Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

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blame and censure of the vulgar have, it must be stressed,supra-aestheticandmeta-

literary significance. Rather than mere colourful metaphors limned with delightful

erotic images, there are precise spiritual significances in verses such as these:

People have aimed the arrow of guilt a hundred times

In our direction. With the help of our Darling’s eyebrow,

Blame has been a blessing, and has opened all our work.^313

As a purificatory experience, the self-abasement generated by being reviled publi-
cally turns themalāmatīunitarian away from creature to Creator, from the vulgar
mob towards God. Blame thus strengthens faith, being much more efficacious than
praise in directing the mystic’s attention to the Supreme Cause and away from sec-
ondary causes. The mystical theology of themalāmatīdoctrines in this verse can be
traced back to a verse of the Qur’ān praising those whose love of God is so sincere
that ‘they do not fear to be censured by anyone who might censure them’ (V: 54).
‘To become an object of contempt and blame is marvellously efficacious in achiev-
ing sincerity in love’, the early theoretician of Persian Sufism ‘Alī Hujwīrī thus
explained in his chapter on theMalāmatīSchool in theKashfal-maḥjūb. ‘The people
of God have always been distinguished by being the butt of blame and censure of
common people.’^314
To put the above verse in its proper context now: by means of becoming a target
of public vituperation (malāmat), the lover is blessed with the experience of an
opening, the eyebrow here serving as a ‘symbolpar excellenceto communicate
Divine expressions and intimations, directing the wayfarer’s attention towards
Unity, just as the arching of the human beloved’s eyebrow directs the lover’s atten-
tion to his or her eye, face, and expressions.’^315
In the same vein, one of the important principles of both profane love theory and
themalāmatītheology of love is that the lover is always reviled and discredited.^316 A
fundamental axiom of the Art ofAmorin the Sufi tradition is that no romantic affair,
human or divine, worldly or otherworldly, temporal or spiritual, is ever safe from
public blame and slander.^317 In one verse, Ḥāfiẓ thus contrasts the dangers of a
lover’s intoxication to the ‘security and safety’ (salāmat) of the conventional life of
the non-lover:

In a nook safe from blame, how can we stay

Secluded when your dark eye reminds us

Always of the joy and mysteries of drunkenness?^318

The lover’s life is dangerous, the lover being by definition one who eschews what’s

safe and sound, for:

Although consorting with what’s safe and sound

Seems, dear heart, to be a joy and a delight,

ḤāfiẓandtheReligionofLoveinClassicalPersianPoetry