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BAGH I MUATTAR
THE SCENTED GARDEN OF ABDULLAH THE SATIRIST OF SHIRAZ
1910
[Arabic]
TO
THOSE PERSONS
WHOSE UNBENDING UPRIGHTNESS,
PENETRATION, RETENTIVENESS, CAPACITY
FOR HARD WORK, OVERFLOWING ABILITY,
AND INSIDE KNOWLEDGE HAVE SO MUCH ENLARGED
THE FUNDAMENTAL BASIS OF
MY PHILOSOPHY
I
DEDICATE THIS BOOK IN MEMORY
OF THE MANY HAPPY HOURS THAT WE
HAVE SPENT TOGETHER IN THE
SCENTED GARDEN
"ALAIN LUTIY"
TO THE
MEMORY OF MY COLLEAGUE
"ALAIN LUTIY" TRUE FRIEND
PUBLISHED SCHOLAR, GOOD SPORTSMAN,
GALLANT SOLDIER, AND CIVIL GALLANT,
I WHO HAVE DONE SO LITTLE TO COMPLETE
HIS LABOURS DEDICATE MY SHARE THEREIN
ON THIS OCCASION OF OFFERING THEIR RESULTS TO THE WORLD
INTRODUCTION
As everybody nowadays is perfectly aware, a knowledge of the Persian language is practically a necessity for all sojourners in Mohammedan India. In the North-West, even more than Urdu, it is the lingua franca of the upper classes: it is the tongue spoken in the courts of the Believing Princes: it is the dialect alike of love and of literature: and its possession is a very talisman from Kabul to Yarkand.
As a subaltern stationed at R...P..., though in a British Regiment, I found it my first duty to acquire a thorough grounding in the tongue of Hafiz, for these as well as professional reasons. Thus I made the acquaintance of Munshi Mahbub Tantra, a Kashmiri from Bandipur, but one familiar with the ways, as well as the speech, of the `Arami from a residence of nearly 30 years in Shiraz and Bushir. My knowledge of the writings of Richard Burton came in very handy, as also the vague studies of Oriental Mysticism with which I had amused my leisure hours: so that a genuine friendship soon sprang up between pupil and teacher.
After some months, indeed -- and this is how I find myself transformed into that glorious being, an Editor -- the munshi, with the childlike frankness of the Kashmiri, blurted out: The Sahib is not like other sahibs; they begin by casting dirt at my people for their bad life, and end by spitting upon my beard, bidding me to procure for them a fat and fair boy: but the Asylum of the World, who lives like a great Prince and a fakir (meaning: "You have illimitable resources but are abstemious") really understands the `hikmat-i-Illahi' and will not jest if I myself bring to him the treasure of Iran.
What, I exclaimed, you mean to bring me a boy without asking? and dissolved in laughter.
He stammered, with the shamed smile of the Oriental, that he had a sacred and secret book treating of the `hikmat' but that it was never shown to any but a Sufi of great and exceptional sanctity -- such as "the Protector of the Poor, my father and mother, who glances at the earth in the hot season, and the fields are immediately tall and green".
Me.
The MS., produced, bore on its front the legend Bagh-i-muattar, in all the glory of the finest Talik calligraphy. Why! I exclaimed, this is the Scented Garden! the famous Arab treatise of the Sheik al Nefzawi, which Burton rendered into English and his silly wife destroyed. {FN1}
This is the Ars Amoris of the Bedawin! Mahbub, (who had never heard of all this) observed that Allah knew everything, and the Sahib *nearly* everything. The upshot of it all was that I started to read the work as part of my daily task. But it was not until a second perusal that I grasped what had happened. Some pedantic idiot had arranged the Ghazals in alphabetical order, according to the rhymes! A common practise in the diwan of the common poet! here a lamentable and fatal error. For there is a psychological order in the Odes: arrange them properly, and a complete story -- nay! a complete system of philosophy issued therefrom, as the living water from a rock at the touch of Moses' wand. When, after long labour, I had made a provisional arrangement, and shewed my great discovery to Mahbub with open triumph, he calmly observed that oh yes! the Ruler of the World was wiser than Solomon, and the proper order could be checked by noticing that the first letter of the first Ode was Aleph, the second of the second Ba, the third of the third Jim. and so on! I take great credit to myself for the fact that with only six transpositions my provisional order became that of the poet.
{NOTES}
{Footnote 1: The two books have nothing in common but the name. Garden is the almost universal glyph for a book of mystic lore, and Perfume for divine chrism. The Arab book is a treatise on the various methods of copulation, plus some obscene stories, and a collection of prescriptions against impotence, pregnancy, and the like.}
THE POEM
Abdullah el Haji flourished in circa 1600 A.D., well after the classic era of Persian poetry. But his style is highly praised by competent judges, though the older school regret the way in which he has broken away from tradition in:
(a) the introduction of coarse expressions.
(b) the undue exercise of poetic license: such as
(1) his extension of the usual license re the Genitive kasra to all kasra sounds.
(2) his occasional breach of the rule which forbids two inert consonants to occur together, though a friendly commentator ingeniously asserts that he does this only to add to the grimness describing anger, punishment, terror, death, or some unpleasant idea:
(3) his treatment of the Tarijiband; and
(4) his trick of inventing words to carry out some extravagant metaphor or paranomasia:
(c) his novel symbolism, which they deplore as likely to confuse even the most pious:
(d) per contra, his novel symbolism as likely to be understood of even the least instructed; and
(e) his constant jibes at Sadi. (I must admit that I was quite unable to see the point of any single one of these, though Mahbub took a deal of pains to show me. They appear to depend on the subtle points of grammar and phraseology.)
It would be impertinent and useless for me to enumerate the various metres in which these Ghazals are written; but concerning the Ghazal itself, the remarks of Dr. Forbes (Persian Grammar, p. 144, par. 148.) are so luminous and concise that I cannot refrain from giving my readers the pleasure of their perusal.
