FEATURES OF SUFI POETRY

Sufi literature, particularly poetry, signs about several fundamental topics in the broadest sense, and it sometimes seems that the entire Sufi literature is compressed or enclosed into very firm and rigid frames and clasps. The most significant body of Sufi literature revolves around these topics, with more or less subtle nuances and variations. These key topics, which are repeated in works of all significant poets, as if each of them wanted to say that he also mastered these topics and have something to say and contribute, are the following: God's unity (tewhīd), existential monism (wahdat al-wuğūd), road and path of spiritual journey (tarīqat, seir wa sulūk), cognition and gnosis (ma‘rifat, ‘irfān), ecstasy (ğazba), Divine love (‘ašq ilāhī, mahabbat), spiritual teachers and miracles (šejh, pīr, ewliyā and karāmāt). It was out of these fundamental conceptions that many variations developed and new armlets or their elaboration, such as the topic of exile of the soul from spiritual homeland and its striving for return, the idea of pure ecstasy and poverty.  

However, the prevailing notion of Sufi literature in terms of content and topics is love. Indeed, the topic of love in the broadest sense, in its different varieties and very subtle nuances: God's love for the man, man's love for God and spiritual states produced by love are some of the central topics of Sufi thinking, particularly in its literary form. Naturally, in the area of love, speaking of love for God and search for “connecting” with Him prevail. Sufi love speech expressed strong yearning, pain due to separation from God, being thrown into the cruel world which produces the feeling of hopelessness and abandonment. The poet highlights sorrow and strong desire for returning and connecting with his spiritual homeland. Prevalence of love motifs and language of love is clearly proven by the fact that only within Rumi's collection of ghazals dedicated to his spiritual teacher Šems Tabrizi, Dīwān-e Šams, there are over a thousand of different phrases derived from a single word or in combination with it, i.e. word 'love' (for more, see: ’Abolqāsemī, ’Estelāhāt wa mafāhīm-e ‘erfānī-ye Dīwān-e Šams). Thus, terms love (‘ašq), in love (‘āšiq) and beloved (ma‘šūq) make up innumerable semantic strings and reveal ability of producing ever new or refreshing old meanings and poetic images. Besides, literature in Persian includes hundreds of other expressions, synonyms and their phrases which express the meaning of love, the person in love and the beloved according to Sufi technical register.

In explaining these subtle love feelings and experiences, poetry of Sufi poets sometimes uses the language of the lowest layers of society, which could be interpreted as the absence of proper education of some poets. However, it cannot be considered a full and adequate explanation. For illustration purposes, besides Masnavi, Jalaluddin Rumi left behind a collection of outstanding love ghazals. He had university, formal classical Islamic education. Before his complete immersion into the Sufi ocean of love poetry, he was a lecturer at a school (madrasa). Still, in Rumi's ghazals we encounter the language of marketplace, vulgar words from folk speech, distinctive language of school theology and local dialects. However, the tone, the musicality, the content of his ghazals remained unique, they radiate with powerful spiritual message and universal messages. “Mevlana's ghazal was not poetry, it was an outpour of spirit, it was a storm of life ˮ (Zarrīnkūb, Pelle, 245). The topic of love is accompanied with the notion of beauty, which is also significantly present in poetry in correlation with love expressions and contents.

Another important branch of Sufi poetry, directly linked with the topic of love, revolves around concepts of wine and drink. This topic is also characterized by a profane language and images from daily life. The profane language is honed by subtle procedures in Sufi principles of life and corresponding metaphors and assumes a completely different, sublime meaning.

One characteristic of Sufi poetry is that it prefers content to form and literary aesthetic norm. For many Sufi authors, poetry is a means of interpreting principles of their own worldview. Some poets did not pay a particular attention to literary and poetic standards and adherence to rules of literary norm. Mahmud Šabestari, and to an extent even Feriduddin Attar as well, in their works admit that for them, formal features of style and literature are of secondary importance. On the other hand, one can encounter Sufi poets who wrote excelling Sufi poetry which, at the same time, reached high levels of style and poetry, abounded in subtle metaphors, figurative language, symbolism and a complex conceptual system expressed in verses. The group of such poets is headed by Hafiz Širazi.

