Strive to Be Truthful . . .

The wind is the disentangling soul of nature, and the poet is the disentangling soul of the universe. One opens the shell of nature’s phenomena—winter, soil, clouds, and vegetation—and the other opens the closed doors of the universe: the firmament and the times. Since the world is pregnant with the soul of the poet, it breathes with the pulse of the poet’s soul and opens with its flight; and once the world is open, it no longer remains the prison of the soul, but becomes the garden of freedom. In order to pass through nature, the wind must leave behind itself. The poet, as well, in his journey through the universe, as he passes beyond himself and is uplifted within himself, also uplifts the universe within himself, and if he dawns within himself, he has opened the universe, like morning.

If you go to the heavens,

like Christ, pure and incorporeal

Your lamp will bestow

a hundred rays upon the sun.¹

Your lamp is the spring of your heart, which is the house of light. The water from this spring irrigates the sown field of the sky and nurtures the tree of light in the stars. The brightness of the world is “from this hidden fire”² of the friend in whose breast is the breath of God.

Christ and the sun are both in the fourth heaven and are both lights of the world, and the brightness of the soul and body of one comes from the light of the other. But the person who can bestow on the sun his own happiness is he who is as pure as “the son of mankind,” like Mansur, a person who can bring the dead to life with his Christlike breath, like Shams,³ a person like our Hafez who blows the message of the Magian elder into our autumn in order for our spring to grow, like the zephyr! If man is a sign of the friend and a manifestation of his beauty, then the more pure and the more incorporeal, the more visible and the clearer the image of the friend in him! In man’s journey toward God’s perfection, as well, he will become more complete and more beautiful, like the world. The breath of those who are willing to risk everything blows like dawn into the darkness of the soul, and like true dawn, it is accompanied by a sunrise.

Strive to be truthful

and the sun will be born from your breath,

For the false dawn’s face

was blackened from falsehood.⁴

It is as though the breath of the truthful is an ocean from the heart of which the smile of the sun opens wide, as though it is the deep mystery of water and the sublime serenity of the sky. Truthfulness is light, and since things that exist are seen in its rays, truthfulness is the visible manifestation of the world and its creation. The world is illuminated by the light of man, and man’s lamp is born from his truthfulness. In contrast, falsehood is darkness; even morning that is the source and place of the soaring of light is darkened by falsehood. Since the first morning⁵ is false dawn, it remains in darkness, or contrariwise, since it remains in darkness, it has been considered to be false. Falsehood and darkness are twins. In the darkness of the world, things lose their visible form and are lost and vanish in one another. Thus, in darkness, falsehood cannot distinguish its soul from itself and others; it cannot see the angel and the demon. In darkness, there is no sun; hence, there is no sight and no insight; corruption is all there is. If falsehood is the substance of darkness, then with falsehood man makes the world dark and as a result, corrupt. “The contamination of the robe means the corruption of the world,”⁶ and a contaminated robe, from Hafez’s perspective, is the robe of the pseudopious, the hypocrites, and the two-faced: the robe of falsifiers.

In the beliefs of religious scholars—who on the basis of religious law ran the affairs of the world and whom the poet refers to as muftis, sheikhs, religious jurists, ascetics, and preachers—God measures the good and bad deeds of his servants on the scales of justice, and places them in paradise or in hell. And the criteria for good and bad are what religious law allows and disallows. As for this world, it is a caravanserai in which one must pack up for the next world; one must pray and find reward. The perception of such faithful people regarding religion is very this-worldly. The connection between the creator and the created, similar to that of a king and his subjects, is based on fear and hope: if you are obedient, you shall be rewarded, and if you are not, you will be punished. And, “What is it the Creator’s clemency / And mercy signify?”⁷ They signify exacting and unforgiving accounting and accountability. Man’s connection with the world, which like an expansive banquet summons the hungry and constantly tempts us to sin, is akin to an unarmed man traveling through a mountain pass where robbers are waiting in ambush. “The world is a paradise for infidels, and hell for the faithful.”⁸ In this deadly predicament with that kind of God and this world, man has a terrified relationship with himself, because his sinful self is always waiting in ambush for his repenting self, and he worships with the hope of salvation in the next world, and he “serves for wages, like a beggar.”⁹

The fear that exists in helpless mankind in connection with the Almighty has also found its way into man’s approach to the world as well as to himself. This formidable fear in facing divine glory stems not from awe of an unknowable and “totally other” absolute, and it is not spiritual; it is something akin to fearing a despotic ruler from whose wrath one might be spared by being unquestioningly obedient, a fear stemming from social life that has infiltrated and spilled its poison onto spiritual life.

Fear was the foundation of knowledge and the method of instruction. From the early years of his life, a child would be raised with terrifying fables of demons, jinn, and spirits. If the pupil in a primary or Koranic school or in a shop or workshop was not afraid of the teacher or the master, he would not learn anything. The motto was, “better a master’s cruelty than a father’s affection,” since students whose teacher was lenient “would play leapfrog in the marketplace.”¹⁰ Domination by the father and fear of him would guarantee the health and prosperity of the family, and fear of the first night in the grave, the endless day of resurrection, and the fiery ball of the sun on top of one’s head would bridle the unruliness and lack of restraint of concupiscence. Man would open his eyes to the world in the light of fear, traverse the paths of fear, and depart on the journey to the next world with his knapsack filled with fears.

Those who instituted man’s relationship to both worlds on the foundation of fear were in fact the interpreters of social reality and the unwitting spokesmen of the powerful, not the harbingers of divine mercy. The social structure and relations had so subjugated the minds of these clerics that they constructed the celestial world based on the model of our dreaded world. In this version of religion, the invasion of fear left no room for reliance on and trust in God, and deprived the “faithful” of the peace of mind of the trusting.

The understanding of our Hafez, however, regarding existence is completely different. According to his thinking, God is the lover, and no judgment exists between the lover and the beloved. And when there is no judgment, there is neither punishment nor fear. God is the friend, the friend who is all forgiveness and benevolence. Hence, to make him appear to be an unforgiving judge and to consider the world to be a laboratory and man a test subject is to extract the essence of truth and offer the appearance of its opposite. Both that understanding of existence and the fear stemming from it are falsehoods. And now, the dark pit of falsehood comes between and causes separation. Because man turns not to existence but to its altered version, not to the truth but to its opposite appearance, he has nothing in his hands but the shell, which he mistakes for the substance, and he falls into the web of his own illusions. Thus, he is left disconnected from the source.

Even if the religious scholars and agents believe in such an assumption of existence—which they often do—they are merely like “the ascetic who is a slave to appearances.”¹¹ They are truthful in their worshipping of the appearance, and they are ignorant of the truth. From the Sufi path, they turn to the path of religion, and even sometimes merely to religious rules and protocols. Even though every step they take stems from truthfulness, they are the wayfarers of the realm of illusion. They are unaware of the “false” space in which they breathe; but they are aware of breathing truthfully in this space. They are the truthful of the domain of falsehood, and despite all their truthfulness, they are considered superficial and incomplete from the perspective of those kindred spirits who follow their own hearts.

But those whose contaminated robes corrupt the world¹² are of a different type. They believe in nothing but the belief of others, which is the capital for their trade. They utilize the beliefs of others and pretend to believe like others. They pretend to have something that they do not have. Hence, inevitably, they are two-faced, and hypocrites. They make such a show of pulpit piety and act in a totally different way when no one is there to see!¹³ The “sellers of piety”¹⁴ and the “blue attired”¹⁵ knowingly engage in falsehood in religion and the Sufi profession so that they can be owners of mosques and monasteries and, in all cases, shepherds of the people’s beliefs.

In our Islamic history, we can see another social group whose deeds were contrary to their words. The caliphs were theoretically the successors to the prophet, since the government was a theocracy. Even though the local kings and rulers seized local governments, they received orders from the caliph, in order to rule on his behalf and be representatives of the deputy to the prophet. Even after the caliphate system came to an end, government was not separated from religion, and the next world was not separated from this world. Theoretically, support for Islam was the primary duty of Muslim kings. In practice, however, their primary duty was to hold onto the government. In appearance, the government was at the service of religion; but in reality, religion was at the service of the government. If the rulers were to admit this contradiction between the theory and their deeds and words, the government would lose its “spiritual” foundation and justification. This contradiction was itself a sign of a falsehood in the social structure and its political and governmental organization that would not go unnoticed by the intelligent.

