with metaphysical qualities, enabling everlasting affluence–presumably
in the hereafter.
Rumi’s palace, then, conveys not simply a palace, but a series of intertextual
allusions defining palaces through images and intoxication. Having established
these metaphors, the narrative pauses for an interpretive interlude, offering a
critique of form in favor of the ideal made possible by formlessness.
Form is brought into existence by the Formless,
just as smoke is produced by afire.
The least blemish in the qualities of that which is endowed with form becomes
annoying when you regard it continually;
Formlessness throws you into absolute bewilderment:
from non-instrumentality a hundred kinds of instruments are born.^76
Moving beyond the Platonic distinction between the ideal–Real and our
physical reality as its shadow, the poem postulates a world in which
thoughts are the reality from which actions and creations emerge in the
world. The only reality is that of thought, reaffirming human existence as
the emanation of divine thought. Yet the princes cannot read this informa-
tion: they must make their way through the fortress to discover it. Inside,
they see a portrait that, although not the most beautiful they have seen,
plunges them into a deep sea:
Because opium came to them in this cup:
the cups are visible, but the opium is unseen.
The fortress, the destroyer of reason, wrought its work:
it cast them, all three, into the pit of tribulation.
Without a bow the arrow-like glances pierce the heart–
mercy, mercy, O merciless one!
A stone image consumed the generations
and kindled afire in their religion and their hearts.^77
Romantic love and opiate intoxication offer metaphors for readers to
comprehend loss of self in the ecstatic experience of the divine.
The description of such a gallery in the Fortress of Form (Kal’e-yi Zat-
‘us-Suver) in Rumi’s poem suggests that the pictures represent not only
their manifest content, but also immateriality.^78 The princes need a guide
in order to remedy their transgression against their father brought on by(^76) Rumi, 1934 : 462 (3012–3014). (^77) Rumi, 1934 : 465 (3762–3766). (^78) Holbrook, 1994 : 36.
214 The Transcendent Image