties of the harem, dance, song, than fast, meditation or the swinging prayers of the mystics. Religion was the worn-out side of pleasure. It was the old clothes of men’s pleasures gone to rags. For a little while there was general inclination among the people to turn to real life and give over vain dreaming.

Of this healthful, sane impulse, Hafiz was poet, uniting as he did the imaginative reach of Rûmi, with the firm grasp on material things, the worldly wisdom of Saadi. But he was greater than either in artistic sense of form, which in the quatrain attained grace and distinction comparable with Anacreon. After the winter of war this was fertile spring, when life blossomed, and with it, genius.

Genghis Khan preceded Hafiz. Tamerlane came along in his old age and devastated the valley whose charm transferred to literature is unique in history, which lay between the peaks of purple, monstrous Persian mountains, and which he loved so greatly he never wished to go elsewhere. After fall of the Mongolian power, founded by Genghis Khan, the cities of Persia, Shiraz, Jesd, Ispahan, Bagdad, Hormus, became independent cities after the manner of independent cities of Italy, in the Middle Age. And like them, too, centers of art, of dominant thought.

Hafiz belonged to religious order of the Sufis, which he is said to have joined in youth. Later it is probable he became their head, although we know his free, vigorous mind could not long be bound by tenets of an order. The Vizier, Kiwam-eddin, founded a public school for him that he might have an assured income. These duties Hafiz discharged more faithfully than the founder who acquired the disagreeable habit of forgetting pay day, and the fact that poets share with the world the vulgar need of eating. The following is Hafiz’ effective manner of reminding him of negligence:

Thou jingling rhyme with the kernel of wit Away to the master! Make quick work of it! When the place shall be right and with it the hour From your eloquent lips let a gay jest flower. In case it should please him, brighten his heart, Within it conceal this question with art: Does it seem to him right (Oh! light be your tone!) That the slave who well serves him receive but a stone?

Here is another poetic remonstrance showing that the great in his day had interesting peculiarities.

TO SULTAN MESSUD

(_On finding his ass in the sultan’s stable_)

Through spirit voices thou hast learned How into night my day is turned, All in three years thou gavest me, Or that thy Vizier gave for thee Was taken from me in a trice, And vanished stealthily as mice. I found myself but yesterday In dreams, in thy broad stable way And trusted not my eyes to see An ass eating who thus to me Up-looking from his manger there: _Hast thou seen me, pray, anywhere?_ Now since I am not wise enough To understand dream-written stuff, And none in wisdom equal thee, Great Sultan, explain, pray to me!

Not only the ruler of Shiraz, but rulers of other Persian cities knew Hafiz, gave proofs of favor, and invited him to court. But the traveling! No one ever had greater distaste for it. He did not even make the pilgrimage to Mecca. The thought of leaving his beloved city made him miserable. This attitude recalls Horace, and Keats, too, with his love for the green English country. It is commonly written that he went to Jesd once on the invitation of Shah Jehja, tempted by hope and need of money. But money was not forthcoming. He writes philosophically, glad to get home:

This is the way of a Shah, Hafiz; Therefore be not grieved.

The historian Muhammed Kasim Firischteh disputes the story of his never having left Shiraz, save on one occasion, for the fruitless journey to Jesd. He relates how he went on ship board, on invitation of some distant Sultan, and how a storm came up just as they were ready to sail. Hafiz was in terror. He made hasty pretext of a forgotten farewell in the city. He left the ship, and started post haste back to Shiraz.

Of his family life we know one fact, that on December 23, 1362, he lost a grown son. For this we have his words. He wrote a poem about it. The story is current that in his old age Timur the Conqueror came to Shiraz and destroyed the dynasty of the Muzaffer, then angrily summoned Hafiz: “With my sword have I conquered the greater part of the earth, put the inhabitants of cities, entire provinces to death, in order that my two cities Bokhara and Samarcand might be more splendid. Now how dare you say you would give them both for the mole upon your sweetheart’s cheek!” Hafiz bent to the ground in salutation, replying: “_Oh Lord of the World! It is because of such generosity that you see me poor, my robe full of holes._”

Timur was so delighted with the witty answer he not only forgave him, but sent him away with a gift.

The songs of Hafiz are illustrative of the fact that whatever comes from the heart has independent life, regardless of friend or foe. He did not collect his poems. He seems to have given no thought to their preservation. He made them for joy of the making. He gave them carelessly to his disciples, friends. Shortly after his death Muhammed Sulandem, a friend, gathered seven hundred verses which he named _The Divan_. But without this friendly intervention they would have lived. They had become property of the people of Persia. They were preserved by word of mouth. They were on all tongues. They could have been suppressed no more than the wind which bloweth where it listeth. Like the wind they, too, were a natural force and would have their way.

