Allegorical Gardens in the Persian Poetic Tradition: Nezami, Rumi, Hafez Author(s): Julie Scott Meisami Source: International

Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2 (May, 1985), pp. 229-260 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/163605 Accessed: 08/09/2010 04:47
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Int. J. Middle East Stud. 17 (1985), 229-260. Printed in the United States of America

Julie Scott Meisami

ALLEGORICAL TRADITION:

GARDENS NEZAMI,

IN THE HAFEZ

PERSIAN

POETIC

RUMI,

A striking feature of medieval Persian poetry is the abundance of nature imagery that permeates every poetic genre, and especially imagery relating to gardens. The royal gardens and parks evoked in the descriptive exordia of the qasTda,the luxuriant gardens of romance that provide settings for tales of love, the spiritual gardens of mystical writings, the flowery haunts of rose and nightingale in the courtly ghazal-all provide eloquent testimony to the importance of the garden in Persian culture. Several studies have discussed various aspects of nature imagery in Persian poetry in relation to various periods, poets, and genres.' One important aspect of such imagery that has as yet received little detailed treatment is its allegorical function.2 In earlier discussions of Hafez I have indicated that garden imagery constitutes an important allegorical construct in this poet's ghazals;3 the present study proposes to extend these earlier investigations by placing Hafez within the more general context of the Persian poetic tradition and comparing his allegorical use of garden imagery with that of two of his most important predecessors in this respect: Nezami Ganjavi, and Jalal al-DTn Rium. Although significant differences of genre separate the romances of NezamTfrom the ghazals of Rfium(that portion of his work to be considered here) and of Hafez, the three poets are linked by a common interest in the use of allegorical imagery based in an analogical mode of thought. Comparison of their styles with respect to a single model-their use of garden imagery-may serve to furnish insights into the complex nature of figurative language in Persian poetry. It is a commonplace of criticism that all gardens are, in some measure, reflections of Paradise. "The place of perfect repose and inner harmony is always remembered as a garden ... an earthly paradise," observes A. Bartlett Giamatti.4 Through the gardens he builds (in physical or in mental space) man expresses not only his conception of and his longing to recapture that ideal state, but also his perception of his relationship with nature: of the design of the cosmos and of his own place in it. The earthly garden functions both as an object of man's contemplation and as a setting for important human activities; it differs from a natural landscape by virtue of being an artifact, constructed according to design (a fact no less true of literary gardens than of real ones) as well as by the frequent opposition of the garden world to the wilderness beyond it (gloomy forest

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or desert waste), the abode of forces hostile to man and to order. In proportion as its design and constituent elements are seen as reflecting principles of cosmic order and beauty, the garden itself becomes an ideal place wherein such principles may be observed; garden poems, as well, function as places of learning and discovery as well as of recreation and delight. Allegorical gardens abound throughout the literatures of the world but especially in medieval literature, both Western and Islamic; they reflect an important and characteristic aspect of medieval thought. The medieval conception of the garden was of a place wherein the soul might read the most profound spiritual lessons. The idea of the Book of Nature, "written" by God to provide signs of Himself, is found in both Christianity and in Islam: the Augustinian view "that beauty is not mere spectacle but God's rhetoric in the book of creation"5 is echoed in the Islamic, that "Nature is a fabric of symbols, which must be read according to their meanings."6 Nature exists, "not to sit and look at, but to be used, and primarily as a repository of moral examples for man's benefit";7 as Abuial-'Atahiya put it: In everythingthereis a sermonwhichprovidesa warningto man, if he be wise.8 Numerous Koranic verses (such as 3:189, "Surely in the creation of the heavens and the earth there are signs for people of understanding") provide a basis for this view of creation, which is echoed by poets in the figure of the Book of Nature. Sa'di's verse In the eyes of the wise man,each leaf of the greentreesis the Book of the Creator's wisdom9 is expanded by Hafez, in whose work it becomes an important informing concept: In the meadow,everypetalis the book of a differentstate: whata pity shouldyou remainignorantof themall! (QG 456)10 Although the concept of things as signs was primarily a theological rather than a literary notion, the view of creation as God's rhetoric undoubtedly supported the figurative use of the garden in secular literature --a usage further supported by the medieval habit of analogical thought. The medieval period (for Islam no less than for Christianity) was "an era of the symbol," itself conceived of "as an instrument capable of penetrating truth, over and beyond any brief and incidental use in mere illustration."'2 While the concept of natural objects as "signs" is essentially metaphorical, analogical symbolism is based in the conception of the existence of harmonies and correspondences between the various orders of nature, the most thoroughgoing expression of which is the parallelism between the macrocosm, nature, and the microcosm, man."3Nature thus provided a rich source of symbols, inspiring the proliferation of literary gardens so characteristic of the Middle Ages that finds its culmination in the elaborate symbolisms of the Roman de la Rose and the Haft Paykar, but which is also seen in lyric poetry. Within the Islamic tradition, allegorical garden imagery (as opposed to nature imagery in general) is less characteristic of Arabic poetry than of Persian, where

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its popularity may well reflect not only a preference for analogical imagery over metaphorical, but also the survival of pre-Islamic Iranian attitudes toward nature and the garden. As Giamatti reminds us, the word Paradise itself "derives from the Old Persian word pairidaeza ... which meant the royal park, enclosure, or orchard of the Persian king."14 In ancient Iran, gardens enjoyed a deep symbolic significance that found its way into the Islamic tradition, and that retained considerable continuity in Islamic Persian culture.'5 In the beliefs of Zoroastrianism, writes Pope, "both the first reality and ultimate bliss have been interpreted in garden terms";16 similarly, for the Manichaeans, the destination of the redeemed soul is a radiant and ever-verdant garden.'7 The Iranian garden was designed to imitate not only Paradise, but also the conception of the cosmos "as divided into four quarters, usually by four great rivers," as exemplified in the plan of the famed Garden of Cyrus described by Xenophon."8 It is a design familiar to man from the most ancient times, seen in the Old Testament and in the iconography of the Christian Paradise, and repeated in Islamic cosmography, in Islamic descriptions of Paradise, and in the design of the Islamic garden, "the terrestrial garden [that] is considered a reflection or rather an anticipation of Paradise."'9 The medieval Islamic garden was a hortus conclusus, walled off and protected from the outside world; within, its design was rigidly formal, and its inner space was filled with those elements that man finds most pleasing in nature. Its essential features included running water (perhaps the most important element) and a pool to reflect the beauties of sky and garden; trees of various sorts, some to provide shade merely, and others to produce fruits; flowers, colorful and sweetsmelling; grass, usually growing wild under the trees; birds to fill the garden with song; the whole cooled by a pleasant breeze. The garden might include a raised hillock at the center, reminiscent of the mountain at the center of the universe in cosmological descriptions, and often surmounted by a pavilion or palace.20 Sensual and spiritual elements found a unique, blended expression in the Islamic garden less often encountered in the West; the medieval Christian often seems to have been ill at ease with the garden's sensual aspects, and to have had greater difficulty in incorporating these along with its spiritual symbolism into an equilibrium.2' The harmony between sensual and spiritual reached its peak in the gardens of medieval Persia, at once the most refined and elegant of Islamic gardens and those most sung by poets. For although gardens flourished in the Arab lands, Arab cultural and literary ideals remained predominantly those of the desert; consequently (with the partial exception of mystical writings), treatment of the garden was essentially descriptive. Moreover, the Arab poets fell short of the ultimate association of nature with love-of "giving, as a frame for the Beloved, the blossoming forth of nature in spring"-that was to become characteristic of Andalusian, Persian, and troubadour poetry;22and even though the poets of Andalusia-where the genres of rawdiyyat (descriptions of gardens) and nawriyyat (descriptions of flowers) flourished-might evoke images from nature to objectify their emotions, their approach still remained primarily descriptive.23 The same is true of the early Persian qasTdas of such poets as 'Onsori, who often employed descriptive, concrete, and highly Farrokhl, and ManfichehrT,

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stylized nature and garden imagery with infrequent allegorical overtones.24In the early romance of Vis o RiamTn,however, in which nature imagery abounds, gardens not only figure importantly as settings for courtly life and for romantic episodes, but also furnish a number of allegorical figures.25 Allegorical gardens appear in Persian mystical writings of the eleventh and twelfth centuries as well, one notable example being Sohravardi's parable of the peacock in the king's garden, a figure of the soul in this world longing for its spiritual home.26 In such works, the emphasis on the symbolic significance of the garden would seem to point to the continuity of more ancient ideals in Islamic Persian culture (a conjecture supported by the prevalence of Iranian cultural and religious motifs in both VTso RamTnand in the works of SohravardT);moreover, an evolution from a conception of allegory as a trope (seen, for example, in VTso Ram'Tn or in the writings of Riizbehan BaqlT27)toward the transformation of metaphor into analogy (observed in the writings of SohravardTand characteristic of the poets treated in this paper) can be seen occurring during this period. The poetic gardens of medieval Persia share an important and unifying feature: they are paradises of love. Whether presented in the form of courtly gardens, the spiritual gardens of the mystics, or gardens of fantasy, all are associated with the experience of love; and it is in this connection that they find their most eloquent and significant expression in the works of the three poets to be considered in this study, NezamT,RumI, and Hafez. In the romances of the twelfth-century poet NezamT,the garden of love functions both as a setting for symbolic action and as a rich source of allegorical imagery that has its basis in analogical thought, and particularly in the belief in the universe as an ordered entity in which there is a continuity between man and the cosmos.28 Examples abound: the constant association of Layll with the fertile garden and Majnun with the barren desert in Layl o Majnuin; the courtly gardens (and natural landscapes) that not only provide settings, but embody the emotions of the protagonists in Khosro o ShTrTn. But it is in Nezami's masterof that the varied such imagery are most fully the Haft Paykar piece potentials exploited. At the heart of the larger progress that provides the unifying central metaphor of the Haft Paykar-the education of its protagonist, Bahram Gfur, in the principles of kingship-lies another symbolic progress from garden to garden.29 The two gardens of the frame-story, symbolizing the two aspects of kingship finally united in Bahram-the man-made winter garden, a marvel of artifice, in :h he celebrates his wedding to the seven princesses; and the royal pleasance in spring, a marvel of nature, in which he holds court following his emergence from the Seven Domes-enclose the central interlude of the seven tales told in the Domes, in three of which (I, V, and VII) gardens figure significantly. The garden of the first tale, which Bahram hears on Saturday in the Black Dome from the Princess of the First Clime (India), is the most remote from reality. The king who is the tale's protagonist, desiring to ascertain why the inhabitants of a certain city habitually dress in mourning, lavishes gifts upon one of its citizens, a butcher, hoping he will reveal the secret. The butcher brings him to a column that the king ascends in a basket; from there, clutching the talons of

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a giant bird that comes to rest on the column, he is magically transported to a grassy plain where, releasing his grasp on the bird, he falls to earth. After a brief rest, he opens his eyes and finds himself in a garden the likes of which he has never seen before: a veritable earthly paradise on which "the dust of man had never lain," formed by hurls and brought from the heavens by the angel Gabriel: its nameby Iramgiven,and by the azuresphere "Restto the heart" called"Paradise."30 The garden is filled with countless flowers of every sort; the king wanders through it, eating of its fruits, and rests beneath a cypress until evening. As night falls and the moon rises, the garden is approached by innumerable "hiurlsfair," who spread carpets and set up a throne in preparation for a feast; soon they are joined by one who in beauty outshines them all. Sensing the presence of a stranger, she bids her handmaidens find the "earth-born" intruder and bring him to her; ignoring his protestations of unworthiness, she seats him beside her on the throne and gives him food and wine, while the handmaidens entertain them with music and dance. Intoxicated by both wine and passion, the king rains kisses upon the lady (whose name, she informs him, is Turktaz, "Turkish Raid");31 she returns his kisses, but denies him anything beyond that, bidding him instead to satisfy his desire with any of her handmaids he may choose. At daybreak, he finds the maidens departed and the garden empty. Things continue thus for a month: by day the king sleeps, by night feasts in the garden and takes his pleasure with the maiden of his choice; only the queen continues to deny him. On the thirtieth night, when the moon is absent from the sky and unrelieved blackness reigns, his desire passes all bounds, and he will not be put off. Although the queen promises that if he wait but one more night he will attain all he desires, he cannot restrain himself, but embraces her ardently. She bids him close his eyes that she may disrobe; when she bids him reopen them, queen, maids, garden, all have disappeared, and he is once more in the basket at the top of the column. Brought down by his friend the butcher, he resolves to dress in black forever, in mourning for the fact That I whilstlongingeagerlyfell far fromsucha Moon with wish ungratified.32 The general pattern of this story is repeated throughout the seven tales: desire, and the ways in which the consummation of physical passion is achieved or frustrated, is the central theme of each. Several important features characterize this tale: the garden is described as a place of abundant flowers, the action takes place at night, and the imagery is permeated by a symbolic contrast between light and dark that culminates in the final "darkest night" of the climax. Most importantly, the garden's location in the realm of fantasy and dream, and its corresponding isolation from real time and space facilitate an iconographic manner of presentation that reinforces its function as a symbolic center embodying an important lesson. It is suggested that the queen of beauty acted unjustly: the butcher speaks of the "tyranny"under which he and his fellow citizens "hotly chafed," and the king