Hafez pays little attention to this social reality, and for reasons that we understand, he mentions it far less, with occasional exceptions, and for that matter, in masked allusions. Similar to the people of his time, he regards the good and the bad of the government—in contrast to the ways of the world and fate as they are related to human beings—to be an individual matter stemming from the nature and behavior of the rulers rather than from the political and social system. But he does not neglect for a moment another individual and collective falsehood that has contaminated the entire society of his time—similar to many other periods—that is, the falsehood of the clerics and Sufis. These tradesmen of religion and mysticism steer the conscience of the people, but are negligent of their own consciences. Profiteering is the basic motivation for their words and deeds. Pursuing their own profit, they view everything from this orbit, and “self-absorption” and egotism are their “guiding star.”¹⁶ With such behavior, they often appoint God to serve their Lucifer. They are loveless sham lovers and slaves of the body who call themselves free spirits; but they engage in injustice in the name of justice, pretend that their enmity toward the people is friendship, and practice corruption on earth, because they have replaced virtue with vice; and since they make falsehood appear to be truthfulness, everything turns upside down and acquires a different meaning. The connection between the tongue and the heart is broken, and then when someone says, “Oh friend,” his voice falls to the ground, since neither does he know what he is saying nor does the addressee know what he is hearing. Neighbors have drifted apart, and only the ostentatious understand each other’s language when they speak about “human dignity.” Falsehood is black, and it slays Sohrab, Siavosh, and Esfandiar; eliminates Rostam¹⁷ through ruses; buries Mazdak,¹⁸ Mansur¹⁹, and Babak²⁰ under the rubble of calumny and slander; and falsehood kills Farhad, drags heroism, love, and any beautiful ideal down into black ashes, and imparts Anushirvan-like justice.²¹

The lofty royal falcon of the soul crawls on ashes with its wings bound and ruminates on the seeds of fear. Because I was born from dissimulation and denial, and I am the offspring of expedient lies, fearing that the truth will cause sedition,²² I hide in the bunker of falsehood. Since we have not been secure in our beliefs, and since we have not had the opportunity nor the heart to face the truth, throughout the course of long periods of history, we have justified our actions by dissimulation and denial in religious terms and expedient lies in ethical terms, and at least in order to escape to an end with peace of mind, we have found a way to flee from the truth.

Dissimulating and falsifying is a method of behaving toward others and exonerating oneself; but once this behavior is firmly entrenched in my nature, then I begin to dissimulate with myself; I stealthily conceal what I do with my hands from my eyes, saying to myself, “God willing, it is the cat,” and using every pretext, lull my negligent conscience to sleep so that it will not see what I think and what I do. For every profitable lie, I find an expedient justification—which is the same as profitability—and I conceal from myself: one with two faces, both the one I show and the one I do not show, such that I can no longer find myself. In playing games with others, I have advanced so far that I too have been trapped in the net I have spread out; I am no longer anything but an endless game of futility. When falsehood finds its way into the religion and government of a people, no one remains immune to its harm, because falsehood becomes the way of life, and like the cane of the blind, it is both an instrument for advancing and also a security blanket. If not only with its help, at least very easily with its help, one can save one’s own skin and have a seat at the banquet. Moreover, in a despotic government, the social individual treads his path not as he wants but as he is shown, and behaving contrary to what he wishes, he is other than he pretends to be. He has a two-faced life. In this case, falsehood is also a defensive shield, and one can take shelter behind it. In a gathering of the ferocious and the deceitful—where the henna of the honest and pure of heart has no color—truthfulness is the sunlight at the edge of the roof that does not warm anyone’s hands and heart; it is a counterfeit coin that has no buyers.

Now this falsehood stands before us like summer’s dry dagger, like oppression and futile hope, like a nightmare in the imagination, torment in the soul, weeds in the heart, poison in the cup, a bullet in the mouth, and a face-to-face insult! It stands in this manner and flaunts its presence before us. And even though we know that the liar is the enemy of God, in enmity toward God, we continue to blacken ourselves and the world. That rose-colored elder says, in the same way that the breath of the truthful exhales light, darkness is born from this falsehood. One gives light to the sun, and the other blackens the morning, and many a time destroys the world. Ethics, the effect of which goes beyond man and his society and in this way finds its way into nature and the world, is not merely a social phenomenon; rather, it is an overall universal truth.

Our sages considered ethical concerns such as domestic economy and civic policy to be part of practical philosophy, the ultimate goal of which is well-being through acquiring virtues and disposing of vices. The domain of practical philosophy is human society. Hence, ethics (and its ultimate goal, such as household management and civic policy) is perceived, measured, and utilized in social relations with others, and since it does not have a loftier origin and purpose, it is merely a social phenomenon, and its character indirectly and ultimately depends on the function of the laws of the society that determines its value system. In the Islamic period of our history, the internal structure and external form of the society had an invisible, quiet process and appeared more or less stagnant. Only shocking external incidents, such as the arrival of the Turks and the Mongol invasion, would create certain changes in it. The ethical values of such a society were also more or less uniform and consistent. During all these periods, however, the rulers of the society were constantly changing, and the government went from hand to hand within various dynasties or the members of one dynasty.

In the type of ethics the goal of which would merely be a social matter, at least the prosperity of the government officials, who deal with the autocratic rulers directly, would depend on the type of relationship they have with them; and with the change of rulers, the well-being of the government officials would also be subject to change. Well-being is the goal of ethics, and virtue is the means. Change in the goal inevitably changes the means. As a result, when rulers change, the system of the ethical values of most of them falls apart, to the point that in order to achieve the goal, by shifting the places of truth and falsehood, beautiful and ugly, and good and evil, and based on expediency, they make one appear to be the other. In contrast to the static ethics of the citizens, the ethics of government officials, who mostly consist of bureaucrats, military men, the wealthy, the intellectuals, and the poets, is “dynamic” and takes on a different hue from time to time.ⁱ

In his long life, Salman Savaji was a eulogist and enjoyed the patronage of the Jalayirid dynasty. When Shah Shoja’ conquered Tabriz and the Jalayirid sultan fled, the old eulogist expressed joy in a qasideh stating that “water returned to the stream of the country,” regarding the defeated and departed friend as “the Gog of calamity and sedition,” and the victorious enemy who had arrived as “the second Alexander,” and he did not consider his own head to be deserving of his threshold and, employing demeaning flattery, he said, Saturn descends from the sky to be your doorman, the cat that is nurtured by you can fight a lion, and other lies like these.ⁱⁱ When Shah Shoja’ went back, and the Jalayirid king returned to Tabriz, Salman composed a new qasideh in praise of the former eulogized patron, in order for the water that had left the stream to return.

At a time when, because of belief in the next world and its eternity, many of the material and spiritual foundations of life in this world were also imagined to be eternal, a set of ethics theoretically based on such a weak social foundation and that in practice would reach such a point could not be a solid guide for human behavior.

Practical ethics, of course, since it shows us the way to behave toward others, is inherently a social matter. Perhaps for this reason, our sages have considered it theoretically and in practice to be social. Our Hafez’s ethics, however, is theoretically other-worldly and, in practice, this-worldly. Such ethics is rooted in his understanding of existence and his worldview; as a result, it extends well beyond the historical and social framework of fourteenth-century chaotic Shiraz and is contemplated as a general universal truth. Since in the poet’s mind social life does not have its own particular law apart from the law of the universe, the universal rules of ethics also apply to the society, as well, and they indicate the manner of human behavior toward others. In this worldview, because man accepted the burden of trust and made an agreement, he became God’s deputy; and when he unburdened himself of that trust and broke the agreement, he acted with enmity toward the friend and became the agent of Satan. The original source of man’s good and evil is in trust or treason, in fulfilling the promise or failing to fulfill the promise. The more a human being is truthful in accepting the trust, the more he is one with the divine essence and the more Godlike he is, and as a result, he brings into existence God’s will in this world. That is why Hafez says, “Strive to be truthful and the sun will be born from your breath.”²³ Because it is God’s breath that comes out of the breast of the truthful, and since God’s breath blew in what was truthful, they became the owners of a breast brighter than the sun. Hence, truthfulness, in addition to oneness with the self and with God, ignites “the flame of the sun from this hidden fire within my breast”²⁴ and the brightness of the world.

But not everyone’s “destiny from the dawn of creation”²⁵ is the same. Every person has his own burden of trust, and not everyone has the good fortune of lovers and poets. After all, Adam, man, is none other than he who is enamored of Eve and wants the fruit of the tree of knowledge and the paradise of earth, which is full of hardship, the same fusion of the angel and Satan. But since “no head exists devoid of some mystery of God,”²⁶ then everyone, every haunter of the tavern and every clever libertine, has some portion of the friend; he has been entrusted with as much of the burden of trust as befits him and is in keeping with his aspirations, and in this way his relationship with God, and as a result his relationship with himself and the world, his relationship with existence, is determined. This trust is “man’s divine destiny,” and for this reason, the nature of his existence. Man’s behavior toward others, that is, his practical ethics, is one of the emergent aspects and manifestations of this nature. Our destiny has been decided “without our presence.”²⁷ “We did not exist, thus our request did not exist.”²⁸ But now we exist, and in any case, we have something of the friend in us in trust, so that blessed with it, we may find a way to his heart.

