JelÁleddÍn RÚmÍ (A.D. 1207-1273) is now universally recognised by 'those who know,' as the greatest of the Persian Mystical Poets. This supremacy, in his own sphere, has been unanimously accorded to him for more than six centuries, by unnumbered myriads of his own disciples and followers in the Oriental World, who have been wrapt in devoutest admiration of the great Master to whom they have owed the highest joy and inspiration of their spiritual life. And at last, in our own Western World, the great Persian scholars of Europe, looking at him without personal or national bias, and through the clear, cold light of the new time, have come more and more, as with one voice, to join in this chorus of praise. His most appreciative recent editor and interpreter in England, in presenting a few leaves plucked with reverent hand from what he calls JelÁleddÍn's 'wreath of imperishable Lyric Song,' offers his own careful and conscientious work to us, as a contribution 'to a better appreciation of the greatest mystical poet of any age.' And with this designation, as summing up the judgment of a capable expert and critic—strange as it may sound—we venture, in all deference and sincerity, to agree. JelÁleddÍn is now rising upon our literary horizon in all his native Splendour—his name appropriately signifying 'The Splendour of the Faith'—as at once the Dante, the St. Bernard, the Spenser, the Milton, the Angelus Silesius, and the Novalis of the Orient. As a religious Lyrical Poet his mellifluous music, his variety of strain, his captivating charm of words, his purity of feeling, his joyous faith, and his elevation of thought, have never been surpassed in their own kind. Taking what Matthew Arnold has called 'the lyrical cry' even in its widest range, it would be doing no one wrong—although it dare hardly be done as yet—to rank JelÁleddÍn, when he comes fully before us 'with all his singing robes about him,' with the very highest—with Shakespeare, with Wordsworth and Keats and Shelley, and with Goethe and Heine! He is certainly one of the most fertile poets of Nature among the Lyrical Singers of all time, and the most exuberant, if not also the most spiritual, Hymnist the world outside of Christendom has yet produced.

This estimate, however shaded or qualified, cannot but appear at first strangely exaggerated, and out of all just proportion, to those who mayhap read the name of JelÁleddÍn now for the first time. Let us listen, then, to the greatest students of Persian Poetry in the critical Nineteenth Century, the judges who have highest authority on the subject, and who have the best right to pronounce judgment on JelÁleddÍn. And let us hear in the first place, as is his due, the most learned Historian of Persian Poetry in the Nineteenth Century, who with indefatigable industry and completest knowledge has adorned his pages with Extracts from no less than Two Hundred of Persia's greatest Poets. Joseph von Hammer, the great Austrian Orientalist (known later as Baron Von Hammer-Purgstall and as the Historian of Arabic Literature in seven immense volumes, containing Accounts of nearly ten thousand Authors) says:—

Thus far the learned Von Hammer. But let us also hear the judgment of the East itself, of which this is only a Western echo, as it may be gathered from Devletshah, the greatest native biographer—the Dr. Johnson we may appropriately say—of the Persian Poets. Of JelÁleddÍn, he says:—

And to cite only one Turkish Authority—for the Turks claim JelÁleddÍn as their own, although a Persian of royal race, born at Balkh, old Bactra, on the ground of his having sung and died at Qoniya, in Asia Minor (the Iconium of Paul and Barnabas and Timothy and St. Thecla), whence he was called Rumi 'the Roman,' usually rendered 'the Greek,' as wonning within the confines of old Oriental Rome. This is how FehÎm Efendi, the Turkish Historian of the Persian Literature, himself a Poet, begins his Sketch of the Life of the great poetic Mystagogue:—

Rosen, who gives this quotation, and an excellent rhymed German translation of part of the Mesnevi, refers to that poem as not only 'one of the most celebrated productions of the Persian Mysticism, but as being regarded by many Mohammedans as almost equal in holiness to the Koran and the Sunna.' Being attached, at the time he wrote, to the German Embassy at Constantinople, Rosen also mentions that not only did the educated Oriental regard the Mesnevi as the most perfect Book of Edification, which when its contents were received into his mind and heart, made him certain of Salvation; but that even the poor Persian retailers of the products of their home industries, on the streets, could recite with enthusiasm long passages from the poems of JelÁleddÍn. We believe that this holds true to-day, more or less, of the whole Mohammedan world.[2]

