On my latest visit to Iran, I purchased a delightful, handcrafted artwork: a miniature gold tableau adorned with elegant flowers, upon which is inscribed a famous line of Persian poetry. The verse speaks of the destitution one embodies before God, pleading for a shred of mercy. Powerful though it is, at the time I did not think of locating the source of the verse. It sufficed merely as a decoration.
Months later, I stumbled upon the entire poem from which the line is found. Two verses resonated with me: the verse inscribed on the tableau, and the verse that immediately precedes it:
Fasten a goblet to my shroud
So that upon that Day
With the overflowing wine
My heart’s fear I’ll allay
I’m in tatters at your threshold
So have mercy on me
For other than to your great love
I have no place to flee
I knew when I read these verses that I had come across something worth noting and pondering; that I had struck gold with Hafez’s paradoxical imagery. Paradox is the playground of Persian poets and within that arena Hafez reigns supreme.
In the first verse Hafez embodies the nonchalant, carefree attitude of the Qalandar Sufi. The Islamic tradition encourages mourners to tie sacred relics to the shroud of the deceased: inscriptions of prayers and litanies, or perhaps soil sourced from a sacred land. Hafez inverts this procedure, instead imploring his morticians to fasten a goblet of wine to his corpse. As Hafez had committed the Qur’an to memory, he knew all too well that alcohol is strictly forbidden in Islam. His usage of wine here may be read as allegorical but the intended effect is clear: he is intentionally provocative, openly flirting with blasphemy. He holds no fear of the wrath he may incur for his bold actions.
In the second verse Hafez adopts a radically different approach. The shift in tone is markedly noticeable in the Persian. Here he becomes the meek, humble servant; the grovelling pauper who seeks but a sliver of God’s mercy. There is no talk of wine, nor any hint of irreverent disobedience. There is only hope and fear.
What, then, are we meant to learn here from Hafez?
Hafez is illustrating for us, in a way that only he can, the balanced perspective that we should adopt when we think about, or supplicate to, God. Indeed, many who believe in God struggle to conceive of the relationship they should hold with God: what kind of relationship should one hold with an all-powerful entity that is simultaneously capable of great reward and punishment?
Hafez answers that we should hold hope and fear in equal measure. Indeed, in our relationship with God, we should strive for a balance between competing emotions. God is to be loved, feared, beseeched and revered.
Without any hope in God, despair settles within our souls and we fall victim to the snares of nihilism. Without any fear, we drape ourselves in garments of hubris and become emboldened beyond measure, going beyond all moral limits. Without any love of God, the relationship between creation and Creator that extends beyond time devolves into a long-winded business transaction.
It is in the balance of these competing emotions that one gets closer to making sense of our relationship with God. Indeed, for Hafez, these emotions funnel into each other, and at their peak, melt into each other: within hope lies a seed of fear; and within fear lies a seed of hope, each tempering the excesses of the other. Simmering beneath these emotions is love, for love is a precondition to holding any hope or fear.
This is my interpretation of the verses of Hafez, based on my own faith tradition and worldview. It represents the ideal emotional state of a believer, one that I rarely achieve in my life.
I have often feared God far too little, held on to unreasonable hopes, and uttered words of love that were untethered to actions. But the poetry of Hafez reminds me of what I should be striving for and, thankfully, has become far more than a decoration.