Truthfulness in trust is man’s human destiny. Even though man has no choice in fate, he does have choice concerning his destiny. Understanding one’s own destiny, accepting it as it is, and being truthful with oneself and the world, or for some ill intention or purpose presenting oneself to be something else and playing dishonestly with oneself and the world, is the destiny of our free will. Our truthfulness or untruthfulness is in our own hands. If you are truthful in your untruthfulness and one-faced in your two-facedness and unhypocritically admit that you are hypocritical, if you reveal your concealed self, you are someone, a great someone; otherwise, you have smeared with blackness love, words, and knowledge through falsehood,ⁱⁱⁱ and the fire of your hypocrisy “will burn the harvest / religion reaped.”²⁹

Truthfulness and falsehood, honesty and hypocrisy, are a paradise and hell that create our Hafez’s world of ethics. The same darkness and light that comprise the nature of man are also the substance of his ethics. Man is an inclination from Ahriman to Yazdan;³⁰ hence, he is a wayfarer moving away from falsehood and reaching toward truth. The ultimate goal of such ethics is union with the friend and being in his alley: oneness with existence. Similar to other virtues, truthfulness is a means of achieving this goal. In this ethical system, however, the “means” itself has absolute value, because in the same way that oneness is impossible without truthfulness, it is impossible for truthfulness to exist and oneness not to exist, for the means to exist and the goal not to exist. In the circle of ethics, the goal is like the center that is surrounded by the means as the circumference, and the circumference and the center are the reason and the requirement of each other’s existence. Truthfulness moves forward within itself, both as the path and as the traveler; it constantly goes beyond itself and is constantly within itself, but each time in a different stage and state. It is the wayfarer, not the one who has arrived; like the sun, it rises from its setting and travels toward its own light. Happiness is in the same wayfaring; in other words, the goal is in the same means, and these two are so fused together that in practice we cannot separate one from the other. As long as they are separated, the trap that is calculation and the ethics of expedient thinking is set, and the possibility constantly exists that an impermissible means will be utilized for a permissible goal; but when they become inseparable, one cannot destroy one in the interests of the other. And this is itself the reason why the ethics of the bard—despite all the contradictions in the field of practice—would never result in anti-ethics in the theoretical realm, and its universal rules remain compatible and constant.

Being honest in trust, accepting the high and the low and the beautiful and the ugly of one’s own nature, is the essence and touchstone of truthfulness; and truthfulness is itself salvation. But man’s trust is in the hands of another.

I did not fall from the mosque into the tavern on my own,

This lot befell me from the dawn of creation.³¹

And the responsibility also belongs to him. At the dawn of creation, when man undertook the responsibility of being the messenger of God, in accepting the burden of trust, he became accountable for the destiny of the creator and his created ones in this world. But the friend who conferred on us the burden of trust and let us go on our own to face existence also became responsible for our fate in both worlds. Both of us must appreciate friendship, since the happiness and unhappiness of friends belongs each to the other. If I am fated to sin, if something in my creation exists without my will, then, either no sin exists in me or God is also a sinner in my sinning, because if no transgression existed, it would not find its way into me, the transgressor. I want to and I strive to avoid sinning, “if fate should agree with my resolve.”³² But if this does not happen, I will not be abandoned to the vengeful hands of sin.

Our elder said that the creator’s pen made no error,

Praise to his error-covering eyes.³³

To be a poet is to be aware. It is impossible for a poet not to feel the injustice and oppression that twists inside us like a whirlwind and not to writhe within himself because of this unwarranted suffering. Some error must have been made somewhere and must have run through the veins of the world “that there are all these hidden wounds and no chance for a sigh.”³⁴ But our elder—because of love—conceals errors, and because he has some vestige of the friend, he is not deprived of the friend’s loving forgiveness. Similarly, our elder himself “with his divine generosity conceals errors.”³⁵ It seems as though in this story of existence the created and the creator have suffered injustice, such that, with commiseration and compassion, both forgive each other’s error. With this mutual forgiveness, the day-to-day accounting seems futile, the rational method of religion that promises paradise to the pious worshippers and hell to sinners is of no use, and the faith of the poet, from the viewpoint of the guardians of religious law, raises its head in the dark desert of heathenism. In this ethical system, essentially, not much attention is paid to nor is much mention made of hell, because religion’s hell belongs to the God of limited wisdom, the God of the morals police, muftis, and politicians, the God of calculators and tradesmen, not the God of universal love, not the generous and merciful friend whose “servants have sinned and he is ashamed.”³⁶ Otherwise, what of love and what of generosity? The generosity and magnanimity of the friend come into existence vis-à-vis the ingratitude of the other.^iv In the relationship between friends, if one of them has made sinning part of man’s fate, he has also destined forgiveness for him, to the point that not only does the reward and punishment system fall apart, but it is totally turned upside down, and paradise is achieved by sinning.

O Hafez, on the last day, if you bear

A wine-cup in your hand,

You’ll go straight into heaven from the street

Of drunkenness and shame.³⁷

In the end, there is the cup and light, drunkenness and truthfulness! Wine is the source of total honesty, and sinning out of truthfulness “is better than displaying piety in pretense and hypocrisy.”³⁸

If the system of reward and punishment falls apart, and the scales of “justice” are set aside, there no longer remains any sin that would obliterate man’s salvation, since our sinning, like ourselves, has boundaries, but the kindness of the friend, like him, is boundless. Our finiteness fades in his infinitude. “God’s kindness exceeds our transgressions.”³⁹ According to this thinking, apparently the sin of those who “carry out so much fraud and deception with regard to the Judge’s affairs”⁴⁰ will also be forgiven, insomuch as it concerns the Judge. Their darkness in contrast to his light is like a drop in the ocean. But if they engage in deception regarding the affairs of the people, the sin is not erased, and the sinner is doomed.

Do what you want, but do not pursue hurting others

For in our religion, no other sin exists but this.⁴¹

Even though sinning, to the extent that it concerns the creator, is a religious and cosmic matter and to the extent that it concerns others, is an ethical and social issue, since in the thinking of our Hafez, hurting other people is the only sin and naught else, sinning is a social and not a cosmic matter, and it occurs regarding man’s relationship with others, not man’s relationship with God. From Hafez’s perspective, Adam’s “sin” at the dawn of creation is neither a sin nor deserving of punishment, since neither does man have free will in this connection nor can one commit a sin that is even greater than the kindness of the friend that would result in punishment.

Moreover, who knows whether at the threshold of the friend who has no needs the clerics and the pious would be more favored than the clever libertines and the haunters of the tavern? “The pious and the mischievous” open their hands and offer their goods; “who knows what will be accepted and what will catch the eye,”⁴² because no one knows what the friend wants, and anyone who claims to know is ignorant of “the secrets of love and drunkenness” and is entangled in “the ailment of egotism.”⁴³ The muftis, who have measured every action on the scales of this and the next world and who already know about the friend’s attitude toward this person or that person, gallop with the flickering lamp of learning in the nocturnal gallery of reason, negligent of the fact that the logic of love differs from bazaar-style trade.

The fear of sinning and punishment and the greed for good deeds in order to obtain reward do not exist in such love ethics; neither does the dreadful whirlpool of hell have its mouth open, nor does the garden of lustful pleasures of paradise await. As a result, not committing sin is not the result of fear or being immune to punishment, nor of expediency and hoping for future times of pleasure. In this state, the purpose of ethics is not another promise or threat, and the goal of one’s deeds is not to escape to another place and gain access to another thing. The motivation for “ethics” is in man’s nature, and for this reason, it is free from external autocratic conditions.

In the mystic perception of man, being free from external fear and hope and achieving inner freedom, is not simpleminded optimism. Man is God’s house. Even though Satan finds his way into this house, he is not its owner, unless he runs God’s house. Hence, evil is accidental, and it finds its way into us from outside, and unjustly. Goodness, however, is internal and inherent in us, and the ability of man to traverse its horizons is infinite. Mysticism, in particular the mysticism of love—because of its perception of man—is necessarily “optimistic,” and it mostly sees the whiteness, the purity, of the heart that is the place of the manifestation of the beloved rather than the blackness, the impurity, of the hand that becomes the instrument of Satan. The eyes of mystical thinking are focused on the flight of the soul in the air of union, on the feet of those who walk the path of liberation.

Attention to the helplessness of the needy soul, to anger, to greed, and to abjectness and wretchedness is for the most part reactive, and that is why harmful characteristics stop the wayfarers from continuing on the path, and man himself becomes the veil hiding himself.⁴⁴ The mystic looks at man’s divine manifestations, at perfect man or human perfection, and if he scrutinizes the demonic aspects and the evil of our self, it is with the hope of emerging from the internal and external whirlpool more quickly and purely.