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refers to himself as one "oppressed"and constrained to go, "with a silent tongue," into mourning. Such statements evoke motifs of courtly love: the lady's cruelty, the lover's suffering, the necessity of his keeping silent though his behavior betrays his state. But the episode is set not in a courtly garden but in an "earthly paradise" explicitly associated with the legendary Garden of Eram, destroyed by God in a hurricane (Koran 89:6-13), and employed in Islamic literature as an exemplum of the vanity of worldly desires and the consequences of disobedience to divine commands. The king's loss of his heart's desire and (more importantly) of the garden is not the result of the lady's cruelty but of his own error: possessing all the joys a man could wish for, he yet perversely pursued that one thing he was denied. In this context the lady herself takes on the aspect of a spiritual guide-an aspect supported by her being consistently described in terms of brightness and illumination, in contrast to the darkness of night symbolic of the king's spiritual ignorance, which makes him succumb to his baser nature and thus lose all. Unable to control his animal soul, he is doomed to remain in darkness, symbolized by the black robes he dons as an emblem of grief: not (it should be noted) the ascetic's renunciation of the world as he turns toward things of the spirit, but an unenlightened mourning for the desires that have eluded his grasp.33 The conflict between man's animal nature and his spiritual one is a central motif in the Haft Paykar, and is quite logically represented in terms of sexual desire and frustration. In this garden, the king is given the opportunity to subdue his passion for the unattainable lady by practicing the virtue of contentment (qeniaat) that she enjoins upon him (p. 143): The personwho takespleasurein contentis one of noble naturewhilst he lives. But he who to desirebecomesakin, will, in the end, fall into penury. Unable to learn the lesson of contentment, symbolized by the virtually unlimited enjoyment of the garden's delights permitted to him, the king is cut off from it forever. The wanderer into the second of Nezami's gardens of fantasy will find that those delights themselves can be deceptive and illusory. This garden, which figures in the tale told on Wednesday in the Blue Dome by the Princess of the Fifth Clime (the Maghreb), represents a turning point, a transition from fantasy to reality. It is reached at the conclusion of a lengthy journey through many obstacles, rather than by a magical journey through the air; its magical transformation serves to direct the protagonist toward a way of accommodation with the real world; the poet's frequent comments and glosses (in his narrator's persona) provide a counterpoint to the fantastic action and relate it to the world of reality. The hero of this tale, the beautiful Egyptian youth Mahan, becoming drunk at a party one night, is enticed into the desert by a demon in the guise of a trusted friend who tempts him with promises of great profits in trade. There he encounters other false guides, divs in human form, who lead him further and further astray. After being tormented by devils and tossed about mercilessly by a seven-headed dragon,34he finds himself at dawn in a dreary desert of blood-red sand that stretches as far as the eye can see. Traversing this desert, at night he

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comes to a grassy meadow by a flowing stream where, seeking a safe spot to rest, he descends, Joseph-like, into a pit and falls asleep. When he awakens, Mahan sees a bright light emanating from a breach in the pit's wall, which proves to be moonlight; enlarging the breach, he penetrates into a garden, "a paradise, finer than Iram," filled with fruits of all kinds. As he helps himself, an old man approaches and accuses him of being a thief. When Mahan recounts his mishaps, the old man tells him how fortunate he has been to escape the fiends of the desert-whom his simplicity and inexperience enabled to appear to him-and exhorts him to think of himself as "reborn"into the garden (p. 203): Thinkthat your motherboreyou but last night;that Godjust now has givenyou to me. This preciousgarden,emeraldin hue, whichby my heart'sblood has been broughtto hand, Is my possessionincontestably; no flowerbut makesavowal(of the fact).35 He announces his intention to adopt Mahan as his son, to share with him the garden's blessings as well as the vast riches he possesses, and to wed him to the most beautiful of maidens. Leading him to a great sandalwood tree that grows before a lofty palace of great richness, he bids Mahan climb the tree and wait for him, without descending or speaking to anyone, until he returns from making the necessary preparations. But scarcely has the old man disappeared when Mahan sees approaching seven beautiful maidens, led by one more beautiful than all. They feast and disport themselves in the garden, their charms revealed to Mahan by the breeze. Sensing his presence, they coax him down from the tree, his youthful impetuosity making him forget the old man's admonitions. He joins their feast, and the charmer allows him to make love to her; but when he embraces her, he is horrified to find that she turns into a dreadful and repellant CIfrTt "who .. had her existence from the wrath of God" and who mocks and torments him, demanding his kisses. The poet comments (p. 209): as temptsto sense-deluding Do not take winefrom sucha cupbearer
drunkenness.36

The gloss reminds us that Mahan's fate is the result of his own error. With dawn the monster disappears, and Mahan swoons before the palace gate. Awakening in full daylight, he finds himself once more in the wasteland, the garden turned to a place of thorns, the palace evaporated into a mist. Despairing, he ponders on his experience: what has it meant (p. 211) To see a floweringgardenyesternight; to see a placeof miseryto-day! Whatmeanta show of rosesand (then)thorns?Whatgain is in the produceof earth'sfields? And he knewnot that all that we possessis a (fell)dragonhid beneath a moon. If they cast down theirveil you (then)will see to whatthingsfoolish mendevotetheirlove.

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Mahan, repenting, finds clear water and performs the ghosl; purified, he prays, invoking the help of God in his distress. Raising his head, he sees before him, clad in spring-like green and with a face glowing like dawn, the prophet Khezr. This "Green Man" of Islamic tradition, type of the spiritual guide, links desert and garden and embodies the lesson of both: the deceptive nature of the evidence of the senses, and the need for guidance in order to avoid being misled by them.37 Khezr tells Mahan to close his eyes, then open them; on doing so, he finds himself outside his own garden, from which he was originally led astray. Entering it, he sees his friends dressed in blue robes of mourning for him, whom they had thought dead; in harmony with them, he does the same: "sky-like he took the colour of the world" (p. 213).38 He thus symbolically renounces the world: this blue robe of mourning represents the ascetic's cloak of abstinence, of refusal to be led astray by the false guides of the senses. As the contrast between light and darkness figured importantly in the first garden episode, the contrast between desert and garden dominates this story; but here they represent complementary, rather than contradictory, aspects of the protagonist's experience. The first garden was described in terms of its flowers, evoking a world of beauty and love; this one is filled with abundant fruits, symbolic of harvest and reward, and the episode is marked throughout by references to profit, gain, and treasure. The garden's fruitfulness contrasts with the barrenness of the desert, a place of aridity and terror, of spiritual and physical desolation, to the unguided wanderer. The failure to choose a guide who can be trusted, thereby inviting vulnerability to the deceptive promptings of the senses, results in the transformation of the garden itself into a desert and the joy so avidly desired into a frightful and abusive monster, thereby revealing the illusory nature of sensory evidence uncontrolled by reference to reason or faith. Through his youth and naivete, Mahan loses the garden of delight, promised by the old gardener on condition that Mahan heed his admonitions; only when Mahan repents and gives himself up completely to God (evoking the concept of tavakkol) is he restored to his own garden. There, he adopts (much like the king in the first story) robes of mourning; not, however, the unrelieved black of grief for the world, symbolic of spiritual darkness, but the lighter blue of the ascetic's renunciation of worldly temptations. This second garden marks another stage, significantly more advanced on the journey toward spiritual illumination constituted by the seven tales as a whole and symbolized in terms of color by the progression from black through blue to the final, dazzling white of the garden of the seventh and last tale. This tale is told in the White Dome by the Princess of the Seventh Clime (Iran), whose name is Dursetl, "Lady Pearl."39 Its garden, unlike the previous two, is presented as real (though existing in the past), belonging to a young man who is a paragon of intelligence and beauty. This "pleasant garden like Iram," which is surrounded by gardens of equal beauty and is filled with all manner of flowers, trees, fruits, streams, and birds, is visited each week by its owner "by way of rest." One day, "at time of mid-day prayer," he goes there only to find the gate shut, the gardener asleep, and sounds of music and revelry issuing from within. Breaking a whole in the wall, he enters, to find the garden filled with

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lovely maidens. Two of them seize, bind, and beat him, accusing him of being a thief, but release him upon learning who he is. In reparation for their abuse of him, they bid him conceal himself and watch their feast, and promise to bring to him whichever of their band he chooses to be his consort. The master hides himself in an upper room where, through a narrow aperture, he observes the beauties disporting themselves in the garden and bathing, naked, in the stream. Particularly struck by one who excels in beauty, he can hardly contain himself, and when the two maids return to him he indicates his choice. The lady-whose name proves to be Bakht, "Fortune"-is brought to him, and expresses her willingness to become his consort; but when he embraces her, the unstable chamber collapses, and they are forced to flee in some confusion from the rubble. The same situation repeats itself several times; constant interruptions thwart the lovers' achievement of their mutual desire. Reunited in a quiet corner of the garden, they are rudely disturbed by a cat in pursuit of a mouse. Seated in a grassy spot beneath a tree, their embraces are shattered when a rat, chewing through a rope by which some gourds are suspended, releases them with a noisy clatter. Couched on a bed of jasmine in a cave, they are interrupted by a wolf chasing some foxes who had taken refuge there, and who flee in terror straight across the master's bed, causing him and the lady to exit in great disarray. Running about in confusion, "covered with dust," the master's greatest desire is to find his way out of the garden as quickly as possible. The maidens chide and beat the lady for deceiving him, ignoring her protests of innocence; but the master makes them desist, placing the blame on himself: it was his illicit and incontinent passion that brought these mishaps to pass (p. 249): No one can eat fruitfromthe fruitfultree on whicha singleevil eye may look: The eyes of hundredkindsof beastsof prey(were)on us, hence our businessturnedout ill. Repenting, he proclaims his decision to take the lady as his lawful wife, and at dawn returns to the town to carry out his purpose (p. 250): Good fortunehis to find a limpidstream!he drankof (water)lawful then to him. sun he founda spring,bright,clearas jasmine, Pureas the (radiant) and, as silver,white. The association with the Water of Life is clear, as is the fact that we have progressed from the blackness of spiritual ignorance to the white light of spiritual illumination, the color of day, of purity, and of adoration. This garden, portrayed as existing in reality and surrounded by others like itself, contrasts with the previous two, symbolic places of isolation located in fantasy. Moreover, unlike the episodes in the previous gardens, which ended in the assumption of garments of mourning, this tale ends in a wedding, thus establishing it as a garden of comedy in terms of the fate of the soul,40 an affirmation of man's triumph over the temptations of the senses. The intrusive "beasts of prey" that