"This kind of composition corresponds, upon the whole, with the Ode of the Greeks and Romans, or the Sonetta of the Italians. The most common subjects of which it treats are, the beauty of a mistress, and the sufferings of the despairing lover from her absence or indifference. Frequently it treats of other matters, such as the delights of the season of Spring, the beauties of the flowers of the garden, and the tuneful notes of the nightingales as they warble their melodies among the rose bushes; the joys resulting from wine and hilarity are most particularly noticed at the same time; the whole interspersed with an occasional pithy allusion to the brevity of human life, and the vanity of sublunary matters in general. The more orthodox among the Musulman are rather scandalised at the eulogies bestowed upon the "juice of the grape" by their best poets, such as Hafiz for example; and they endeavour to make out that the text is to be taken in a mystic or spiritual sense, such as we apply to the "song of Solomon". It appears to me however, that Hafiz writes upon this favourite theme just as naturally, and with as much gusto, as either Anacreon or Horace, who in this respect may be safely acquitted of the sins of mysticism. The first couplet of the Ghazal is called the Matla' or "the place of rising" (of a heavenly body), which we may translate the "Opening". It is a standard rule that both hemistichs of this couplet should have the same metre and rhyme. The remaining couplets must have the same metre, and the second hemistich of each (but not necessarily the first) must rhyme with the Matla'. The concluding couplet is called the Matka', or "place of cutting short" -- which we may translate the "Close"; hence the phrase, Az Matla' ta makta', "from beginning to end". In the Makta', or close, the poet manages to introduce his own name, or rather his assumed or poetic name, called the Takhallus, though few of the older poets paid strict attention to this rule previous to the time of Hakim Sanayi, between A.D. 1150 and 1180. Anwari occasionally introduces his own name in his Ghazals, but it is the exception and not the rule in his case. As a general law, the Ghazal must consist of at least five couplets, and not more than fifteen; but on this subject authors by no means agree, either with one another or with real facts. Hafiz, for example, has several Ghazals consisting of sixteen and even seventeen, couplets; and Hakim Sanayi has many that exceed the latter number".
THE MSS
Being myself admitted formally (in the course of my first few readings) to the joyous company of the Sufis, (I cannot here discuss the curiously patriarchal systems of mystic fraternity in vogue among Muslim, if only because I am a Freemason) I was enabled to use several fine MSS. for the translation, a privelege of which I availed myself without scruple, as knowing I was well entitled to them; and without diffidence, because of the invariable courtesy which adepts in these mysteries exhibit to their fellow workers in the divine Arcanum.
I was also permitted to order a copy to be made, which the calligraphist has still in hand. It is the sort of order that acquits a man of the charge of doing nothing for posterity, for assuredly nobody who knows India will try to raise false hopes in me that I may live long enough to see it.
I would warn scholars that, unless they are in some way definitely mystics and truly acknowledged as such, they will do better to hunt for the lost books of Livy than for the Bagh-i-muattar. There is no copy in any public library here or in the East: not surprising, when one hears Platt in 1874 complain that of so famous a classic as the Gulistan there is no genuine Persian MS., but only the garbled Indian copies, in either the India Office Library or the British Museum.
If you question a Persian on the subject he will "begin to curse and to swear, saying: I know not the" book.
Of late I have amused myself by asking stray Persians "Have you ever heard of Abdullah el Haji?" and when they denied all knowledge of him, quoting:
"Forget an if thou wilt, the scribe!
The lovely script to heart be laid!"
The reason is of course that it is held exquisitely sacred; and seeing that the nature of the symbolism renders it open to the prurient jest or prudish reproach of the notoriously foul-minded Anglo-Saxon, the Persian, who is nothing if not dignified, is justly chary of casting his pearls before swine. Indeed, a certain scent seller with whom I once argued against all this secrecy replied by begging my permission to depart, "for a Jew had promised to spit on his beard before as sohri (noon prayer), and he feared to miss the appointment".
But for all that, no well appointed private library but has one or more copies of the little masterpiece; no travelling merchant but carries at least some leaves of it under his dirty sheepskin. It is too sacred even to sell, whatever the extremity; the one copy -- a mutilated and incorrect Indian -- which by dint of infinite diplomacy I half cajoled, half forced from a drunken Afghan elephant-snarer in Ceylon, where I was shooting on leave, became the prey of the ants which help to make that devil-haunted Eden a House of Little Ease.
As, seriously, I expect to get my copy within twelve months or so (a brother officer, now at Q..., where they copyist lives, has promised me to stretch out -- unofficially -- the iron hand of the Sirkar on my behalf) I may say that I intend to issue the MS. in facsimile, as a pendant to the present volume.
For, when all is said and one, I do not believe in either the advisability or the efficacy of this secrecy business. The Apocalypse has been published for some years now, and I have yet to meet anyone who really knows how to extract the gold. Certainly no unworthy person. All arcana are indicible. A man whose formula is "n" may understand (n + 1), but not (n + 101). So that my Persian MS. is doubly safe from the profaning touch of the British Public. Even the Persians themselves hold that there are Guardians who know how to guard: without pandering to any such superstitious beliefs, I may say that as far as results go, I believe them to be right.
I should observe that the translation itself, as well as many of the notes, is due in the very greatest degree to the earnest help of my munshi, and of a certain dealer in furs, with whom I travelled through L...h, A...r, and G...t, as well as in the C...s country, during two successive summers.
Some two months after the completion of translation, I fell in with the gentleman whose name appears with mine on the title page. He represented to me that a large class of scholars might be reached by a considerable extension of the notes to cover ethnographical, critical, and other interesting points. We went to work accordingly during my last leave in England, and accomplished (I think) a good deal.
(Major Lutiy's death left this paragraph incomplete. I need only add that on his departure from the front he sent the MSS., with numerous further additions, to me. I have retained the paragraph to explain the occasional diversity of opinion in reading or interpretation, and the way in which `I' and `we' are alternatively used in the notes. Ed.)
The verse renderings are in every case later paraphrases from the original drafts, and the prose has been carefully revised at leisure.
I wished to put the whole into verse: but the `prodigious difficulties of the monorhyme', as Burton only too inadequately says, beat me as often as not.