In the face of the external wave and storm, in facing a society that “is the army of tyranny from shore to shore,”⁴⁵ the poet longs to be free of “anything that takes on the hue of attachment under the turquoise dome.”⁴⁶ The goal of the practical ethics of our elder is to be a free spirit, which one can achieve by breaking away from the world and then joining the world. The world from which one must break away is the “terrestrial world” in which humanity cannot be found.⁴⁷ From the perspective of ethics, the terrestrial world is the world of attachments, since “attachments” are confining: attachment to gold and attachment to power, both of which are the means for dominating others and are twins that complement each other. In the world of attachments, good fortune depends on wealth and power, on “gold engraved with the king’s name and Yemeni tempered metal,”⁴⁸ on money and the sword! And falsehood that is at their service in its various forms, such as flattery, ruses, and hypocrisy, each time both titivates in a new color and also presents them in a deceptive shape. But when only a few among the greedy and hasty enchanted ones reach the promised prosperity, they become enslaved to their new situation, spending a lifetime on maintaining and serving this “good fortune,” and for its sake, they do not hesitate to engage in lying and oppression. They present their greed and domination of the people as serving the people; they call their own cravings that which the people wish and that which is in the interests of the people; in their egotism, they speak of loving others, and with this lie, they oppress everyone. In this manner, people hurt one another for these “attachments”; like a group of prisoners in a confined prison, they make the place more confined for each other; they chew on each other’s flesh and skin; like bats in the sunset of the soul, they parade themselves and restlessly bump into doors and walls.

When those who seek attachments become accustomed to falsehood and injustice and rest easy in them, they betray divine trust and do injustice to human destiny. After all, our elder believes that man came into existence for truthfulness and love. A person who adheres to attachments is a falsifier and oppressor, and falsehood and oppression occur when one finds its way into the other. Both of these are inherently aggressors. Hence, a man who accepts attachments is inevitably a person who hurts others. A greedy human being is the hungriest beast in the world, and like a wolf, even when full, for no reason, he rips and tears apart in order to have more and to dominate the world and those in it. He slashes the insides of the ocean, the land, and the sky, and as he extracts the essence of nature, he destroys himself with a stony heart, because in the marketplace of the society, he has treated himself the same as a natural phenomenon. At one time, man was an entity in line with the cow, land, seeds, and water, and in another society and economy, he was another instrument of production. The hurtful actions of those who have attachments leave nothing unscathed, and hurting is the one true sin. Hence, abandoning attachments means liberation from sinning, “for eternal salvation means not hurting others.”⁴⁹ In order to acquire some morsel, a piece of bread, those enamored with the world have spoken so much falsehood in praise of denouncing worldly positions and possessions that no one any longer believes them. But the truth is that happiness, needing nothing, contentment, and mendicancy, or abandoning “attachments,” are the sources of freedom.

no one profitsfrom the market of life

except the dervishwho wants nothing

O Godenrich me with poverty

and make me content with humility⁵⁰

Sa’di’s merchant on his way to Turkistan, India, China, Rome, Persia, and Yemen is a wandering phantom following a mirage, in his mind the image of water and in his eyes a delusional ruse,⁵¹ with no peace of mind and no time left to live!

Abandoning attachments means breaking away from the world in order to join the world: breaking away from predestination, from the inhumane worldly characteristics that stem from within and outside man, that ruin his oneness with existence and, as a result, alienate him from himself. In addition, such abandonment means freely belonging to the world and voluntarily choosing it. In facing an unknown next world in an insecure world, “some time for leisure, a book, and the corner of a meadow,”⁵² human friendship and harmony with nature, refreshing wine and “a spring and a stream”⁵³ are the antidotes to human anguish in the society and anxiety in confronting the world. These phenomena are the “human” manifestations of the world, and perceiving them means joining the “humanity” of the world. Our elder travels in the garden of friendship and nature that is transient like running water, in the wine that is light, and in a book that is knowledge, in order to find momentary repose from the darkness and ignorance of the “drunken world.”⁵⁴

The ultimate goal of the practical (or social) ethics of our Hafez is freedom through abandoning attachments, and the ultimate goal of his theoretical ethics is union with the friend through truthfulness. Each of these two goals necessarily leads to the other: until you are free, you will not achieve union, and until you achieve union, you will not be free. But in a city like Shiraz at that time, when it breathed in the air of oppression and falsehood, how could one not be tormented and not torment others; how could one be free? This may be the source of the contradiction in the poet’s ethics. He is both in the society and longing to stay removed from its blights. On the one hand, in order to live, wittingly or unwittingly, he deals with those who seek attachments, with rulers and the rich, and on the other, not only does he wish but he also strives to be separated from them. He is caught in the struggle between attachment and relinquishment, and he continues his effort to climb out of the whirlpool of need and reach the shore of freedom from need; but the wave of daily bread and water tosses him back into the previous predicament.

Moreover, the lone star of freedom flickers dimly. The God of religion is autocratic, like the rulers of the world, and those in charge of religion and government are the agents of this autocracy, which they implement and impose on the society. The warp and weft of despotism have entangled this and the next world for the free-spirited, and any plan for destiny that they make takes shape on this canvas. Our elder longs to be free, but he cannot be. And the shameless tumult of falsehood spirals like a whirlwind in the morning of truthfulness and disturbs the truthful voice of the poet. Under the tyrannical government of the Mozaffarids, the exacting and ignorant upstarts wreak havoc and depredation; preachers who act in a wholly different way⁵⁵ and mercenaries who proselytize repentance are busy excommunicating the people; the market of posturing and prejudice is thriving; they have no mercy on the old and the young; and “they rob love of its honor and lovers of their chance to flourish.”⁵⁶ In this chaos in which the tongue of virtue is sealed and the mouth of vice is open, a defenseless man longs to speak truthfully. How could one live in such a place without falsifying? The sharp eyes of the morals police search the back rooms of houses and hearts. “Do not drink wine to the sound of the lyre, for the ears of the morals police are sharp.”⁵⁷ But is truthfulness indeed the cause of annihilation? Is it only possible to find a window to truthfulness through twisted and crooked hands and the labyrinth of the branches and leaves of lies? By hiding secrets and not speaking of the mystery, is he also engaged in dissimulation and concealment in his own way? “For those who do know are never heard from again.”⁵⁸ The story of Mansur hangs before the eyes of the insightful.⁵⁹ Despite all this, however, my rose-colored elder often risks his life, and a voice of truthfulness resonates under the dome of the sky:

Not only today do we drink wine

to the music of the harp,

So many times the firmament

has heard this melodic sound.⁶⁰

At times, however, his inner and personal truth cannot escape the domination of external realities and the society; hence, inevitably, he utters the truth indirectly and allusively, and secretly gains access to forbidden wine, love, and beauty. Covertly, he commits “sin,” and to achieve his purpose, he engages in ruses.

I drink from the decanter secretly,

and the people think I am lost in a book,

Astonishingly, the fire of such hypocrisy

does not set the book ablaze.⁶¹

And he is not only ashamed of his innocent ruse, but regards such “knowledge and skill” as the source of sleight of hand and trickery, and he speaks about himself as if in scolding terms:

I am ashamed of my soiled robe

That I have patched with a hundred tricks.⁶²

In any case, even though the theoretical and practical ethics of our Hafez are in harmony and consistent, when his practical ethics leads to behavior, it is ripped in two and signifies the disconnect between free longing and tied hands, the ambition of the human individual and the heaviness of social life, and is a sign of the bewilderment of truthful steps in the labyrinth of the alleyways of the city. He is unable to be without need, to be free, and to be truthful, as he wishes. His “ethical” effort is on the path of closing the gap that has been created between his thinking and actions in order to surmount this paradox and regain his harmony.

On this path, every one of his steps falls into the trap of habits and customs, the rules and laws of social life. Once again, the same oppression and the same falsehood, and once again, the same crooked ways and customs. And since he is neither able to change all this nor to set his hopes on such change, he regards happiness as shunning the society, or better stated, shunning the pomp and power of and involvement in the society, the system of which is no less stonyhearted than the revolving firmament. He distances himself from the tumult of the collective and collects himself within himself, and hoping for a “collected mind,”⁶³ he turns away from the thought of discord. May he become less in need and as free from attachments as possible.

But love mysticism, as well—that on the one hand does not accept other-worldly despotism and, on the other, remedies this-worldly despotism for itself with internal, subjective, freedom—calls the poet from “without” to “within.” In this manner, both behavior and thinking turn the practical and social ethics of our elder into an individual and nonsocial issue. Since a man like him ethically is adept in terms of his inner self and is inept in the face of the ethics of the society, he can neither accept it nor eradicate it. Hence, he does not nurture the idea of the ethical change of the society by means of a social program, through improving the organizations, the laws, and so forth. He leaves the task of reforms to the reformists. Instead, the self-motivated ethical principles that gush forth from his nature come into existence within him, and his “ethical” behavior blows like a breeze in the stifling air of the society.

Where superficial traditions, hollow values, and rigid customs dominate, the path to the freedom of ethics for those who do not want to be of the same hue as others is closed. In this case, in addition to the behavior and the thinking of the individual, the society as well drives man’s practical and social ethics on an individual and nonsocial path, inward. The poet who is aware of his practical inability in the face of the workings of the society and its practiced ethics, and whose ethical behavior suffers from a painful paradox in the turning of its wheels, consciously turns inward, to himself, in order to overcome the paradox within the domain that is under his own command and to regain his own harmony. But he realizes that he cannot. One must either, like Naser Khosrow,⁶⁴ have a social life and ethics in opposition to the society and in harmony with oneself, or like Onsori,⁶⁵ have a life and ethics with the coloring of the group of which we are a part. Living with one’s own particular ways and customs in a society with different ways and customs is undoubtedly a source of suffering, since it disrupts both thinking and action.