He is the most widely read poet of the world. Hafiz is the favorite of the Mohammedan Orient. He found the heart of the people. And he kept it. He is sung by the tiller of the field, camel driver of the desert, the boatmen upon the Red Sea. When the religious zealots found it was impossible to suppress his poems, they set about making them innocuous. They said they were allegories; that the writer was a master of _double entendre_, that he wrote one thing and meant another. With this object in view they called him _the mystic tongue_, and the _translator of the unseen_. Indeed an attempt was made in Turkey to suppress _The Divan_, in Constantinople, under pretext of heresy. The Mufti Abu Su’ud rescued it by saying that when it was read one should keep the good and throw away the evil. It was a Turk who, in the sixteenth century, wrote the first intelligent commentary, showing people its true, long forgotten meaning.

Hafiz lies buried, it is good to know, where he loved to be, Mosella, the pleasure place by Shiraz. Loti, the eloquent, has told us about it in _Ver Ispahan_. He made a journey there. He did some of his most charming writing. In the year 1451, a conquering Sultan erected a splendid tomb in his honor, which has since been neglected and fallen to ruin. But the grave remains a place of pleasant pilgrimage for Persians, just as it was for Loti, and especially for the people of Shiraz. There is kept a holiday spirit in memory of the man who loved, then glorified life.

When that accomplished linguist, Friedrich von Bodenstedt, was living in Tiflis he learned Persian. He wrote of Hafiz:

“I have received and taken up Hafiz as I would an old and honored guest, in order to free him from dust of the highway and introduce him worthily to my circle of friends. He will sing them songs of quite peculiar beauty and voice thoughts of cryptic wisdom that are pleasanter to listen to than those of the _blasé_ Solomon.” M. Carrier exclaims joyously at the name: “A blessing upon thy pleasure, dear inspired drunkard! Thy pleasure is fruit of freedom of the spirit, of deep, noble feeling, of confidence in God whom he had seen face to face. Unceasingly he praises spring, love, wine. He is always offering gems in new settings, but he lacks the epic, the organic. He is purely lyrist, one meant to attune, then harmonize emotion. The zealots have written Hafiz down in the black book of their disapproval. He advised them to pawn their priestly cowls for wine. Silver and gold are to him negligible things in comparison with freedom of soul. He desired greater, better things. And he found them! He brought heaven down upon earth. In intoxication of the spirit he found the flowing light of revelation. In wine he found truth. This is the way to look at Hafiz. Not as a wine tippler after the manner of Falstaff, but as wine’s high priest, crowned with vine-leaves, and its singer.”

Among nations of today the influence of Hafiz has been greatest in Germany, just as the English Byron’s influence was greatest in Russia. And there it is interesting to note the effect upon Goethe. He was an old man as years count, (He who was never old.), in the early seventies, when he first read Hafiz. Straightway he wrote memorable things of him: “That you can not end, that makes you great.... Your song is like the whirling star-set sky, on and on, the same.... And should the entire world perish and pass away, with you, with you, Hafiz, I will emulously strive. Let Joy and Pain, the twins, be yours and mine alone! To love, to live, to drink like you, be that my pride!”

This from Goethe, the calm, olympic God! This from Goethe, who believed in Greek standards of unemotional excellence! What was the result? In Hafiz, Goethe found another youth. He bathed in the spring of oriental love, life, was renewed and grew young. And he gave us again a poet’s book of youth, fire, fancy, _Der West-Östlicher Divan_. This book we owe to Hafiz! It has the fresh charm that distinguishes the _Vita Nuova_. It has all that delights in books of youth, without defects.

Goethe exclaimed with joy: “I will grow young! I will mingle with the herds’ boys in the desert! I will refresh myself in the oasis, in the waste places!”

Sometimes we are forced to think he borrowed from this Eastern poet. But he did not try to conceal it. He was great enough to borrow without bowed head. Hafiz’ meters and somewhat of his manner have become naturalized in Germany, thanks to men like Platen, Rückert. The Germans, too, have translated Hafiz better than other nations. There we find him freest from foreign substance, clearer, less _betrübt_.

