Images Divine Rumi - and Whitman 1980
Images Divine Rumi - and Whitman 1980
Images Divine Rumi - and Whitman 1980
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to Comparative Literature Studies
GHULAM M. FAYEZ
Mystic poets like Rumi and Whitman reveal a more humane and
democratic image of the Divine than, say, do theologians or even
philosophers. A theologian, who may like to pose as a rather ratio
alist scholar of religion, is often inclined to conceptualize God in
terms of the history and literature of a given religion, but a my
with a poetic imagination always tends to intuit Him in his own
ing, in nature, and in all that exists in the universe. A theologian
also tend to characterize the Divine - or that particular image of
Deity with which he is concerned - according to a certain scri
convention, but a mystic poet is always ready to humanize, de
tize, and universalize Him in everything that lives. Rumi and Wh
are indeed such mystic poets. They are more concerned with the
of the Divine than with His fragmented, sectarianized, and conce
ized images. In this way, God is not seen to be apart from the cr
but included and including all. "The Beloved," says Rumi, "is
all, the lover merely veils Him."2
In other words, the unitive Divine image consists of the union of ab-
solute objectivity with absolute subjectivity. That is to say, in panthe-
istic terms, God is all that exists. He cannot be defined, or restricted to
the Biblical God, but His unitive image does include Him and even the
Devil, as Whitman suggests in these lines from "Chanting the Square
Deific":
33
Mystic poets such as Rumi and Whitman never want to dualize what
appeared to be dual to many poets and philosophers in world litera-
ture. The Manichean concept of the Devil as Anti-God or Anti-Christ,
with its horde of macabre goblins and demons which has fascinated a
number of Medieval and Romantic writers, has no influence on the
mystical democracy of Rumi and Whitman. What is called evil is often
experienced by the mystic to be a mere temporary phenomenal fact
which is relative, not absolute. Rumi affirms such a concept of evil,
as Emerson does in his essay on "Fate," in the following lines:
Rumi and Whitman see man and nature and the whole universe as
diverse images of one unifying and creative force. "All this multi-
formity is one; whoever sees double is a squint-eyed manikin," says
Rumi. In "A Persian Lesson" - a poem as deeply mystical as "Chant-
ing the Square Deific" - Whitman makes the "greybeard sufi speak
for the old poet in the same kind of Sufi language one can notice in
Rumi's poems. These are Whitman's lines:
For I am Brahman
Within this body,
Life immortal
That shall not perish:
I am the Truth
And the Joy for ever.8
The erroneous c
world as being m
feel the burden o
"I have put dualit
He is the outward
ly real: "God hath
from His choicest
calls "the stream
runs through the
ity of the mystic
manent life-death
in "Song of Myse
ant urge of the
Seeing the world
most often mirro
self or the soul d
poems. A brief di
poets may be opp
other essay "Moti
ing, which includ
seen, may be diff
tween the subject
seeing - that wh
nothing; I see all;
me; I am part an
tangible omnisci
more than the sa
always encounter
a dynamic force,
experiences the w
Furthermore, it
in the Higher Sel
through the lowe
man - and ascend
outline the evolut
reunion with the
I died as miner
I died as plant a
I died as animal and I was man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as man, to soar with
angels blest; but even from angelhood
I must pass on. . .
Oh, let me not exist; for non-existence
Proclaims in organic tunes, "to Him we shall return."15
Rumi in his "The Soul of the World" (the title of this and other poems
is given by Reynold Nicholson, Rumi translator and scholar) identifies
his soul with the creative spirit of the universe: "I have circled awhile
with the nine Fathers in each Heaven./For years I have revolved with
the stars in their signs./I was invisible awhile, I was dwelling with Him. . . .
Man is born once, I have been born many times."16 Having identified
himself with various forms of life, as Whitman does in "Song of My-
self," he claims creative immortality: "I am both cloud and rain: I
have rained on the meadows. /Never did the dust of mortality settle
on my skirt, O dervish!" Fluid and permeating, the soul feels no hin-
derance before its movements. Like a light wave it goes through life
and animates it. As seen by Rumi and Whitman, the soul is the active
conscious pulse, the dynamic principle, and thus identical with the
life-force of the earth.
Seeing into things and feeling them, embracing them as parts of a
whole, is the drama of the self performed in the mystical poems of
Rumi and Whitman. In tune with his central vision, which is truth-in-
unity, the mystic sees diverse images of the earth interlinked, flowing
into one another, and becoming one another, because the life-death-
rebirth cycle is a unitive urge on the earth which never ceases. There-
fore time and space lose their dimensions in this universal flux. And
thus the drama of identifications, the chief actor of which is the self,
can move on with ease.
Each moment
So that wearin
I see the world
Fresh water ev
The sounds of
My brain and
Branches of tr
Leaves clapping
These glories a
In "Song of the
be "in concord" with the earth:
II
Happy was I
In the pearl's heart to lie;
Till, lashed by life's hurricane
Like a tossed wave I ran.
The secret of the sea
I uttered thunderously;
Like a spent cloud on the shore
I slept and stirred no more.19
Whitman, like R
symbolized by th
India":
l.Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273), the greatest classical Persian poet, is the author of tw
monumental works in Persian literature: the Mathnavi (a long mystical epic as widely known
in the Islamic world as Dante's Divine Comedy is in the Western world) and the Divani Sha
Tabriz (a huge collection of odes inspired by the poet's encounter with Shamsi Tabrizi, his
friend and master, and his Muse). He is better known to the West as the founder of his Sufi
order the "Whirling Dervishes." In his "Proud Music of the Storms" Whitman has this accu-
rate description of the order: "I hear dervishes monotonously chanting, interspers'd with
frantic shouts, as they spin around turning always toward Mecca,/I see the rapt religious
dances of the Persians and the Arab