Since ethics materializes in connection with others, it is a social matter, and since it is a social issue, it changes according to the common methods of prophets, martyrs, and the like: On the one hand, prophets address everyone, and on the other, they turn all beliefs in everything over and upside down, and the field is cleared for everything, including ethics. They uproot the foundation to establish a new foundation. Prophets are victorious over the spirit of the world, and the world is victorious over the life of martyrs. If they are unable to change things and make the foundation of ethics crumble, at least they have already changed themselves, have uprooted their own foundations, and have been liberated from the contradiction in ethics. Martyrs are victorious over their own souls. Society’s ethics can be affected and modified by individual methods, but they cannot be changed or toppled; they remain more or less in place, and the individual who is his own creed becomes entangled in contradiction with them, and such contradiction often finds its way inside him and settles there.

The poet, however, who is standing and waiting at the crossroads of the ugly and the beautiful of the world and is a fellow traveler of its good and evil, uproots neither the foundation of the world nor his own foundation; he is neither a prophet nor a martyr, and at the same time, similar to them, he constantly demolishes and builds the foundations of both. Since he lets go of the world and of himself, he is neither in this one nor that one; and since this “letting go” always happens within himself and the world, then he is in both that one and this one. Even though our elder, like prophets, martyrs, and others, does not remain trapped in ethical contradictions, like poets, artists, and so on, he is not free of them; the paradox in him is a stationary marcher who never reaches his destination. On the other hand, the poet is aware of being on the move. Hence, his practical and social ethics are inclined toward freedom, albeit without becoming free and achieving tranquility.

I am slave to he

whose spiritual vocation

is untainted by any lingering attachments

under these wheeling heavens

the velvet blue of the night-sky⁶⁶

Not only is he not free, but he is a slave, a slave to the high-flying aspirations of the free! He is bound by flight and a captive of freedom, because he is free within himself, not in others. This freedom does not have a social existence: A free-spirited man can neither live within it nor make it fly into the air like a pigeon and release it among others as a phenomenon founded on his own inner self. He is pregnant with an offspring that cannot be born, that remains in the uterus of the soul; and free-spiritedness, which is the actualization of freedom in the soul and is an internal state and condition, takes the place of freedom, which is a social matter. This free-spiritedness is largely an individual matter, and similar to harmlessness, means removing oneself from the chaos of the world and its denizens and drinking “water that is pure of heart”⁶⁷ and learning “truthfulness from the cypress and the meadow.”⁶⁸ In the same way that the cypress has its roots in the earth and its head in the sky, free-spirited man has his feet rooted in the people and his head in the lofty air of the heavens and, from foot to head, he is as straight and true as the cypress.

Like a cypress, gleefully,

I will raise my head above the crowd,

If it is possible for me

to leave this world behind.⁶⁹

If only one could turn one’s eyes away from the enchanting temptations of the world! If only one could part with “bitter wine”⁷⁰ and “love of youth and beauty”!⁷¹ If only repentance were a remedy for any ailment and “spring that breaks repentances”⁷² would not arrive and its breeze would not fan the fire of one’s sinful nature . . . Love of the joyful pleasures of this house of colorful images roars like floodwater over the delicate mirror of the soul.

How could we claim to be without sin in a place

Where Adam was struck by the lightning of rebellion?⁷³

My rose-colored elder, who like the earth thirsty for rain drinks truthfulness and without hypocrisy pours out his thorns and flowers, neither claims to be innocent nor claims to be truthful and devoid of hypocrisy. He is a crossroads, a filter, a wine cellar through whom all the sweet human inabilities have passed, and have been filtered and fermented. And since he is without hypocrisy, his hands are open and his secret is there to see.

I am a lover, a libertine, an admirer of beauty,

and I say it oh so candidly

So that you might one day comprehend

I am endowed with such ability.⁷⁴

A free spirit who could not plant the sapling of freedom among the people and live under its shadow does not relinquish the “negative” albeit proud freedom of not wanting and not accepting. If he does not like something, even if it seems desirable and acceptable, even if it is the dangerous belief of the public and the deceivers of the public, he rejects it and tosses it back like an insult. And now we hear that familiar voice that poisons the heart of falsehood by opposing the devious and vexing ethics of the society. This man so disdains the Islamic mandates of enjoining others to do good deeds and preventing them from engaging in prohibited acts, as well as fatherly advice and sagacious preaching. He neither listens to anyone’s advice, other than the old wine seller—who summons him to wine and drunkenness—nor does he give advice to anyone. Merely on a few occasions, and for amusement, as “the wise elder,” he “gives advice dearer than life itself to the young fortunate ones”:⁷⁵

Speak to me of minstrels and wine

And less of the secret of life and fate

For no sage has solved this riddle with wisdom

And no sage ever will.⁷⁶

Advice against advice givers and their ethics! The goal of his advice is not to show the high road to salvation; rather, he wants to ruin the advice of the experts of the path, the straight path of the preachers. In any case, the social and practical ethics of Hafez evolve and are shaped in opposition to the ethics of the society and the “ethical” behavior of the people of the society, and for this reason—similar to his concept of freedom—in principle, they are passive.

Oh Hafez, drink wine, be a clever libertine, and rejoice, but

Do not use the Koran like others as a trap of deception.⁷⁷

By observing others who not only act hypocritically but do so by exploiting the Koran, he arrives at not being hypocritical and not setting traps, at drinking joyfully and being joyful, in order to not use truthfulness for the exploits of falsehood. Unlike the “moralists,” he does not have clear-cut and easily acceptable principles. Moreover, unlike philosophers, he does not have an ethical system. With his penetrating eyes, however, he scrutinizes the behavior of men in the government and religious establishments; he is disgusted by their deceitfulness and hypocrisy; and he establishes the foundations of his own ethical and behavioral ways and manners in opposition to all of them. “He learns politeness from the impolite”⁷⁸ and indirectly finds his own path through the wrong path of others. He does not follow their path, and he warns the kindred spirits against doing so. In this arena, he rarely knows what should be done, and he mostly knows what should not be done. In the matter of ethics, he possesses neither the strict certainty of Naser Khosrow⁷⁹ nor the easygoing capriciousness of the most revered sage⁸⁰ in Golestan. The former walks with the steps of the men of faith, and it is natural for him to call on others to follow his path. The latter occasionally treads on paths that should not be trodden and becomes involved in things that should not be done; slyly, he visits every place and returns. Hence, it is not surprising that with his model of behavior, he advises others to take various paths and to return, like him, if they do. Why be afraid?

But how could a man who is entangled in serious doubt tell others to follow his path, the path of a man who has no path? Not only does he not show a path, but he always worries about his own transgressions, about “wine, beautiful beloveds, and being a clever libertine”⁸¹ and about “bewilderment,”⁸² “negligence,”⁸³ “pledge breaking,”⁸⁴ not “being a Muslim,”⁸⁵ and “being deceitful,”⁸⁶ which he uses here and there as touchstones to assess himself. “There is no hope for Hafez’s deliverance from vice.”⁸⁷ Before he decides to teach something to someone, he “takes a look at himself, who is so sinful,”⁸⁸ and repentance does not solve any problem for him. With this strategy, he descends to our level and remains by our side, in sympathy. In exchange, we too overhear his whispering to himself, and we take a sip from this stream. Hence, that which he says, wittingly or unwittingly, nests in our hearts more than advice from advice givers.

In giving advice, the assumption is that one person knows something that the other does not; hence, the former places himself as a knower before an ignorant person. With every bit of advice, there is a distance between the speaker and the listener that causes them to hear each other with difficulty; and often they do not understand each other’s language, because one is acting as the teacher and the other as the pupil, one is mature and the other immature, one is experienced and the other inexperienced. The only time that the words of the advice giver nest in the heart is when he shows that he himself does exactly what he suggests and asks the other to do.

Our didactic literature is not very appealing, especially since much of what it teaches is outmoded and does not apply to our lives today. If the qasidehs of Naser Khosrow and the didactic work of a few others—in addition to their use of language and their knowledge, which are useful for the learned—still provide some inspiration for the reader, it is not because of the advice they impart or taking the paths that have already been trodden, rather, it is because of the truthfulness or the enduring ethical principles that emanate from beyond their advice. Hence, today, a significant part of our true didactic literature is exhausted and cannot keep in step with the times, not to mention the false didacticism that was dead before it was born.

The words of our poet, however, even when they fall into the arena of practical ethics, are far removed from being didactic literature, because he neither places himself as a teacher in front of pupils, nor does he speak to anyone for the purpose of teaching him something. Besides, as I have said earlier in this chapter, “such ethics is rooted in his understanding of existence and his worldview; as a result, it extends well beyond the historical and social framework of fourteenth-century chaotic Shiraz and is contemplated as a general universal truth.” Hence, such ethics is neither burdened with serving as practical guidance to others, nor does it remain futile within the framework of any specific time or space. The ethical approach of the poet to any occurrence extends beyond its historical and social base.

