Sadi - The gulistan of sadi: the rose garden.

The Persian poet Sa'di, generally known in literary history asMuslih-al-Din, belongs to the great group of writers known as theShirazis, or singers of Shiraz. His "Gulistan," or "Rose Garden," is themature work of his life-time, and he lived to the age of one hundred andeight. The Rose Garden was an actual thing, and was part of the littlehermitage, to which he retired, after the vicissitudes and travels ofhis earlier life, to spend his days in religious contemplation, and theembodiment of his experience in reminiscences, which took the form ofanecdotes, sage and pious reflections, bon-mots, and exquisite lyrics.When a friend visited him in his cell and had filled a basket withnosegays from the garden of the poet with roses, hyacinths, spikenards,and sweet-basils, Sa'di told him of the book he was writing, andadded:"What can a nosegay of flowers avail thee? Pluck but one leaffrom my Rose Garden; the rose from yonder bush lasts but a few days, butthis Rose must bloom to all eternity."

Sa'di has been proved quite correct in this estimate of his own work.The book is indeed a sweet garden of unfading freshness. If we compareSa'di with Hafiz, we find that both of them based their theory of lifeupon the same Sufic pantheism. Both of them were profoundly religiousmen. Like the strong and life-giving soil out of whose bosom sprang therose-tree, wherein the nightingales sang, was the fixed religiousconfidence, which formed the support of each poet's mind, amid all thevagaries of fancy, and the luxuriant growth of fruit and flower whichtheir genius gave to the world. Hafiz is the Persian Anacreon. As heraises his voice of thrilling and unvarying sweetness, his steps reel,he waves the thyrsus, and his flushed cheek shows the inspiration of thevine. To him the Supreme Being has much in common with the Indian orThracian Dionysus, the god of perennial youth, joyous revel, andexhilaration. Hafiz can never be the guide, though he may be the cheererof mortals, adding more to the gayety than to the wisdom of life. Butboth in the western and in the eastern world Sa'di must always be lookedupon as the guide and enlightener of those who taste life, and lovepoetry. It has been said by a wise man that poetry is the greatinstructor of mature minds. Many a man turning away in weariness fromthe controversies, the insincerities, and the pretentiousness of theintellectualists around him, has exclaimed, "Give me my Horace." ButHorace with all his bonhommie, his common sense, and his acuteness, isbut the representative of a narrow Roman coterie of the Augustan age.How thin, flimsy, and unspiritual does he appear in comparison with themarvellous depth, the spiritual insight, the tenderness and power ofexpression which characterized Sa'di.

Sa'di had begun his life as a student of the Koran and became earlyimbued with the quietism of Islam. The cheerfulness and exuberant joywhich characterize the poems he wrote before he reached his fortiethyear, had bubbled up under the repressions of severe discipline andausterity. But the religion of Mohammed was soon exchanged by him, underthe guidance of a famous teacher, for the wider and more transcendentalsystem of Sufism. Within the area of this magnificent scheme, theboldest ever formulated under the name of religion, he found the libertywhich his soul desired. Early discipline had made him a morally soundman, and it is the goodness of Sa'di that lends such a warm andendearing charm to his works. The last finish was given to hisintellectual training by the travels which he took after the Tartarinvasion desolated Persia, in the thirteenth century. India, Arabia,Syria, were in turn visited. He found Damascus a congenialhalting-place, and lived there for some time, with an increasingreputation as a sage and poet. He preached at Baalbec on thefugitiveness of human life, on faith, love, and rest in God. Hewandered, like Jerome, in the wilderness about Jerusalem, and worked asa slave in Africa in the trenches of Tripoli: he travelled the lengthand breadth of Asia Minor. When he arrived back at Shiraz, he had passedthe limit of three-score years and ten, and there he remained in hishermitage and his garden, to arrange the result of all his studies, hisexperiences, and his sufferings, in that consummate work which he hasnamed the "Rose Garden," after the little cultivated plot in which hespent his declining days and drew his last breath.

The "Gulistan" is divided into eight chapters, each dealing with aspecific subject and partaking of the nature of an essay: although thesechapters are composed of disjointed paragraphs, generally beginning withan aphorism or an anecdote and closing with an original poem of a fewlines. Sometimes these paragraphs are altogether lyrical. We are struck,first of all, by the personal character of these paragraphs; many ofthem relate the experience of the poet in some part of his travels,expressing his comment upon what he had seen and heard. His commentsgenerally take the form of practical wisdom, or religious suggestion. Hegives us the impression that he knows life and the human heartthoroughly. It may be said of him, as Arnold said of Sophocles, he wasone "who saw life steadily, and saw it whole." On the other hand, thereis not the slightest trace of cynical acerbity in his writings. He haspassed through the world in the independence of a self-possessed soul,and has found it all good, saving for the folly of fools and thewretchedness and degradation of the depraved. There is no bitterfountain in the "Rose Garden," and the old man's heart is as fresh aswhen he left Shiraz, thirty years before; the sprightliness of hispoetry has only been ripened and tempered to a more exquisite flavor, bythe increase of wisdom and the perfecting of art.

Above all, we find in Sa'di the science of life, as comprising moralityand religion, set forth in a most suggestive and a most attractive form.In some way or other the "Rose Garden" may remind us of the "Essays" ofBacon, which were published in their complete form the year before thegreat English philosopher died. Both works cover a large area of thoughtand experience; but the Englishman is clear, cold, and sometimescynical, while the Persian is more spiritual, though not less acute, andhas the fervor of the poet which Bacon lacks, and the religious devotionwhich the "Essays" altogether miss. The "Rose Garden" has maxims whichare not unworthy of being cherished amid the highest Christiancivilization, while the serenity of mind, the poetic fire, thetransparent sincerity of Sa'di, make his writings one of those bookswhich men may safely take as the guide and inspirer of their inmostlife. Sa'di died at Shiraz about the year 1292 at the reputed age of onehundred and ten.

E.W.