Had I been able to obtain the aid of a professional poet, I might have made a better job of it, for my experience is confined to vers de societe! But I have done my best.
THE SUFI DOCTRINES
No apology is needed, since the publication of Sir William Jones's able monograph, for the gross symbolism of such Oriental poems as those of Hafiz, the Song of Songs, the Ghazals of `Ismat of Bokhara -- not to mention the obscene Chinese Aphorisms of Kwaw.
Yet no doubt though Hafiz sings chiefly of wine, Solomon of woman, and `Ismat of Harlotry, we sooner pardon these freedoms because we ourselves can understand though we can never approve of them: but they seem innocent indeed when we compare them with the nameless bestialities of Kwaw, or the frank paederasty of Abdullah.
But, apart from the fact that paederast : fornication: `St. George'; `matrimonial' in Persia and England respectively, we may at least suspend judgement while we consider this symbolism in detail with a view to discovering why (unless from caprice) el Haji chose this particular indulgence to mirror that supreme passion of the human heart, the craving for unity with the All-One.
"Make room for me" quoth the poet of Salaman and Absal, "on that divan which is only large enough for one!"
Now I shall waste my time if I prove that something in the nature of sexual intercourse is the most fitting image of that passion; for our Christian theologians, anxious to avoid the reproach of the scoffer who quotes such passages as "My beloved put in his hand by the hole, and my bowels were moved in me" (Cant. v. 4), have built a great rampart of argument to that effect. {FN2} But Abdullah no doubt considered that the specific differences between man and woman vitiated the symbol, since man is formed in the image of God, and in Muslim theology is not supposed to have forfeited the same. It may here be remarked (as a bulwark to this contention) that el Haji is conspicuous -- in fact, incurs reproach in consequence -- for his innovations in the matter of scientific precision. Hafiz uses his symbols vaguely: the tresses of his mistress are no doubt the Glories of God, but they are also at times the rays of the sun, the verse of the Q'uran and so on; wherefore an uninstructed pupil, or an inquisitive Sahib, or an unauthorized Sufi, one of those who `creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold', cannot, by possession of the elementary keys, unlock the Holy of Holies of the `hikmat-i-Illahi'. It is as a violator of the Magian secrecy, even more than as a Christianizer, that Abdullah is blamed. Mildly blamed, for none would dare express downright disapproval of so exalted an adept; but it is no doubt for this reason that the Bagh-i-muattar is only allowed to circulate in private, even among Persians themselves; bestowed rather upon the already accomplished mystic than upon the mere inquirer into the `hikmat', denied existence to the question of the infidel.
Perhaps owing to some curious trick of my brain, I found myself (one fine day) in the state which, as far as I can gather, Hindu writers call Samadhi. (Compare the experiences of Burton in the Bombay Presidency, as hinted by Lady Sisted in her admirable sketch of his life.)
Hindus claim that advanced Yogis can always recognize at sight those who have ever attained this condition, just as the Freemasonry of Paederasts makes the formality of introduction superfluous among free companions of the Craft.
I must say that I attribute nine tenths of Burtons's success with natives of Arabia, Africa, and Hindoostan to his mastery of their mystic systems, not only as a theoretician, valuable as that is, but as a craftsman. In my own case I am convinced that Mahbub would never have entrusted me with his precious MS. but for the fact that he recognized me as one of the `illuminati'. Such a secret as that of Samadhi is absolutely safe, because the one who knows it cannot by any possibility divulge the same. It is real, not an artificial secret. One could expose Freemasonry -- it has been done repeatedly by idiots who did not understand what it meant -- by publishing the rituals and so on. But the secret remains and ever must remain the property of those worthy of it; nor does it necessarily follow that the highest mason living has a knowledge thereof. But the clothing of the secret, so to speak, can be studied; and for those whom the glorious garment may fit such study is truly illuminating.
This being understood, it may be granted without further discussion that the intelligent study of the Bagh-i-muattar will yield deeper knowledge -- the husks for the scholar, the wheat for the elect -- than any other known poem.
Now the revealing of one is the revealing of all: for from Fez to Nikko, there is one mysticism and not two. The fanatic followers of el Senussi can suck the pious honey from the obscene Aphorisms of Kwaw, and the twelve Buddhist sects of Japan would perfectly understand the inarticulate yells of the fire eaters of el Maghraby. Not that there is or has ever been a common religious tradition; but for the very much simpler reason that all the traditions are based on the same set of facts. Just as the festivals of Spring all the world round more or less suggest the story of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, simply because the actual phenomena which every man is bound to observe in Nature are essentially the same in every clime; so also is Mysticism One, because the physiological constitution of mankind is practically identical the wide world over.
We have then the right to buy our pigs in the cheapest market, and the Bagh-i-muattar will certainly give us more reward for our trouble than any other work, the only possible competitors being the Bhagavad-gita, Bhagavad Purana, {FN3} and the Chinese Aphorisms of Kwaw. El Haji then earns our gratitude in that he has adopted the principle `One mystic grace one symbol', and if we have but the wit to interpret this simple cypher, the whole secret of the East is open to our eyes. In the notes (which I have by no means stinted) I have indicated clearly to what each allusion refers; and it is within the capacity of any reader of ordinary intelligence to erect a complete system of philosophy, practical and transcendental, on those slender foundations. True, Abdullah approaches Calvin (too closely to please most students of Eastern religion) by his insistence of the doctrines of Sin and Grace, Freewill and Discipline; but on the other hand, neither St. Francis nor Buddhaghosha can parallel his Devotion and his Phenomenalism. No doubt at times one is puzzled for a while: one picks up a loose word here and there: one doubts: one guesses: one is illuminated in a moment.
One is rather reminded of the workings of a heliograph under unfavourable conditions. But (as with that instrument) by dint of repetition one gets the all-important message at last; and the situation is saved.