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harass the lovers are allegories of the nats-e ammdreh, man's animal soul, which tempts him into disobedience of the Law. It is this divinely revealed Law, setting man's limitations and his obligations and defining his duties and rewards, that controls his passions and diverts them into legitimate channels, delivering him from the snares of ignorance and delusion and enabling him to achieve both the earthly paradise of human happiness and the celestial Paradise, both rewards for faith and obedience to divine Law. This garden, with its affirmation of the Law, leads almost without pause to the final garden of the Haft Paykar: the royal park in which Bahram Gir celebrates the New Year. While in terms of its relationship to the action that takes place there this is the most "literal" of the poem's gardens, it is described in less concrete and more symbolic terms, in imagery that evokes the concepts of rebirth and Paradise. The verdure appears like Khezr, restored to youth; the waters renew their life; the fountains resemble Salsabil; while the breeze scatters the petals of the flowers like stars on Judgment Day. Here the king receives the messenger who tells him of the wrongdoings of his evil vazTr,ironically named Rast-rishan-again alluding to the deceptiveness of appearances, another motif that recurs throughout the Haft Paykar. The progress through the series of gardens that lies at the heart of Nezami's poem establishes the relationship between the seven tales told by the princesses and the story of Bahram Guiras an organic one and not merely that of entertaining anecdotes to frame-story. Departing from Bahram's artificial winter garden, testimony both to the deceptive nature of appearances and to the creative genius of art (which we will witness manifested in the tales themselves), we have passed, along with the hero, through fictional gardens isolated in varying degrees from the concrete dimensions of space and time, moving through stages of increasing proximity to reality, to this final garden, contiguous in time and space to the main action of the narrative. The man-made marvel of Bahram's winter garden contrasts with the miracle of nature observed in the royal pleasance in spring-a contrast that illuminates the function of the tales themselves. Bahram's dalliance with the princesses, open to condemnation on one level as neglect of his kingly duties, appears on another as a necessary truancy, an essential and climactic stage on the spiritual journey through which he learns the lessons of kingship.4' Having been led by the tales (and not least through the cosmic symbolism that informs them, one aspect of which is embodied in the garden imagery we are considering here) to an understanding of the principles of Law (both natural and divine, the former being but a reflection of the latter), he finally renounces his seven brides and converts their Domes into fire-temples; henceforth he is to devote himself to the single bride of Justice.42 Thus in one important sense the Haft Paykar can be seen to function as an allegorical "mirror for princes" (a function made clear in the poet's prologue) that, through its presentation of Bahram's progress toward ideal kingship, provides both precept and example to guide the ruler toward the principles of justice-as Bahram himself is guided both through the events that mark his life and, more importantly, by the seven tales.43 In frame-story and tales alike, gardens (as an aspect of cosmic symbolism) provide concrete embodiments of the

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state or experience with which they are associated. The material but lifeless (or, more accurately, soulless) marvel of the winter garden, the fantastic garden found, and lost, by the "King of Black," fading as rapidly as the flowers that are its dominant feature, the paradise whose fruits turn to ashes for Mahan, the earthly garden in which the young master at last attains his Fortune, and the final garden whose renewal in spring parallels Bahram's spiritual rebirth: all these are no less than aspects of the cosmic world-garden, places in which man learns of the complex and problematical nature of his existence, and of the ambivalence of the human condition. Simultaneously settings and symbols, they point above all to the correspondences existing between man the microcosm and nature the macrocosm, and are thus not merely imagistic reflections of human moods or actions, but expressions of the continuity between man and the
cosmos.44

If the gardens of the Haft Paykar owe much of their evocative power to the rich descriptive imagery employed by the poet, in which no significant detail fails to receive a just measure of attention, those found in the ghazals of the thirteenthcentury mystical poet Jalal al-DTn Ruim gain theirs, by contrast, from their total involvement in the symbolic actions that not only take place in them but are also performed by their denizens. They provide eloquent testimony to the mystics' view that God manifests Himself in His creation and to the concept of the created universe as the mirror of the Unseen and the reflection of Divine beauty. Both Koranic verses and Traditions such as that of the "hidden treasure" supported this view; and the principle of "comparison" (tashbTh) of the Divine beauty and majesty to created objects, anathema to the orthodox, was a cornerstone of the Sufi doctrine of God's immanence, viewed as complementary and not contradictory to that of His transcendence.45As Ruml comments in the Discourses (FThi madf hi): "Comparison is one thing, and likeness another.... When things appear unintelligible and are enunciated by means of a comparison, then they become intelligible, and when they become intelligible, they become sensible (p. 174)."And further:"Comparison does not resemble likeness. Thus, the gnostic gives the name 'spring' to relaxation and happiness and expansion, and calls contraction and sorrow 'autumn': what formal resemblance is there between happiness and the spring, sorrow and the autumn?" (p. 176). The "forms" of creation are veils interposed between human perception and the Divine that are yet essential to apprehension of the Unseen (p. 47): For if God's beautyshould displayitself withouta veil, we would not have the powerto endureand would not enjoyit.... You see yonder sun, how in its light we walk and see and distinguishgood from bad and are warmed.The treesand orchardsbecomefruitful,and in the heat of it theirfruits, unripeand sour and bitter,become matureand sweet.... If yondersun, which through bestowsso manybenefits,wereto come nearerit would bestowno benefit intermediaries on the contrary,the whole worldand everycreature would be burnedup and whatsoever; destroyed. WhenGod most High makesrevelationthrougha veil to the mountain,it too becomes fully arrayedin trees and flowersand verdure.WhenhoweverHe makesrevelationwithout a veil, He overthrows the mountainand breaksit into atoms.46

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Forms, though imperfect reflections of universal truth, are yet guides to that truth, invaluable mediators in its perception: "Through the medium of this form [of heaven and earth], derive benefit from that universal reality" (p. 51). Such passages from RfimT'sDiscourses shed light on the allegorical imagery of his lyrics. Creation, for Rumi, is one vast metaphor, a web of interrelated symbols that testify to the eternal reality beyond them. "Creation has acquired a speaking soul" he states (F 514),47 echoing the Koranic verse (17:46) "Nothing there is, that does not proclaim His praise."48The vastness of this complex web of symbols, which testifies to the beauty and majesty of its creator, is mirrored by the enormous variety of Rumi's imagery.49And while he is indifferent to no aspect of man or nature, his significance for this study lies in his being one of the few Persian ghazal-poets to devote a sizable number of individual poems-as well as large portions of poems on other subjects-to the garden. In these poems, the denizens of the garden-the earthly manifestations of the unseen, universal reality-appear as participants in rituals of praise and adoration. This "cosmic praise," a major motif of Rumi's garden poems,50 finds its formal corollary in his extensive use of allegorical personification. Personification, though an important metaphorical device in Persian poetry, does not have the same prominence as an allegorical technique that it does in the West.51 With RfimT,as with most Persian poets, individual personifications are rarely sustained and remain on the level of tropes; their cumulative effect is to people the poems with an abundance of lively images. This is especially vivid in the numerous poems that portray the garden in spring-"For it is in the spring that the glory of God appears";52the spring garden, in its joyous burgeoning forth, becomes a figure both of the Divine epiphany and of the spiritual rebirth of the soul. Citation of one of Rumi's spring songs provides a useful starting point both for discussion of his use of allegorical personification and as an introduction to some of the important allegorical motifs derived from the garden; I quote, for convenience, Arberry's translation, although it poses some problems that will be discussed in the commentary. and the Beloved's messagehas come;we are Joyous springhas arrived drunkwith love and intoxicatedand cannotbe still. O my darlingone, go forthto the garden,do not leavethe beautiesof the meadowin expectation. fromthe Unseenhavearrivedin the meadow; go forth,for it Strangers is visited." is a rulethat "thenewcomer to greet Followingyourfootstepsthe rose has come into the rosebower, and meetyou the thornhas becomesoft of cheek. Cypress, give ear, for the lily in expositionof you has becomeall tongueby the bankof the river. The bud was tightlyknotted;yourgraceloosensknots;the rose blossoms thanksto you, and scattersits petalsoveryou. You mightsay that it is the resurrection, that therehaveraisedtheir and January, the headsfromthe earththose who rottedin December dead of yesteryear. The seed whichhad died has now found life, the secretwhichearthheld has now becomerevealed.

Allegorical Gardens in Persia The boughwhichheldfruitis gloryingforjoy, the root whichhad none is shamefast and ashamed. Afterall, the treesof the spiritwill becomeeven so, the treeof excellentboughsand fortunatewill be manifest. The kingof springhas drawnup his armyand madehis provisions; the jasminehas seizedthe shield,and the greengrassDhu '1-Faqar. Theysay, "Wewill cut off the headof So-and-solike chives;behold that visiblyenactedin the handiwork of the Creator." Yes;whenthe succourof divineassistance arrives,Nimrodis brought to destruction by a gnat.53

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Here-in contrast with NezamT-no elaborate descriptive imagery delineates the outward form or features of the garden; in fact, a striking characteristic of RumT'sstyle is its lack of concrete description.54The garden vibrates with joyous life as its denizens testify to the miracle of rebirth; that this testimony is, quite literally, an enactment of the ritual of shehadat is made clear by the language of the first two verses, whose crucial insistence on punning-forcing a simultaneous awareness of the multiple senses of certain key words-is unfortunately lost in the translation. Spring appears, not as the Beloved's "message," but as His Messenger (rasil), a specific designation that bears obvious associations with the shehadat. The poet's "darling" is addressed as ay cheshm o ay cheragh, "O eye and lamp," a conventional epithet that may indeed be so translated; but if we examine the literal meanings of its constituent elements, treating the epithet as an intentional use of language rather than as a dead metaphor, we see that it involves ideas of perception and illumination associated with "the inner eye which has been illuminated by the divine light."55The "beauties of the meadow," shahedan-e chaman, are literally "witnesses" to God's epiphany in His creation. These lines thus place us not merely in a spring garden, but within the context of a symbolic ritual. This "literalism" with respect to language is typical of allegory, which exploits the pun as a method of emphasizing the inherent polysemous nature of words.56 Puns abound in Ruim's poems; later in this one, another pun informs us that the "king of spring" (the rose) has not only made provisions, but put forth leaves (be-sakht barg): indeed, the rose's petals are its provisions (as well as its glory, another sense of barg), just as the jasmine's white blossom is its shield, the grass's green blades its sword-a sword, moreover, dedicated to the destruction of unbelief. Such puns, which throw the poem's individual words sharply into focus, serve to emphasize the rituals "visibly enacted" within it: as it opened with that of shehadat, it concludes with another, jihad, holy war conducted by the garden's denizens. The proverb concerning "beheading people like chives" alludes to the unbelieving Jews, who preferred onions and chives to heavenly ambrosia; Nimrod, another unbeliever, was slain by a gnat's bite.57Those who cannot see God's manifestation in His creation are doomed to perish. In fact, the ghazal presents three interconnected tableaux of ritual actions performed in the garden by its inhabitants: shehadat, bearing witness to the Creator's glory and oneness; qiyamat, resurrection, when the souls confess and the true worth of each is revealed (associated by the mystics with prayer); and

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jihad, holy war against unbelief. These ritual actions are conveyed through the unifying technique of personification. But it is not a sustained personification that allows each agent to develop an individual "personality" on the basis of which it interacts with others; on the contrary, the pervasiveness and predictability of the device sharply reduce the individuality of the separate figures, presenting them in an emblematic fashion. This technique is used throughout Rumi's garden poems; each of the garden's inhabitants is given a function (or functions) that is generally portrayed consistently. Spring is the Beloved's messenger, bringing greetings to the drunken lovers from that "prophet of the beauties" (payghambar-e khuban, F 62); it is "sweet-cheeked" like the Beloved (F 570), with whom it is sometimes identified (F 569). The spring breeze revives the garden with its song (F 196); it is a sdqi bestowing wine on the garden (F 782), a magician reciting a charm (F 581). Flowers and trees rejoice at spring's advent: the lily most commonly reveals its secret, but it can also be steadfast despite its hundred tongues (F 581). The tulip brings good tidings to the trees (F 196), which, lightheaded and drunken (F 196, 581), dance joyously in the meadow (F 1077). The violet, traditionally compared to a blue-robed Sufi, prostrates itself in prayer (F 211, 581), as does the vine (F 581); the plane tree lifts its hands in prayer (F 927, 1000), claps them in joy at news of spring (F 1077). Many garden poems include passages in which the garden's denizens exchange greetings and converse together in various contexts. The poet's use of such iconographic methods of personification has the effect of depriving the personified agents of both human and plant-like attributes, making them anonymous participants in rituals of adoration. Although it is true that "in Rfim's garden, every flower has its function in representing various states and aspects of human life,"58 these functions are subordinated to the central unifying purpose: praise of the Divine. The undistinguished nature of most of these personifications is reinforced by the general lack of originality with which RfimTtreats conventional figures such as the many-tongued lily, the tulip branded by love, the blue-clad violet, the drunken narcissus, and so on: it is in their capacity of typical denizens of the garden (and of garden poems) that they are best fitted to participate in its rituals. In the poem cited, we have seen those of shehadat, qiyamat, and jihad. Annemarie Schimmel has commented on Rumi's image of the sama'c performed by the plants;59prayer is another ritual in which the garden's inhabitants participate; and in yet another-the wedding-lover and Beloved become one, as (notes Schimmel) do earth and sky in the hieros gamos.60 But in an important way, both the ritualistic nature of the actions performed in the garden and the virtual anonymity of the participants are essential to the conveyance of a message-or perhaps a vision-that is central to Riumi's work and that places this "conformity" and "anonymity" in a new perspective. I shall return to this point in a moment. Several elements in the garden enjoy a more developed symbolic significance. Water (both as stream and as rain) has a complex symbolism, functioning as a life-giving, nourishing force, a visible sign of God's grace.61 The rose is associated with the Divine Beloved and especially with the person of Muhammad, the Perfect Man.62Trees-or rather a generalized, allegorical Tree with no individual particularity-also have a special significance. The poem cited above

