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August 8, 2004
EXCERPTS: Devil in the triangle
How do Rumi, Goethe and Iqbal interpret evil and good? Dr Javid Iqbal explains, while Dr Annemarie Schimmel sheds light on the life of Rumi
The problem of evil has baffled many thinkers. Evil is not mere darkness that vanishes when light arrives. In other words, evil does not have a negative existence. This darkness has as positive an existence as light. The problem is how to account for evil in a world created by an all-good God? Rumi’s answer is that the existence of evil is necessary for the fulfillment of the divine plan. Goethe thinks that evil is the reverse of good. Without evil, it would not be possible to identify good. Iqbal is of the view that the running parallel lines of good and evil meet in infinity. He points out in one of his quatrains:
How may I describe good and evil?
The problem is complex, the tongue falters,
Upon the bough you see flowers and thorns,
Inside it there is neither flower nor thorn.
(Payam-i-Mashriq)
Rumi’s long poem titled “Mu’awiyah and Iblis”, Goethe’s Faust and Iqbal’s verses dedicated to Satan can be considered as great diabolical apologies in world literature. The three poets blend the “classical” with the “romantic”, and despite the gaps in the times of their lives, their ideas on the role of evil in the spiritual and material development of man are similar.
In Iqbal’s poetic vision, Rumi and Goethe meet in paradise. Goethe reads out to him the tale of the pact between the Doctor and the Devil, and Rumi pays tribute to him in these words:
O portrayer of the inmost soul
Of poetry, whose efforts goal
Is to trap an angel in his net
And to hunt even God.
You from sharp observations know,
How in their shell pearls form and grow,
All this you know, but there is more,
Not all can learn love’s secret lore
Not all can enter its high shrine,
One only knows by grace divine,
That reason is from the Devil,
While love is from Adam.
(“Jalal and Goethe” in Payam-i-Mashriq)
Rumi’s portrayal of Iblis depicts him as a lover of God. But a heartless being is incapable of loving, and here lies his deceit. Therefore when Iblis claims that all envy arises from love, for fear lest another becomes the chosen of the beloved, he is lying. In fact, Rumi’s Iblis is nothing but reason (‘aql), the reverse of love, (‘ishq). According to him Adam lapsed because of his stomach and sexual passion whereas Iblis was accursed because of pride and ambition engendered in him by reason. Rumi also shows us that Iblis not only instigates man to commit sin, he sometimes persuades man to perform a virtuous act in order to deprive him from earning a higher reward.
In Goethe’s Faust the role of Mephisto is not that which is usually attributed to the Devil. He represents a spirit of nihilism, negation and contradictions, which is inimical to all life and higher forms of existence. Goethe first takes up the conflict of good and evil on a subjective plane and thereafter at the cosmic level. It is only when Faust rejects all pretensions of knowledge that Mephisto appears at Faust’s own craving. The events that follow take the reader through the problems of human innocence, suffering, love, hate, desire, appetite and sin. It is the unique quality of Goethe’s genius that he picked up an ordinary legend and filled it with the experiences of the entire human race. According to Goethe, evil is a stepping-stone to virtue in a mysterious way and this is conveyed through the words of Mephisto in Faust.
Iqbal was profoundly influenced by Rumi who is his spiritual guide. On the other hand he was also a great admirer of Goethe. Yet Goethe’s spirit, like the Urdu poet Ghalib’s, is that of a poet, whereas Iqbal’s spirit, following in the footsteps of Rumi, is more of a prophetic nature.
Iqbal is acknowledged as the poet of “Khudi” (Self/Ego). “Khudi” has many dimensions and forms. Therefore, Iqbal’s Satan is one of the forms of “Khudi”. Since Iqbal believed in the greatness of human ego and was a poet of action, he could not resist being attracted by the dynamic personality of the Devil.
Iqbalian Satan is a gigantic five dimensional figure. His first dimension is that no one can surpass his deceit, cunning, remarkable planning and constant striving for the realization of his objective. He is not evil incarnate. His self-confidence, determination, pride and ambition are the qualities that make him a model of self-hood (Khudi).
Like Rumi and Goethe, Iqbal believes in restless and feverish activity for attaining the goal. The goal itself has no significance to Iqbal. It is the striving for the goal, the energy for tireless effort, and the strength to always continue to remain a wayfarer that matters. Life is a chase after a goal, which must go on changing. Iqbal says:
ln a spark I crave a star.
And in a star a sun.
My journey has no bourn.
No place of halting, it is death for me to linger.
Iqbal, like Rumi and Goethe, believes that evil is necessary for the development of man. Had there been no evil, there would have been no conflict, no struggle and no striving. Therefore, Iqbal emphasizes:
Waste not your life in a world devoid of taste.
Which contains God but not the Devil.
(Payam-i-Mashriq)
Iqbal does not want man to get involved in the controversy of virtue and vice or good and evil, but must only concentrate on striving for better destinations. Life, which leads to paradise, is a life of passivity, inactivity and of eternal death.
The second dimension of Iqbal’s Devil in his cheeky confrontation with God. . . .:
The third dimension of Iqbal’s Devil is that he is the first lover (of God’s Unity). He unhesitatingly accepted God’s wrath and separation by his disobedience. But even in the state of negation he fulfilled the inner will of God. . .
The fourth dimension of Satan that fascinated Iqbal is his pride and rivalry with his adversary, man. Here Iqbal follows Rumi by affirming that satanic reason is the basis of the Devil’s entire activity...