In any case, in Sufi poetry in Persian there is an acceptable and somewhat usual phenomenon that the poet directly admits and announces that “it is the meaning of my expressions that is important, rather than poetic form” (Šamīsā, Sabkšenāsī, 201). Great Sufi love poet Jalaluddin Rumi also focused on meaning and message. “Rumi had no admiration for poetry as such. If poetry has any value, it is found in the meaning and the message it transmits ˮ (Chittick, Sufijski put ljubavi, 309). Moreover, Rumi seems to admit that he is forced to use poetry because he has no other choice. His personality, speech organs and mental awareness and processes are only tools and means for words which come out of his mouth and for meanings they carry.

Over centuries-long domination on a very wide geographical space, Sufi worldview expressed in literature has left behind an unusual conceptual and intellectual wealth, and in terms of literature, an impressive diversity of genres and topics, as well as hundred of more or less successful writers and poets. This literature encompasses poetry and fiction, philosophy and ethics, history and tafsir (commentaries); it includes both prayers and intimate conversations (munāğāt), as well as hadith and music. A significant part of Sufi poetry and prose has a research (tahqīq) and didactic (wa‘z wa pand) character; however, a significant part of its motifs is directed to decisive advocating of the worthlessness of this world, dunjaluk, or to developing the fundamental Sufi principle according to which, in the eyes of a true Sufi, this world is a house on the road to the hereafter, ahiret. However, the house is full of dangerous challenges.

The literary norms and the style which were established by Sufi poets surpassed frames of Sufi teachers and followers. This literature, which developed very influential and subtle forms of expression, motifs and topics, powerfully transcended borders of hanikahs (dervish monasteries) and Sufi circles. There have been many poets who were not Sufis at all, and who, in their literary works, abundantly cited and repeated Sufi topics and motifs and included principles and teaching of Sufism in them. In a way, it was a literary fashion and a necessary license for personal literary verification. Love for God, descriptions of the state of Sufi ecstasy and gnostic exaltation, expressing yearning for God's beauty became usual topics for many Oriental poets of non-Sufi provenance. At times, due to prominent presence of emphasized ambiguity and by provoking a game on the border of Sufi and non-Sufi discourse, literary texts put the reader in the position of confusion and a need to provide his own interpretation of the content, or to struggle with determining poetic intentions between the bodily and the spiritual love, particularly when it is known for certain that some of the poets who used Sufi means did not belong to this worldview at all or that they did not share similar beliefs in their life. “In later Persian Sufi poetry, which experiences such a brilliant flourish, images from love life were used in full realism, so that creations of many poets became the subject of debate on whether they sing of spiritual love or of worldly passion. This picturesque way of expression became standard in the most part of Persian, Turkish and Urdu poetry, and its charm was so strong that it was only in this century that literary style began to distance itself from such figurative expression” (Rahman, Duh islama, 206-207).

It is on these spiritual, conceptual, language and style bases that one should understand, among other things, literary work of Bosniaks in Oriental languages, as well as acceptance of elements of earlier literary inventory in Bosniak literature.

Detail from the Sufi zikr in Blagaj (photo: Mirza Hasanefendić)

References:

• ’Abolqāsemī, Sayyede Maryam, ’Estelāhāt wa mafāhīm-e ‘erfānī-ye Dīwān-e Šams, Wazārat-e farhang wa ’eršād-e ’eslāmī, Tehran, 1383 (2004).

• Chittick, C. William (2005), Sufijski put ljubavi: Rumijeva duhovna učenja, Naučnoistraživački institut “Ibn Sinaˮ, Sarajevo.

• Rahman, Fazlur (1983), Duh islama, Jugoslavija/Prosveta, Beograd.

• Šamīsā, Sīrūs, Sabkšenāsī-ye še‘ar, Entešārāt-e Ferdūs, Tehrān, 1376.

• Zarrīnkūb, ‘Abdolhosein, Pelle pelle tā molāqāt-e Xodā, Entešārāt-e ‘elmī, Tehrān, 1377 (1998).