But coming to more familiar names, we might gather a whole cloud of the most approved witnesses in this connection. Thus Sir William Jones, the first great Anglo-Indian Scholar, the Columbus of the new Old World of Sanskrit and Persian Literature, enters with wonderful sympathy and insight into possession of the Persian and Hindu Mystical Poetry; he refers to their great Maulavi, and his astonishing work, The Mesnevi; and he translates the celebrated opening passage in rhyming couplets which would not have been unworthy of Pope himself.[3] Sir William Jones did not, indeed, touch JelÁleddÍn's Lyrics, but he rendered some precious morsels of Hafiz, 'Odes,' as they are called, both in English and French, in a way that made young European students and poets, like Herder and Goethe, turn again to the East with yearning expectant eyes. Similar testimony might be adduced from Henry Thomas Colebrooke, one of the very greatest of the successors of Sir W. Jones. The chief Historian of Persia, and the best informed Persian scholar of his day, Sir John Malcolm (of Langholm), if less sympathetic than Sir W. Jones in his painstaking account of the Persian Mystics, gives likewise the first place to JelÁleddÍn.[4] And then much more definitely Sir Gore Ouseley, the first English Biographer of the Persian Poets, gives JelÁleddÍn due recognition in connection with the unrivalled Mesnevi.[5] The Journal of the Asiatic Society, an ever valuable Magazine of Oriental learning, and the parent of many others of its kind, has been enriched by the contributions of many enthusiastic English scholars following in the footsteps of Sir W. Jones, and it contains the earliest fragments of English translations of JelÁleddÍn.[6] Robert Alfred Vaughan, in his Hours with the Mystics, 1856, a popular, sympathetic, and still attractive work, appreciates JelÁleddÍn, and compares him with Angelus Silesius and Emerson, but all his knowledge of the Persian Mystic was derived from Tholuck and Sir W. Jones. At last competent scholars began to deal worthily with JelÁl's poetry in English. Sir James W. Redhouse has translated the First Book of the Mesnevi in rhyming couplets, with the utmost fidelity and care; and another distinguished Persian scholar, Mr. Whinfield, the most faithful English translator of Omar KhayyÁm, has given an abridged version of the whole immense work, which in the Persian original contains about 70,000 lines.[7] The Mesnevi has thus come now to be pretty well known by English readers interested in the subject; and in the last edition of the EncyclopÆdia Britannica, Professor Hermann EthÉ, an unquestionable authority, in his valuable Articles on Persian Literature and JelÁleddÍn Rumi, sums him up as 'the greatest Pantheistic Writer of all ages,' and speaks of 'his matchless Odes in which he soars on the wings of a genuine enthusiasm, high over Earth and Heaven, up to the Throne of Almighty God.' Be it noted, in passing, that it is at least remarkable how two such different writers as the Turkish Devlet Shah and the learned German Orientalist should both write of JelÁleddÍn in terms that undesignedly, but irresistibly, recall by their very superlativeness, the famous lines of Dr. Johnson on Shakespeare:—

All this makes it now intelligible that the late lamented Editor of the EncyclopÆdia Britannica, Dr. W. Robertson Smith, when Professor of Arabic at Cambridge, with the fine insight of the far-seeing scholar, should have directed the attention of a young, enthusiastic student to the 'Lyrical Poetry of JelÁleddÍn Rumi'; and it is to the loyal devotion of this young scholar that we owe the first appearance from an English Press of a Volume of forty-eight 'Selected Poems' of JelÁleddÍn, in a critical Persian Text and with accurate and elegant prose renderings.[8] Mr. Reynold A. Nicholson has thus established a right to pronounce judgment on the merits of JelÁleddÍn, and we now listen to him with deference, and no longer with astonishment, when he deliberately characterises him as 'the greatest Mystical Poet of any Age.'

