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    Delphi Collected Works of Saadi (Illustrated)
    Delphi Collected Works of Saadi (Illustrated)
    Delphi Collected Works of Saadi (Illustrated)
    Ebook374 pages5 hours

    Delphi Collected Works of Saadi (Illustrated)

    By Saadi Shirazi

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    About this ebook

    Saadi is one of the greatest figures of classical Persian literature. His best-known work of poetry is the ‘Bustan’ (The Orchard), composed entirely in epic metre and consisting of stories illustrating the standard virtues recommended to Muslims, as well as offering reflections on the behaviour of dervishes and their ecstatic practices. Saadi also wrote the ‘Gulistan’, a prose collection featuring stories and personal anecdotes. The text is interspersed with a variety of short poems, containing aphorisms, advice and humorous reflections. Saadi’s works are characterised by their unusual blend of kindness and cynicism, always wishing to avoid the hard dilemma, making him, for many, the most widely admired poet of Persian literature. The Delphi Poets Series offers readers the works of literature’s finest poets, with superior formatting. This volume presents Saadi’s collected works, with related illustrations and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1)


    * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Saadi’s life and works
    * Concise introduction to Saadi’s life and poetry
    * All of the major verse and prose texts of Saadi
    * Images of how the poetry books were first printed, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts
    * Excellent formatting of the poems
    * Easily locate the sections you want to read
    * Includes the rare poetry collection ‘Pand Namah’, first time in digital print
    * Features a bonus biography — discover Saadi’s intriguing life and poetry
    * Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres


    Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to see our wide range of poet titles


    CONTENTS:
    The Life and Poetry of Saadi Shirazi
    Brief Introduction: Saadi by Epiphanius Wilson
    Bustan (translated by A. Hart Edwards)
    Pand Namah (translated by Arthur N. Wollaston)


    The Prose
    Gulistan (translated by James Ross)


    The Biography
    Introduction to Saadi by Arthur N. Wollaston


    Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of poetry titles or buy the entire Delphi Poets Series as a Super Set


    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDelphi Classics Ltd
    Release dateMay 13, 2019
    ISBN9781788779715
    Delphi Collected Works of Saadi (Illustrated)

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      Book preview

      Delphi Collected Works of Saadi (Illustrated) - Saadi Shirazi

      Saadi Shirazi

      (1210-c. 1291)

      Contents

      The Life and Poetry of Saadi Shirazi

      Brief Introduction: Saadi by Epiphanius Wilson

      Bustan

      Pand Namah

      The Prose

      Gulistan

      The Biography

      Introduction to Saadi by Arthur N. Wollaston

      The Delphi Classics Catalogue

      © Delphi Classics 2019

      Version 1

      Browse the entire series…

      Saadi Shirazi

      By Delphi Classics, 2019

      COPYRIGHT

      Saadi - Delphi Poets Series

      First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by Delphi Classics.

      © Delphi Classics, 2019.

      All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

      ISBN: 978 1 78877 971 5

      Delphi Classics

      is an imprint of

      Delphi Publishing Ltd

      Hastings, East Sussex

      United Kingdom

      Contact: sales@delphiclassics.com

      www.delphiclassics.com

      Interested in classic Eastern literature?

      Delphi Classics is proud to present comprehensive editions of these important Eastern themed authors.

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      The Life and Poetry of Saadi Shirazi

      Shiraz, the fifth most populous city of Iran and the capital of the Fars Province. Saadi’s birthplace is one of the oldest cities of ancient Persia.

      Imamzadeh Ali ebn e Hamze, Shiraz

      Jean Struys’ drawing of Shiraz in c. 1681

      Brief Introduction: Saadi by Epiphanius Wilson

      THE PERSIAN POET Sa’di, generally known in literary history as Muslih-al-Din, belongs to the great group of writers known as the Shirazis, or singers of Shiraz. His Gulistan, or Rose Garden, is the mature work of his life-time, and he lived to the age of one hundred and eight. The Rose Garden was an actual thing, and was part of the little hermitage, to which he retired, after the vicissitudes and travels of his earlier life, to spend his days in religious contemplation, and the embodiment of his experience in reminiscences, which took the form of anecdotes, sage and pious reflections, bon-mots, and exquisite lyrics. When a friend visited him in his cell and had filled a basket with nosegays from the garden of the poet with roses, hyacinths, spikenards, and sweet-basils, Sa’di told him of the book he was writing, and added:— What can a nosegay of flowers avail thee? Pluck but one leaf from my Rose Garden; the rose from yonder bush lasts but a few days, but this 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 compare Sa’di with Hafiz, we find that both of them based their theory of life upon the same Sufic pantheism. Both of them were profoundly religious men. Like the strong and life-giving soil out of whose bosom sprang the rose-tree, wherein the nightingales sang, was the fixed religious confidence, which formed the support of each poet’s mind, amid all the vagaries of fancy, and the luxuriant growth of fruit and flower which their genius gave to the world. Hafiz is the Persian Anacreon. As he raises his voice of thrilling and unvarying sweetness, his steps reel, he waves the thyrsus, and his flushed cheek shows the inspiration of the vine. To him the Supreme Being has much in common with the Indian or Thracian Dionysus, the god of perennial youth, joyous revel, and exhilaration. Hafiz can never be the guide, though he may be the cheerer of mortals, adding more to the gayety than to the wisdom of life. But both in the western and in the eastern world Sa’di must always be looked upon as the guide and enlightener of those who taste life, and love poetry. It has been said by a wise man that poetry is the great instructor of mature minds. Many a man turning away in weariness from the controversies, the insincerities, and the pretentiousness of the intellectualists around him, has exclaimed, Give me my Horace. But Horace with all his bonhommie, his common sense, and his acuteness, is but the representative of a narrow Roman coterie of the Augustan age. How thin, flimsy, and unspiritual does he appear in comparison with the marvellous depth, the spiritual insight, the tenderness and power of expression which characterized Sa’di.