The poet’s tongue-lashing targets falsehood and oppression more than anything else, and the falsifier and the oppressor are either the cleric, the mufti, the morals police, the Sufi who has followers, or the ruler, the vizier, the autocrat, the bureaucrat, the chief of police, and the like. Both groups possess social positions and status with the help of which they can utilize falsehood and oppression among the people. Hence, falsification and oppression are social realities, not universal ones, and they have a specific and human time and space. In facing them, the poet arrives at a nonsocial (albeit not antisocial) ultimate conclusion: freedom through the abandonment of attachments! To set out on this path and to reach that destination, one must “leave this world behind” and, like the cypress, free himself from the people.⁸⁹ The means and the goal of social ethics tend to be individual and nonsocial; moreover, since man has longed for and sought freedom and the abandoning of attachments in some form and language everywhere and in every age, they have split open their one-time and one-place confinement and no longer remain within the boundaries of the specific society of the poet.

From this perspective, our Hafez is not the true representative of the ethics of his own time. Of course, in terms of good and evil and driving out the demon and beckoning the angel in order to achieve union with freedom and freedom of union, he begins with his own society; but at every stop and in every stage of this journey, he leaves behind his own social boundaries, flies further, and reaches our time, and his ethical ideals continue to be ours. His ethics splits apart his own social framework and emerges from it. As a result, the picture is not the same size as the original, because it shows something more and beyond his own era as well.

Perhaps such notable figures as Obeyd Zakani⁹⁰ and Salman Savaji⁹¹ are clearer and more complete mirrors in reflecting the ethics of the Bard of Shiraz’s time. One of them wriggles in the chaotic bazaar of moral values; he observes every type of debauchery and corruption; he tests every group and clan, from the bureaucrats and the clerics to all sorts of pederasts and catamites; and without becoming one of them, he mingles with all and with a stinging sneer shows their baseness and depravity and reminds them of the kind of cesspool in which they are so deeply steeped. And in the midst of all this, he himself struggles in vain and laughs bitingly. It is as though this mendicant is the sinning, surrendered conscience of his time. On the other hand, Salman is another example of the intellectuals of the bard’s era; and in terms of ethics, he represents the same group on whom he is dependent and on whom he sponges. Eulogizing is his trade, and sycophancy his duty. He is a flatterer and a devoted crony; and like most qasideh composers, for the sake of worldly possessions, he extends his needy hand not only to every ruler and vizier, but also to their harems, their cronies, and their servants. He does not concern himself with the good and evil of things. He is the conscienceless conscience of his own time. The likes of him, intentionally or unintentionally, knead with their hands the corruption that comes out of the mouth of Obeyd Zakani.

These two, each from a different perspective, are true reflectors and examples of the ethics of their own societies, and they appear like a picture in this frame. In contrast to Obeyd Zakani, who is an astute and sharp-sighted critic, who touches each and every one of the unethical values with his scrutinizing eyes, like the edge of a sharp blade, cuts them open and scoffs at them, our Hafez has a universal outlook. Even though the rays of his eyes shine on every ethical phenomenon, his vision, like the spring of the sun, is universal. His “passive” ethical plan appears in the general texture of existence, in the relationship of man with the creator of the world and with the world (and society). For this reason, it does not remain limited merely to one person’s treatment of another; rather, it is fundamentally an existential (existentiel) matter, and it is dependent on how our ideals materialize and are actualized in the world, on how we live. Because of this universality, even the practical ethics of our elder has existed everywhere and in every time for us Persians, and its essence has manifested itself brightly each time with a different face in every society of our history and inspired similar ideals. In the same way that falsehood and oppression have always existed, the longing to be free of attachments and for freedom do not belong to yesterday or today. As a result of this perpetuity, even regarding the social ethics of our elder, there is an inclination to make it an existential and “suprasocietal” matter.

The practical ethics of our bard shuns the society and has a “passive,” individual, and nonsocial approach, because he lived during an era in which, as soon as any noble free spirit saw the criminal face of the society, he would flee from it and take refuge in his own seclusion.

A pair of clever companions, and of old wine, a couple of stones,

Some leisure time, a book, and the corner of a meadow.

These I would not trade for this world or the next,

Even if at every moment I am mocked by some assembly.

The tumultuous storm of events have left us unable to see

Whether this meadow ever had a jasmine or a rose.

Observe in the mirror of the cup the images drawn by the unseen

For no one can recall such strange times as these.

With all the scorching winds that have passed through the garden,

It is a wonder that some scent of a rose

and the color of a daffodil remain.⁹²

Hafez’s life was spent during one of the darkest periods of our history. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries alone, at least seventeen clans ruled our country, that is, the lands that we today call Iran.^v The emergence and departure of these rulers was always accompanied by war and slaughter, with soldiers who had no income except from plundering and who would risk their life and limb in hopes of spoils. They came like a flood, and they were uprooted when they faced a more dreadful flood. All that remained was a bunch of drunken plunderers and a half-alive plundered heap, poverty, disease, and death, in addition to the decline of religion, the degeneration of ethics, and the kingdom of corruption! The chaos and storms one after another tore all asunder.

Look at these conditions, I said

to an astute man, who laughed and replied,

Such hard times, such strange affairs, such a chaotic world.⁹³

The people of the bard’s time had seen and were cognizant of the fact that Shah Shoja’ had blinded his father so that he himself would not be blinded on the orders of his father, and later on, did the same thing to his own son. Inevitably, he feared that his son would do to him what he had done to his own father. Brothers were thirsty for each other’s blood and killed each other over the monarchy, and within the confines of the harems, deceptions and conspiracies were plotted and carried out. The wife of one prince had an affair going on with one of her husband’s commanders. The husband, who had no knowledge of this affair, threw the lover into prison for some other reason. The wife thought that the husband had learned about the secret affair. Hence, she colluded with a few of her confidant ladies in waiting and, at night in the bed chamber, they grabbed the husband and with their delicate female hands, they squeezed his testicles so hard that he died, and then the cronies of the prince tortured and killed the wife, tore her body to pieces, and ate them. The wife of Shah Mahmud was an ally of the brother of her husband (Shah Shoja’) and conspired to have her husband overthrown. The brothers were enemies. Shah Mahmud found out and strangled his own wife; but then, regretting what he had done, he began to yell and beat himself and went mad. This madman had another wife, who was so jealous that she unearthed the corpse of the beloved wife who had been involved in the conspiracy and burned it. The wife of Pahlavan Asad, the rebel governor of Kerman, agreed to kill her husband in order for Shah Shoja’ to take control of Kerman. The condition was that the victorious ruler would marry her after his victory. Shah Shoja’ agreed, wrote a letter to the wife in which he pledged his consent, and swore by the souls of the prophets and saints that he would keep his promise. Apparently, this brave prince, in order to break through the walls of cities, would first bravely invade the strong walls of the harems of the rivals.

The governors and leaders of various regions were mostly thieves, adventurers, and conspirators. Prior to becoming the governor of Soltaniyeh, Adel Aqa was a highway robber, and Pahlavan Asad had killed so many people that when they found his body, the people tore it to pieces and took them away as a symbol of good luck. Indulging in pleasure, drinking, brawling in drunkenness, and lasciviousness were in their character and nature; and the plunder of cities and villages was the profession of the viziers, tax collectors, agents, governors, and commanders, who were all engaged in conspiracies against one another to get rid of rivals and pretenders and in order to remain in their positions and protect themselves.^vi I will refrain from speaking about the clerics, the pseudo-Sufis, and the qasideh composers.

Everyone’s life was a plaything in the hands of a bunch of such despicable characters. The continuous wars in Fars, Isfahan, and Kerman; the devastation of agriculture and commerce; and the constant plunder had ruined the territories of the Mozaffarids and had brought indigence and chaos to the people. The wolf of oppression howled on the expanse of the earth, showed its teeth, and flaunted its power. No one was secure regarding his life and possessions, and everyone sacrificed ethical values to save his life and property. Hence, instead of friendship and truthfulness, in the depressing twilit air, fear and lies had descended like a nightmare, scattering abasement and abjectness like dust over the heads and faces of a people already covered in dust.

What kind of sugar is there in this city

that the royal falcons

Of the path of truth

are content to act like flies?⁹⁴

In the twilight of this haze of dust, the brightness of faces cannot be seen. It is as though everyone has changed. The times in the heart of which the poet lives are appalling, and rarely do the ups and downs and the visible and invisible aspects of events escape the poet’s eyes that see all that is hidden. From within him, a window is open to the outside and beyond. Though preoccupied with matters of the heart, as he observes the mayhem, he constantly keeps an eye on the perpetrators of the mayhem.

On the other hand, since the society and the world—or as the poet says, the times—are a unified body and inseparable, all the organs and parts are interconnected with all of this whole. Hence, every social man is inevitably also a universal man. No one is seen merely as an individual among other individuals. Such a person is constantly face-to-face with the world. His emotions and dispositions are not merely “social.” He is dependent on all things and further phenomena, on the world and the creator of the world, and he originates from somewhere farther and closer. Naturally, such a perception finds its way into the substance of the bard’s words. His social thinking and feeling is perceived and expressed in the open circle of the revolving times. For this reason, in some ghazals, the social and the personal, the worldly and the divine, the rational and the mystical, and so on, are comingled and become one, to the extent that to separate them would result in nothing but the breaking asunder of a poem that is unified in its form and content.

