Dr Marvasti's Speech at the Banquet

In the name of that mysterious force that has created you and me, East and West, created different nations, languages, religions so that we know each other and benefit from our experiences.

Ladies and gentlemen I am delighted to welcome you to this banquet. What you heard in the preamble prayer are typical Persian metaphors (1) . A Butterfly and a Candle, a Nightingale and a Flower are symbols for a lover and a beloved. A beloved starts with someone tangible such as a woman, then it becomes a friend, a teacher/master, and then it transcends to God.

Persian language was the Franca-Lingua of the Muslim world. Arabic was the religious and scientific language but Persian was the literal, cultural, royal and legal language of the courts in the Ottoman and the Indian empires. Indeed the Mughul and the Ottoman royal families were speaking Persian in their courts.

Persian literature is multi-dimensional in its scope; you will hear recitations of poems in English from 4 great Persian poets: The omissions of some of them do not mean they were not great but rather we could not fit them all in tonight's program. For example, one of the omitted Persian poets, Ferdowsi- who lived in the10th century- is very well known for his epic poetry and nationalistic old Persian stories in Shah-Nameh (Book of Kings) who revived the Persian language. His most famous chapter is the tragedy of Rustam and Sohrab, where Rustam kills his son Sohrab without knowing him.

The other 4 poets that were picked for the recitation for tonight are Omar Khayyam, Sadi, Hefez, and Rumi. There is a reason to this sequence. It is a spiritual journey of human understanding and experience. It is a flight of human knowledge from doubt and Hedonism of Khayyam to Humanism of Sa'di; and the continuation of the journey to symbolic mysticism of Hafez and finally to the Union with God through the poetry of Rumi. So it is a journey of human experience from doubt and materialism to certainty and spirituality. Now I would like to briefly describe each of the 4 poets:

1- Omar Khayyam lived in 11-12th century. He was a mathematician and an astronomer who wrote poetry (Rubayiyat = Quatrain) as a hobby but because of the translation of his poetry into English by Fitzgerald and an excellent translation into Arabic, he has become world famous. In fact many Arabs think that Omar Khayyam wrote his poems in Arabic. Also, some English/American scholars believe that the translation is even better than the original, which I don't agree.

Khayyam's poetry represents the doubt of a scientist, he questions the purpose of creation and hence the inclination towards the philosophy of Epicurism and Hedonism; a philosophy of enjoying your life. The essence of his poems is as follows:
The scientist's research papers and books are just tales and myths since they could never figure out the purpose of creation. Death makes the efforts of this life futile and worthless.
The symbol of pots of clay in his poetry aptly shows this point. A potter's shop is a theatre of humanity in the past. In the potter's shop, the pots made of clay were uttering with their silence that one day they were human beings themselves: buying, selling and making pots, but after they died and were buried, they became earth and from the same earth, others made pots out of their corpses again. This is the destiny of mankind! The end result of his philosophy is since we do not know the purpose of creation and life is so short, let us forget everything and enjoy our present life:
Enjoy this one breath of your life One breath and that is your existence so brief!

From Khayyam we then move on to the beauty and humanism of Sa'di:
2- Sa'di- who lived in 13th Century- is one of the greatest figures in classical Persian literature who travelled to the Middle East, North Africa and India for about 30 years. He was enslaved by the Franks and was forced to work in the trenches of Tripoli- imagine the magnitude of tragedy if Shakespeare or Victor Hugo were to be enslaved by the crusaders.

Sa'di's writings were collected in mainly 3 books: Boustan and Golestan (which means Orchard and Rose Garden) consist of poems and prose representing wisdom, advice and ethics; and his third book, Ghazaliyat, is mainly lyrics on love and personal anecdotes. One of his humanistic poems of Sa'di is on the walls of UN in New York.

If thou art not affected by the sufferings of others, thou shall not deserve the name of a human being. Flying over the Persian literature, we will land on the most beautiful lyrics of Persian poetry with sophisticated symbolic mysticism, i.e., Hafez:

3- Hafez lived in the14th century. He took the name Hafez since he knew the whole Quran by heart. He was a theologian and later a mystical Sufi, but in his poems he was critical of most groups for lack of sincerity.

He is the most read in Persian speaking countries and apart from Urdu and German speaking countries, he is not too well known in the world. Goethe's 12 books on East-West Divan are wholly inspired by Hafez. In fact Goethe learnt art of Calligraphy and later Persian because of Hafez.

