female guile, by expanding on those elements in the Quran that allow
for sympathetic interpretations of sexuality and female desire.
The unprecedented eroticism enlivening the scene reflects the Sufi
recognition of sexuality as a transcendent experience simulating the pas-
sionate desire for annihilation in God. It echoes ibn Arabi’s assertion that
in sexual intercourse, the man is annihilated in the woman, but that this is
in fact annihilation in God.^50 Like Zuleikha, Yusuf falls prey not only to his
human sexual desire, but also to his own beauty. Zuleikha recognizes this,
saying:“You only feel lust for your very own self!”^51 The poem reveals
Yusuf’s self-reflexive and self-sufficient desire as narcissistically inverted. It
thus reflects a similar understanding of sexuality as that expressed by ibn
Arabi:
Because God contains the totality of all meanings of the universe, and indeed is the
place where opposites are conjoined, he is both active/male and receptive/female.
Therefore it is insufficient for man to contemplate himself by himself to under-
stand God; the best and most perfect kind of contemplation of God is in woman.
Sexual union imitates God’s relationship with man,‘the man yearning for his Lord
Who is his origin,’as woman yearns for man. His Lord made women dear to him,
just as God loves that which is in his own image.^52
Jami’s recognition of female sexual desire and pleasure thus reverberates
with the cosmology of ibn Arabi, who understood the recognition of the
gendered Other as a microcosm of the recognition of divine alterity to
humanity. Having been oneirically initiated into divine vision, partaking in
it becomes her right no less than his.
Consistently inverting conventional interpretations, ibn Arabi ele-
vates the pleasurable aspect of sexuality above the procreative, com-
paring pleasure to paradise and procreation to animals, whom he
designates as particularly noble because they signify life. He argues
that our subjugation to our passions reflects the position of servitude
of the gnostic. “If it did not have complete nobility indicating the
weakness appropriate to servanthood, it would not have such an
overwhelming pleasure which causes a person to pass away from his
own strength and pretentions.”^53 Thus Yusuf’sadoptionofZuleikha’s
lust does not take him farther from prophecy, but closer. Their mutual
desire inverts the relationship between lover and beloved, indicated as
well by Jami:
(^50) Hoffman-Ladd, 1992 : 88. (^51) Barry, 2004 : 206. (^52) Hoffman-Ladd, 1992 : 89.
(^53) Hoffman-Ladd, 1992 : 89.
From Theology to Poetry 239