Hafiz has the conversational freedom, fluency, which distinguish Tu Fu, and which give his poems freshness. Sometimes they have effect of brilliant improvisation, that promptitude of the moment, which fastidious Watteau held to be the essential of art. He has primal fire. His sunlight dazzles us. It is too strong for eyes accustomed to dilutions, to tempered shadows. His roses are brilliant, richly scented, and of the East; they are unlike pale, pastel tinted shadows into which Eighteenth Century art conventionalized them. He had not learned to like the mixing of light with shadow. He paints as Watteau painted his _Italian Clown_, under direct hard light, straight fronting us. We must learn to see with a painter’s trained eye the modulations of white. He knew how to _harmonizer le blanc_. Watteau, the lyric painter, is his kin in plastic art of the brush. He is likewise his kin in scornful, contemptuous creation of beauty, and in his scorn of things that perish. But it is not wise to write of one art in terms of another.

Strong indeed must have been the personality that burst priestly restraint six hundred years ago! And sure indeed was his realization of self.

What capability for suffering! What a tender heart in the midst of joy that is pagan! He was a tearful jester, a scornful, sardonic romancer, a gentle, heroic reader of the riddle of life. In his plaint there is perhaps something of Verlaine, of Villon. But nothing of their manner. His grief never became the melancholy of a less vigorous age. Always in it there was joy of the struggle, strength to endure. A peculiar mental combination in truth; mediæval seriousness from which thought of death is seldom absent, combined with the reasoned blitheness of a Greek.

Hafiz was a jovial fellow with a host of friends. They played part in his life, we gather from his poems. There we see the shadowy, unnamed forms of a merry, talented company. Youths, handsome as Antinous of old, but of whose name we have no slightest hint, lure us with charm of mystery.

It would be interesting to know the youthful friends with whom he jested, made merry. Like the Greeks, the Persians loved the beauty of men in youth. They have written about them, as the Greeks wrote. There are lines which are made more acceptable by changing the personal pronoun to feminine gender.

In poetry today friendship is seldom celebrated. Nor more do we find eloquence of denunciative wrath. Such elements of power, of rebellion, belong to an earlier age, to the day when Cicero was orating against Cataline, or when Firdusi was writing his splendid satire to Sultan Mahmud. Our poetry, symbolically speaking, is what autumn says to the rose. Hafiz’ poetry is what spring says to the same immortal flower. And the difference is the difference between things that live and things that die ... and rise not.

Many and varied qualities go to this lyric supremacy: the natural art of Petofi, its characteristic lyric freedom, the golden fluency of Puschkin; the pitiful sweetness of Catullus; the intellectual reach of Rûmi, the mystic; the limpid racial charm of Mistral, all are here, but made more direct, informed with fiercer fire.

Hafiz was last of the great ones. After him came imitation, insincerity, mental decay. Dschami, who lived in the century after Hafiz, writing of it says: “The new scholars have invented to be sure verse and rhyme, but except bare verse and rhyme everything else has vanished. No one troubles himself whether it contains phantasie, truth, or falsehood. And yet Oh! Great God, how splendid is poetry! How exalted, how dignified! Oh that I were a poet! Where is there an art more splendid, that more mightily ensnares!” Dschami came after the great ones. It has been wittily remarked of him that he possessed all their qualities _except their originality_. Rückert says of him: _Dschami hat nah daran gedichtet_, referring to the masters of Persian poetry.

The heart of every Persian echoes to Hafiz, just as Germany, and indeed Europe, has echoed to the music of Heine. It is interesting to note in passing, that in 1814 a poet was born in Shiraz, Hussein Ali Mirza, who has been accused of imitating Heine. We translate from an orientalist: “... either the translator has _frisiert à la Europa_ too greatly, the new Iranian poet, Prince Hussein Ali, or else he has read Heine. This kind of sentiment does not belong to the East.”

Heine and Hafiz were most alike perhaps in their consuming fear of death. They were so vivid the thought of _not being_ was terrifying.

It is felt in whatever they wrote. It did not enervate them. It inspired them to eloquence, to rebellion. In technical equipment the poets stand shoulder to shoulder. In grace, in fanciful invention, they were likewise equal. But the Hebrew and the Persian possessed in greater degree the power of passion, anger, and the strength to use them. Tu Fu was a lyric genius, of whom years of training made a master. Yet it seems to us that none has made art so absolute a thing as did Anacreon, in the days when his race were making models for remaining time to copy. However, this is matter of temperament, which helps render criticism uncertain.

There was an interesting superstition in the long ago regarding the two older, Hafiz and Anacreon, to the effect that to read them brought madness. Its origin is as deeply veiled in mystery as origin of the wandering quatrains of Persia. But we recognize gladly a tribute to power.

