Persian Literature, Volume 1, Comprising The Shah Nameh | Page 5

in the home of the Abbaside Caliphs. His
journeyman-years took him all through the dominions which were
under Arab influence--in Europe, the Barbary States, Egypt, Abyssinia,
Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor, India. All these places were

visited before he returned to Shiraz, the "seat of learning," to put to
writing the thoughts which his sympathetic and observing mind had
been evolving during all these years. This time of his mastership was
spent in the seclusion almost of a recluse and in producing the
twenty-two works which have come down to us. An Oriental writer
says of these periods of his life: "The first thirty years of Sa'di's long
life were devoted to study and laying up a stock of knowledge; the next
thirty, or perhaps forty, in treasuring up experience and disseminating
that knowledge during his wide extending travels; and that some
portion should intervene between the business of life and the hour of
death (and that with him chanced to be the largest share of it), he spent
the remainder of his life, or seventy years, in the retirement of a recluse,
when he was exemplary in his temperance and edifying in his piety."
Of Sa'di's versatility, these twenty-two works give sufficient evidence.
He could write homilies (Risalahs) in a Mystic-religious fashion. He
could compose lyrics in Arabic and Turkish as well as in Persian. He
was even led to give forth erotic verses. Fondly we hope that he did this
last at the command of some patron or ruler! But Sa'di is known to us
chiefly by his didactic works, and for these we cherish him. The
"Bustan," or "Tree-Garden," is the more sober and theoretical, treating
of the various problems and questions of ethics, and filled with Mystic
and Sufic descriptions of love.
His other didactic work, the "Gulistan," is indeed a "Garden of Roses,"
as its name implies; a mirror for every one alike, no matter what his
station in life may be. In prose and in poetry, alternating; in the form of
rare adventures and quaint devices; in accounts of the lives of kings
who have passed away; in maxims and apothegms, Sa'di inculcates his
worldly wisdom--worldly in the better sense of the word. Like Goethe
in our own day, he stood above the world and yet in it; so that while we
feel bound to him by the bonds of a common human frailty, he reaches
out with us to a higher and purer atmosphere. Though his style is often
wonderfully ornate, it is still more sober than that of Háfiz. Sa'di is
known to all readers of Persian in the East; his "Gulistan" is often a
favorite reading-book.
The heroic and the didactic are, however, not the only forms in which
the genius of Persian poetry loved to clothe itself. From the earliest
times there were poets who sung of love and of wine, of youth and of

nature, with no thought of drawing a moral, or illustrating a tale. From
the times of Rudagi and the Samanide princes (tenth century), these
poets of sentiment sang their songs and charmed the ears of their
hearers. Even Firdusi showed, in some of his minor poems, that joyous
look into and upon the world which is the soul of all lyric poetry. But
of all the Persian lyric poets, Shams al-Din Mohammed Háfiz has been
declared by all to be the greatest. Though the storms of war and the
noise of strife beat all about his country and even disturbed the peace of
his native place--no trace of all this can be found in the poems of
Háfiz--as though he were entirely removed from all that went on about
him, though seeing just the actual things of life. He was, to all
appearance, unconcerned: glad only to live and to sing. At Shiraz he
was born; at Shiraz he died. Only once, it is recorded, did he leave his
native place, to visit the brother of his patron in Yezd. He was soon
back again: travel had no inducement for him. The great world outside
could offer him nothing more than his wonted haunts in Shiraz. It is
further said that he put on the garb of a Dervish; but he was altogether
free of the Dervish's conceit. "The ascetic is the serpent of his age" is a
saying put into his mouth.
He had in him much that resembled Omar Khayyám; but he was not a
philosopher. Therefore, in the East at least, his "Divan" is more popular
than the Quatrains of Omar; his songs are sung where Omar's name is
not heard. He is substantially a man of melody--with much mannerism,
it is true, in his melody--but filling whatever he says with a wealth of
charming imagery and clothing his verse in delicate rhythms. Withal