No More Learning

No doubt many of these Quatrains seem unaccountable unless mystically
interpreted; but many more as unaccountable unless literally. Were
the Wine spiritual, for instance, how wash the Body with it when dead?
Why make cups of the dead clay to be filled with--"La Divinite," by
some succeeding Mystic? Mons. Nicolas himself is puzzled by some
"bizarres" and "trop Orientales" allusions and images--"d'une
sensualite quelquefois revoltante" indeed--which "les convenances" do
not permit him to translate; but still which the reader cannot but
refer to "La Divinite. "[8] No doubt also many of the Quatrains in the
Teheran, as in the Calcutta, Copies, are spurious; such Rubaiyat being
the common form of Epigram in Persia. But this, at best, tells as
much one way as another; nay, the Sufi, who may be considered the
Scholar and Man of Letters in Persia, would be far more likely than
the careless Epicure to interpolate what favours his own view of the
Poet. I observed that very few of the more mystical Quatrains are in
the Bodleian MS. , which must be one of the oldest, as dated at Shiraz,
A. H. 865, A. D. 1460. And this, I think, especially distinguishes Omar
(I cannot help calling him by his--no, not Christian--familiar name)
from all other Persian Poets: That, whereas with them the Poet is lost
in his Song, the Man in Allegory and Abstraction; we seem to have the
Man--the Bon-homme--Omar himself, with all his Humours and Passions,
as frankly before us as if we were really at Table with him, after the
Wine had gone round.

I must say that I, for one, never wholly believed in the Mysticism of
Hafiz.
It does not appear there was any danger in holding and singing
Sufi Pantheism, so long as the Poet made his Salaam to Mohammed at the
beginning and end of his Song. Under such conditions Jelaluddin,
Jami, Attar, and others sang; using Wine and Beauty indeed as Images
to illustrate, not as a Mask to hide, the Divinity they were
celebrating. Perhaps some Allegory less liable to mistake or abuse
had been better among so inflammable a People: much more so when, as
some think with Hafiz and Omar, the abstract is not only likened to,
but identified with, the sensual Image; hazardous, if not to the
Devotee himself, yet to his weaker Brethren; and worse for the Profane
in proportion as the Devotion of the Initiated grew warmer. And all
for what? To be tantalized with Images of sensual enjoyment which
must be renounced if one would approximate a God, who according to the
Doctrine, is Sensual Matter as well as Spirit, and into whose Universe
one expects unconsciously to merge after Death, without hope of any
posthumous Beatitude in another world to compensate for all one's self-
denial in this. Lucretius' blind Divinity certainly merited, and
probably got, as much self-sacrifice as this of the Sufi; and the
burden of Omar's Song--if not "Let us eat"--is assuredly--"Let us
drink, for To-morrow we die! " And if Hafiz meant quite otherwise by a
similar language, he surely miscalculated when he devoted his Life and
Genius to so equivocal a Psalmody as, from his Day to this, has been
said and sung by any rather than spiritual Worshippers.

However, as there is some traditional presumption, and certainly the
opinion of some learned men, in favour of Omar's being a Sufi--and
even something of a Saint--those who please may so interpret his Wine
and Cup-bearer. On the other hand, as there is far more historical
certainty of his being a Philosopher, of scientific Insight and
Ability far beyond that of the Age and Country he lived in; of such
moderate worldly Ambition as becomes a Philosopher, and such moderate
wants as rarely satisfy a Debauchee; other readers may be content to
believe with me that, while the Wine Omar celebrates is simply the
Juice of the Grape, he bragg'd more than he drank of it, in very
defiance perhaps of that Spiritual Wine which left its Votaries sunk
in Hypocrisy or Disgust.

Edward J. Fitzgerald




Footnotes:

[Footnote 1: Some of Omar's Rubaiyat warn us of the danger of Greatness, the
instability of Fortune, and while advocating Charity to all Men,
recommending us to be too intimate with none. Attar makes Nizam-ul-Mulk
use the very words of his friend Omar [Rub. xxviii. ], "When Nizam-ul-
Mulk was in the Agony (of Death) he said, 'Oh God! I am passing away in
the hand of the wind. '"]

[Footnote 2: Though all these, like our Smiths, Archers, Millers, Fletchers, etc.