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introduces a number of important symbolic motifs that recur in connection with garden imagery throughout RumT'swork, and that include the image of the rose as the earthly manifestation of Divine beauty; the figure of spring as Resurrection, with associated imagery of planting and harvest; the motif of the "secret revealed," which is linked with that of the "martyr of love"; and the allegorical "trees of the spirit." The poet's "darling" (his "inner eye") is bidden to go into the garden to greet the "beauties of the meadow," the newly arrived "strangers from the Unseen," who bring tidings from the hidden world of eternal reality; in this epiphany of Divine beauty the rose reveals itself to the contemplative vision, and even the thorn-often associated with spiritual blindness, the incapacity of Reason, and the obscuring veils of physical existence (cf. F 132)-becomes lovely and pleasing. The symbolism of the rose is developed fully in a ghazal devoted entirely to its praise (F 1348): the entire garden celebrates its coming, and its grace fills the garden with joy; but, as the poet makes clear, The Rose is of Thatworld,it cannotbe containedin This:how could the worldof phantasms containthe imageof the Rose? The rose (as the Tradition has it) is the distillation of "the sweat of the Prophet's grace" ('araq-e lotf-e Mostafa); obeying the summons of spring to appear, it symbolizes that Eternal love that promises "that our eyes may nevermore see the fading of the rose." The comparison of spring to Resurrection is perhaps the most important and all-encompassing of the allegorical figures derived from the garden (F 2636): come to the garden,whichwill show If you wishto see Resurrection, of the dead underthe earth you the greenness says the poet (alluding to Koran 22:6-7). Spring brings to life the seeds that lay dormant under ground in winter, like the corpses of the dead (F 782). In the Discourses, Rilumcompares the physical world to a world of winter in which all is icebound and solidified, awaiting release: the "winter of the reason," which, when the "Divine zephyr" appears, will melt just as ice melts in spring; "On the resurrection day when that zephyr blows, all things will melt away" (p. 69). But the season of winter is also a necessary stage in which the seeds-and the soul-rest, storing up what they have acquired in order to blossom anew in spring: "If in the winter time the trees do not put forth leaves and fruit, let men not suppose that they are not working.... Winter is a season of gathering in, summer is the season of spending" (p. 62).63 The ruined garden of autumn contains within it the certain promise of spring (cf. F 1794). The generative force that nourishes the world is love: "if earth and mountain were not lovers, grass would not grow out of their breast" (F 2674). Earth harbors the seeds planted in her womb by love until it is time for them to sprout (F 3048), at which time their nature becomes manifest. This concept evokes the motif, common to both mystical and secular love poetry, of the "secret revealed": the glory of the spring garden discloses the secret of the Divine love that nourishes it (cf. F 196, 581). Schimmel reminds us that a favorite hadTth of Ruimr'swas al-dunya mazra' al-akhira, "this world is the sprouting-bed of the

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next."65Just as the nature of the seed, inherent within it, is revealed at its sprouting, man's acts in this world, revelatory of his own nature, bear fruit for him both here and in the Hereafter. The imagery of the sprouting seed and the disclosure of the "secret"concealed within it receives its most powerful expression in the figure of the tree. The fruitful tree glories in its burden, the barren root is ashamed; even so will the "trees of the spirit" become manifest on the day of Resurrection. Most important of such "trees of the spirit" is the Tree of Love, whose branch is in pre-eternity and whose root in post-eternity (F 395). The figure of the Tree of Love, the metaphor of branch and fruit, and the motif of the "secret revealed" are all united in the symbol of the apple. The half-red, half-yellow apple-a conventional image of the half-joyful, half-grieving lover-becomes an emblem of that greatest of all martyrs of love, Hallaj, whose ecstatic declaration Ani al-haqq is the mystical embodiment of the "secret revealed." The martyr of love is the most sublime fruit of love's tree, the most supreme manifestation of the seed's hidden nature (F 566): First I was bornof His love, finallyI gave my heartto Him;when fruitis bornof a branch,fromthat branchit hangs.66 The branch of the tree is compared to the gibbet on which Hallaj hung (F 558). In a passage of one of the spring songs, the apple, suspended from the branch as from the gibbet, is pelted with stones (another ritual act) for revealing its knowledge of the Beloved, but this stoning is as gentle as the Beloved's caress (F 581). In the figure of Hallaj the tree of the spirit finds its fullest expression; of that tree, and its ultimate significance, RuimT says in the Discourses (p. 216): Whatis the In short, the root of the matteris the end: may the end be praiseworthy! end?That the tree whose roots are fixed firm in that spiritualgarden,and praiseworthy whose branchesand boughs and fruits have become suspendedin anotherplace, and its fruitshave scattered-that in the end those fruitsshouldbe carriedback into that garden, for thereits roots are. This image of the fruit of the tree of the spirit that returns ultimately to the garden of its origin, and its explicit association with the figure of Hallaj, the martyr of love, sheds light on how this type of imagery functions to convey Ruimi's vision of cosmic unity. In this vision, nature and man, macrocosm and microcosm, are intimately joined, both mirroring the ultimate reality of their Creator. The "actions" that take place in Ruimi's gardens are not events, but rituals enacted by their inhabitants; the poet's persona appears most often as an observer or another anonymous participant. These gardens are both manifestations of a higher truth and witnesses to it, and through his use of personification to depict the participation of nature in human rituals of adoration, Ruimi both achieves a fusion of natural and human elements in this act and carries the meaning of the rituals themselves far beyond their ordinary significance. From being expressions of membership in the human community of believers and testimonies to the unity of this community, they take on the character of "rites symbolic of

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union with the Perfect One"67-rites in which nature and man participate equally, thus suggesting the capacity of both to participate in divine grace. Each created being thus becomes a theophany, a reflection of the unseen divinity; through contemplation of their images one can arrive at a perception of the ultimate Reality behind them. The paradisal state reflected by the world-garden is thus, for RiumT, nothing less than the Beatific Vision. Although both the poetic gardens of the ghazals and the parables of the Discourses express a mystical vision of creation, it should not be inferred that the poet sought to convey a systematic philosophy in his poems. RfimT'stotal oeuvre represents a lifelong attempt to express, through allegory and parable, the ineffability of the mystical experience of love; thus, despite the allusions to mystical theosophy which permeate his work, RiimTmust be considered not as a philosopher, but as a poet whose "thought . . . cannot be separated from his poems."68 For him, the use of allegorical imagery was the natural result of the need to find a language through which to express the inexpressible, and in it, allegory is a stylistic means for the depiction of spiritual invisibilia through the portrayal of the visibilia of nature. If Nezami's gardens can be described as emblematic symbolic landscapes that constitute a sensible corollary of the experience with which they are associated, thus providing both a setting for and figure of the actions that take place in them, Riumi's gardens are inseparable from the rites of adoration observed (in both senses of the word) in them. While the allegorical imagery of both poets stems from the same conceptual premise-the perception of the universe as an ordered entity and the assumption of a continuity between man and the cosmosthey choose to emphasize different stylistic techniques to convey their individual interpretations of this concept. The third and final poet to be discussed in this study, the fourteenth-century lyricist Hafez of Shiraz, employs yet another technique to express his own interpretation of the meaning of cosmic harmony: the analogical symbol of the world-garden, a complex figure constructed out of many smaller metaphors. For the court poets of Hafez's time, the garden was an important center of life, a place where nobles, divines, scholars, and poets gathered for feasting and winedrinking, witty converse, and the recitation of poetry. The courtly ghazal testifies to the pervasive influence of the garden on the poets' vision of life and love. It provided a wealth of descriptive metaphor, an ideal setting for poems on love, and that conventional pair of lovers, the nightingale and the rose. Many ghazals feature a brief, stylized "spring song" prelude, consisting of a mere verse or two serving chiefly to evoke the poem's main topic: love. Few poets attempted to integrate such preludes into the remainder of the poem; still fewer devoted whole poems, or even extensive portions of poems, to the garden. Hafez is a significant exception, and although in formal terms garden imagery functions in his ghazals much as it does in those of his contemporaries, it also has an important allegorical dimension that is generally lacking in theirs. In fact, the presence of a garden, or of garden imagery, in a ghazal by Hafez is often a signal that the poem must be read allegorically; in such poems, Hafez takes us from the ostensible setting, the courtly garden, into the world-garden, the Book of Nature itself.

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Hafez's allegorical technique is well illustrated by the ghazal which begins (QG 486): Lastnight,fromthe cypressbranch,the nightingale stations.69 sang,in Pahlavinotes,the lessonof spiritual This single line contains within it the germ of the most important areas of signification encompassed with HaIfez'sfigure of the world-garden: the evocation of the garden in spring (the season of the nightingale's return, a season traditionally associated with roses and wine) as the setting for both love and poetry (implied in the bird's song), together with the hint that this is a courtly garden (the cypress suggests both prince and beloved), a hint made explicit in line 3; the implication of an ancient tradition underlying the "song" sung in the garden through the suggestion that the nightingale sings in "Pahlavi" (although SudT denies that the poet intended a reference to "Old Persian,"70such a reading ties in with the motif of ancient authority that will recur later in the poem); and the association of the nightingale's song with a lesson of "spiritual" significance (in the broadest sense of "deeper meaning").71Each of these elements will be taken up and explored in the course of the poem; since a thorough analysis of the complex resonances established by the density and allusiveness of Hafez's language would be the topic of a paper in itself, I must content myself here with a treatment of the poem's primary motifs as they elucidate the figure of the garden. In a characteristic manner, Hafez divides his ghazal into segments concentrating on different but related topics juxtaposed with one another. The first segment (lines 1-3) constitutes a "spring song" serving as prelude to the poem; in the second line we are summoned (by the nightingale) to observe the freshly blooming rose shining on its tree like the flames of the Burning Bush, from within which Moses heard the voice of God-the manifestation of Divine beauty that is the subtle "point of unity" (nokteh-ye towhTd)taught by the tree through the miraculous reappearance of the rose each spring. The "spiritual stations" (maqamit-e ma'navO) of which the nightingale sings suggest the "stations" or states of love celebrated in the ghazals to the music of which the "lord" (khijeh, i.e., Hafez's patron) quaffs his wine, entertained by the wit and eloquence of the "birds of the garden"-the courtiers, poets, and others who attend him (line 3); and an explicit connection is established between garden and court, nightingale and poet, "song" and "lesson." The image of the garden gives way, in line 4, to an expanded sententia that occupies the exact center of the poem (lines 4-5; the final line, it should be noted, constitutes an epigrammatic "cap"that is structurally "outside"the poem). Its significance is made clear by its centrality: with his invocation of the exemplum of the ancient king Jamshid, who "bore naught but the tale" of his marvelous world-seeing Cup from this world, and the sudden warning: "Beware! do not fasten your heart on worldly things," the poet creates a sudden change of mood that forces us to reevaluate the idyllic scene presented in the first segment, and that will cast its shadow over the third. The amplification provided by line 5, which praises contentment with simple pleasures (an estate "not enjoyed by the royal throne") further emphasizes this need for reevaluation, and recalls the

