SYMBIOSIS BETWEEN SUFISM AND LITERATURE

It seems that Sufis moved through and felt in poetry as if on their own turf. Literature and poetic form offered them the opportunity to achieve multiple goals. Closeness of Sufism and literature should perhaps be sought in the deep roots of Sufi teaching in contemplation, spiritual maturing, intuition and spiritual leadership, which make it fairly close to poetry, which in turn uses terms such as inspiration, imagination, revelation etc. Literature is defined as metaphorical speech and speech by images, and some literary theoreticians claim that “every word of the poem is 'ambiguous' since it is required by the nature of poetic language within which it functions” (Kulenović, 2006, 153). The poetic language is therefore considered more complex than the natural language. For instance, a poem of just several verses can transmit an extremely great quantity of information. Besides, the poetic language lifts bans and restrictions in selection, though in the combination of language units which are used in the natural language.

In Sufi poetry, and even in non-literary Sufi writings, one can strongly feel iconicity of language and the presence of speech in images, in the way that a single term or notion encompasses several meanings and, like an image, send many messages, directly or indirectly. There are many such iconic signs in Sufi literature. For example, some of these terms are wine, cupbearer, beloved and many others. These terms do not carry only two possible meaning, basic and figurative one; rather, they are powerful semantic images where many semantic fields intertwine; they simply radiate from these images, carrying with them the entire context, ideology and worldview. In this literature, the concept of wine is not only a metaphor for love potion, i.e. cognition; rather, it is an entirely iconic term. It associates to delight, desire, passion, cognition, knowledge, ignoring the matter, ignoring This World, focusing on God, residing in His presence, “observation” of God, drunkenness, unawareness, indifference, and also speaks about a worldview and view of the man, of the order of value and principles. When we add, to this, associations which wine has in the non-Sufi discourse, the spectrum gets far more meanings. Many other Sufi terms also summarize this and similar symbolism and meanings. As much as we try to encompass all these meanings, something of its semantic fullness is always left out.

The effect of multiple meaning of the language is achieved by intensive and dense figurativeness and metaphors, even when they are not images, both in the cases of love lyrical contents and cognitive Sufi topics presented in the form of verses. We should also be reminded that Sufism deals with religious truths and principles, the textual contents of which immanently imply figurativeness. “People sometimes ignore another feature of sacral style, i.e. its rich metaphors and allegory” (Bakaršić, 2001, 71). Besides, “since Islamic mystics perform mind exercises according to Theosophical methods, poetry has been the main instrument. In any case, the earliest mystics were aware of the psychological effect and overwhelming power of poem on the emotions of members of the order and that is why they used poems and music for arousing ecstatic states by these aesthetic means. These ecstatic states, as they believe, are moments of the highest experience, when the mystic communicates and unites with the Beloved (God)” (Ćehajić, „Vidovi stvaranja“, 25).

Besides being the basic carriers of the meanings of Sufi truths, Sufi terms in literature fit into strict molds of formal prosody, metrics and grammar, and then build very complex semantic compounds and relations which serve as figures of speech, contribute to stylogenicity of the text and aesthetic experience. Technical terminology of Sufism has extremely enriched literature with an unusual language and ideas, imbued it with a new life and a new direction, opened or initiated new perspectives and literary spaces. In the words of Russian formalists from the early 20th century, it gave new impulses to heavy and ossified literary forms, and by replacing them with new forms and filling them with new contents, it performed poetic de-automation.

