represents that which cannot be represented, but which people compul-
sively try to represent. The Simurgh emerges as an icon of the impossibility
of the icon.
Yet the Simurgh cannot be considered as an isolated sign. Rather,
its aniconicity depends on the multiplicity and mutability of images
through which painters could manifest the ineffability of the divine.
This reflects the formulation of the Shafi’i jurist al-Juwayni (d. 1085)
of a normative stance toward the form of God:“Whoever stops at
something which exists and in which he is capable of conceiving is an
anthropomorphist. Whoever stops at pure negation is an atheist. [...]
Whatever you formulate in your imagination, God is not that.”^58 The
shifting nature of these representations reflected a need to destabilize
divine form, so that the ineffability of God would always emerge
outside of any image. Gruber describes this as challenging painters
of the mi’raj to depict the divine through a “‘balancing act’...
through various visual stratagems, most important among them the
cloud, veil and light metaphors, celestial and angelic motifs and color
symbolism.”^59 Attar’s rendition of the Simurgh offers yet another
form for not-picturing the divine, but rather to allow God to emerge
between the successive failures of representation.
In Attar’s work, the birds follow the Hoopoe, but, weighed down by their
human frailties and worldly concerns, many perish along the way. When,
bedraggled, theyfinally arrive at the mountain, they are refused access. As
the Simurgh has no form, it can only be apprehended through self-reflection,
through which being is perceived as the shadow of the divine. The birds
nonetheless insist, relating the parable of the moth whose attraction to the
flame is so strong that he annihilates himself in it. The herald unlocks the
door for them. Then,
A hundred veils drew back, and there before
The birds’incredulous, bewildered sight
Shone the unveiled, the inmost Light of Light.^60
Although a step closer to the throne, the birds may not proceed. Theyfirst
must consider the tale of Joseph’s brothers groveling before him in shame
for their failure to recognize his divine emanation. Recognizing their own
failure to abnegate the self in their expectation of a reward, the birds absorb
the brothers’ignominy: a true supplicant maintains no self. In the moment
of this self-abnegation:(^58) Quoted in Gruber, 2019 : 133. (^59) Gruber, 2019 : 134. (^60) Attar, 1984 : 217.
96 The Insufficient Image