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designation of the nightingale's song as a "lesson"; but the full implications of this lesson are not yet complete. From this segment, which has introduced the topic of the vanity of the world supported by an appeal to the authority of antiquity (the exemplum of Jamshid) and by the use of a sententia, the poet returns to the gathering in the garden to tell his own "amazing tale": he has been slain by the "life-giving" breath of his beloved, who has the power, with one coquettish glance, to destroy the lover's whole existence. This third segment (lines 6-8) exploits the analogy that is central to many of Hafez's poems, particularly those that incorporate a panegyric element: the courtly relationship of lover and beloved becomes a figure for that of poet and patron; the ma'shiuq, the beloved, becomes the mamduh, the object of praise.72The court poet's task of bringing fame to the patron through his eloquent verses-reflected in the commonplace of the poet's comparing himself to the nightingale-gives him the right to claim his due reward (alluded to in the final line of this ghazal); the etiquette of courtly love could serve to remind the patron of his obligation toward the poet (cf. QG 247, 277, 321). This is the apparent context of the poet's complaint, followed by his hope (in line 7) that his "beloved," who "struts so gracefully drunken," will suffer no "headache in consequence of his excesses"; but the final line of this segment alerts us to the existence of a broader context of signification than that of the poet's plea for favor. How well the ancientGardener put it to the Youth: "Olight of my eyes, you shall reapnaughtbut whatyou sow." The position of this line (structurally parallel to line I and thematically linked with line 4) throws the various areas of signification in the poem into sharp relief.73The invocation of the authority of the gardener (a figure seldom encountered in the Persian garden) reestablishes the garden as a place of learning, while his association with Zoroastrian antiquity parallels the nightingale's "Pahlavi" song.74 Nightingale and gardener are conflated as teachers of the "lesson" alluded to in the second hemistich of line 1 and now explicitly stated in the corresponding position in line 8 (a lesson anticipated by the reference to JamshTd),the real significance of which can now be understood as not merely embodying the negative principle of contempto mundi (as the contrast between JamshTd'sfate and the praise of contentment might suggest), but a positive directive to right conduct as the means of achieving good repute in this world and salvation in the next-a traditional topic of ethical literature and particularly of princely mirrors.75 The lesson taught by nightingale and gardener links the courtly garden, the garden of love, and the world-garden, juxtaposed in the actual poem sung in the actual garden, from which the poet proceeds to distance himself in the final line, fictionalizing his poem as an excessive outpouring inspired by too much wine. Through this device (to which Hafez frequently resorts) the poet is able, through his apparent self-deprecation, both to fulfill the practical requirements of courtly circumspection and to call attention to the fact that the poem must be judged as independent of his authorship-in other words, to indicate its truth.

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This ghazal demonstrates the complex polysemous nature of Hafez's allegorical imagery, characterized less by concrete description and extensive personification than by analogy and parallelism. The mixture of sensual and spiritual, present at the metaphorical level in the comparison of the spring garden to Divine epiphany and the allusions to spiritual and mystical concepts, is paralleled, on the level of the poem's overall structure, by the integration of the courtly garden into a more generalized context; it is also reflected in the juxtaposition within the poem of a variety of topics whose relationship becomes clear only in the context of the poem as a whole. Both the blend of sensual and spiritual dimensions-to which is added a strong moralizing element-and the juxtaposition of topics illustrate the basic principle of Hafez's analogical symbolism, which can be described as "the gathering of many little metaphors into the scope of one larger unifying figure which is also a metaphor."76The figure of the garden functions in a far more complex fashion than that of merely supplying a conventional "spring" prelude or a background motif; its evocation in the poem's climactic line indicates that the garden in fact exerts a determining influence on the poem as a whole. Although the basis of analogical symbolism, like that of metaphor, is comparison, it goes beyond simple allegorical tropes that link abstract and concrete such as those used by Hafez when he compares the accession of the prince, which restores order to the state, to the return of spring; likens the prince's sword (his protection) to the life-giving water of the stream; and exhorts him to "plant the tree of justice; uproot the ill-wishers" (QG 390). Far more typical is the construction, through the use of recurrent images, of larger and more inclusive figures, creating a complex system of imagery that characterizes a significant portion of Hafez's work. We can observe, for example, that many of the topics of QG 486 are repeated by QG 81, in which the exemplum of the Garden of Eram (associated in Persian tradition with the seat of Jamshid) becomes a unifying figure. It begins: At dawnthe birdof the meadowsaid to the new-risen rose: of coquetry! for in thisgardenmanylikeyou haveflowered."77 "Enough Again the poet, ostensibly treating the poet-patron relationship in the language of courtly love, links courtly garden and world-garden. His reminder that princes, like roses, come and go in the world-garden is met by the rose's rebuff invoking the courtly convention that "no lover ever spoke a harsh word to his beloved," followed by a homily on courtly service: the lover must suffer greatly before he is granted favor (figured by the iconographic metaphor of the "jewelencrusted cup of ruby wine") and must render humble and devoted service in order to merit affection. The patron's vision is limited to the etiquette of the courtly garden; the short-sightedness of this vision is brought home by the exemplum of Eram's Garden, whose flowers have faded forever, while the worldseeing Cup of its prince could not ward off his fate. Worldly riches, like worldly beauty (Jamshid's Cup and the bejeweled cup of princely favor, the beauty of the beloved and of the rose) are doomed to perish. In the poem's final lines, the poet invokes another courtly convention: the paradox of the lover's obligation to keep

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silent about his love, and his inability to do so. The wineshop to which he repairs to drown his sorrow combines with the garden of love and that of Eram to present the varied aspects of the world-garden, an analysis of some specific components of which may serve to clarify its cosmic dimensions. The rose is an important symbol for Hafez. As the prince is the center of the world of court, and the beloved the center of the lover's world, so at the center of the world-garden is the rose, emblem at once of all that is noble and beautiful and all that is transient and fading. The rose's fate foreshadows the passing not merely of earthly splendor, but of all that is beautiful. The nightingale's lament arises from his knowledge that "there is no token of fidelity in the rose's smile" (QG 37); but the rose's faithlessness is itself the reflection of the faithlessness of "unchivalrous" (bT-morovvat) Time, the thief who lies in wait for all: "Whoever smelled the odor of loyalty from Time's garden?" (QG 243). The prince must learn from the rose, emblem both of what he is and of what he will become, whose "glory and kingship" will be scattered by the wind (QG 429). Since "the rose of the garden does not remain fresh forever" (QG 493), the prince must act with justice in order to gain good repute in this life and be judged favorably in the next; herein lies the secret of the "contentment" that is beyond the reach of princes who desire the things of this world for their own sake. For (as Ghazzali observed and as Hafez makes plain in numerous poems), "the treasure for the next life is righteous conduct, and the treasure in this life is a good name among the people."78 In this respect, Hafez is akin to NezamL,in that the garden (and the poem in which it figures) functions as a "mirror" in which the prince may learn the lessons of kingship and justice. But (as with Nezami as well), though the immediate lesson of the poem may be addressed to the ruler, it is far broader in its application, meant for all men who see in the example of the rose that all that blossoms also fades. Man's perception of mortality is symbolized in the world-garden by the thorn that, in the garden of love, figures the lover's suffering. In QG 456, where the garden of love provides an allegory of the human condition, Hafez ponders this double symbol. The poet, who has gone to the garden at dawn to pluck a rose, is moved by the frenzied song of the nightingale (like himself a lover) to contemplate the example of nightingale and rose-the one constant in his devotion, the other in her indifference-and concludes that such is the unchanging state of the world, in which "no-one has ever plucked a rose without the pain of the thorn," and where the indifferent Wheel of the sky, like the obdurate beloved, "shows no favor" to any man. But though the rose's fading foreshadows human mortality, and the thorn of grief man's intimation of his end, this is only half the lesson they embody: for the rose also signifies the ideal of perfect beauty, love, and virtue; the thorn, the suffering man accepts as the price of his pursuit of that ideal. To seize the rose is life's highest goal. "The rose is precious; count her company as gain," says the poet (QG 154), employing a favorite topos; "count the moment as gain," he advises, for the harvest of life is only a brief season (QG 473), and can be turned to profit only through love. The shade and running water of the garden, poetry, wine, and love-these are life's true riches, the source of true

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happiness (QG 288). Paradoxically, such moments of beauty and joy are at once transient and incorruptible: laid up in the heart, they endure, while worldly splendor fades (QG 430). Moreover, in Time's unchanging cycle, Autumn's vaunts will be brought to nothing by the spring breeze, just as "the magnificence of Winter's wind, the glory of the thorn" are ended by the blossoming of the rose, symbol of nature's earthly triumph over Time (QG 166). The exhortation to "seize the moment" is not an invitation to self-indulgence but to the wise employment of life's brief span in dedicated service on the path of love. The spiritual treasure of contentment is opposed to the false gain of material wealth (QG 112); one should not trade for Eram's Garden "one glass of wine, a sweet-lipped maid, the edge of the sown" (QG 487). Kings may aspire to splendor and might; the lover aspires to contentment, and industriously cultivates virtue-a concept expressed in metaphors of sowing and reaping, planting and bearing fruit, which to some extent recall the imagery of Ruimi. But, though Hafez occasionally suggests the presence of a Divine gardener who directs the growth of His creation, 79it is more often man who is given the responsibility for cultivating virtue, by such symbolic acts as the planting of trees in spring. In is the root from which springs the tree on which QG 485, "good conduct" (nTkT) blossoms the "rose of prosperity" (gol-e towfTq), the king of flowers; in QG 115, the poet exhorts: Plantthe tree of friendship, whichbearsthe fruitof fulfillment; uprootthe saplingof enmity,whichbearscountlesssuffering. Such cultivation requires both deliberation and continual labor (QG 369). Hafez's imagery places a far greater importance on human action than does Rimi's, where the seed only awaited the benign nurture of Divine love to sprout. In further contrast to Rfimi, Hafez praises the cypress, which in its emblematic specificity is quite unlike RfimT'sabstract "trees of the spirit" and is at variance with his emphasis on the primacy of fruit-bearing trees. For Hafez, as the rose embodies abstract qualities of beauty and love, the cypress figures forth more concrete virtues. The focal point and cynosure of the earthly garden, the cypress becomes a metaphor for prince and for beloved, as, noblest of trees, it towers above grass and flowers, which flourish beneath its shade (QG 355). Ever-green, it symbolizes the ability to endure the vicissitudes of life (QG 119); fruitless, it is an emblem of the moral quality of tajarrod, being "stripped" of worldly attachments (QG 173). Thus it is an appropriate figure of independence and uprightness.80 Other metaphors of cultivation return to the topic that man's deeds on this earth are as seeds that he plants, and he shall reap that which he sows; of the harvest of the world's garden, "only the generous deeds of the truly noble will endure" (QG 179). For Hafez (in contrast to Riimi), the nature of the seed will become manifest only "when the season of reaping comes" (QG 406)-in that final Reckoning in which man's deeds will be awarded their ultimate just value, and of which Hafez is reminded as he contemplates "the sky's green field and the sickle of the new moon" (QG 407).