The perception of a man such as Naser Khosrow regarding the religious society is ethical and “sociological”: The world is created by a wise God, hence, everything—including the creation of man—has a reason that can be understood through the blessings of religion. The straight path of religion not only reveals the motivation and purpose of the creation of man, but through its laws and ethics, it also shows the way for him to live in this world and among others in the society. Hence, his religious ethical poetry is inevitably also social; in fact, it is like a travel guide and provisions for the road. Thus, in poetry, as well, he expounds ideas as he does in his Safarnameh [Book of Travels] and Zad al-Mosaferin [Pilgrim’s Provisions],⁹⁵ and in each, he explains some aspect of religion. Not only do we arrive at the world (and society) from religion, but we also arrive at religion from the world. We must understand the world and know how to treat others and find our own way among them in order not to become victims of concupiscence, the worldly self, and not to err in religious terms. In this way, that sage must understand worldly phenomena in order for his words to be religious. On the other hand, the perception of someone like Anvari⁹⁶ about the society is not religious but “ethical” and sociological. However, since his ethics are for profit, the outcome is anti-ethics. To live his daily life, he must pay attention to the social base of others. Hence, in order to live, he must inevitably have an “understanding” of the society. I explained earlier what his understanding is, which resembles that of those whom he resembles.

Hafez, as well, sees and understands the scattered and connected phenomena of the society from the affairs and the people to their social bases; but he does not target each in order to understand and then use the results with the intention of giving guidance, receiving a reward, or any other worldly purpose. His perception of the society is not “sociological,” it is universal. The poet has a view of the world that finds its way into things even without his will, and he connects them together in a systematic and organic whole: He gives unity to the world’s plurality and brings together and gives order to its dispersion. The eye of the sun, even when it flows in the river of night, sees the spring of the water of life, the waves of the seven seas,⁹⁷ and the soil of the seven climes;⁹⁸ it sees Simorgh on the peak of Qaf Mountain⁹⁹ and Joseph at the bottom of the well;¹⁰⁰ it sees the secret and the openness of the earth and the sky, the sunset and the sunrise. The seven-colored canvas of a glance that is cast from the workshop of the imagination of the poet views things simultaneously, together, united and yet distinct, in becoming and in being. By this analogy, in the shoreless horizon of his vision, no design—divine or worldly—remains in and of itself, separate and individual; rather, it forms and appears in the warp and weft of other things.

Now we will give an example of the two social phenomena that are mentioned in two ghazals about the falsehood and oppression of Prince Mobarezoddin Mohammad Mozaffari and the truthfulness and freedom regarding the rule of his son, Shah Shoja’. That prince was an authoritarian hypocrite and one who killed with ease, who used religious law as a pretext for persecution and bloodshed. The poet remembers “pleasurable wine, the breeze soaked in roses, the music of the harp” and the friendship of the companion^vii that are hidden under a heavy, grim-faced sky, like hiding “a wine cup in the sleeve.”¹⁰¹ Unless the quiet and secretive ways of reason come to the rescue, the sharp eyes of the times will be waiting in ambush. In the hothouse of hypocrisy and abstinence, we also wash the wine-tainted garb with the water of the eye and the stain of wine with the tears of repentance, because the reverse turning of the sphere from whose trap the powerful and the tyrants cannot escape undoubtedly has shut the door of joyfulness to you and me. Even though the domain of the injustice of that prince is also the land of the kingship of Hafez’s poetry, the poet wishes to hurl himself somewhere outside the confinement, into a space in another time.¹⁰² In this way, the social falsehood and oppression of a man with a social base is fused with the characteristics of the phenomena of nature—with love and practical wisdom, with the cleverness of a captive people eager to live, with the unrelenting injustice of the world, and with the visible threat of death and escaping it—and creates a singular self-organized picture.

During the rule of a free-spirited king, however, the liberation of the people of the heart from the previous prince’s dark house of fear and silence is accompanied by the unsealing of silent lips and closed hearts, and the telling of concealed stories, with words, with gushing, gusting, seed-sowing words, with words that like the neighing of a horse resonate in the tranquil breast of the plain, and that, like a flowing spring, open in the undulating thirst of the desert and, like the season of spring, in the harsh sleep of the stone, and gush forth like poetry in the soul.^viii At one time, words had fled into the back room of silence and “homemade wine, afraid of the morals police,”¹⁰³ had taken shelter in the cellar. But now that the morals police are not hypocritical, the words and the wine are both free. Words rise to “the sound of the harp,”¹⁰⁴ “the sun of wine”¹⁰⁵ rises in the east of the face of the beloved, and “cheers of ‘to your health’”¹⁰⁶ resonate under the sky. Now, even the former hypocrites, like the prayer leader cleric of the city, have turned toward truthfulness and inebriation.¹⁰⁷ After all, “in the era of the king who forgives errors and conceals offenses,” the Sufis sit by the vats of wine while “the mufti drinks from the cup.”¹⁰⁸ They have turned away from displaying pseudopiety; they have abandoned “attachment”; and as a result, they have ended their harassment.What a great thing is “good guidance”; what a great thing is “the path to salvation”!¹⁰⁹

From the very opening of the ghazal, the good tidings of boldness and fearlessness, the good tidings of liberation from fear and falsehood, come at dawn from “the messenger of the invisible realm,” from another world, and settle in the ear of the heart of a monarch who is “intimate with the message of the messenger angel.”¹¹⁰ “The king’s luminous decision is where light is manifested.”¹¹¹ God’s light shines on the paths of his thinking. It teaches him “the secrets to the wellbeing of the kingdom”¹¹² and makes liberation possible.

This prosperity in truthfulness and freedom, this liberation from fear and lies, is not only comingled with this-worldly and social things—with music, wine, and joyfulness, with the truthfulness and salvation of others and the justice of the king—but both at the beginning and at the end is connected to the invisible realm and “the message of the messenger angel,” and that is where he receives his knowledge.

I will now provide examples of two other social events mentioned in two ghazals. One event is the return of Shah Shoja’, and the other, the death of another eulogized patron.

The first ghazal addresses the return of Shah Shoja’ to lost, bygone Shiraz, the good tidings of a messenger, an unexpected friend from a faraway land,^ix wine, freedom from sorrow, good fortune, the fragrant breeze, happiness and gazing at the meadow, the compassion of the cloud, unison with the nightingale and the excursion of the observing wind, the kingship of the indigent lover, the wakefulness of sleepy fortune, and the victory of love.

The second ghazal revolves around the other event, the killing of a friend by the enemy and an elegy about the happy, bygone times:^x in the compassionate gathering of the circle of friends, one’s words expressed the secrets of the other’s heart and both were of the same heart and spoke the same words; “It was in my heart that I would never be without my friend”;¹¹³ living under the rays of love, in the alley of the friend, on the bright dust; “so often, wishes turn into dust”; the injustice of the times, the robbing trap of the world, the undying bitterness of separation in the soul, and the futility of man’s effort that like a vat of wine remains with “blood in its heart and feet in the mud”! I am a weak and negligent bird when suddenly “the claws of the hawk of fate” descend, without my knowing why.¹¹⁴ “I searched at length to find the cause of separation’s pain / The mufti of reason was totally ignorant about this matter.”¹¹⁵ Yearning for the happiness of the one who died before his time, bewildered by the injustice of the world, and the settling of unjust suffering!^xi

In each of the examples cited, a social phenomenon or event in the poem goes beyond its own boundaries, comingles with other phenomena of the society or of nature, and comes alive and is felt in relation to them. In addition to this, however, a social issue has a longer and more diverse reach, and it extends from this world to beyond the world: from this world to the next, from the terrestrial to the celestial, from man to God! Every terrestrial incident contains a celestial secret, and is dependent not only on human enterprise, but on divine fate.

No friendship is seen in anyone

What happened to my dear friend?

What became of all my friends?

When did friendship end?

The Water of Life turned cloudy

From the stem of the rose blood drained

Auspicious Khezr,¹¹⁶ where is he?

No hint of the spring breeze remained

Now no one ever says

that a friend has the right to friendship

But what has befallen those who once knew

the privilege of true friendship?

From the mine of magnanimity

Not a ruby in years were we to gain

What happened to the shining of the sun

and the endeavors of the wind and rain?

This place had been the city of friends

and the soil of the kindhearted,

What became of this city of friends

that kindness has become blind-hearted?

They have tossed onto the polo field

the ball of success and veracity

No one has come onto the field

Where could all the riders be?

Flowers have bloomed by the thousands

yet the birds exist to no avail

What has become of the songbirds,

and the cherished sound of the nightingale?

Poor Venus, now her lyre has burned,

she plays no happy tune

No one yearns for drunkenness

Why are no wine drinkers here to swoon?

