Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/388

368 merit of his genius or the incidents of his career. These &quot; orient pearls at random strung,&quot; as a version of a passage from Hafiz in Sir William Jones s grammar calls them, are often held together by a very slender thread of continuous thought, and very few editions agree exactly in the order of the couplets which form the individual ghazals. Still, although they often appear at first sight extremely disconnected, a careful study of them, especially from the point of view indicated by the Sufiistic system of philosophy, will always show that a single idea does run through out the whole. The nature of these poems has been the subject of much discussion in the West, some scholars seeing in their anacreontic utterances nothing but sensuality and materialism, while ethers, following the Oriental school, maintain that they are wholly and entirely mystic and philosophic. Something between the two would pro bably be nearer the truth. It must be remembered that Hafiz was a professed dervish and Sufi, and that his ghazals were in all probability published from a takia, and arranged with at least a view to Sufiistic interpretation. At the same time it is ridiculous to suppose that the glowing imagery, the gorgeous and often tender descriptions of natural beauties, the fervent love passages, and the royster- ing drinking songs were composed in cool blood or with deliberate ascetic purpose. The beauty of Hafiz s poetry is that it is natural. It is the outcome of a fervent soul and a lofty genius delighting in nature and enjoying life ; and it is the poet s misfortune that he lived in an age and amongst a people where rigid conventionality demanded that his free and spontaneous thoughts should be recast into an artificial mould. The system of philosophy professed by Persian poets and dervishes, and in accordance with which the poems of Hafiz are allegorically interpreted, is called Sufiism (Tasawwuf). It is derived usually from the word suf, which in Arabic means wool, and is supposed to refer to the woollen robes worn by ths dervishes, although it is in all probability con nected with the Greek o-o^os. It is the ultimate outcome of the protest of the conquered Aryan nations against the laws, ceremonials, and ideas of their Semitic conquerors, which first found expression in the schism of the Shiahs. that is, of the Persian party who sided with the family of Ali Ibn Abi Talib, cousin and son-in-law of Mahomet, against the claims of Moawiyeh, who at the head of the Arab party claimed and held the caliphate. Forced by events to accept el Islam, and compelled to forsake the Magian and Zoro- astrian faiths, the Persian Shiahs rapidly developed a system which, while teaching openly the unity of God according to Moslem doctrine, secretly theorized and refined it away, until Pantheism became the esoteric religion of the sect. It teaches that God is the only real existence and that all other existences are hypothetical, that God existed alone and created the universe merely by His Will and by the utterance of the word &quot;Be.&quot; The &quot; Will&quot; or &quot; Order &quot; and the &quot; Be &quot; are closely allied to the &quot; Spirit &quot; and &quot;Word&quot; of Christian theology. Man, the highest purpose of this creation, is therefore part and parcel of the Deity, and when sufficiently purified from the lower and grosser elements returns to his source again. The circle of existence thus imagined is looked upon as a road which all must travel, and this image is kept up throughout the terminology of the sect. Thus the doctrine is tarikat (the road), the student or disciple is the sdlik (wayfarer), and the different stages of perfection are manzilhd (road-side stations or inns). And since all differences in sect and religion are as nothing to the illuminated philosopher who is initiated into this mystery, and as the contemplation of the divinity of his own existence and of his ultimate resump tion of his place as part and parcel of the Deity produces ecstacy and mental exaltation, and inasmuch as everything that is beautiful, lovable, and pure is a purer and clearer manifestation of the Deity that runs through all, therefore the Sufis speak of their real worship as paganism, their real devotion as love and drunkenness, and see a divine mystery in every phase of beauty in humanity or inanimate nature.

1em  HAGEDORN, (1705–1755), one of the most distinguished German poets in the earlier half of last century, was born April 23, 1708, at Hamburg, where his father was Danish minister at the court of Lower Saxony. The father, a man of scientific and literary tastes, possessed a valuable library of French literature, and dabbled also in the science of alchemy. Having by this and other means lost a great part of his fortune, he died in 1722, leaving in poor circumstances a widow and two sons, of whom the poet was the elder. He was educated at the gymnasium of Hamburg, and went later (172C) to study jurisprudence at Jena. Shortly after his return to Hamburg in 1729, he obtained the appointment of private secretary without salary to the Danish ambassador in London, where he lived till 1731, and published two small works in English. His return to Hamburg was followed by a period of great poverty and hardship, a scanty income being derived from the posts which he held in the Hamburg cathedral and among the mining population in Klausthal. In 1733 Hagedorn became secretary to the so-called &quot; English court&quot; in Hamburg, a trading company founded in the 13th century, and formerly known as &quot;Die Societiit der Aventurier Kauneute.&quot; He shortly afterwards married, and from this time, with a settled income and sufficient leisure to pursue his literary occupations, led a pleasant and congenial existence, surrounded by friends and admirers, till his death, at the early age of forty-seven, October 28, 1755. Hagedorn is known as the author of satirical, didactic, and moral verses, epigrams, odes, fables, and songs. His popularity during his lifetime was great. Although he held himself aloof from any poetical school, he nevertheless exercised an important influence on the German poetry of his time ; for, besides being a learned man and well-read in the ancient and modern classics, lie was a special admirer of French literature, the study of which gained for him an ease and mobility before unknown in German versification. He has been called the originator in Germany of the modern song, and some of his Lieder were set to music by the favourite composers of his day. His popularity, how- 