Sufi terminology enters poetry and fully adapts in it primarily due to its semantic depth and polysemy, which would be useful for outstanding adaptability and flexibility as an excellent background for semantic figures, primarily metaphor, and then personification, metonymy, synecdoche and periphrasis. Sufi poetry does not exclusively deal with cases of a special experience which a Sufi poet had and then expressed it by means of metaphor. The vision or an image itself is a metaphor which is manifested as a real symbol, since expressions used by Sufi poets are a sensory form in which a Sufi watches reality in a higher sense of the term. In Sufi poetry one can encounter all forms of metaphor. Besides, Sufi language is allegorical; there are two levels of meaning in it, literal and figurative, and the reference to the other, unexpressed meaning is characteristic of both literary and a great part of non-literary Sufi texts. Certainly, other semantic figures such as metonymy, periphrasis, synecdoche and antonomasia also provide Sufi terms with poetics at different levels. Personification and hyperbole are particularly common. In the Sufi text, everything speaks, lives and pulsates, since everything is a reflection of the One Living, of the One who gives life to everything. The Sufi narrates, at times briskly argues, with a blade of grass, a rock, water, or a dog. Jalaluddin Rumi begins Masnavi with a story told by ney (flute). It is not an ordinary story; ney tells the greatest spiritual truths, ney narrates, cries, whines, warns. The fact that it has features of living beings is personification but at the same time a metaphor for the state of man's separation from spiritual homeland, as Sufis teach. It is also an allegory, since it carries both levels of meaning, literal and figurative; one meaning is told and the other it refers to. Ney is allegory for perfect man; that is, the story is not told by ney; rather, it is the perfect instructor that speaks through it, since „commentators of Masnavi believed that ney is the perfect man” (Zamani, 1998, 48). Finally, ney in a broader context with reed is a Sufi symbol.

Thus, one Sufi term has multiple functions, it assumes a role of several figures of speech and in this way becomes a very convenient linguistic sign in a literary text. It leads to the conclusion that Sudi terms both entered the literary text in their polysemic dimension, that they are characterized by adjustability, adaptability for building semantic figures of speech, and that they position themselves as constructive parts of poetic expression. With respect to figures of speech, it should be noted that most part of Sufi discourse is hyperbolic. Everything is a hyperbole, from miracles (keramets) of Sufi leaders, supernatural powers, experiences and journeys to magic carpets. Even strictly speaking, from the position of an average reader of a Sufi text, states and spiritual stages, as a central topic of whole tasawwuf, are mostly in the domain of hyperbole. Naturally, it refers to the view from the angle of literary aesthetics, consciously abstracting all the others.

An important feature of the Sufi text is the widespread use of parable. A parable is a story which has some sense per se, but the purpose of which is to suggest more than this direct meaning, a moral lesson. Although narration and stories serving as a parable are more suitable to a prose Sufi text, parable is prominently represented in poetry. Poetic texts are often a sum of branching and mutually intertwined parables. Parables are often interrupted by parts of other parables; while speaking, the poet makes digressions, introduces some other elements and then again returns to continue the course of previous story. The Conference of the Birds (Mantiq al-tayr) by Farid ud-Din Attar is, among other things, an outstanding parable from the beginning to the end. The whole work is more or less an allegorical parable which leads the reader through the adventure of journey to the ultimate destination, through the search of a group of birds for Simorgh (Sīmorg) or the Ultimate Truth (Haqq). The story has its course, its course, heroes, beginning, plot, end or denouement; however, it is not told us to provide information of adventures of a group of birds but rather to suggest, above all, to provide a moral lesson that moral refinement and spiritual maturing and cognition require effort, commitment, determination to head to this goal uncompromisingly, despite obstacles and dangers. Parables sometimes condense Sufi terms, and sometimes break them down and explain to triviality through other images and symbols.

Sufi terminological system, impregnated in the literary text, showed an extreme absorbing power, “processing” ability, by granting subtle meanings and metaphors to many common, trivial expressions. In the same vein, by taking images and terms from pre-Islamic literary tradition, poets interpreted these words through their spiritual hermeneutics at a metaphorical-psychological level. In any case, by their character, composition, role and distribution, these distinctive terms and symbols constitute a separate mystical-allegorical level of poetic narration in this poetry.

Besides their function of different, mostly semantic, figures of speech, terms in the literary text are symbols of given spiritual dimensions, and symbolism is thus one of fundamental features of Sufi poetry. In a sense, symbolic though is far richer than any historical thought. Symbolic thought gets immersed into the unconscious and ascends to the super-conscious, relies on inner experience and tradition, manifests itself in proportion with personal openness and ability. Symbolic thought lasts in time, preserves its identity waiting for the one who will come and devote oneself to it, reveal its contents.

