The Persian Rubäl: Common Sense in Analysis
Von Michael Ckaiq Hillmanit, Chicago
In a recent article, entitled "Die Struktur eines Robai (ZDMG 1968,
pp. 75—8)," G. L. Windfuhr endeavors, by means of a "Formalanalyse"
of his own devising, to demonstrate that the speaker of the following
poem means something quite different from what he literally says :
aknün za sabä däman-e gvl chäk shude
bvJbvl za jamäi-e gul tarabnäk shude
dar säye-ye gul neshin ke besyär in gul
dar khäk furü rizad o mä khäk shude.
(#50 in A. J. Arberry, ed., The Bubä'iyät of
Omär Khayyam. London, 1949)
The piain sense of this poem, which Sädeq Hedäyat singles out as an
example of Khayyam's sensitivity in describing nature (Taräne-häye
Khayyäm, 4th ed. Tehran, 1963, p. 59), is plain enough: the speaker
urges his audience to take advantage of life's fleeting opportunity to
enjoy the beauty of nature, here epitomized by the rose, which inspires
the nightingale with joy and whose petals the zephyr's caresses open.
The obvious point to this carpe diem plea is not so much that the rose
wül eventually wither and die, which it will, but that we, humans, are
even less enduring that the rose.
Mr. Windfuhr, after acknowledging something of this level of meaning
applies his theory to the poem and arrives at this paraphrase :
1 der Rock-Saum der Rose, d.i. der Geliebte ist zerrissen, jetzt vor
Morgengrauen 2 die Nachtigall, d.i. der Liebende, ich, ist begeistert
von ihrer Schönheit 3 setz dich, d.i. ich setze mich, in ihren Schatten,
d.i. zu ihr oder vor sie 4 viele Rosen, d.i. Geliebte faUen 4 zu Boden,
ins Gras, und wir mit ihnen.
To this explication, Mr. Windfuhr adds: "Es gibt keinen zwingenden
formalen oder iiüialthchen Grund, diese Deutung als um-ichtig zu er¬
weisen."
Now, in examiiüng Mr. Windfuhr's interpretation vis-ä-vis the text
of the poem, one can say that the nightingale and rose obviously often
represent lover and beloved in classical Persian poetry. Yet, there is
no reason to suppose that the poet is to be identified with the nightingale in a description of nature unless he so indicate. Then, in the third mi^a', the phrase "besyär in gul" is amenable to two interpretations : (1) "many times this rose..." or (2) "many such roses..." Though a personal
preference is possible here, both meanings must be operable in any inter-
The Persian Rub&'i: Common Sense in Analysis 99
pretation of the poem. And, in the final misra', the word "mä" smrely
refers to speaker and audience alike; i.e., the human race, the poet's
awareness of whose mortaUty has prompted this poem and many others
hke it in the Arberry edition cited. Mr. Wmdfuhr's interpretation is
syntactically implausible as well; for, the phrase "mä khäk shude" is
prior in time to "besyär in gul dar khäk furü rizad", which is to say:
"When many such roses (this rose) fall (s) to the ground we wiU have
(long since) become dust."
The basis of Mr. Windfuhr's interpretation is his method of analysis
which attaches special significance to some words that are repeated, to
some words that look like other words, and to a word in the middle of
the poem, seen as the poem's center, in relation to which some other
elements are symmetrically arranged. For example, m Mr. Windfuhr's
view, the "key-words" in this poem are "gul," which appears four times, and "khäk," which appears twice. The word "shude" is ignored, however,
even though it appears three times and serves as the radlf for the qäfiye
of "chäk," "tarabnäk," and "khäk." The examination of the rhyme
scheme of a poem is obviously relevant to any analysis of poetic form
because rh3nne signals to the audience that a poem has verse and syn¬
tactical units. That the third misra' of this poem lacks a rhyming word
is structurally of primary importance because, lacking such it naturally
runs on (as opposed to being end-stopped) to the fourth misra', which
thereby gains emphasis and, by virtue of its rhyme word, signals a return
to the previously estabhshed pattern. Mr. Windfuhr is equally silent
about the matter of meter, another very basic formal consideration
since the repetition of a rhjdihm breeds an expectation in an audience
as well as giving an order and congruity to the separable elements of
a poem.
The third — and most important — omission by Mr. Windfuhr is his
failure to comment upon the poetic geiu-e in which the poem in question
assuredly participates. The poem is a Persian rubä'i, for which one can
induce formal, descriptive criteria through an examination of a large
number of rubä'is and for a better understanding of which one can con¬
sider what critics of classical Persian poetry have conceived of by the term.