It is undoubtedly the importance he attaches to Sin, Repentance, Grace, as the means of raising the old to the new Adam that cost el Haji so much pains in persecution by the more orthodox Muslim; possibly the teachings of St. Paul had vaguely penetrated to the gulf with the merchants of Venice or Portugal, and their danger had been recognized by those who held to the simpler grandeur of Islam. But clearly the belief in Evil -- perhaps even a modified Manichaeism; {FN4} we must no forget that this heresy is a legacy from the Guebres with their Aormuzd and Ahriman -- had impressed itself profoundly on the mind of the young Abdullah. Or he may have attached an exaggerated importance to that mystic phenomena which Bulwer Lytton calls the `Dweller of the Threshold', that moment of intensest agony which separates Work from Reward and serves as a sure diagnostic {FN5} to discriminate between the happy-go-lucky `union with God' of the mere church goer -- an emotional glow of pious exhilaration -- and the splendid illuminating Union which constitutes Samadhi. Never forget that this great doctrine informs almost the whole of so called Christian literature; St. Paul's apostrophe (I Thess. iv. 16) if translated literally into Sanskrit word by word, reads like a mutilated but unmistakable passage from some lost Upanishad.
Such follies as Sri Parananda's lunatic commentaries on Mathew and John could never have been perpetrated but for the fact that his fundamental theory -- that Christ was a Yogi -- is correct.
And our hymn:
"Forever with the Lord!
Amen! so let it be!
Life from the dead is in that word:
Tis immortality".
may be rendered by paraphrase:
For ever Timeless: an epithet only used of the Atman.
with the Lord sam Adhi.
Amen Aum.
Life from the dead an expression constantly and exclusively employed to denote the
yogic attainment.
that word To Aum is attributed the great power of regeneration. It has the
sense of the Greek Logos.
immortality a-mrita, the same idea glyphed as a dew: the Christian Graal, cup,
blood, etc.
In short, every single word in the verse is literally and even in two cases etymologically identical with a technical mystic Sanskrit phrase. This is not a carefully chosen and exceptional case; on the contrary, I challenge any orthodox divine to produce any passage of scripture or any decent hymn which is free from identities of this kind.
To return to the question of phallicism, I will not be so frivolous as to quote `New every morning is the love Our waking and uprising prove' as an example of obscene symbolism in the Christian Church; for there is no lack of serious identity. The cross itself is notoriously the lingam; the vesica piscis -- Christ being [Greek letters: Iota-Chi-Theta-Upsilon-Sigma], the fish -- the yoni. Now the vesica piscis is the foundation of all Christian architecture; that is to say, the female member lying open, and awaiting impregnation by the male, is the glyph of the church, and the divine invocations upon its altar. Similarly the figure of the bride of Christ has only been spiritualized in very recent days. Whoso doubts it may consult Payne Knight's essays `On the Worship of Priapus'. The lady was usually represented by the `Early Christians' (our models in all things) as a naked female with a lascivious grin; offering with her hands, apparently to the first comer, a vulva which is of the shape and relative size of a horse collar! Any ordinary man who attempted to indulge her fancy would find himself in the position of Baker's blue jay. But with God all things are possible.
I am tempted to add that even plain paederasty, without any question of symbol at all, is perhaps not so incompatible with virtues, religious, social, moral and domestic, as my good compatriots make such a point of asserting with a fine show of disgust and indignation, thereby lending colour to the fixed idea which obtains on the Continent of Europe that all Englishmen are sodomites.
To my hand, as I write this, comes a strange essay [Greeks: pi-epsilon-rho-iota tau-eta-sigma pi-alpha-iota-delta-epsilon-rho-alpha-sigma-tau-epsilon-iota-alpha-sigma] written by a well known clergyman. He is adored by his wife and children; his church is full when his brethren in the district are in despair; his poor are better looked after than any for fifty miles around; and his choir is incomparably the best in the kingdom. {FN6} To a sincere and even rapturous piety he joins a passionate love for the pleasures of the table and the bed; and the reader will I think grant him both acuteness of intellect and elegance of diction.
It is instructive: indeed, beyond all comparison better than the laborous and pedantic exposition I have conceived it my duty to attempt: it gives the inside view, and references to the scholars and paederasts who have previously enlarged on this fascinating topic: the style is impassioned and the matter impeccable.
I therefore turn my readers over to it without further parley, for I feel that they must be (by this time) thoroughly tired of the prosing of one who is after all not a writer, but a soldier. (In defence to the wishes of the widow of the gallant soldier who penned these lines and gave his life to his country in S. Africa, we do not carry out his intention of attaching his name to them (during her lifetime) and designate him only by his chosen nom de plume, Alain Lutiy. Ed.)
{NOTES}
{Footnote 2: St. Augustine can find no better symbols than El Haji to express his love for God. "What is it then that I love, O my God, when I love you? It is not the beauty of bodies, not the glory which passes, nor the light which our eyes love; it is not the varied harmony of sweet songs nor the aroma of perfumes and sweet flowers, nor the voluptuous joys of carnal embraces. No, it is more than these that I love when I love my God; and yet in this love I find light, an inner voice, a perfume, a savour, an embrace of a kind which does not leave the inmost of myself. There in the depths of the soul glows something which is not in space: there a word is heard which has no syllables; thence there breathes a perfume which no breezes waft away: there food is always savored and never eaten: there are embraces which never ask to end..."}
{Footnote 3: The few who still suppose that Omar Khayyam was a libertine should read the exposition of Book xi of this Purana.}
{Footnote 4: Manes (Mani) the heresiarch was of course Persian.}
{Footnote 5: I cannot agree that such a moment necessarily intervenes between normal and Samadhic consciousness, or, as the Buddhists assert, that there is a long series of intervening states invariable and well-defined, though perhaps this may sometimes be so. Nor is the appearance of the "Dweller" a sure earnest of success: on the contrary, many (even most) will fail to pass this terrible barrier.}
{Footnote 6: Crede experto? Ed.}
Peri
Tes
Paiderasteias
Megale Polis, Etis Kaleitai Pneumatikos
Sodoma Kai Aiguptos
Opou Kai O Kurios Emon
[artwork]
Rev. XI. 8.
