Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

Furthermore,onthemetaphysicallevel,theasceticwhosuffersfromamourpropre,
prepossessedofaninfantile,inflatedsenseofself-importance,cannottranscendthe
artificialdualityofperceptandobject,seerandseen,norseebeyondtheillusorydis-
tinctionbetween‘me’and‘thee’,‘I’and‘thou’.Sincehecannotapprehendthetran-
scendental immersion of the part in the Whole, Lover in Beloved, or servant in the
Lord,theasceticdoesn’tunderstandthathehim-selfinhis‘infidelSelfhood’consti-
tutestheultimatemetaphysicalsacrilege.^88 Ḥāfiẓdescribesthestrugglethatrending
theveilofSelf/him-selfentailshiminthefollowingfamousverse:

Betweenloverandbelovedthereexists

Noveilatall.You,youyourselfare

Yourownveil:Ḥāfiẓ,getoutoftheway!^89

ThislinerepresentsaglossinverseontheProphet’sstatement:‘Yourgreatestfoe

is your own soul between your ribs’,^90 aḥadīthwhich the Sufis traditionally inter-

pretedtomeanthat‘yourveryself[nafs-ikhwud]isthegreatestveil’.^91 Thus,when

Bāyazīd was asked how he would describe the way to God, he replied: ‘Once you

removeyourselffromblockingthewaytoGod,youwillhavearrivedatHim.’^92

Excoriatinghisnescience,Ḥāfiẓscoffsatthearroganceoftheasceticonboththe

moralandmetaphysicallevelinmanyverses,ofwhichthefollowingistypical:

Goaway,youegoistascetic!Thismystery

Behindtheveilisconcealedtotheeye

Ofyouandme–andhiddenitshallremain.^93

To sum up the discussion so far concerning the ‘veil of the infidel selfhood’: there

are two main obstacles–respectively moral and metaphysical–impeding the

ascetic’seffortsatspiritualrealization.

Thefirst,themoralimpedimentthatpreventstheasceticfromrendingthe‘veil’,

is simply–to use the apt phrase descriptive of the condition of a fictional English

Puritan,thestewardMalvolioinShakespeare’sTwelfthNight–thatheis‘sickofself-

love’.^94 That is to say, that the ascetic is preoccupied with the delusion of his own

virtue and moral excellence. This is the main reason why Ḥāfiẓ, from the spiritual

station of inspired libertinism (rindī), deprecates the puritan ascetic (zāhid) for his

conceit, arrogance and self-centredness, and extols instead the inspired libertine

(rind),whohastranscendedthesevices.^95

Secondly,themetaphysicalstumblingblocktotheascetic’segocentricvisionishis

false distinction and discrimination of separative personal ‘identities’ (‘you’ vs.

‘me’),sothat,nothavingyetexperiencedimmersionintheseaoftheUnityofBeing

(againquotingShakespeare’sdescriptionofMalvolio),hetastes‘withadistempered

appetite’.^96 Nothavingsteppedoutsidethesmallcourtyardofnaturalexistenceand

thus unable to enter thetemenosof the spiritual path, the ascetic has yet to learn

that:

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