Silence, Hafez! No one knows

the secrets of the Divine

Whom do you ask concerning the events

of this revolving time?¹¹⁷

The previous examples were about significant social events: the rule of a despotic sultan or a just king, the arrival of a friendly king or the departure of another king and friend. This ghazal, however, is not about any specific event; it is a glance cast by the poet at the entire society, and he sees the saddening change in the city and the citizens and their relationships: friends, kindred spirits, the riders, and the reveling drinkers have left, and there is no trace of the city of lovers; there is no friend, nor alley of the friend! Here, there is a continuous vacillation, a departure and return, between the characteristics and dispositions of people and the phenomena of nature, between friendship, benevolence, and inebriation and the rose, the spring breeze, the sun, the rain, and the stars. Both man and nature have the same destiny; together, they are headed toward the house of oblivion, and they are traveling to the shores of the world, to the hiding place of the water of life, which is light. But it is as though light has died and the lamp of salvation has gone out; the foundations of the world are in disarray.

When the poet contemplates the world, he rarely speaks in the language of the hopeful and joyful. But the world is not abandoned, left on its own. Creation is not in vain, and the turning of the affairs of the world is not without purpose. Since the problem-solving hand of the friend is behind the veil of this irrational and baffling puzzle, undoubtedly, hopelessness will come to an end someday. At the end of a totally despairing ghazal, the poet says to himself: “Silence, Hafez, since no one knows / The secret ways that heaven goes.”¹¹⁸ Not knowing the secret is not a sign of disloyalty of the friend and the abandonment of the ship in “the flood of nothingness.” Do not forget Noah, who guides your ship!¹¹⁹

Hark! Do not despair,

as you know not of the secrets of the unknown

Hidden games are behind the curtain,

do not lament.”¹²⁰

Like a star in the bosom of darkness, a ray of light twinkles from behind the veil of despair and hopelessness in order for lost Joseph to find his way and return to his Canaan.^xii

This very hope of being spared from misfortune is evident not only in the face of the mysterious and inaccessible “world,” but also in the face of rulers and those who have power over people’s lives.

to spend time in the company

of those in authority

is like the longest of long nights

pray for the light of the sun

that it may rise again¹²¹

The darkness of the night of the winter solstice, the longest of long nights, falls heavily and remains for a long time, as though it intends not to be lifted. The sun is awaiting and, stalling time with its heavy sleep, has blocked the roads, and the sun continues to wait. The night is long, and in that nocturnal era of religious orders and prohibitions by the oppressors, it is not followed by a dawn. Since socializing, cooperating, and associating with these people blackens one’s heart, the poet turns away from this evil bunch and their debased circle, turning toward the pure sun in the open sky. But they who have grabbed the earth with their claws have left no place with prosperity:

The army of tyranny rules from shore to shore, but

From the dawn of eternity to the end of time

is the chance for mendicants.¹²²

“The army of tyranny” had destroyed the cities, scorched the fields, and killed innumerable people. The army of tyranny and aggression by outsiders and insiders was the unhappiness, lamentation, and death that had camped in the hearts of everyone. “From shore to shore” on earth means the destruction of the world. But the possibility of the liberation of the kindred spirits from the tyrants is boundless; it is from the dawn of eternity to the end of time, that is, from the “time” when there was no space to the “time” when space no longer exists. In the same way that that ancient time surrounds created space from beginning to end, the chance of mendicants also extends beyond the faraway shore of injustice and surrounds it.

When the doors of the society open to the world and the doors of this poet open to the creator of the world, his worldview drives him from social hopelessness into the bosom of hope beyond the society. This hope is a truth that our elder not only feels in his mind but is also aware of in his heart, and he “lives” it. But hopelessness is an unmediated, indisputable, and ever-present reality that continuously gushes out like bitter sap from the heart of the stone of the times. From the times to the creator and from the self to the friend, hopelessness and hope traverse in him faster than a meteor. But when he is in the alley of the friend, he goes beyond both, and he is in a different arena and station. Here, social and nonsocial poetry come together and become one.

In addition, since in the creative imagination of the poet, existence is a single existence and the world is the thousand-imaged face of a single soul, and since various phenomena are saplings that stem from the same root and are ultimately of the same essence, naturally, individual, social and universal, terrestrial and divine are all fused and acquire another singular order, such that the distinction between social and nonsocial poetry is erased, such that it is neither this nor that and both this and that.^xiii

i. Khajeh Nasir Tusi is of the Isma’ili faith, and in the government of an Isma’ili ruler, on his order and in his name, he compiles a book on ethics (Khajeh Nasireddin Tusi, Akhlaq-e Naseri [Tehran: Kharazmi, 1990]. This book was translated as The Nasirean Ethics by G. M. Wickens [New York: Routledge, 2011]). Once the table turns and a Mongol chieftain puts an end to the reign of that Isma’ili ruler, Khajeh Nasir converts back to his previous faith (Twelver Shi’ite), shifts his loyalty to the new ruler, and adds a new preface to the book, stating that even though the Isma’ilis “oppose the beliefs and contradict the path of the followers of religious law and tradition,” there was no other choice, and “in order to save my life,” I wrote an introduction to their liking. (See the introduction to Akhlaq-e Naseri [Naseri Ethics]). In short, he practiced dissimulation and denial and wrote something in which he did not believe. Now here is a book on ethics with an introduction contrary to ethics!

How could one be certain that in the court of Hulagu, the enemy of the Isma’ilis, turning away from and avoiding the Isma’ili faith was not another dissimulation and denial? Perhaps God only knows what was in Khajeh Nasir’s heart!

ii. The Divan of Salman Savaji, the following qasidehs: “How fortunate because of the royal bird of good fortune” and “When words describing his face cross my mind.”

iii. “Drink wine, for a hundred sins concealed from others / Are better than worshipping hypocritically in front of others” [from ghazal 196]. This is conveyed in many other couplets.

iv. “Paradise is for us, go away oh pious worshipper / Those who deserve generosity are the sinners.” [From ghazal 195.] “Even though paradise is not the place for sinners / Bring wine, since I am backed by his magnanimity.” [From ghazal 405.]

v. Genghis Khan came in the early thirteenth century and Tamerlane later, in the fourteenth century. In the meantime, the following clans also ruled: the Ilkhanids, the Solghori Atabaks, the Atabaks of Yazd, the Atabaks of Lorestan, the House of the Inju, the House of the Kurt, the Shabankareh dynasty, the Mozaffarids, the Ilkhanids (Jalayerids), the Chupanids, the Sarbedars, the Togha Timurids, the Ruyan and Rostamdar dynasty, the Mazandaran dynasty, and Mir Qavamoddin Mar’ashi and his sons.

vi. For more, see Qasem Ghani, Bahs dar Asar va Afkar va Ahval-e Hafez, vol. 1 (Tehran: Zavvar, 1961).

vii. See the following ghazal [41]: “Even though wine is delightful and the wind scatters flowers / Do not drink wine to the sound of the lyre, for the ears of the morals police are sharp.”

viii. See the following ghazal [283]:

At dawn the mysterious voice

whispered the good news in my ear

Shah Shoja’’s time has come drink without fear.

[Geoffrey Squires, trans. Hafez: Translations and Interpretations of the Ghazals (Miami: Miami University Press, 2014), 180.]

ix. See the following ghazal [176]: “At dawn, my good fortune came to my bedside / And told me, arise, the beloved king has come.” [This paragraph consists of phrases that summarize the entire above-cited ghazal.]

x. The death of Sheikh Abu Eshaq Inju at the hand of Prince Mobarezeddin Mohammad in the following ghazal [207]: “I remember, when living on your alleyway / My eyes lit up at the dust beside your door.” [My translation. See also Dick Davis, trans. Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (New York: Penguin, 2013), 58; and Squires, Hafez, 189.]

xi. Despite our insignificant knowledge about the poet’s life, one can cite other examples when a poem is composed due to a social event but goes far beyond the limitations of a social incident. For example, the following two poems, one of which is a response to a ghazal by Shah Ne’matollah Vali [a fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Sufi master and poet], and the other is apparently a reference to Emad Faqih [known as Faqih-Kermani, a Sufi poet and contemporary of Hafez] and the “piety” of his cat. “For those who turn dust into gold with a glance / To turn the corner of their eyes on me, is there any chance?” [From ghazal 196.] “The Sufi set up a trap and opened his box of tricks. / He began to play tricks on the firmament, the trickster.” [From ghazal 133; Squires translates the couplet as: “the Sufi who plays tricks / and engages in sleight of hand / as if he could outsmart the conjuring heavens.” Squires, Hafez, 310.]

xii. O youmy amorous nightingale

pray for longevity for eventually

the garden will turn green again

and the rose tree bloom in spring.

[From ghazal 232; Squires, Hafez, 207]

xiii. For instance, see the following ghazals: “Lost Joseph will return to Canaan again / —do not despair” [ghazal 255; Davis, Faces of Love, 29] and “Come so that we can scatter flowers / and fill the glass with wine.” [ghazal 374; Davis, 22.]