Had Mr. Windfuhr done either of these things, he would have discovered
that the ruM'l doesn't lend itself very well to a symmetrical structure,
if by symmetry one means items centered about a focal point. For, the
ruM'i, consisting of four mi§ra's, of various hazaj rhythms and either
aaba or aaaa rhyme schemes, lends itself to epigram (A. J. Arberry, ed.
Omar Khayyam: A New Version. New Haven, 1952, p. 33) and, usually,
by virtue of its brevity, meter, and rhyme scheme, culminates in a
"punch" line (L. P. Elwell-Sutton, "The Omar Khayyam Puzzle,"
7»
100 Michael Ckaig Hillmann
RCAJ, 1968, p. 174), which drives home a point, completes a verbal
irony or paradox, or sums up a moral or lesson. Practical proof for this
commonly accepted notion of the nature of the rubä'i can be had simply
by reading a number of rubä'ia minus their final misra'a. If there were
symmetry of the kind Mr. Windfuhr speaks of, one should be able to
predict the content of the final misra', at least sometimes.
These three omissions from the scholarship of one who begins his
investigation by emphasizing the truism that "... ein Robai nicht nur
Inhalt hat sondern auch Form," are as inexcusable as some of what is
included.
For example, in order to strengthen his assertion that the poem
consists of "key-words" which are grouped around a neutral, central
word, Mr. Windfuhr says, "... das geschriebene /gl/ nicht nur als /gol/
'Rose' sondern auch als /gel/ 'Erde, Staub' gelesen werden kann." And,
although he admits that such meaning makes little literal sense in con¬
text, he continues, "... sie ist aber — sozusagen auf höherer Ebene
sinnvoll, d.h. thematisch, doch nur allein infolge der Zusammenstellung
der Schlüsselwörter." Now, this is nonsense for many reasons, the most
obvious of which being that this poem, in all likelihood recited extempo¬
raneously without prior commission to writing and certainly orally
transmitted for some time, was — and still is — intended to be heard and
not to be read. And, in the recitation, there isn't the remotest chance
that an auditor will be reminded of the ambiguity of Persian script.
Secondly, the lexical difference between "khäk" and "gel" would make any farfetched coimection between "gul" and "gel" meaningless. "Grel"
means "clay," which is a popular word in the rubä'i tradition (#93, 114,
170 in the Arberry edition), but in a very different context. Thirdly, was
the "gäf" of "gul" in the manuscript Arberry edited written with two
strokes or one (p. vii)? If it was written with one stroke, don't other
words thus become associated with "gul?" Fourthly, how does one
decide which words to choose in his search for other words that are
similar to the chosen ones in writing? Suppose a "key-word" is one the spelling of which has varied over the centuries?
In any case, this problem of misreading (or reading into) Persian
script has been disposed of in the convincing rebuttals of W. B. Henning
and Mary Boyce ("A Novel Interpretation of Hafiz," BSOAS, 1953,
pp. 279—88) to a pair of articles by G. M. Wickens on an ode by Hafez.
Miss Boyce's words on Hafez are equally apphcable here: "... it is
unlikely that anyone will now discover in the poems whoUy new ranges
of meaning, which have been hidden from generations of scholars among
the poet's own countrymen. Any claim to such discovery must be sub¬
jected to the strictest scrutiny" (Ibid., p. 279).
The Persian Rubä'i: Common Sense in Analysis 101
It is, further, unlikely that a new revelation of structural principles
wiU result from the examination of a single poem, which ia what Mr.
Windfuhr has done in his paper on this one rubä'i and in his cited, un¬
published article on a generic ghazal attributed to Khusraväni. It seems
that these two poems and Mr. Windfuhr's curious analysis of them pro¬
vide the basis for his assertion that "gemeinsam hat das Robai mit dem
Ghazel offensichtlich die Überlagerimg von linearer und symmetrischer
Struktur," and his closing assertion that "... erscheint die Komposition¬
technik des Robais komplizierter als die des Ghazels." If there is a sense
in which this latter statement is true, it has escaped everyone from
Shams-e Qays to E. G. Browne, who asserts that rubä'is are "easy to
make or paraphrase {Literary History of Persia, II. Cambridge, 1928,
p. 258)". That there are tens of thousands of these poems in Persian,
composed in every generation during the last thousand years, many of
popular, anonymous origin, many so akin in subject and manner of
treatment that authorship can never be estabhshed, sustantiates,
partially at least, Browne's view.
