He traced its work with twofingers;
When he wished a line’s mark, of a sudden,
From his innermost nature, drew he straight–and without ruled paper!
He might leap far as high as the satin-dark arch
Andfix corbelations upon Saturn’s own vault!
When his hand took a turn to the chisel,
The very stone turned softer than the rawest wet brick;
When he set his mind on to design,
Lovely traces in thousands sprang up there in tendrils;
The world’s structures, and all without zenith or base,
Might he show, all of them, on the nail of hisfinger;
Through the painting he wrought, when so cast he his glance,
From his pen-brush, adorned he the Tablet of Being;
Infiguration, whatsoever from his pen-brush he drew,
From itsflow, every soul sprang alive!
Upon a stone, if he traced a bird’sfigure,
The very stone turned weightless–flew forth from its place!
By the Nurse’s command, the goldhanded artist
Raised on its foundations the castle, gold-studded:
*The pure sheen of its slabs: is a dawn of joy!
*The space of its halls: is a treasure of hope!
Its corridors smoothed with carpets of marble
And its doors worked in ebony, ivory:
Encircled one in the other, therein Seven Halls
Like unto Seven Thrones, this age has none their like!^44
The poem invites two competing readings: a guileful nanny goads her ward
to spend lavishly on a sexual lure; or the divine architect is guided by a
woman to build a universe of beauty that fosters love. Convincingly
arguing that nannies in medieval Persian literary romances suggest not
simply the feminization of guile but also the generational heritability that
makes it apply to all women in the context of Persian literary romances,
Ferzaneh Milani focuses on the literal approach to the text.^45 Affiliating her
interpretation of guile through reference to Western feminist critiques of
the persistent patriarchal rendition of woman as evil, she references the
common appropriation of Aziz’s condemnation of all women as guileful as
central to Jami’s narrative. While clearly reflective of contemporary uses of
the passage, Jami’s participation in such popular misogyny is unclear. Just
as art history occludes aspects of Islamic perception through its(^44) Barry, 2004 : 204. (^45) Milani, 1999.
236 The Transgressive Image