Christo Sunestauromai Gal. II. 20
AN ESSAY
by the Reverend P.D. Carey
It is sunset, and the rose rays fall aslant the woodland; they trace patterns of wondrous witchery on the velvet of the glade. A ruddy glow lightens the marble leer of the all-glorious one, the child of Arcady, the ineffable Pan -- Pan! Pan! Io Pan! -- before whom I lie prostrate with my robes careless and freeflung, so that the red warmth of Apollon burns on my live quivering flesh, as I lie and yearn in utter worship towards the all glorious one, not daring to raise my eyes to yonder rosy shaft of Parian stone. The love in my heart melts all the winter of my body, and the warm salt springs gush from my eyes upon the ground -- surely the latter spring shall see green violets grow thereon!'
Then, in the hush of the sunset, come noiseless hoofs treading the enammelled turf; and ere I know it a fierce lithe hairy body had gripped mine, and the dread wand of magic shudders its live way into my being, so that the foundations of the soul are shaken. The heavy breath and the rank kisses of a faun are on my neck, and his teeth fasten in my flesh -- a terrible heave flings our bodies into mid air with the athletic passion that unites us with the utmost God "hid i' th' middle o' matter" -- and the life of my strange lover boils within my bowels -- there is a ronronnement as of myriad nymphs and fauns, satyrs and dryads, -- a stirring of the waters of life -- we fall back in an ecstacy -- somewhat like death -- with the gasping murmur Pan! Pan! Io Pan! while the marmorean splendour before us turns with the last ray of sunlight his goodly smile upon still and stricken bodies -- the heap of the slain of Priapus -- perinde ac cadaver -- ah! it is night, it is death.
Alas! it is not sunset; here is no glade, but a noisy London square; we cannot live, we must talk; we cannot love, we must dissect. We know that these people are not the gracious children of God, but the evil and laborious gnomes of hell; creatures whose lives are given to the senseless lust of gold, the infamous toil of coynte, counter and countinghouse. They understand us only enough to know that we are happy; therefore they hate us; therefore as they spat on Christ, forsaken of all but John, his sweet-voiced catamite, so does the cur today spit in the face of Oscar Wilde, as he goes from the judge to the prison. Ye were too childlike, too innocent, too hopeful of mankind, that ye did proclaim your pearly gospel to the swinish multitude!
The old law, silence is the master: therefore whoso looketh for my name, let him find it darkling in these lines of power!
R. is the Father, W. the Son,
And E. the Holy Spirit, three and one:
But if they esoterically are read,
My equal name shall glitter out instead.
Yes! we must not sing hymns to Pan to-day; we must pretend to be German professors, with a keen scientific interest in these very remarkable phenomena which look so much like madness, and which our own perfect sanity and the effulgence (possibly a shade alto) of our discreet and legal passion for our Limburger-tainted hausfrau hide from our fuller comprehension.
As is right, therefore:
In nomine v. Krafft-Ebing, v. Schrenk-Notzing, et Havelock Ellis, Amen.
The Holy Trinity (invoked above) have brought within the knowledge of the English speaking races all those facts connected with `sexual perversion' (in its infinite variety) which occur in the diseased.
The late Sir Richard Burton has informed us of all that need be known on the subject in the matter of its historical, geographical, and ethnographical distribution; and his Priapeia, and the verses of the Hermaphrodite of Panormita, form a valuable commentary on his remarks. Ulrichs and Symonds have treated the subject sympathetically (though rather timidly and as it were with the cold ardour of the special pleader) in its modern practical aspects; but with the exception of Verlaine in `Hombres', Wilde in `Teleny', the pseudonymous (as we suspect) author of `White Stains', and the nameless Aristophanes who wrote the `Nameless Novel', nobody in modern times has dared to voice openly the supreme sanity, the splendid athleticism, and the unutterable spirituality of the male rapture of the passion between man and man.
In treating of this matter I must first premise that by paederasty I mean actual sodomy as defined by British law {FN1} immisio penis in corpus vivum.
"Arse makes life golden, want of it dull yellow;
The rest is only leather and prunella".
At least the rest is but preliminaires. An acute observer of my acquaintance remarked to me recently that it was the actual mess caused by emission, and the necessity of cleaning up, that, by allowing time for passion to cool, prevented a great deal of copulation which would otherwise take place. There is a great gulf fixed between the `short time' and the `all night', and that great gulf is filled with Condy's Fluid! This applies equally to sodomy. If the semen is safely bestowed in mouth or anus of the beloved one, the temptation is to begin all over again; bar the trifle of fatigue, one is in the same position as at first; its loss between the legs or in the hand rouses a sentiment of disgust {FN2} which is fatal to passion. Even the mouth, like the vagina, remains in a somewhat greasy condition after it has achieved the holy task, and we have no hesitation in plumping for the anus as the one vase into which the perfumed oil of manhood may be poured without exciting a reaction. {FN3}
This point being established, let me further {FN4} make a distinction between the two great classes of sodomites. Ulrichs has pedantically christened them Urning and Uranodioning; for the former we have no colloquial name: the latter we term Bimetallist. Being himself an Urning, he has naturally failed to grasp the vast gap that divides the classes, which is that between an indulgence and a morbid craving; between the insane delusion that one is Jesus Christ or Julius Caesar and the sane and healthy resolve to emulate the exploits of these worthies in mysticism and war respectively. We pity the Urning, as we pity the consumptive or the drunkard; but we do not pity him in any special sense, any more than a connoisseur of fine wines pities the drunkard above all other pitiable folk. We do not acknowledge any nervous weakness as having a peculiar claim on us, just because it lies in the same plane {FN6} as one of our hobbies.
Now this question of Bimettalism leads us to the subject of the reasons for our indulgence, since we are not (as some silly Germans would pretend) equally with the Urning the slaves of an uncontrollable paranoia, to use a somewhat discredited but useful term.
"Why, in short, (quoth Mr. Moses Monometallist) loving women as you do, sir, do you go to boys and men? Is it only for variety? If not, in what does the charm consist?"
I will enumerate the conditions, and that cheerfully, since it will incidentally enable me to justify that very remarkable phrase used above, the spirituality of Sodomy.
A woman can afford two pleasures to a man, which a boy cannot;
namely:
(1) the pleasure of the cunnilinge.