Browne also asserts in a discussion of poetic genres that "... the
nibai ... is formally ... two bayts ... from the beginning of a qasida
or ghazal written in certain varieties of ... hazaj {Ibid., p. 34)." Although
this assertion can be disproved on grounds of rhyme, it raises a question
for Mr. Windfuhr. For, in strictly formal terms, it is perfectly possible
for a rubä'i to serve as the opening two bayts ofa lengthy ghazal composed
of several pairs of such interdependent bayts. In fact, Mr. Windfuhr's
view of the structure of the rubä'i, that is, a poem that doesn't lead up
to an ending, but is, rather, turned in upon itself, a symmetrical arrange¬
ment of "keywords" around a neutral, central word, is more consonant
with the requirements of individual bayts or pairs of hayts in a ghazal
than the traditional view of the structure of a rubä'i, the movement of
which is toward a climax and rhetorical conclusion in the fourth misra'.
In the traditional view, nothing can easily follow the fourth misra'. But,
according to Mr. Windfuhr, the structure of a rubä'i is more complicated
than that {ghazal) of which it might theoretically be a part. For example,
the following pair of bayts would be technically a rubä'i were the meter
different. Would Mr. Windfuhr argue that they are more complex than
that of which they are a part?
subhdam murgh-e chaman hä gul-e no khäste guft
näz kam kun ke dar in bagh basi chün to shekuft
gul bekhandid ke az räst naranjim veil
hich 'äsheq sukhan-e sakht be ma'shüq naguft.
(A. J. Arberry, Fifty Poems of Häfiz. Cambridge, 1962, p. 47)
Eine Karmaväcanä-Sammlung aus Gilgit
Von OsKAB V. HxNÜBEB, Mainz
Der weitaus größere Teil der Sanslirit-Handschriften, die M. A. Stein
durch einen glückhchen Zufall 1931 bei Gilgit entdeckte*, ist bis heute
nicht herausgegeben. Auch eine genaue Aufnahme der Bestände, die
jetzt in den National Archives of India lagern, steht noch aus*. So ist
es zu begrüßen, daß Raghu Viba und Lokesh Chandka 1959 begonnen
haben, Faksimilia dieser Handschriften zugänghch zu machen. Bisher
hegen vier Mappen als Band X. 1—4 der Serie Satapitaka vor. Die
Faszikel X.3,4 enthalten Blatt 1—84 der Panmvimiciiisahasrikä Pra-
jnäpäramiiö-Handschrift Serial No.* 24 und sind von E. Conze durch
eine Konkordanz zu der Ausgabe von N. Dutt aufgeschlüsselt*.
Der Inhalt der Mappe X.l läßt sich demgegenüber aus der Einleitung
mur unvollkommen entnehmen; im Faszikel X.2 unterließ es der Heraus¬
geber gänzlich, eine Inhaltsangabe beizufügen. Daher soll zunächst im
Folgenden eine Aufstellung der Handschriften gegeben werden, deren
Faksimilia in X.l, 2 vorliegen. Da ich im September 1967 die Originale
der Gilgit-Manuskripte kurz einsehen konnte*, füge ich die bei dieser
Gelegenheit aufgenommenen Maße der Handschriften bei, die aus den
willkürlich vergrößerten Fotografien, die den Faksimilia zugrunde liegen,
rdcht zu ersehen sind*. An diesen Katalog schheßt eine Transkription
der Blätter 39—42 der Handschrift Serial No. 3 an.
Faszikel X.l enthält':
1. Serial No. 2: 8 Blätter, 39,5 zu 8 cm, Schnürloch ca. 12,8 cm vom
hnken Rand. Inhalt : unvollständigesPrätimokgasütra. Edition: Lokesh
Chandka, WZKSO 4. 1960. 1—11.
1 S. Levi, JAs 1932. 13ff.
^ Zwei vorläufige Listen hat Lokesh Chandba publiziert: A Note on the
Gilgit Mantiacripts, JOIB IX. 1959. 135—140 und mit einigen Änderungen
wieder WZKSO IV. 1960. 12f.
' Serial No. bezieht sich auf die Numerierung von Lokesh Chandra,
WZKSO a.a.O. * Näheres ist aus der Einleitung zu X. 3 zu entnehmen.
' Meinen Dank möchte ich an dieser Stelle Herrn S. Roy, Deputy Director,
National Archives, der mir die Handschriften zugänglich maehte, und der
Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, die meine Reise finanziell unterstützte, aussprechen.
' Die Abmessungen un ddie Lage der Sehnürlöcher in der Faksimile-Ausga¬
be dürfen also nieht als Kriterien bei der Ordnung von Handschriften dienen
' Alle im Folgenden besprochenen Hss. sind auf Birkenrinde beidseitig in der 'Gilgitschrift' beschrieben, Typ I bei Waldschmtot, Sanskrithandschriften
aus den Turfanfunden I (Verz. d. Or. Hs. in Deutschland X. 1) p. XXXIV.
