The conclusion might be drawn, on the analogy of the very neatly ordered sequence of the first seven Roman kings, that the history we’ve set in place here has been cunningly and quite intentionally fabricated; against this, however, it should be noted that the seven poets who are considered the earliest by the Persians, and who gradually appear within a time- frame of five hundred years, really have an ethical and poetical relationship with one another, which might appear concocted if the works they left behind did not bear witness to its actual existence.
Still, if we consider these Pleiades more closely, insofar as it’s possible for us at so great a distance, we find that all seven of them possessed a capacious talent, ever freshly reinventing itself, by which they deemed themselves to be exalted above the small number of outstanding men as well as the larger mass of middling and pedestrian talents; yet, by the same token, they ended up situated as they were in a particular time and place, in which they could happily realise a huge windfall and blunt the impact of their equally talented successors for a long time to come, until an age again appeared in which nature could once again open up new treasures to poets.
With this in mind, let us take the poets we’ve considered once again individually and observe that:
Firdowsi seized all the past events of the state and empire, whether historical or fabulous, so utterly that nothing remained for a successor other than allusion and annotation, not new treatment or re-imagining.
Anvari took his stand in the present. Brilliant and splendid, as nature appeared to him, he gazed, joyously gifted, at the court of his Shah; to string the two worlds – this one and the next – together in their most exquisite features, and to do so in the choicest of words, was both his duty and his delight. No one has ever done it better than he.
Nizami seized hold of all the legends of love and wonder-working which lay before him with the force of affection. The Qur’an had already shown how the most ancient, the most laconic traditions might be handled and treated to one’s own specific purposes and made entertaining.
Jalal al-Din Rumi feels uneasy on the problematic ground of reality; he yearns to solve the puzzles of inward and outward phenomena by witty and spiritual means, with the result that his own works stand in need of new riddles, new solutions and commentaries. He finds himself at the last constrained to take refuge in the doctrine of Oneness of Being by which as much is lost as is gained and in the end nothing remains but a zero, as comforting as it is comfortless. How then could any communication in either poetry or prose succeed beyond this? Fortunately,
Sa‛di, that excellent man, is expelled into the larger world and swamped with the numberless little facts experience accords, from all of which he is astute enough to draw something of use. He feels the need to concentrate and collect himself; he is convinced that he has an obligation to instruct others and in this way, he has become eminently profitable and beneficial for Westerners like ourselves.
Hafiz, a blithe and mighty talent, content to decline everything which human beings most crave, to set aside all that they may not dispense with, and in this way he ever appears as the merry brother of his fellow man. He can be acknowledged justly only within the sphere of his own time and place. But as soon as one has seized hold of him, he becomes a lovable life’s companion. Even today, camel and mule-drivers still sing him out, hardly knowing who he is, not because of the meaning of his verses, which he himself has chopped to bits, but for the sake of the mood he forever diffuses so purely and freshly.51 Who could then succeed this poet when all else had been already taken by his predecessors? But then
Jami, equal to everything that had occurred before him and around him, wound this all together into sheaves, imitated, renewed, extended, united within himself all the merits as well as the shortcomings of his predecessors with the greatest lucidity, and he did so in such a way that to a succeeding age nothing remained possible other than to be like him, unless it were to be worse; and thus it remained for yet another three centuries. In this respect we note only that if the drama might have broken through at some point and a poet of this sort arisen, the whole course of literature might have taken another direction.52
If we have ventured to describe five hundred years of the Persian art of poetry and eloquence within this small compass, let it be – to draw on the words of Quintilian, our ancient master – accepted by our friends as rounded numbers are permitted, not for the sake of more exact determination, but in order that we may express something general in an approximate and rather easygoing fashion.