(2) common copulation.
(both these either with or without `Red and white roses' i.e., menses and leucorrhoea.)
Common to either sex (besides opifex and artifex) are obviously all forms of masturbation with the hand, mouth, breast, armpit, etc; active sodomy; most forms of sadism and masochism; nearly all forms of coprophilia; and so on. (These latter forms are so symbolic that sense of sex is a minor matter).
A man can afford to a man two pleasures which a woman cannot give him; namely:
(1) passive sodomy. (pleasure of the pathic)
(2) irrumation. (pleasure of the fellator) {FN7}
The latter is a small matter, and we are justified in concluding that as far as gross gratifications go, the advantage, substantial though slight, rests with the woman. The supreme pleasures are common to both, except cunnilingism (especially during the monthly courses) on the one side, and passive sodomy on the other. Both are pleasures of a somewhat masochistic order, and if we had definitely to choose, it would be hard. Glory to the Creator whose bounty has not forced us to this alternative; aye! blessed for ever be His holy name, and thanksgiving in the highest for His loving kindness towards the Children of Men!
Why then do we so dearly cherish the passion of man and man, since of the myriad pleasures of love, two only are peculiar to it? Why, at the risk of liberty, do we pursue the shy kisses of silly English boys, often of the lower classes, {FN8} when every type of woman (from the mustachioed and muscular belly dancer from Spain, with a constrictor cunni developed till the penis issues aching and bruised from her dangerous defile, to the soft and rosy maiden of our own dear land, with slender limbs and velvet flesh, whose pleasure is like a single slim petal of hyacinth) is at our disposal for sums ranging from half-a-crown to fifty guineas?
To ask the question is to acknowledge that one is still no better than the brutes; and to answer it is (consequently) to attempt to teach a dog dog-Latin!
O man! how can I hold talk with thee, who hast not lain upon a bed, expectant, fearful, of thou knowst not what; tremulous; stammering foolish words in pretence of conversation; thine eyes hard shut lest thou shouldst see thy lover move and perhaps (oh, worst of woes!), frighten him from thee; fearful, oh! infinitely fearful lest he should not love thee after all, fearful lest he should fear, lest he leave it for thee to say the soft words (oh! the burning cheeks, the bitten lips!) whose hidden fire shall kindle the great blaze? How talk with thee, whose quickened hearing has not known him creep ever closer, yet afraid to touch thee, has not heard the rushing of his heart, the shortening of his breath? How talk, if thou have not felt one trembling foot seek thine, one hand steal near thee and yet nearer? Till thou feel the tremor of his body; till his hot breath stir thine hair! Why, neither thou nor I can tell of that swift attack (is it a minute or an hour?) when without word spoken the bonds of conversation snap -- hast thou seen a village, with its smug Swiss thieves, whelmed by the avalanche, the avalanche of elemental force, the avalanche of God? Nay, I remember nothing; I know I found myself naked in his naked arms, his giant member still throbbing and beating in my flooded bowels, and the world aswim before mine eyes.
I tell thee, man, that the first kiss of man to man is more than the most elaborately manipulated orgasm that the most accomplished and most passionate courtesan can devise. {FN9} That is, it is not a physical, but a spiritual pleasure.
I tell thee, as I walk the sunsmitten streets of Mandalay, where lives a boy I love, that the very foundations of the soul tremble as mine eyes fall upon him.
I have never spoken to him; I doubt if I could command myself to speak to him. Have I faced death in a hundred forms, and never winced, {FN10} to fear (at last) the frown of a Nubian slave? Strange, friend monometallist! But true!
With sodomy, too, no children come, to cloud one's love with cares material and profane. I love my own children deeply, intensely; but they are rivals to my wife. Nothing can intervene between my boy and me but the slow foot of change, for sodomites are mortal; but that immortal longing in them which is [pi-alpha-iota-delta-epsilon-rho-alpha-sigma-tau-epsilon- iota-alpha] -- . That twins them with the Lord of Resurrection; and even as I plunge my member into the sarcophagus, the flesh eater, the podex of my lover, and withdraw it, its strength renewed as the eagles, so do I know that when the Eater of all flesh devours me altogether, I shall arise in my strength, through the blessed resurrection of our Lord Jesus, the lover of John the beautiful, into a world where erectio penis shall be the rule and not the exception. Where, please God, we shall all be Sapphists and Sodomites, joined each to each in one incredible spinthria, with the extreme orgasm (which is the Holy Ghost) abiding upon us and within us for ever and ever.
Shall I find you there, my lost darling? As I pass from the swoon of death to feel the fresh wind of Heaven blowing on my cheek, shall I find you first to meet me in those Elysian glades?
"In what ethereal dances?
By what eternal streams?"
shall I find you, sweet acolyte of Salmacis or of Terpsichore, of Bacchus or Sabrina? Will it be you on yonder bank of yellow moss by the sunspangled rivulet that tumbles noisily from the throne of God? Will it be you with your fine hair like spider's webs in the sun changed to an aureole, and your seductive face still as ever the incarnation of one single never-ending scarlet kiss? Will yours be the long pale hands to mould my body to your liking; and yours be the faithful, the unfailing member that never said me nay?
Oh come to me there darling! Lean upon the golden rampart, and watch for me to come! Be first to meet me, sweetheart! forgive me for all the wrong I did you here. I will try and be a good wife to you, darling, if you will give me one more chance to hold your love.
I had heaven in your kisses, and I went to seek it in the cloister. {FN11} I loved you always; it was but a boy's folly; forgive me! I may never cling to you on earth again: pray God that Heaven may be one long, long life of such bliss as we had of one another long ago by yon slow stream on whose banks I have wandered (many a time since) crying like a lost soul concerning you in the words of Milton lamenting his beauteous-buttocked Lycidas "Oh! who hath reft my dearest pledge?" Alas! neither fate nor God could I accuse: the dread hollow voice of my own stricken soul answered me: "Thine own folly, thou miserable of the fortunate of the sons of men!" Ah! but I beat my breast -- in vain -- in vain!