Hafez unlike Sa'di hardly travelled anywhere. His experiences were internal, mental and emotional. Iranians seek guidance and decisions from the book of Hafez (Divan of Hafez). For example in the last 5 years (which was published 2 days ago on the eve of IST2001) , I had been writing a book on signal processing and sampling theory; I was looking for a nice poem to insert at the beginning of my book. With the help of a friend I made an intention and opened the book, the following verse came to my attention

ASo many secrets in the universe to be discovered Ample samples, yet the Signal remain to be recovered@

A different rendering of the above poem will be recited now:

Finally our journey will take us to supreme faith, certainty, wisdom, love, Union with God by the most creative mystic and visionary of all time, Molana Jalaludin Rumi:

4- Rumi- who lived in the 13th century, was one of the greatest mystical poets not just in the Persian literature but also in the world. Surprisingly, the translations of some of his poems by 2 professors in USA (Coleman Barks and John Moyne) are among the best sellers in the last few years in America. Even Madonna has song a poem by Rumi. Prof Arberry of Cambridge (an orientalist who has translated many books from Persian and Arabic into English) said the following about Rumi:

It can well be argued that he is the supreme mystical poet of all mankind.

Prof Eric Fromm the famous psychoanalyst who fled Germany before World War II because of his Jewish background said:

Rumi was not only a poet and mystic and the founder of a religious order; he was also a man of profound insight into the nature of man.

Jalaludin Rumi was born in early 13th century in Balkh, Afghanistan where at the time was part of the Persian empire. Because of the imminent invasion of Mongols and difference of his father with the local government, his father decided to immigrate westward to Iran and Turkey. Rumi was 5 years old when his father, a well known scholar and teacher, went to Nishabour and had a brief encounter with a great mystical poet Sheikh Attar. Attar with just a few words with Rumi, recognized his potential. He gave a copy of his book to him and told his father to take good care of his son since he would soon set fire to the souls of all lovers of the world! His family finally settled in Konya, in present Turkey where he felt more secure with the Saljugh dynasty in that region. Rumi studied Islamic jurisprudence and traditional sciences till the age of 25. After his father died, a teacher came from Balkh, Afghanistan and taught him mysticism for 9 years. After his teacher died, he started teaching Sufi mysticism. At the age of 38, he meets Shams of Tabriz and his life totally changes. He gets into such a master/disciple friendship with Shams that his students and relatives become jealous. Shams is forced to leave but Rumi is so upset that he sends his son to Damascus to bring Shams back. After 3 years, Shams disappeared. Rumi became a poet all of a sudden at the age of 39. There are no records of any poems from him before that age. So if you have not made any poetry so far, do not despair; you still have a chance provided you fall in love!

Divan of Shams includes poems dedicated to his master in a span of 30 years. After 7 years that Rumi lost his companion Shams, he met someone else Salahedin who calmed him a bit. 10 years later he met Husam-ul-din who encouraged him to compose Masnavi, the Couplets based on Attar's works and others. Masnavi is the masterpiece of Rumi based on parables, anecdotes and mystical experiences. It took Rumi 10 years to finish and shortly after he finished this masterpiece, he died. He never wrote down any of his poems but rather would dictate it to his friend Husam; in the bathroom, in the streets, in the classroom. Rumi in his own Masnavi says the following about Masnavi1:

Maybe you cannot drink the whole Oxus River But don't deny you're thirsty! You want a spirit-cleansing? Dig a hole in this book, the Masnavi, this island. Make holes, so the ocean can flow up through.

Dig and make it porous until it is all seawater. Wind moves word-leaves off the surface, showing one colour, clearness. Beneath you, coral branches, and ocean-peaches! When Masnavi sinks, with your digging, it loses its words. Speaker, listener, language. Bread, Bread-giver, bread-winner. The categories dissolve into One Water.

It is interesting to note that in the first encounter of Rumi with Shams, Shams dropped all the books and lecture notes of Rumi in a well; he wanted to teach him a new subject that did not need any books and intellect, i.e., Love.

Now let me finish my talk with the following question: how could Rumi spontaneously come up with so many verses without any deliberation or editing? He himself answers this question in Masnavi (2) :

Those who live in Union become pregnant with the feelings and words of invisible forms!
Their amazed mouths open, their eyes withdraw.
Children are born of that illumination
We say Aborn,@ but that's not right.
It only points to a new understanding
Be quiet and let the Master of Speech talk.
Don't try to dress up your own nightingale-song
to sell to this rose! Be all ear.