of Shiraz (1315–1319) frequently draw on transgressive tropes as meta-
phors for divine love. For example, Rumi writes:
...Aren’t you the one looking for immortality
in music? Look up! He comes to you now. He comes!
See! The full Moon! Let your eyes drink theirfill. Theirfill!
I’m happy, just staring here, drunk on his beauty...
As if hefilled my cup and gave me wine. Pure wine!^63
Hafez describes such divine awareness as emerging in the similitude
between the physical beauty of the wine-bearer, wine, and music, contrast-
ing it with the restrictions of mundane religiosity.
When in the morning from the chamber of the palace of novelties
The candle of the East casts its rays over all sides,
The heavenly sphere draws a mirror from the horizon’s pocket and in it
Reveals the face of the world in thousands of guises.
In the corners of the pleasure dome of the Jamshid of the heavens,
Venus tunes the organ to the refrain of the dervish chant.
The harp strums arpeggios asking,“Where has the disapprover gone?”
The bowl falls to gurgling,“Where has the prohibiter gone?”
See the deposition of the wheeling. Take up the glass of joy,
Because in every outcome this is the best of states.^64
Literary (‘adab) gatherings (majlis) with wine and music where such poetry
would be shared and imitated proliferated. Abu Ishaq al-Husri (d. 1022)
describes such events, saying:
Themajlis: its wine is the ruby, its blossom is the rose, its orange is gold and its
narcissi are dinars and dirhams carried by chrysolite...amajlisin which the
strings have begun to answer one another and the goblets to rotate; theflags of
intimate fellowship arefluttering and the tongues of the musical instruments are
speaking. We are seated between full moons while the wine cups are circulating.^65
With the onset of modernity, the Ottoman poet Leyla Saz (1850–1936)
alludes to the same combination of literary social gathering and wine in
lamenting the disarray of the era by saying,“Now hearts are a broken cup
in a gathering of pleasure.”^66
(^63) Akhtarkhavari and Lee, 2016 : 11. (^64) Avery, 2007 : 359. (^65) Brookshaw, 2003 : 199–200.
(^66) Poulos, 2017 : 107.
Music between Transcendence and Transgression 75