The symbol is an outstanding means and a figure of speech for literary texts which attempt to speak of transcendent reality and reflections of Infinite in the finite, like Sufi poetry. Together with metaphor and allegory, symbol is the most successful in forming semantic polyphony, allusions and ambiguity which the tasawwuf text insists on. Thus, the symbol in the text construct an almost unlimited conceptual background which cannot be firmly and forever fixed; it always suggests and never fully explains. Besides, in texts where the symbol as a figure of speech prevails there is a high degree of imagination and abstraction.

Early Sufi literature does not provide evidence that the first Sufis were also poets. They are typically described as devout people, ascetics without a particular desire for and inclination to poetry. Far later, when poetry had already become a recognizable and well-established medium of Sufi expression, we find Sufi teachers who also did not show their affinity for poetry, although they used and wrote it.

In general, tasawwuf enters poetry and operates in it in two ways. First of all, many poets were part of the very structure of a given Sufi order, shaykhs or murshids who lived and believed in Sufi doctrines, were inspired by them and further promoted ideas of the first advocates of Sufism. Their poetry is the reflection of such an approach and a result of a sincere Sufi belief. Indeed, many poets of classical epoch of Persian poetry were actually Sufi teachers, theoreticians and practitioners of Sufism as well. Some Sufi poets lived in tekkes or spent a lot of time in them, went through rigorous methods of spiritual journey, and then had listeners of their own and taught them. Therefore, they were educated Sufis, they wrote poems in the language in which they contemplated and lived. While writing Masnavi and Divan, Jalaluddin Rumi resided in a tekke in the company of his followers; Abdurrahman Gami lived a life of dervish; Mahmoud Shabestari was a dervish shaykh; Farid ud-Din Attar led a very modest, ascetic life. Thus, these poets did not use terminology for purely formal or aesthetic reasons, to adorn their works or because it was a mere means for expressing a poetic or aesthetic experience, although there many have been such cases as well. “A great majority of Sufis of the Middle Ages lived lives of saints, dreamed of God and were intoxicated with him. When they attempted to communicate their dreams, since they were people, they used human language. If they were writers, they would spontaneously use the style of their time and generation” (Nikolson, 2004, 77).

The second approach was taken by poets who saw Sufism as a literary resource, who approached tasawwuf indirectly, from the artistic side. They used rich terminology, metaphor and allegory accumulated in Sufi discourse to ensure the desired or shifted reception of their own literary work and a high degree of abstraction. This approach can be seen in many Persian poets who belonged to the Indian literary style (sabk-e hendī), from the 16th century on. Indeed, the use of Sufi register and accumulated cache of motifs for literary and artistic reasons, without a particular desire to promote Sufi principles, emerged in the period of the diminishing of interest in and reduction of popularity of Sufi worldview in the public space. In this period, the deposited Sufi terminological and motif materials became the background for articulation of other literary and artistic ambitions.

References

• Chevalier, Jean, and Gheerbrant, Alain (1983), Rječnik simbola, Nakladni zavod Matice hrvatske, Zagreb.

• Nikolson, Rejnold A. (2004), Sufizam – Mistici islama, Babun, Beograd.

• Tvrtko Kulenović, „Poezija i njeno čitanje – iskustva ‘Nove kritike‘” in: Lešić, Zdenko, Kapidžić-Osmanagić, Hanifa, Katnić-Bakaršić, Marina, Kulenović, Tvrtko (2006), Suvremena tumačenja književnosti, Sarajevo Publishing, Sarajevo.

• Zamānī, Karīm, Šarh-e ğāme‘ Masnawī-ye ma‘nawī, Entešārāt-e ’ettalā‘āt, Tehrān, 1377. (1998.).

• Katnić-Bakaršić, Marina (2001), Stilistika, Ljiljan, Sarajevo.

• Ćehajić, Džemal, „Vidovi stvaranja muslimanskih mistika porijeklom iz Bosne i drugih krajeva Jugoslavije od XV do XIX vijeka”, Godišnjak Instituta za jezik i književnost, volume III-IV, Sarajevo, 1974-1975.