As the object of this Introduction is only to determine, in some measure, the literary interest of the Lyrical Poetry—the DÍvÁn, as it is technically called—of JelÁleddÍn, space need not be taken up by narrating again what is traditionally known of his Life, and it is the less necessary as excellent accounts are now easily accessible. Sir James W. Redhouse gives in somewhat abridged translation El Eflaki's interesting narrative, with its romantic wreath of legend, and its quaint anecdotes and racy sayings. Mr. Nicholson furnishes an excellent summary. Professor Hermann EthÉ's notice in the Encycl. Brit. has been already referred to, and reference may also be made to his MorgenlÄndische Studien, and his popular Lecture in the Virchow-Holtzendorff Series, 1888, on 'The Mystical, Didactic, and Lyrical Poetry, and the later Literature of the Persians,' with its fine characterization, which we would fain have quoted. Rosen translates into German the Biographical Sketches of Devletshah and Jami. Professor E. G. Browne's recent 'Literary History of Persia,' which carries the subject down to A.D. 1000, and is undoubtedly so far the best History of Persian Literature yet produced, contains appreciative references to JelÁleddÍn, with a masterly account of the Sufi Mysticism; and we look forward with much interest to a comprehensive and judicial summing up of the great Mystic Poet, by this high authority upon the whole subject.[9]

II.

The interest of the writer in JelÁleddÍn has been from the first, and all through, philosophical and theological rather than specially historical or textual. This interest was awakened in him by Hegel. In early student days, when to him as to so many then, the Hegelian Philosophy was the all in all of his thought, he was startled by the unwonted enthusiasm with which the great thinker at the climax of his severest exposition, paused to pay a warm tribute to 'the excellent JelÁleddÍn,' when he came into view in the light of the Supreme Idea of his own System.[10] This passage in Hegel, seems always to have impressed the students of his own writings, and it has been frequently referred to both by his German and English expounders. The greatest speculative Thinker of the Nineteenth Century, seems to have felt a deep satisfaction in recognising the affinity of the greatest speculative Poet of the East to his own deepest thought, while at the same time carefully distinguishing the clearer and higher form of his own conception. Nay more, although parsimonious to the utmost of his space and words, in this, the most condensed and compacted Text Book of Philosophy written in any European language since Aristotle, the stern German Dialectician in a comparatively long Foot Note, says he 'cannot refrain' from quoting several passages from the Poet, in order that the reader may get a clearer knowledge of his ideas; and he quotes them from RÜckert's Versions, to give, at the same time, some specimens of 'the marvellous Art of the translation.' The Reader who is not acquainted with German will find Hegel's words accurately translated by the late Dr. W. Wallace, who also gives an English version of the passages quoted from RÜckert, in which he says he was 'kindly helped by Miss May Kendall'—although Dr. Wallace and Miss May, rhyming in utter ignorance of Persian Prosody, and consequently, like so many more, in the dark, have entirely failed to catch the delicate play of the Gazels, so faithfully reproduced by the tuneful RÜckert.[11]

In another of Hegel's works—his valuable posthumous 'Lectures on the Philosophy of Art'—he takes up the same subject from the Æsthetic point of view, and he deals with it again in a more popular, but in an essentially identical, way.[12] As the former passage has now obtained currency in our philosophical literature, it may be more useful, as well as more relevant to these pages, to reproduce the latter, the fuller and more intelligible, but hitherto untranslated, exposition. Hegel is here dealing with the Symbolical Forms of Art, and in particular with the symbolism of Sublimity, historically characteristic of Oriental Art, which thus gives expression to the consciousness of absolute subordination and the dependence of all that is individual and finite on the Universal and the Infinite. In his comprehensive historical survey Hegel, at this stage, finds occasion to deal with what he calls 'Pantheism in Art.' The profound thinker, with a vigorous grasp and original view of the historic evolution, is here singularly lucid and suggestive, as he delineates the Pantheistic Poetic Idea exhibited in the lyrical forms of 1. Indian Poetry; 2. Mohammedan Poetry; 3. Christian Mysticism. Very refreshing and sane is his representation of Indian Poetry, at a time when the uncritical enthusiasm of the Schlegels and other young Sanskrit Students, was carrying an unrestrained admiration beyond all reasonable bounds. Hegel castigates this juvenile weakness with a firm hand. He, too, has read the startling translations of the Sakuntala and the Bhagavad Gita, and he knows something of the Ramayana; but he is not dazzled or carried away. He recognises the marvellous exuberance and profusion of the Indian imagination, but it is all too fantastic as yet. While it is boundless, it is also formless, and just so far is it lacking in true Beauty. Its Sublimity is confused, chaotic, helpless; it ever struggles for a harmonious unity, for spiritual mastery of the manifold and the overwhelming, which it never attains. All this is truest insight, soundest criticism.—But a higher stage is reached in the Persian Poetry. Here the form of the Poet becomes more adequate, more masterful, more refined. Beauty springing up with Sublimity, is harmoniously wedded with it, and in one great Poet the victory of Love is freely consummated; for—to paraphrase with Tennyson—