Ay! the joy we had of each other under those blue-grey hills! Do you remember the day of the storm, when we huddled under the rocks, and lit a fire of bracken and pine twigs? How you stripped me by force -- for I was afraid, and jealous, and coquettish -- and took your pleasure of me, thrice in the one delirious hour? By the memory of that cave, I conjure you, be first to meet me in the Elysian fields!
I must express regret for having intruded what may appear to be a personal matter into an essay on the German model, but the good Bimetallist will forgive me. He will know that the old poet was right who wrote:
"The passion of man for a woman
May serve a lad for a span.
But utterly superhuman
Is the passion of man for man.
Let him but taste the wine!
It grips him body and soul.
Once and for all,
Whatever befall,
He is bound to the golden goal
By the joy of his shuddering spine."
He will know that in the rites of sodomy duly done, even more than in the rites of heterosexual passion, lies the great secret of the Universe, the Key of the Gardens of God...
But I must not proselytize; many are called, but few chosen; a sodomite is born, not made; you can't make a silk sodomite out of an English grocer's boy; one sodomite doesn't make a scandal; take care of the boys, and the girls will take care of themselves; strike while the tool is hot; don't bugger in haste, or withdraw at leisure; a turd in the hand is worth two in the bush; a prick in time saves nine; it's a wise Wilde that knows his own Q.; one good turn deserves another; frig wise and fuck foolish; there's better boys in the choir than ever came out of it -- all of which goes to show that it took no genius to write `John Ploughman'. Not that if Charles Spurgeon had been {FN12} one of us, his style would have approximated to that of Walter Pater; a stylist is as direct a miracle of God as a sodomite. No! I must not proselytize! there are enough of us in the world; a select body of idealists, of men cleansed from gross passions, of poets and mystics linked in a perfect freemasonry of style and manner, of ships (as it were) who have dropped anchor in a safe harbour, of conquerors at ease in the towns they have captured, whose inhabitants are too crass and stupid even to know themselves slaves.
Yes, we are a goodly company, the blest; our lives are spent in sunny gardens and yours in subterranean sewers; we are so blissful that we rarely notice you; when we do, it is to say: God have mercy upon these blind miserable slaves, and bring them out into His light and joy and liberty!
Wherefor I pray Him (Oh thou all-loving, all-transcending God!) that should this essay fall (as seed by the wayside) into the hands of the young and beautiful, the unspotted from the world, that He will bless it to them, that they may dwell with us in the Heaven that is Here and Now, and (after) in the Palace which of His lovingkindness He hath prepared for us in that Garden of Gardens which is approached only through the narrow postern gate of Death.
{NOTES}
{Footnote 1. There is of course not the most shadowy reason in ethics for the attitude of the law. The most confirmed sodomite (bimetallist) may beget quite as many children as another, while monogamy is the fashion. If man were expected to fertilize some dozens of women every night, like a stud ram, I don't say: but he is not. But on the positive side, a strict adherence to sodomy except for the practical purpose of begetting children, or for pacifying women, an object which a parallel development of Sapphism would more rationally fulfil, would avoid the numberless crimes and calamities inseparable from sexual intercourse -- venereal diseases (almost entirely), seduction, abortion, concealment of birth, child murder, social tyranny -- et omnis horrida cohors malorum.
As few people seem to know the fons et origo legis, I may here be permitted to sketch it in outline. When the power of the Crescent menaced that of the Cross, sodomy was put down with Draconic rigour because the Turks believed that the Messiah (a reincarnation of Jesus) would be born of the love between two men. Sodomy was thus a religious duty with the Turk; at any moment his passion might be used to bring about the millenium; so with the Christian it became heresy and was punished as such. People who were beyond suspicion, such as the Princes of the Church, could always obtain dispensations, and in fact habitually did so. The documents are extant. This was to the mediaeval mind a far more urgent matter than any mere persistence of Levitical tradition, founded as it was on a popular superstition scarcely less gross than their own.
But today no man can bring forward either the population nonsense or the heresy nonsense, so he brings up his dinner instead, under the equally absurd delusion that the process is physically dirty. In the interests of Light and Truth, one cannot too widely disseminate the grossly phrased, but noble, American proverb that "A turd jumps away from a live prick like a grasshopper from a snake". Anyway, one can wash! (i) i. The pathics of Laknau, when offering themselves for hire to British officers, draw long strips of muslin from their recta, whose perfect cleanliness is thus beyond suspicion. O si sic omnes! Ed.
The sole effect of the law as it stands is to make life in England insupportable for the wretched urning, and to expose every man, whether he be a sodomite or not, to the attacks of blackmailers of the vilest sort.
Suppose I am threatened by these gentry; suppose I catch them and prosecute them; suppose they get the maximum penalty, and I leave the court with applause and with the strongly expressed thanks of the judge for the courage and skill with which I have discharged so unpleasant, albeit so useful, a public duty?
Very well; does that convince my jealous wife?
Does that prevent people in the street pointing me out as "the man who was mixed up in that buggery business, don't you remember? Of course there was nothing against him; it's difficult to bring home these things, don't you know? But we think what we think, don't you know?"
While your admiring friends openly boast of you as a "dam clever bugger, by God! He had half the boys in London, and when they started to blackmail him, he turned right round like that (gesture) before you could say "knife", by God! and didn't they get beans, by God!"
But could I fight an English election? How would my chiefs in the army look at it, when it came to the actual point of choosing one of two men for promotion? What price that fat tutorship?
There are dozens of weak innocent fools in London at this hour who, making these reflections, paid the first fatal moderate demand.
There are dozens of strong-minded men who have come to the conclusion that they may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, especially as the former is real and the latter imaginary, and so, a posteriori turned their thoughts ad posteriorem. Some are born sodomites, some achieve sodomy and some have sodomy thrust upon them: the Urning, the Bimetallist, and the carcerophobe.
There are some sodomites which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some sodomites which were made sodomites of men: and there are sodomites which have made themselves sodomites for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. (The Urning, the Bimetallist, and the carcerophobe, and the holy sodomite to whom his passion is a sacrament, leading him on the straight road into the very arms of God). He that is able to receive it, let him recieve it!