The fifth dimension of lqbalian Devil is political i.e., how he, on national and international planes, carves out earthly devils in the form of political leaders who through their strategies lead to war, disease, misery and destruction of mankind. In his poem, “Satan’s Parliament” (Armaghan-i-Hijaz) Iqbal’s Devil prophesizes that since he himself is the founder and protector of capitalism, he is not afraid of the communist revolution of tomorrow.
But Iqbal’s Devil is as miserable as man in this world, full of complexities.. .
To sum up, good without evil amounts to the passivity of paradisal rest. Therefore it is disapproved by the three poets as against the divine plan. Man’s destiny lies in constant creative activity. Iqbal is categorical when he asserts:
When act performed is creative.
It’s virtuous, even if sinful.
The crux of the message of the three poets is that the creation of Adam is not a “wasteful effort.” It must be clearly understood that under the divine plan man is still in the state of becoming.
Metaphors of love
(Dr Annemarie Schimmel)
Rumi has also been misunderstood by his most ardent admirers, for nothing could be more alien to him than a systematization of his thought, particularly when this systematization is undertaken, as in hundreds of commentaries up to being taught in Konya by Rumi’s colleague, Sadruddin Qonawi. To understand properly Rumi’s poetry, and particularly his lyrics, one has to know the major events of his life out of which his verse grew.
Muhammad Jalaluddin was born in Balkh, now Afghanistan, in 1207. His father, Baha’uddin Walad, was a noted mystical theologian whose Ma’arif contain unusual, often bizarre visions and statements which seem to have influenced his son at a later stage of his life. The family left Balkh before the Mongols began their attacks on the eastern part of the Muslim world. They finally settled in Anatolia, Rum — hence the poet’s surname, Rumi.
It was the era of Sultan Ala’uddin Kaikobad, under whom the Rum Seljukid capital, Konya, reached its greatest splendour; the mosque which he erected in 1220 close to the fortress is still in use. In 1228 the aged Baha’uddin Wallad was called to teach in one of the numerous madressahs of Konya; he passed away in early 1231, and his son succeeded him in the chair...
Rumi’s life as a professor and father of two teenage sons was suddenly changed in October 1244 when he met the wandering dervish Shamsuddin, “Sun of Religion” of Tabriz, a man of at least his age, endowed with an overpowering mystical presence. The two mystics spent days and nights, weeks and months together, deeply immersed in discussing mystical love, and forgetting the world, family, and disciples. None of the masters in Syria had appealed to the passionate, demanding Shams, but in Rumi he found the friend who understood him and was ready to be consumed by his spiritual fire. The intimate relation of the two mystics aroused the wrath and jealousy of Rumi’s students and his family.
After some eighteen months Shams left Konya secretly. Maulana was heartbroken, and it is at this point that he began to sing poetry. In whirling dance he poured out his longing and love, even though he had never previously shown any major interest in Persian poetry. He had of course read the classical works of Anwari, Khaqani, and others, as can be understood from allusions to and quotations from their verse in his own poetry. . .
After another eighteen or twenty months Shams was seen in Syria, and Maulana’s elder son, Sultan Walad, was sent to bring him back; he later poetically described his father’s meeting with Shams: they fell at each other’s feet, “and nobody knew who was the lover and who was the beloved”. Shams stayed in Konya, now even in Maulana’s own house, and was married to a girl from the household, but again tension built up between him and Rumi’s younger son Ala’uddin. Finally Shams was called out one night in early December 1248, and stabbed to death, and hastily buried close to the house — not without the connivance of Ala’uddin.
Rumi was told that he had disappeared once more, and after a few sighs of resignation he burst out in a long threnody with the radif begristi — the whole world “would have wept” and yet he did not want to believe that “the sun has died”. After some time he set out to search for Shams in Syria, but finally he discovered the friend was living in him — Shams was he himself, and what he sang was in reality Shams’ words. By thus adopting the friend’s name and using it as a pen name in his verse he assumed a new identity, entering, as it were, a new life. His younger son Ala’uddin, however, was no longer considered a member of the family.
At present it seems impossible to attempt an exact dating of Rumi’s early verse. However, one can observe a certain change of emphasis in his lyrics, and a careful metrical analysis of the Diwan-i-Shams is also helpful in placing at least some poems in their proper sequence. During the earliest period, overwhelmed by the separation from Shams, Maulana sings of love, longing, and sometimes of dance. Grotesque images also appear, but the identity of the friend is not mentioned. It is an old Sufi rule not to reveal the name of the Beloved. In the beginning Rumi would therefore say:
I gave him so many surnames, perfect and imperfect ones,
But since he is absolutely peerless, he has a hundred times more.
However, many of the poems that give no proper nom de plume speak at some point of the sun, aftab or khurshid thus pointing to the name of Shamsuddin, “the sun of religion”. Then, the shift from secrecy toward open declaration is made in a delightful poem, a description of the poet’s destitute and miserable heart which sits at night in a lonely corner, crying and shivering. But asked who is his makhdum, his master, and asked to describe him, the heart refuses to answer, until finally, after a lively dialogue with the poet, a voice from the Unseen exclaims at sunrise, “Tabriz!” the heart falls down in a swoon, overwhelmed by the appearance of the Sun, and the poem ends with the jubilant lines:
When I became unconscious, on [the heart’s] face became engraved.
Excerpted with permission from
Mawlana Rumi — Bridge of East and West
Edited and annotated by M. Ikram Chaghatai
Sang-e-Meel Publications, 25 Shahrah-i-Pakistan, Lahore. Tel: 042-7220100
Email: smp@sang-e-meel.com
ISBN 969-35-1585-4
492pp. Rs750
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