But let us hear Hegel's own grave, well-weighed judgment, as he spoke it in those days to his own Students at Berlin:

Hegel thus deliberately gives JelÁleddÍn an eminent place not only among the great Poets, but among the great Thinkers of the world. He is more than satisfied with RÜckert as a translator, and he is virtually at one with JelÁleddÍn's principle of thought. His qualification is historical rather than essential; the relation to Pantheism is the particular limiting condition of JelÁleddÍn's stage of development and environment; it is not a ground of reproach, nor of condemnation as more than relatively untrue, or rather incomplete. And so Hegel is at pains to vindicate the poet-thinker from the vulgar and unjust stigma commonly implied in the ascription of Pantheism. This he does in his remarks on the contributions to the subject by Dr. Tholuck, who became afterwards the eminent evangelical theologian of Halle, but who was then just entering on his distinguished career. Tholuck had quite a genius for languages, and his first intention was to devote himself to Oriental Philology. He prosecuted the study of Arabic, Persian and Turkish, with great zeal and success under the distinguished Dietz; and in 1821, at the age of twenty-two, he qualified as a University Teacher, by a learned Latin Dissertation on 'Sufism, or the Pantheistic Theosophy of the Persians.'[14] This remarkable exposition was at once recognised as of real merit, and it is still valuable. Tholuck, who was a born poet and had a rare breadth of literary appreciation, supplemented his work, four years later, by a very interesting Anthology from the Persian Mystical Poets in German verse, with an attractive introduction to the whole subject.[15] With the profoundest admiration for Dr. Tholuck's work as a theologian, and an unfading personal affection, kindled by tender and memorable student contact with him in his old age, we yet cannot dissent from Mr. Whinfield's critical judgment when he thus sums up the value of these contributions: 'Tholuck was an indifferent Persian Scholar, and many of his translations are wrong, but he grasped the meaning of Sufism and its affinity to European mysticism much more thoroughly than many who were far superior to him in mere verbal scholarship.' Hegel, who was not a Persian scholar, is generous in his recognition of Tholuck's Anthology, but he points out the weakness of Tholuck's criticism, and shews in particular that the young theologian is too perfunctory in his view of the subject generally, as merely adopting the 'current chatter about Pantheism,' and hurling it as a convenient term of reproach against the whole speculative thought of the time. This shallow popular criticism, as Hegel puts it, quite misunderstands the real principle of speculative Pantheism, confounds it with a crude view of the world which immediately identifies the object of sense with the Divine, but which no sane thinker ever really held, and it is to be rejected emphatically when applied to JelÁleddÍn. For, as he says, 'In the excellent JelÁleddÍn Rumi in particular we find the unity of the soul with the One set forth, and that unity described as Love; and this spiritual unity is an exaltation above the finite and common, a transfiguration of the natural and spiritual in which the externalism and transitoriness of nature is surmounted: in this poetry, which soars over all that is external and sensuous, who would recognise the prosaic ideas current about so-called Pantheism?' No; JelÁl is not to be tabooed, off-hand, and labelled merely as a Pantheist!