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In the garden man learns contentment and cultivates virtue-spiritual riches that will outlast the corruptible (and corrupting) riches of this world and that, unlike them, will accompany their owner into the next, where they will prove his final worth. The ultimate source of virtue and contentment, as well as their result, is love, life's greatest treasure and most enduring gain. Love and wine are pledges against life's end, in defiance of Time (QG 166); "drinking wine in the rose-garden" becomes a metaphor for the acceptance of life, the precious pearl contained within the shell of the world (QG 162), underscoring Hafez's contempt for asceticism, the renunciation of life's pleasures and, by extension, the negation of the value of life itself. The ascetic, in ascribing value to the celestial Paradise his blue robe becomes, alone, has failed to learn the lesson of the earthly garden;81 for Hafez, the insignia of hypocrisy, antithesis of the virtues cultivated in the garden and the chief characteristic of the figures of the religious establishmentzahed, v'Cez, Sufi and mohtaseb-who populate the ghazals and to whom he opposes the rend, embodiment of virtue and contentment. The rend, heeding the words of the "ancient gardener," celebrates life with wine, the "seed of contentment" (QG 88); the wineshop provides a climate in which he can grow when the "root of joy" has dried up (QG 377). The rend's religion is that of love, and the wineshop is his temple; wineshop and garden have in common their function as places wherein man learns the lessons of love. This love is not, like that praised by RumT,mystical, although the poems contain obvious mystical allusions, indicative of the complex relationship between the languages of profane and mystical love poetry in Persian; it transcends the limitations of mystical and courtly love alike to become an affirmation of man's human as well as of his spiritual nature, and of the life-accepting, as opposed to the life-negating, spirit. Love is the most essential and binding of God's commands; the sign of man's dedicated service on its path is his acceptance of suffering. The lover's state mirrors the human condition: just as the lover weeps at his separation from the beloved, mourns her loss, and suffers her cruelty, so man grieves at the intimation of mortality, the fading of beauty, and his own helplessness before the onslaughts of Time. Man's acceptance of the burden of love decrees that he make the supreme sacrifice of loving-and living-without hope of return, taking as his only gain life's brief moments of joy, and as his only consolation the solace of the cup of wine (QG 45). In garden and wineshop the parallel figures of courtly love and rend are initiated into the service of love. The garden in spring is preferredto the madraseh where religious sciences are taught (QG 44); "the science of love is not contained in school-books (daftar)" (QG 162), but can be read only in the Book of Nature. In the season of spring, says the poet, "call me perverse should I cast a glance at the pages of the school-book" (QG 346). Nor can dry reason teach this "subtle point": that "he does not boast of the rose of the world's garden who knows of the raids of the Autumn wind" (QG 48). The doctrines of the Sufis are likewise antithetical to the true nature of love: Hafez opposes the "meadow's circle" (halqeh-ye chaman, QG 133) to that of the Sufis, and exhorts the Sufi to "pluck

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a rose, and leave the gown to the thorn," to exchange "dry" asceticism for nourishing wine, mystical formulas for the music of the lute, and prayer-beads and prayers for wine and wine-seller (QG 275). The inability of ascetic, divine, and Sufi to comprehend the lessons of garden and wineshop is made clear by the preference of both these places over the celestial Paradise to which those persons aspire. Just as the earthly wineshop boasts a wine "not in Kawsar's spring" (QG 162), earthly love is superior to the enjoyments of Paradise (QG 353, 372), and the "cash" of garden and wineshop is more certain than the "credit" of the Hereafter (cf. QG 79); however lovely the garden of Paradise may be, "you count as gain this willow's shade and this green verge" (80). Nor is it merely that the pleasures of the earthly garden are more tangible and more certain; the promise of Paradise as the reward for obedience to religious law as interpreted by the self-seeking divines is a cheat and a deception (QG 332): How long, O ascetic,will you deceiveme, likea child, with the Garden's apples,honeyand milk? For Hafez, it is the celestial Paradise that is but a dim and dubious reflection of the earthly garden of love, of which the ascetic seeks to deprive man, and to which the poet would restore him. The earthly garden, the source of man's humanity as well as of his virtue, is a far better text than the books of the schoolmen, which are distortions of God's rhetoric (QG 48): the book of the rose; Onlythe birdof dawncan interpret its meaning. for not all who reada pagecan understand In Hafez's metaphorical system, the figure of the nightingale unites courtly lover, rend, and poet; and in connection with this last, yet another text is depicted as conveying the lessons of the garden: the "book of verses." "Hear the tale of love from Hafez, not from the preacher" says the poet (QG 131), punning on his own takhallos; the poet's art (honar, for Hafez frequently equated with wisdom, macrefat) is a better source of knowledge than the preacher's practice of his trade of words. Hafez's verses, "the sweetest fruits of this garden" (QG 404)which, he asserts, from Adam's time "adorned the pages of the book of rose and eglantine" in the Eternal Garden (QG 206)-image forth the garden in words, revealing the lesson embodied in the Book of Nature. The figure of the world-garden as both place of learning and text that combines both precept and example informs and unifies Hafez's treatment of the garden, linking the courtly garden, nature's garden of love in which rose and nightingale perform their ancient ritual of courtship, and the wineshop where the rend drowns his sorrows through the common dimension of meaningfulness with respect to the relationships they represent. The perception of parallelism between these relationships is not merely arrived at by a consideration of existential reality,82but has its chief source in the analogical habit of thought mentioned earlier, expressed through the parallelism between macrocosm (nature) and microcosm (man). To these two terms Hafez adds a third, that of the court, creating a tripartite figure whose dimensions evoke that "belief... in 'correspondences'

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between . . . the individual man, or 'microcosm', the universe, or 'macrocosm', and the state, or 'body politic'" that informs much ethical and gnomic literature of the classical and medieval traditions.83 This third element forms (in both structural and conceptual terms) the "connecting link" between macrocosm and microcosm, as a schematic breakdown of the basic elements of the figure shows: Macrocosm Body Politic Microcosm Nature(= garden) Court(= courtlygarden) Wineshop(+ its garden) : Rose/Nightingale : Prince(Patron)/Poet : Beloved/Lover (rend)

Smaller images, metaphors, and so forth can either be broken down along corresponding lines, or serve to support one or another of these categories (e.g., JamshTd'sCup and Eram's Garden link the gardens of the court and of nature through the shared aspect of decay and transience). The overall effect is that an allusion to any one of these three dimensions implies, by virtue of this system of correspondences, the other two; thus the separate "states" of the cosmic garden are linked through symbolic images that are, characteristically, few and concentrated, emblematic and circumscribed, their signification deriving chiefly from their association with the larger figure. The three poets considered in this study, separated by time and by the nature of the genres considered, represent three individual approaches to the writing of poetic allegory; the differences in their styles can be clearly seen by comparing their utilization of a common source of imagery, the garden. Each has, presumably, chosen to emphasize those techniques that lend themselves best both to the formal limitations he imposes upon himself and to the expression of his thought. Sharing a common realization that the universe is an entity in which "the whole penetrates each of its parts,"84that man himself is a part of this cosmos, that its order is knowable and that knowledge of one aspect will lead to knowledge of the others, they create a varied array of earthly gardens through which to convey their vision of cosmic order. In this connection, it is perhaps not inappropriate to quote a passage from another great allegorist, Dante, the occurrence of which in the work entitled De Monarchia is itself instructive, as we seem constantly to return to the concept of the poem as mirror: Unutterable providence... has set two ends beforeman to be contemplated by him; the blessedness,to wit, of this life, which consists in the exerciseof his properpowerand is of eternallife, whichconsistsin the figuredby the terrestrial paradise,and the blessedness fruitionof the divineaspect,to whichhis properpowermay not ascendunlessassistedby the divinelight.85 From this common point of departure-the figure of the earthly garden as a symbol of human potential-all three of the Persian poets considered here set out to construct poetic texts that will reveal the lessons embodied in the Book of Nature. That their treatments of this figure are (in terms of style) so varied points both to the inherent polysemousness of allegorical symbolism itself, and to the conscious artistry with which these poets approached their task. Also evident is the high instructive and moral value all three placed on poetry itself; none

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of the poems discussed here can be considered as exercises in entertainment, mystical "escapism," or prince-pleasing flattery. They are, rather, quests for knowledge arising from the belief that man, "in coming to know the world ... comes to know himself as well,"86 quests that attempt to reveal the infinite variety and harmonious order of the universe.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

NOTES 'See especially W. L. Hanaway, Jr., "Paradise on Earth: The Terrestrial Garden in Persian Literature," in E. B. MacDougall and Richard Ettinghausen, eds., The Islamic Garden (Washington, D.C., 1976), pp. 43-67; C.-H. de Fouchecour, La description de la nature dans la poesie liyrique persane du Xle siecle (Paris, 1969); A. Schimmel, "A Spring Day in Konya According to Jalal al-DTn RumT," in P. J. Chelkowski, ed., The Scholar and the Saint (New York, 1975), pp. 255-73, and The Triumphal Sun (London, 1980), pp. 59-93; see also A. Bausani, "La rappresentazione della natura nel poeta persiano Hafiz," Oriente Moderno, 23 (1943), 28-39; J. W. Clinton, The Divan of ManuchihrTDamghdnT:A Critical Study (Minneapolis, 1972), pp. 100-23; H. Ritter, Uber die Bildersprache NizdmTs (Leipzig, 1927); D. N. Wilber, Persian Gardens and Garden Pavilions (Rutland, Vt., 1962), pp. 39-51. 2Touched on by Hanaway, pp. 58-61; A. Schimmel, "The Celestial Garden," in The Islamic Garden, pp. 13-39, and Mvstical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, 1975), passim. 3J. Meisami, "Allegorical Techniques in the Ghazals of Hafez," Edebivat, 4 (1979), 1-40; "Hafez's Allegorical Gardens: The Problem of Interpretation," paper delivered at the 15th Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, Seattle, Wash., November 1981; "The World's Pleasance: Hafiz's Allegorical Gardens," Comparative Criticism, 5 (1983), 153-85. 4A. Bartlett Giamatti, The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic (Princeton, 1966), p. 11. On the relationship of both real and literary gardens to ideals of Paradise, see Terry Comito, The Idea of the Garden in the Renaissance (New Brunswick, N.J., 1978), pp. 25-50; Giamatti, pp. 11-86; Hanaway, pp. 44-51; J. Lehrman, Earthly Paradise: Garden and Courtyard in Islam (Berkeley, 1980), passim; D. Pearsall and E. Salter, Landscapes and Seasons in the Medieval World (London, 1973), pp. 56-75. 'Comito, p. 105; cf. M.-D. Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century, edited and translated by J. Taylor and L. K. Little (Chicago, 1968), pp. 114-19; Angus Fletcher, Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Ithaca, 1964), pp. 130-35; L. L. Martz, The Paradise Within (New Haven, 1964), pp. 17 ff. 6S. H. Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 24. On the concept of ta'wTl (allegorical exegesis of the Koran) that arises from this view of creation, see H. Corbin, Avicenne et le r&eitvisionnaire, 2nd ed. (Tehran, 1954), I, 32-36; and especially Paul Nwyia, Exegese coranique et langue mystique (Beirut, 1970), pp. 314-16. 7Pearsall, p. 183 (a propos of Ymaginatif's reminder to the dreamer in Piers Plowman). 8Kullu shay'in fThi mawcizatun/ta'izu 'I-insdna law 'aqald. Abui al-'Atdhiya, ash'aruh waakhbdruh, edited by Shukri Faysal (Damascus, 1965), p. 609. daftar-e ma'refat-e kerdegar. Quoted by 9Barg-e derakhtan-e sabz dar nazar-e hushyi0r/har varaqT Sudi, Sharh-e SudTbar .Hafez, translated by 'Esmat Sattarzadeh, 3rd ed., 4 vols. (Tehran, 1978-79), IV, p. 2439. 'ODarchaman har varaqTdaftar-e hall digar-ast /hayf bashad keh ze kdr-e hameh ghifel bashT. Hafez, Dvamn,edited by M. QazvTniand Q. Ghani (Tehran, 1941). Unless otherwise indicated, all citations are based on this edition (designated as QG); all translations of Hafez are my own. In QG 268 Hafez alludes to the concept of "signs"or natural symbols: BeneshTn bar lab-eju. o gozar-e cumr bebTn/k-Tnesharat ze jahdn-e gozardn mara bas, "Sit by the edge of the stream and watch life pass, / for this sign of the passing (transient) world is enough for us." On the opposition of ishira