The law manufactures sodomites as it manufactures habitual criminals.
Legalize sodomy, and you will diminish it; or even if, as you seem to fear, you increase it, you will see no change in society but an advance in refinement, and possibly, parallel with the fall in price of Mercury Iodine, and Sandalwood oil, a slight increase in demand for that preparation of the supra-renal capsules which is so useful in obstinate cases of internal haemorrhoids.}
{Footnote 2. Pray analyse the sensation aroused in you by the story which ends (Mrs. Awkins, asleep, being awakened by the cup of tea which she has spilt over her lap). "There you are, Awkins! All over my stummick again!"}
{Footnote 3. A skilful sodomite should be able to withdraw his penis nearly dry. The subsequent moisture of the anus will act as a pleasing lubricant, when the next round of preliminaries is over.}
{Footnote 4. This has been already anticipated in the long note above. (Ed.)}
{Footnote 5. I would suggest allopath, homaeopath, and eclectic, as a fitting classification of humanity.}
{Footnote 6. A little obscure. I suppose the author means: a scientific whist player need not pity a gambler more than he does a drunkard; a father of twelve pity the raper more than the brawler; or the polo enthusiast pity the man who thinks he is a horse more than him who fancies himself a teapot. A.L.}
{Footnote 7. Conversely, it is interesting to observe that a woman can afford two pleasures to a woman, exclusively:
(1) tribadism (cunnus ad cunnum)
(2) cunnilingism
A man can afford three pleasures to a woman exclusively:
(1) sodomy
(2) irrumation (pleasure of the fellatrix)
(3) copulation
Of these, tribadism is rather artificial, and hardly to be distinguished from ordinary masturbation; so that the balance is strongly in favour of man. This explains why very few women are exclusively Sapphists, but many bimetallists; and enables one to comprehend the hatred of woman for sodomy, and the toleration with which men regard Sapphism.}
{Footnote 8. I cannot too strongly urge my readers to select their lovers from their equals in rank and fortune. It is the only safeguard against betrayal; further, it fulfils the Greek ideal, and silences the voice of adverse criticism. A.L.}
{Footnote 9. Besides all this, there is the question of "nature" and "against nature". "Praise Lacedaemon, and despise Corinth! God gave me Daphne; I won Hyacinth." All our modern devices, though applications of nature, are against man and above nature; therefore of God. Nature's man is the cave-man. We take no paternal pride in the pariah dog, the product of nature; in the highly bred setter, the product of man's genius applied to nature's very raw material, through centuries and chiliads of struggle, we do. There is no poetry in the panting Puritan prone on his puffing and perspiring Priscilla: the love of Adrian and Antinous is a monument for all ages. Is there better poetry in the world than Wilde's "...on Adrian's gilded barge The laughter of Antinous" or F.........'s "the splendid Syrian youth with scarlet mouth Standing upon the summit of the world?" Why to kiss my boy is a canzonet, and to suck him off a sonnet; his mouth is a madrigal, his lips are lyrics, and his eyes idylls; to be beneath him is an epithalamium, and on top of him an epic.}
{Footnote 10. The author of this essay was with the force that captured Theebaw in 1886, and with the Soudan expeditions of recent years. A.L.}
{Footnote: 11. A high Anglican, he lived for three years, immediately after his ordination, in monastic seclusion at L.... A.L.}
{Footnote 12. He was. A.L.}
The Material Basis of Spiritual Sensation {FN1}
BAGH-I-MUATTAR
--I--
ABDULLAH EL HAJI, {FN2} called EL QAHAR {FN3}
I
THE ABYSS
As I placed the rigid pen {FN4} of my thought within the inkstand {FN4} of my imagination, I tasted the bliss of Allah; and withdrawing, beheld night and the Void like an hollow vortical shell. {FN5} But it was only Habib's podex; {FN6} and EL QAHAR would rather possess Habib's podex than the universe.
{NOTES}
{Footnote 1. I am alone responsible for these capital summaries; but a well know lady mystic in London assures me that they are just.}
{Footnote 2. [Arabic] satirist, not to be confused with [Arabic] pilgrim.}
{Footnote 3. El Qahar -- The Conqueror -- Abdullah's `Takhallus' or cognomen qua poeta.}
{Footnote 4. Common symbols for member and podex. See Burton, Priapeia.}
{Footnote 5. Not the common cowrie... ...which would be more probably taken as an emblem of pudendum muliebre. [Arabic] is the pearl-oyster shell; [Arabic] the cowrie, here the text reads [Arabic] shell-whirlpool, which I took to mean the common spiral sea-shell. There may be a less fantastic phrase for this; to my Munshi, who had never studied the sea, all shells are alike and I could not explain my questions.}
{Footnote 6. It must be noted that kun (Be!) is the Arab Fiat or [lambda-omicron-gamma-omicron-sigma], hence "podex" is a just symbol of the Noumenon or Essence, the knowledge of identity with which is the goal of all genuine religion.}
The Spiritual Basis of Material Sensation
II
THE JINN-VISION
I plunged my stamen-shaped spud {FN1}
Into a pool of crimson mud.
Yet stars {FN2} I saw; and camel-jinn, {FN3}
And moons {FN4} upon the winds that scud. {FN5}
The sun {FN6} I saw; and night, {FN7} borne up
Upon some dark eternal flood.
Ay! mine Habib! thy body's key
Is like a scarlet poppy bud.
Strike in my bell thy clapper; wake
The cosmic echo in my blood!
For El Qahar thy beauty broods,
Of thy perfection chews the cud.
{Footnote: 1. [Arabic] Suli, an impaling stake. A rare word of Sanskrit origin.}
{Footnote 2. Chokmah, the "emanation" referred to the Sphere of the Stars.}
{Footnote 3. Geburah. Curiously reminiscent of Cazotte's conception of Asmodai. There may be a pun between [Arabic] camel and [Arabic] the devil. Demons are usually described as resembling animals or distortions of them. One may consult the descriptions of the 72 evil spirits of the Goetia, or the following actual results of the clairvoyance of a well known Irish lady.