With Hegel's correction of Tholuck and his vindication of the speculative standpoint of the Persian Poet, we are entirely agreed; but Hegel is himself here not quite adequate. All students of philosophy know that in this very relation has lain the chief ambiguity and weakness of his own System, and it is reflected in his view of JelÁleddÍn. With his dominating passion for systematising the evolution of History and conforming it to a logical scheme of thought, he yet fails to see—largely owing to the limitation of his material—how practically modern and how spiritually personal JelÁl really is. For, after all, JelÁleddÍn is no mere idle dreamy mediaeval Mystic; he is essentially a modern poet and thinker, and is not to be pushed back into the dim vagueness and impersonal materialism of ancient thought. He has twelve centuries of Christian life and reflection behind him, with all the dogmatic development of the ancient orthodox Church, on the one hand; all the forms of Indian pantheistic and Greek freethought on the other; and six centuries of austere restraining Mohammedan Monotheism as his central curb and check—and well and clearly he knows them all. He is at once universally eclectic and originally constructive, and he moves freely and joyously with a larger insight all his own. The East and the West meet in him again, more richly than they have done in any other for centuries, and he binds them into a new, happy harmony, the 'heavenly harmony' of poesy. He is a true Seer, like his own ancient Zarathustra, like Lao-tse, like Buddha, and much more akin to Jesus, and Paul, and John, than to the fierce, relentless, one-sided Prophet of Arabia, whose barren religion he redeems from its mechanical inhumanity and quickens with the breath of a purer and Diviner love. His intellectual kinship is with Plato and the speculative Theologians of the Christian Church, and with the deep dreamers who live in the highest vision and lose themselves sweetly and gladly in God. He is the veritable Morning Star of the new Day of the World, rising in pure brightness, afar in the East—and after barbaric crusade and mad war, heralding, in a clearer and sweeter Song of Divine Love, the triumph of the new time.

In the year of JelÁleddÍn's death Edward I. ascended the throne of England, with the first faltering grasp of a mightier Empire; the boy Dante was catching the gleam of strange Visions in the shining eyes of the sweet-faced gentle maiden Beatrice; the mystic thrill that had run through the Middle Age was pulsing in the youth of Meister Eckhart, and preparing for Suso and Ruysbroek and Thomas À Kempis, through the mellifluous Rhythm of St. Bernard which had been sung for a hundred years; the Doctor Angelicus had all but summed up the system of Christian Theology, the well-worn pen just trembling to its fall from his wearied grasp; and the spirit of Martin Luther, whom of all religious Reformers JelÁleddÍn most resembles, was already beginning to breathe in William Occam and the free young thinkers of the time. Yes; JelÁleddÍn has both a wider relationship and a more modern significance than even Hegel has thought of.

And now we have surely cited Authorities enough to enable us to form at least a preliminary judgment, fair, reasonably informed, and impartial, concerning JelÁleddÍn's distinctive position and work as a Poet. We have seen him thrice crowned—in the Realms of Poetry. Philosophy, and Religion—by authoritative representatives, qualified kingmakers; and hardly any one who now knows truly of him, will dispute his right to be ranked as one of 'the great of old! The dead but sceptred sovrans who still rule our spirits from their urns.' His royal Title was proclaimed long ago in the musical name most aptly bestowed upon him when he lived and sang, and by those who knew him best: JelÁleddÍn, which we have already rendered literally as 'The Splendour of the Faith,' but which we prefer now to reproduce in its proper English equivalent as 'The Glory of Religion.' This designation at once strikingly expresses the Secret of his Power, the Consecration of his Genius, and the essence and end of his Humanity. To him Religion was all in all; it was the very Life-breath of his Soul; the Home and Joy of his Heart; the be-all and end-all of his Will. Of but very few others of the Sons of Men can this be said; of only One can it be said in a higher degree than of JelÁleddÍn, as he himself knew and confessed. He too 'sought for the healing Hand of Jesus,' and it purged his inner sight and enabled him to see all the world again, lying bright and beautiful, in the Light and Love of God. And moved by that all-compelling Law whose 'seat is the Bosom of God' and whose 'voice is the Harmony of the world,' he burst spontaneously into song, and the keynote of all his singing—exultant, jubilant, triumphant—was ever the living, loving God, 'Him first, Him last, Him without end.' Religion was the golden Thread on which, all his silvery poetic Pearls were strung, and he flung them around him in his own generous, selfless joy, with the most lavish hand. They seem to have cost him no effort of search or toil. Much more than Spinoza or Novalis was he a 'God-intoxicated man'; the prophetic fire burned in his soul, without consuming it and it must out in 'thoughts that breathe and words that burn.' And this is still our precious inheritance from him to-day, which we will do well to appreciate and cherish anew in this cold, heartless, irreligious, prosaic time. Let his ringing voice then be reverently heard even through these few, faint, far-off re-echoings of his own soul-stirring elevating strains; for the burden of all he sings, in endless variation of note and tune, his one theme as he himself caught it direct from the melody of Nature and of Man, is the Glory of Religion!