Both Hafiz and Heine, with Tu Fu, have that inexplainable quality that touches the heart. They say the things we can not forget. But there was an elfish caprice in Heine which Hafiz did not have, just as there was a mystic yearning in the Persian the Hebrew did not know. And in Tu Fu there were heights of lyric rapture none have surpassed. They were not lonely geniuses, seeking solitude, meditation. They lived in the whirl of life. They learned wisdom of its sadness. Heine had the beauty-loving soul of an ancient Greek, the restless pitiful heart of a modern, and the passionate vengeance, the hate of the Hebrew. He realized in his life, in the few years of health granted him, the fierce, furious ideals of pleasure of Anacreon and Hafiz. He lived like a God. And he received the punishment of a God, in a consuming Promethean fire of pain, that crippled him, then burned up his life. Each lived in an age of mental expansion, when minds were creative. The Paris of Heine was the most brilliant age of that gay city by the Seine, when she best deserved the proud appellation of _the step-mother of genius_. Poland had fallen. Paris was filled with a crowd of brilliant Slav exiles. It was the day, too, of Eugene Sue, Berlioz, George Sand, de Musset, Dumas, Gautier, the Goncourt Brothers, Gavarni, Saint Beuve, Liszt, Chopin, Felix Mendelssohn, Ary, Sheffer, Delacroix, Horace Vernet. Mickiewicz was there, too, editing the fourth volume of his poetry. And Julius Slowacki, and Count Krasinski. After the period of these men had passed there was no more writing whose inspiration came from deep conviction, and which was indifferent to gold and to the praise of the world. Tu Fu lived at the time lyric verse reached its height under art loving Emperors of Tang, and when one of the proudest periods of plastic art was beginning, the Period of Sung Emperors.

Anacreon was borne on the crest of the wave that was sweeping on to the sublime heights of Greek culture. And Hafiz, who wrote in _the divine, high piping Pehlevi_ of old Omar, _the language of heroes_, crowns the crest of the great age of Persian lyric poetry.

Anacreon is product of soft, sensuous Ionia, home of art and song. Hafiz is product of the mystic imagination of India, of her unreckoned centuries of culture and meditation, and the dominant clear thinking wisdom of Persia. Tu Fu was the mental product of three thousand years of intensive cultivation.

Heine is product of the prophetic fury and eloquence of Israel and the grace of France. Heine and Hafiz had no little in common. They are to be added to the list of inspired teachers who have come out of Asia. Each was born into a received religion, but neither bore its limitation nor its restraint. Each was receptively tolerant of the religion of others, while having none of his own. Heine said proudly: _I am the freest man since Goethe!_ Hafiz said equally proudly, in his Rubaiyat: “Only he is happy who draws inspiration from all things beautiful just so long as he shall be permitted to live!”

Heine loved the Orient. He longed for it. Heine has written a lyric of a pine in the north girdled with snow and ice, dreaming of a palm in the Orient. Like Gautier he dreamed of life under a bluer sky, its splendor of light. He read and loved the poets of Persia, Hafiz, Firdusi, Rûmi, Nizami. Schlegel was just telling the German world of that day of the literary treasures of Asia. In Heine he found a receptive listener. The oriental blood in his veins answered to call of the Persian poets. He, too, was of the East.

At the same time both Heine and Hafiz are modern, because of their free, their inquiring souls. No other writers have so eloquently expressed grief at the vanity of life. The lyric poets of other races and ages have not had their tragic fire, power of denunciation, nor their philosophic depth. None have so rebelled against life’s briefness, its inexorableness. None have so sounded hollowness of all things human.

At the same time the mind of each has been rainbow-prismed with joy. It is people of Asiatic blood who are capable of transitions from grief to joy. The fog bound lands of Europe can not shelter such chameleon-like changefulness.

The throb of warring ages in which they lived was in their blood. It beat in their verses. It modeled their measures. They were indebted to its storm, its stress for vivid vitality. And they were indebted likewise for warmer blood. Great lyric poets must come of impassioned, Asiatic races. Something hinders their European brothers, binds their utterance. They can not make of their souls a torch of joy to light a moment. They lack the passionate conviction that makes them great.

Each was born upon crest of an age of transition that resembles the one in which we live. A period that followed wars! Heine was born the last year of the Great Century, 1799. He saw blind worship of royal power, prerogative, give way to the modern spirit of freedom. Hafiz was born at end of a period of religious intensity which gave way during his life to a genial culture. Both felt the battling, invigorating influences of two distinct ages, each of which was strongly marked.