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(the allusive use of language) and 'ibara (plain speech) in relation to ta'wTl, see Nwyia, pp. 174-75, 313-16, and Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, p. 59. "Cf. Chenu, pp. 99 ff.; E. de Bruyne, Etudes d'esthetique medievale, 3 vols. (Bruges, 1946), III, 302 ff.; J. Chydenius, "La th6orie du symbolisme m6di6val," Poetique, 23 (1973), 322-41; C. B. Kendall, Bede's Historia ecclesia: The Rhetoric of Faith," in J. R. Murphy, ed., Medieval Eloquence (Berkeley, 1978), pp. 145-72. '2Chenu, pp. 103, 112. '3Cf. Chenu, especially pp. 21-33, 81-85, 99 ff.; on the analogical mode of thought see also Eugene Vinaver, The Rise of Romance (Oxford, 1971), pp. 99-112. The complexities of this topic are beyond the scope of the present paper, and I shall allude to them only briefly as relevant to the treatment of specific examples. '4Giamatti, p. 11; cf. Lehrman, p. 31; Pearsall, p. 54. '5Cf. Lehrman, pp. 61-62; Wilber, pp. 19-25; R. Pinder-Wilson, "The Persian Garden: Bagh and Chahar Bagh," in The Islamic Garden, pp. 71-85. '6A. U. Pope, A Survey of Persian Art, Vol. Ill: Architecture (Tokyo, London and New York, 1964/5), p. 1,428. For Iranian and other ancient Near Eastern descriptions of Paradise, see H. R. Patch, The Other World (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), pp. 8-16. In the Grand Bundahishn, one of the forms in which the departed soul's den (i.e., his "religion") that he encounters after death appears to him is that of a verdant garden; cf. M. Mole, "Daena, le pont Cinvat et l'initiation dans le Mazdeisme," Revue de I'histoire des religions, 67 (1966), 176. '7For images of Paradise in Manichaean texts, see M. Boyce, The Manichaean Hymn-Cycles in Parthian (London, 1954), pp. 15-23 and passim; cf. also (for survivals in Coptic Manichaeanism) C. R. C. Allberry, A Manichaean Psalm-Book, Part II (Stuttgart, 1938), passim, and especially pp. 224-25. '8Pope, p. 1,429; cf. Lehrman, pp. 61-62. '9James Dickie, "The Hispano-Arabic Garden: Its Philosophy and Function," BSOAS, 31 (1968), 238; cf. Lehrman, passim; G. Marqais, "Les jardins de l'Islam," Melanges d'histoire et d'archeologie de l'occident musulman, Vol. I (Alger, 1957), p. 234; Schimmel, "The Celestial Garden," pp. 13-22. 20Cf. Nasr, p. 99; Pinder-Wilson, pp. 71-73. For descriptions of Islamic gardens, see the works cited by Lehrman and Wilber; the articles by Dickie (an expanded version, "The Islamic Garden in Spain," appears in The Islamic Garden, pp. 89-105) and Marqais; Pope, pp. 1,429-43. On correspondences between the features of gardens and other landscapes (particularly the locus amoenus), see Giamatti, pp. 33 ff. 21Cf. Lehrman, pp. 31-33, and especially Pearsall, pp. 78-80. This unease finds expression in Christian allegorizations of the Song of Songs (cf. Stanley Stewart, The Enclosed Garden, Madison, 1966, especially pp. 3-30) as well as in the relatively frequent occurrence in Western literature of gardens representing evil, such as the "false Elysia" of the gardens of Dragontino, Falerina, and Morgana in Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato (discussed by Michael Murrin, The Allegorical Epic, Chicago, 1980, pp. 53-85; cf. particularly pp. 74-84, on the significance of their "Oriental" locale) and Acrasia's Bower of Bliss in Spenser's Faerie Queene. In Christian literature, earthly paradises most often suffer by comparison to the celestial; cf. Martz's discussion of Henry Vaughan's "Regeneration," pp. 8 ff., and Stewart, passim. 22J.-M. Vadet, L'esprit courtois en orient (Paris, 1968), p. 251. 23Cf.J. Monroe, Hispano-Arabic Poetry (Berkeley, 1974), p. 20; on Andalusian garden poetry, see Dickie, "The Hispano-Arabic Garden"; Marqais, p. 238; and H. Peres, La poesie andalouse en arabe classique au XIe siecle, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1954), pp. 161-201. The treatment of nature by Arabic poets has been discussed by G. E. von Grunebaum, "The Response to Nature in Arabic Poetry," JNES, 4 (1945), 137-51, but his thesis statement (based on a comparison of Arabic poetry up to about A.D. 1000 with Western poetry since the Renaissance, a treatment that creates serious methodological difficulties) that "on the whole, nature means considerably less to the Arab than to the occidental artist, both as source and as object of his inspiration" (p. 137; my emphasis) is open to considerable question. Similar problems arise in Ritter's treatment both of Arabic imagery and of that of NezamT, where his analysis is largely conditioned by his use of Goethe's verse as a standard of comparison. 24See the study by de Fouch6cour, especially p. 12. A partial exception seems to be the "mythopoetic" narratives of Manfichehri; cf. Hanaway, pp. 58-59, and Clinton, pp. 112-23. The tendency towards "analogical" imagery is also visible in the use of descriptions of nature to suggest the poet's

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state or situation (e.g., Manfichehri's journey across the icy desert evokes his desolation at the loss of his patron; cf. DTvan,edited by M. Dabir-Siyaqi, 2nd ed., Tehran, 1338/1959, pp. 53 ff.). The evolution of this type of imagery requires extensive further study. 25Fakhral-Din Gorganl, Vis and Ramin, translated by G. Morrison (New York, 1972); see especially the use of the garden as a figure for the state (pp. 15, 353); the song of garden and tree in which is concealed the story of the two lovers (p. 203); and the "garden of love" in the heart, once fertile and blooming, later afflicted by the winter of separation (p. 286). 26Quoted by A. J. Arberry, Classical Persian Literature (London, 1958), pp. 107-9; he does not indicate the original source. On the importance of nature imagery for the Persian mystics, see Schimmel, "The Celestial Garden,"passim, and Mystical Dimensions, pp. 295-309. 27The metaphorical mode can be illustrated by a typical passage from Ruizbehan BaqlT's 'Abhar al-'Asheqin (edited by Henry Corbin and Mohammad Mo'cn, Tehran, 1337/1959, pp. 111-12): "When the spring of hope appears, the winter of fear flees. The sun of love reaches the station of Aries in the heart; the world of reason and wisdom becomes filled with the blossoms of hope's New Year; the nightingales whose tongues had been cut by the shears of fear sing of Unity on the branches of the rose-tree of love; the soul's airs become perfumed by the influence of hope." Sana'T in the HadTqat al-HaqTqa employs metaphorical description and parable primarily as tropes; cf., for example, the chapter entitled "On the Description of Spring and on Similitudes" (Andar Sefat-e RabT' o TashbThit Giuyad) or the parable of the dialogue with the World Soul (Nafs-e Koll), HadTqatal-Haq'qa, edited by M. T. Modarres Razavi (Tehran, 1329/1940) pp. 400-2, 345-50. 281nhis analysis of NezamT's imagery Ritter, although mentioning instances of concrete visual imagery being used to symbolize internal or spiritual (seelische) states, stresses its visual, "decorative" and metaphorical qualities (cf. especially pp. 7-8, 29-44, 70-73, and passim). In my opinion NezamT's imagery, while iconographic and metaphorical, is less decorative than emblematic; in other words, it is based on the belief (in Vinaver's words) "that the universe formed an ordered structure of such a kind that the pattern of the whole was reproduced in the pattern of the parts, and that inferences from one category of phenomena to the other were therefore valid methods of approach for the understanding of either" (p. 100). Correspondences between imagery and mood are not based on romantic empathy but on analogy; similarly, the relationships between things are not products of fantasy but perceived as inhering in the objects themselves. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the cosmic symbolism of the Haft Paykar; but it is also the basis of the analogical symbolism of both Rumi and Hafez. Cf. also Chenu, pp. 5-48, 99 ff. 29Onthe allegorical progress, see Fletcher, pp. 147-57. 30TheHaft Paikar (The Seven Beauties), translated by C. E. Wilson, Vol. I (London, 1924), p. 125 (hereinafter referred to as Wilson); page references in the text are to this translation, which I have used throughout unless otherwise noted (despite its often pedantic language), amending where necessary; Haft Paykar, edited by Vahid Dastgerdi, 2nd ed. (Tehran, 1955), p. 159 (hereinafter designated Haft Paykar): Eram aram-e del nehadesh nam/khandeh minutshcharkh-e minuifim. The garden's nomenclature seems to arise as much from the wordplay as from actual identification with the Garden of Eram; moreover, the name ardm-e del evokes the idea of the virtue of qend'at that is a central value in the episode. On the importance of punning and wordplay in allegory, see M. Quilligan, The Language of Allegory (Ithaca, 1979), pp. 40-42 and passim. 3'NezamT's use of allegorical names (whether of places or persons) is a significant feature of his work; on the "magic of names" in allegory cf. Fletcher, p. 161, and Quilligan, pp. 163-66; see also Chenu, p. 107, on the symbolic importance of names. 32Wilson (p. 143) translates a variant of the verse that appears in the editions of DastgerdT (see Haft Paykar, p. 180, n. 6) and of H. Ritter and J. Rypka (Heft Peiker, ein romantisches Epos, Prague, Orientalni Ustav, 1934, p. 32 1. 510). I have preferred the variant as consistent with the light/dark symbolism of the episode. 33Dastgerdi (Haft Paykar, p. 180, n. 6) observes that the king's downfall was caused by his "immature and inordinate desire" or concupiscence (arzu-ye khdm-e ziyadeh-talabt); and indeed, the alternation between tales that represent actions motivated by the concupiscent (I, III, V, VII) and those that speak of the irascible faculties (II, IV, VI) is an important structural principle of this portion of the work. For a discussion of these faculties, see NasTral-Din TUsT,The Nasirean Ethics, translated by G. M. Wickens (London, 1964), pp. 42-43; for similar patterns in Western literature,

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cf. Murrin, pp. 60-74; Pierre Gallais, Perceval et l'initiation (Paris, 1972), pp. 122-27. On contentment, see Nasirean Ethics, p. 83; it is one of the 12 virtues subsumed under continence ('effat), all of which have relevance with respect to this tale. One should be careful, however, of giving this or any of the other tales an overly simplistic interpretation. Ambivalence is a basic element of NezamT's allegory; as Fletcher observes, "The prohibitions that are discovered by the hero of the ethical fable are not so much rational laws of a conditional sort; they are absolute imperatives. The heart of moralizing actions becomes temptation" (p. 225; cf. pp. 224 ff.). The principle of the ambivalent nature of human experience, symbolized through the motif of appearance vs. reality, informs the entire Haft Paykar. 34Glossed by the poet as an emblem of the "sky," i.e., the world; cf. Haft Paykar, p. 244, n. 1, where the editor comments that this is an "allusion to the moral (natTjeh)of the fable," and interprets the anatomical components of this emblematic dragon. The Manichaean conception of hell as a waterless desert inhabited by fiends is strongly evoked in this segment; cf., for example, Boyce, pp. 87-91. 35Cf. Haft Paykar, p. 253, where the second verse is more ambiguous than the translation (the "heart's blood" may refer to Mahan's sufferings in his journey to the garden); in the third, the flowers "confess" (ecteraf) to the gardener's ownership of all. A possible source for this episode is Sand'T's discourse with the World Soul, represented as a hermit, mentioned above (note 27); for an interesting Western parallel, see the description of the realm and palace of Nature in Bernard Sylvester's De Mundi Universitate, discussed by Giamatti, pp. 54-55. 36DastgerdT(Haft Paykar, p. 262, n. 2) glosses this and the following line as a warning against attachment to this world. Mahan was originally led astray through drunkenness, symbolic of lack of control. It seems more plausible, however, to interpret the episode as an allegory warning against exclusive reliance on the evidence of the senses, without the controls provided by reason (personified by the gardener whose advice Mahan fails to heed) and right guidance (in the person of Khezr). The transformation of the beautiful lady into an IfrTtrecalls the Zoroastrian conception of the daena (cf. note 16 above) that greets the soul of the deceased after death: if he has been righteous, his daena takes the form of a beautiful maiden, but if he has done evil, it is embodied in an ugly hag. Cf. M. Mole, "Lejugement des morts dans l'Iran pre-Islamique," Sources Orientales, IV: Lejugement des morts (Paris, 1961), pp. 143-75. The image of the world as an ugly crone with many bridegrooms is commonplace in Islamic literature and suggests an influence of this tradition. 37On right guidance (another of the virtues of continence), see Nasirean Ethics, p. 83. Ritter's comment on the poet's comparison of Mahan to a thirsting man finding water ("As soon as Mahan heard the words of Khizr, . . . a thirsty man, he saw the Font of Life," p. 212)-"Surely plain water would have been enough" (p. 28), and the implication that this is a forced correspondence established to "fit the mood" of the scene-seems to miss the point of the episode; the motif of the Water of Life, moreover, recurs throughout the poem in various context (as in the conclusion of the final tale, and the description of Bahram's royal garden in spring). (Haft Paykar, p. 267, n. 1) interprets this symbolism as alluding to acquiring immunity 38DastgerdT to the world's afflictions by taking on its color (hamrangi-ye rCuzegar). On the synecdochic relationship of microcosm to macrocosm symbolized by dress, cf. Fletcher, pp. 110-20. 39It is significant that this last princess is Iranian (early in the poem Nezaml praises Iran as the "heart of the world" p. 21); the pearl is associated with divine love and knowledge acquired through spiritual self-purification, and with the Prophet (cf. Koran 21:107); a slight alteration in voweling in this already symbolic name (leaving its orthography unchanged) produces dorostT, "truth." On figurative uses of the pearl in the Persian tradition, see M. Mokri, "Le symbole de la perle dans le folklore persan et chez les kurdes fiddles de v6rit6 (Ahl-e haqq)," JA, 248 (1960), 463-81. 401 use the term "comedy" in its sense of a mode in which the action depicted is grounded in reality and concludes in a positive fashion (generally with a wedding), as opposed to the tragic mode in which the action is typically grounded in unreality and concludes negatively (generally with a death); either may be employed in romance. Cf. Fletcher, pp. 175-76; Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, 1971), pp. 33 ff.; J. Rypka, "Les sept princesses de Nezhami," in L'ame de l'lran, edited by R. Grousset (Paris, 1951), pp. 124-25. 4'The principles of kingship presented in the Haft Paykar resemble remarkably those outlined in the contemporary prose mirror, the Bahr al-Fava'ed, described by A. K. S. Lambton, "Islamic