This very general Introduction to the subject-matter of JelÁl's Lyrics must here suffice, as our immediate object is merely to present some specimens of them in a form at once popular and generally intelligible. But the detail of the subject in its historical, philosophical and theological bearings, which would only be confusing here, is reserved for some subsequent discussion. Sir William Jones gave a first popular Epitome of the Mystical System of the Persian Poets, which in its own way has never been surpassed (see Note A), although the subject has been much more profoundly studied and elucidated since his time. A competent discussion of the system of 'the greatest Sufic poet of Persia' (EthÉ), would be a valuable contribution to our contemporary Philosophy of Religion. Mr. Nicholson has concisely sketched the parallelism between the doctrines of JelÁleddÍn and Plotinus, but we must go further and even deeper than Plotinus in order to reach the root of the whole matter. Professor Browne is very helpful, and gives the best Literature, as also does Hughes in his most interesting illustrated Articles; Kremer is invaluable, as also are Professor Palmer on the one hand, and the recent translators and expounders of the early Iranian and Hindu Religion and Philosophy on the other; Whinfield gives an able, lucid Sketch.

III.

Looking now at the poetical form of JelÁl's Lyrics, it goes without saying that it is distinctively Persian, and always eminently so in its kind. The Persian Poets were truly 'makers'; they not only created most of the nature-imagery still current in all modern poetry, but they constructed new forms of rhythm and rhyme, in which they finely echoed the sweetest melodies of nature and gave a richer and more expressive music to human speech. Their fluent and flexible language, with its natural wealth of resonant cadences and rhymes, furnished them with a facile medium of expression, and the still richer Arabic readily lent its copious resources at need. And the Persians were always rhyming, in public and private, on great themes or small; a poetic people, ever ready to recognise and honour sweet songsters; the readiest and wittiest of 'improvvisatori.' Even yet, as Richardson tells us; 'it is a common entertainment for the great and learned men in Persia, to assemble together, with the view to an exercise of genius, in the resolving of enigmas ... and to rival one another in the facility of composing and replying to extempore verses, in which, from practice and a natural liveliness of fancy, many of them arrive at an astonishing proficiency.' Hence, as Goethe says of himself, the Persian Poets 'sang as the birds sing;' and taking that master-singer of Nature, the Nightingale, as their model, they too trilled in strains of unrivalled sweetness, range and depth of tone, and consummate florid beauty. Even the most careless reader cannot fail to be impressed by the affluence of imagery in the Persian Lyrical Poetry, and no one has dwelt more suggestively than Hegel on the spiritual significance of its characteristic profusion of metaphors, images, similes, and comparisons.[16] But while so lavishly employing the decorative forms common to all lyrical poetry, the Persian Poets, with singular constructive originality, also created new lyrical forms of their own, and carried them to their highest perfection. Chief of these are the Gazel and the Divan, two terms which are only now being naturalised in our language, and becoming generally understood. Here, again, it may be more serviceable to quote one or two authorities, rather than to give a mere abstract definition; and as we have generally found the older authorities in these matters to be the best, we start with Richardson's summary of the definitions of D'Herbelot and Revizky.

'The Ghazel or Eastern Ode—says Richardson—is a species of poem, the subject of which is in general Love and Wine, interspersed with moral sentiments, and reflections on the virtues and vices of mankind. It ought never to consist of less than 5 beits or distichs, nor exceed 18, according to D'Herbelot; if the poem is less than five, it is then called rabat or quartain; if it is more than eighteen, it then assumes the name of kasside or elegy. Baron Revizky[17] says, that all poems of this kind which exceed 13 beits [couplets], rank with the kasside; and, according to Meninski, the ghazel ought never to have more than 11.—Every verse in the same ghazel must rhyme with the same letter; and when a poet has completed a series of such poems (the rhymes of the first class being in alif [a], the second in be [b], and so on through the whole alphabet), it is called a Divan, and he obtains the title of Hafez, or as the Arabians pronounce it, Hafedh.... The ghazel is more irregular than the Greek or Latin Ode, one verse having often no apparent connection either with the foregoing or subsequent couplets. Ghazels were often, says Baron Revizky, written or spoken extempore at banquets or public festivities, when the poet, after expressing his ideas in one distich, impatient of confinement, roved through the regions of fancy, as wine or a luxuriant imagination inspired.'[18]