The old wine sidled through the old man’s veins
And like a twisting compass turned his brains;
Old wine, young love, a lover far too old,
Her soft arms welcoming–could he be cold?
Beside himself with love and drink he cried:
“Command me now; whatever you decide
I will perform. I spurned idolatry
When sober, but your beauty is to me
An idol for whose sake I’ll gladly burn
My faith’s Koran.”“Now, you begin to learn,
Now you are mine, dear sheikh,”she said.“Sleep well,
Sweet dreams; our ripening fruit begins to swell.”^70
Long before Jami, Attar uses the sexual allusions of his poetry to
seduce and entertain his readers through the all-too-familiar inter-
play of an old man falling in love with a young woman, male
impotence, and female resistance. Yet it is only through stark abase-
ment at the altar of their dream-induced love that both, male and
female, old and young, transcend the self. In the Platonic tradition,
true love eschews the self. In the words of Socrates, the lover does
not
value anyone above the one with beauty, but quite forgets mother, brothers,
friends, all together, loses wealth through neglect without caring a jot about it,
and feeling contempt for all the accepted standards of propriety and good taste in
which it previously prided itself, it is ready to act the part of a slave and sleep
wherever it is allowed to do so, provided it is as close as possible to the object of its
yearning.^71
Socrates’identification of such madness as a divine gift reverberates with
the frequent use in Islamic poetry of abject love as a narrative trope
designating the renunciation of self in favor of the divine.
Attar further underscores the theme of idolatry as a station on the path
to transcendence by telling the shaykh’s followers that they had selfishly
abandoned him, and should have instead stayed with him, even at the price
of converting to Christianity or worshiping idols.
Love’s built on readiness to share love’s shame;
Such self-regarding love usurps love’s name.^72
(^70) Attar, 1984 : 66. (^71) Plato, 2005 :32–33. (^72) Attar, 1984 : 70.
From Theology to Poetry 249