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Mirrors for Princes," Quaderno dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 160 (1971), 426-36, in particular the distinction between kingship by law (padeshahTbe-shart-e shar') and by desire (be-khast-e tab' o movifaqat-e nafs); cf. Lambton, 426; Bahr al-Fava'ed, edited by M. T. Danesh-Pazhuih (Tehran, 1966), p. 118. This distinction-also phrased as between "force" and "law" (cf. Nasirean Ethics, pp. 227-29)-is well known in mirror literature both East and West; it may also be described as material versus spiritual rule, the first symbolized in the Haft Paykar by Bahram's man-made winter garden, the second by his pleasance in spring. 42This does not represent-as Ritter has it (although vague on the point; cf. pp. 27, 50-51)-a "defeat" of astrological by religious thought; NezamTemploys astral symbolism to represent natural law (as seen also, for example, in the cycle of the seasons within which the tales are framed), which is not in conflict with divine law but a proof of it. Bahram's progress constitutes an evolution in which lower stages in the hierarchy of cosmic order lead upwards to higher. The highest of these, for Bahram, is reached when, with his symbolic wedding of Justice, he combines in his person the offices of both king and priest-a development that sheds light on his final disappearance into the cave, with its marked associations with the imam gha'ib and his precursor, the Zoroastrian Saoshyant (cf. J. Duchesne-Guillemin, La religion de 'lIranancien, Paris, 1962, pp. 261-64, 343-54; Corbin, pp. 282-98). Ritter's comment on the "dreadful senselessness" of this occurrence (p. 68) thus seems misplaced. On the hierarchy of the natural order, cf. Nasirean Ethics, pp. 43 ff.; Chenu, pp. 23 ff., 115. 431n his prologue Nezaml associates himself specifically with four famed advisors to princes: Aristotle, Bozorgmehr, Barbad, and Nezam al-Molk (p. 22). 44Ritterdiscusses the analogical aspect of NezamT'simagery only in connection with what he calls "imagistic aphorisms" (pp. 70-73), but I find it to be the underlying principle of his imagery in general. 45Cf. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, pp. 267-72, 289-91, and Triumphal Sun, pp. 225-26; Eva Discourses of RimT, Meyerovitch, Mystique et poesie en Islam (Brussels, 1972), pp. 165 ff.; RiumT, translated by A. J. Arberry (London, 1961), p. 238 (all references to the Discourses are to Arberry's translation). Ruim's views on "comparison" recall the medieval belief in the "dissimilar similitudes" of the cosmic hierarchy (a view originating in the work of pseudo-Dionysius) and the consequent tendency to anagogical symbolism, especially in mystical writings; cf. Chenu, pp. 123-24. 46Rumi quotes Koran 7:139: "And when his Lord revealed Him to the mountain He made it crumble into dust." 47Kulliyat-e Shams, edited by Bad!c al-Zaman ForOzanfar, 8 vols. (Tehran, 1957-1966); all citations are from this edition (designated as F). Translations not otherwise indicated are my own. 48Cf. Discourses, p. 104 and also p. 33. 49Cf. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, pp. 318-20, and especially Triumphal Sun, which discusses Rum?'s imagery in detail. 50Cf. Meyerovitch, pp. 192 ff. 5'Although there is evidence to suggest that personification was an important device in Avestan religious literature at least, its usage (perhaps due to linguistic changes, and chiefly to loss of gender) does not seem to have persisted in New Persian; for an example, see the discussion of the Art Yasht (Yasht 17, in which Art "Fortune" is personified as female) in H. W. Bailey, Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-Century Books (Oxford, 1943), pp. 4 ff. The chief example of lengthy personification allegory in Persian is 'Attar's Manteq al- Tayr (which finds a source in Sana''s qasTdadepicting the birds praising God). In Western allegorical literature, personification (even in the context of the animal fable) generally involves agents intended to represent abstractions, or topical allusion; cf. Fletcher, app. 26-35. 52Discourses,p. 144; cf. pp. 46-47. 53Mystical Poems of RumT,translated by A. J. Arberry (Chicago, 1968), #141 (= F 1121). 54Cf. R. M. Rehder, "The Style of Jalal al-Din Rium," in The Scholar and the Saint, p. 276. Schimmel seems to insist on a "realistic" quality in Riuml's nature imagery when she states, for example, that "Only those who have spent some days in May in the Konya plain can fully understand the truthfulness of Ruimi's imagery" (Triumphal Sun, p. 83; cf. "A Spring Day," p. 255). In fact, the personified flora of Riim's gardens are as near abstractions as can be; the "truthfulness" of this imagery arises from its correspondence not to physical reality, but to spiritual veritude.

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55Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, p. 231; cf. Discourses, pp. 20-21, and F 122: DTdamrokh-e khib-e golshanT-ra/an cheshm o cheragh-e rowshanT-rd,"I saw the beautiful face of a rose-garden, / that 'darling' of brilliant light"; also F 56. 56Cf.Quilligan, pp. 25-26, 40-41; Fletcher, p. 171, alludes to the "microcosmic character" of much allegorical imagery, where each word must contain within itself the entire concept. 57Cf. Mystical Poems, p. 169, n. 6:16, and Koran 5:114-15. For the Sufis the "greater holy war" (al-jihad al-akbar) was that against the nafs ammara, the base aspect of the soul; cf. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, p. 112. 58Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, p. 89; Rium employs primarily the type of "emblematic" personification described by Fletcher, pp. 25-26, and 30-34. 59Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, pp. 217-22, and notes; cf. F 2849. 60Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, p. 86; cf. F 589. 61Cf.Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, pp. 75-82, for imagery of water. 62Cf.Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, pp. 27, 298-99, Triumphal Sun, pp. 90-94. 63Cf.Schimmel, "A Spring Day," pp. 256-59. 64Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, pp. 260-61. 65Cf.Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, p. 88, and F 968. 66Mystical Poems, #69. 67Chenu, p. 85. RuimT's symbolic imagery is anagogical in that objects (created beings in general) are seen as valuable for their capacity to provide knowledge of the unseen Reality behind them; the "upwards reference of things" in the cosmic hierarchy leads ultimately to knowledge of their Creator (cf. Chenu, pp. 13-28). For many general parallels with RumT'sview of creation as the mirror of its creator (and a probable source), see, for example, Ibn al-CArabi, The Bezels of Wisdom, translated by R. W. J. Austin (New York, 1980), passim; he observes, for example (p. 73): "The truth is that Reality is manifest in every created being and in every concept, while He is [at the same time] hidden from all understanding, except for one who holds that the Cosmos is His form and His identity." 68Rehder,p. 282; cf. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, pp. 288, 315-16. 69Bolbol ze shikh-e sarv be-golbdng-e pahlavl/mfkhand dash dars-e maqamat-e maCnavT. In my reading I prefer the order of lines in the edition of H. Pezhman (Tehran, 1939, #468) to that of QG. 7Cf. SudT,IV, 2595-96. 7'The poetic use of the terms maCna, ma navTsuggests something similar to the significatio or sen referred to by medieval European poets as the "deeper meaning" underlying the surface of the poem or its story, which the poet attempts to reveal in treating his (essentially traditional) material. Cf. Vinaver, pp. 15 ff. 72Cf. R. Lescot, "Essai d'une chronologie de l'oeuvre de Hafiz," BEO (Damas), 10 (1944), 59-61; J. Rypka, History of Iranian Literature (Dordrecht, 1968), pp. 266-67. 73Thepoem can be schematically represented as an example of ring composition (a type of structure found with some frequency in Hafez) analyzable in the following terms (based on the reading of Pezhman; cf. note 69 above): A (line 1), Lesson (sung by nightingale); B (lines 2-3), Love (general and implicit: love poems in courtly garden); C (line 4), Exemplum and warning; C' (line 5) Sententia in support of line 4 (both linked with court); B' (lines 6-7), Love (specific and explicit: poet/lover "destroyed" by beloved); A' (line 8), Lesson (stated by gardener); X (line 9), Cap ("distancing" of poet from poem). 74Cf.de Fouchecour, p. 176; Wilber, pp. 24-25. 75Cf., for example, Ghazzall's Book of Counsel for Kings (NasThat al-Muluk), translated by F. R. C. Bagley (London, 1964), pp. 53-54, 74. 76Fletcher, p. 71; cf. his discussion (p. 85 ff.) of "teleologically controlled tropes," in which "the whole may determine the sense of the parts, and the parts be governed by the intention of the whole," exemplified by synecdoche, which "would always call to the reader's mind some larger organization of symbols to which system it bore an integral relationship." Cf. also R. Tuve, Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery (Chicago, 1972), pp. 105-9. 77Sobhdam morgh-e chaman be-gol-e now-khasteh goft/ndz kam kon keh dar-Tnbagh basTchon to shekoft. Cf. SudT, II, 510-12. p. 74. 78GhazzalT,

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79Cf. QG 379, 380. For Rfim the gardener is God, who knows the hidden nature of the seed as of the human soul; cf. F. 3048, and Discourses, p. 112. Koran 27:60-61 refers to God as He who sends rain down to earth and makes gardens and trees grow-a view that informs Rumi's garden imagery but is less obvious in that of Hafez (although the dehqdn of QG 486, creator of the garden and progenitor of a "son" to whom he imparts advice, might conceivably be taken as implying God, I think Hafez here is using the authority of ancient tradition to reinforce the Islamic authority already suggested by the reference to Moses and the Burning Bush, towhTd,etc.). 80Cf. SidT, III, 1968; see also de Fouchecour, pp. 58-60, who points out that in the early qasTda the cypress, though a metaphor for the beloved, was not employed to designate the prince. 81Hafez and NezamT both (like many of their contemporaries) find sublimation of man's baser impulses and his consequent fulfillment to rest not on asceticism but on the principle of attraction upward through the hierarchy of cosmic correspondences, according to which each level of creation finds its ultimate perfection; cf. Chenu, pp. 24-25; Nasirean Ethics, pp. 51 ff. 821nhis study on Manuchehri, Clinton remarks on the similarity of the figure of the poet as lover to that of the poet as eulogizer, but adds that this resemblance "is one to which no poet of ManuchihrT's day ever alluded. To have done so might have been considered an extraordinary impertinence and a punishable presumption" (p. 122). But as he himself continues (p. 123), "an overt delineation of the relationship was unnecessary"; it was clearly perceived, not merely because of its existence in reality, but even more as a result of the analogical habit of thought that was beginning, in ManuchehrT'stime, to find increasing literary expression. 83M. Manzalaoui, "The pseudo-Aristotelian Kitab Sirr al-Asrdr: Facts and Problems," Oriens, 23-24(1974), 160. 84Chenu,p. 6. 85Quotedby I. G. MacCaffrey, Spenser's Allegory (Princeton, 1976), p. 33. 86Chenu,p. 33.