      Sa’di had begun his life as a student of the Koran and became early imbued with the quietism of Islam. The cheerfulness and exuberant joy which characterize the poems he wrote before he reached his fortieth year, had bubbled up under the repressions of severe discipline and austerity. But the religion of Mohammed was soon exchanged by him, under the guidance of a famous teacher, for the wider and more transcendental system of Sufism. Within the area of this magnificent scheme, the boldest ever formulated under the name of religion, he found the liberty which his soul desired. Early discipline had made him a morally sound man, and it is the goodness of Sa’di that lends such a warm and endearing charm to his works. The last finish was given to his intellectual training by the travels which he took after the Tartar invasion desolated Persia, in the thirteenth century. India, Arabia, Syria, were in turn visited. He found Damascus a congenial halting-place, and lived there for some time, with an increasing reputation as a sage and poet. He preached at Baalbec on the fugitiveness of human life, on faith, love, and rest in God. He wandered, like Jerome, in the wilderness about Jerusalem, and worked as a slave in Africa in the trenches of Tripoli: he travelled the length and breadth of Asia Minor. When he arrived back at Shiraz, he had passed the limit of three-score years and ten, and there he remained in his hermitage and his garden, to arrange the result of all his studies, his experiences, and his sufferings, in that consummate work which he has named the Rose Garden, after the little cultivated plot in which he spent his declining days and drew his last breath.

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

      Above all, we find in Sa’di the science of life, as comprising morality and 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 of Bacon, which were published in their complete form the year before the great English philosopher died. Both works cover a large area of thought and experience; but the Englishman is clear, cold, and sometimes cynical, while the Persian is more spiritual, though not less acute, and has the fervor of the poet which Bacon lacks, and the religious devotion which the Essays altogether miss. The Rose Garden has maxims which are not unworthy of being cherished amid the highest Christian civilization, while the serenity of mind, the poetic fire, the transparent sincerity of Sa’di, make his writings one of those books which men may safely take as the guide and inspirer of their inmost life. Sa’di died at Shiraz about the year 1292 at the reputed age of one hundred and ten.

      E.W.

      A copy of Saadi Shirazi’s works by the Bosniak scholar Safvet beg Bašagić (1870–1934)

      Saadi in a Rose garden, from a Mughal manuscript of ‘Gulistan’, c. 1645

      Saadi Shirazi is welcomed by a youth from Kashgar during a forum in Bukhara — double page illustration from a late Timurid manuscript

      Bustan

      Translated by A. Hart Edwards

      Completed in 1257, Saadi’s Bustan is a book of poetry, which was dedicated to the Salghurid Atabeg Sa’d I or Sa’d II. It was the Persian poet’s first published work and the title translates as The Orchard. Featuring the fruits of Saadi’s long experience, it reveals his judgements on life, while illustrated by a vast collection of anecdotes. The text also includes accounts of Saadi’s travels and his analysis of human psychology. The poet often mentions his accounts with fervour and advice similar to the tenor of Aesop’s fables.

      Bustan is written entirely in verse epic metre, consisting of stories aptly illustrating the standard virtues recommended to Muslims: namely, justice, liberality, modesty, contentment. The small book also offers reflections on the behaviour of dervishes and their ecstatic practices. It is full of practical spiritual wisdom and is characterised by Saadi’s tendency not to depend on allegory as much as other Sufi writers of the period. The majority of the stories in the collection are concerned with a moral lesson to instruct the reader.

      This prose translation of the Bustan was originally published as part of the Wisdom of the East series in 1911 and has remained out of print for many years.

      The first page of the ‘Bustan’, from a copy dated to the seventeenth century

      CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTION

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER I. Concerning Justice, Counsel, and the Administration of Government

      CHAPTER II. Concerning Benevolence

      CHAPTER III. Concerning Love

      CHAPTER IV. Concerning Humility

      CHAPTER V. Concerning Resignation

      CHAPTER VI. Concerning Contentment

      CHAPTER VII. Concerning Education

      CHAPTER VIII. Concerning Gratitude

      CHAPTER IX. Concerning Repentance

      CHAPTER X. Concerning Prayer

      ENDNOTES

      INTRODUCTION

      IF AMONG THE twenty-two works with which Sadi enriched the literature of his country the Gulistan rank first in popularity, the Bustan (lit. Garden) may justly claim equal precedence in point of interest and merit.

      No comprehensive translation of this important classical work has hitherto been placed before the reading public, but it cannot be doubted that the character of its contents is such as to fully justify the attempt now made to familiarize English readers with the entertaining anecdotes and devotional wisdom which the Sage of Shiraz embodied in his Palace of Wealth. This is the name which he applies to the Bustan in an introductory chapter, and it is .one which springs from something more than a poet’s fancy, for the ten doors, or chapters, with which the edifice is furnished lead into a garden that is indeed rich in the fruits of knowledge gained by a wide experience of life in many lands, and earnest thought.

      The Bustan is written in verse — a fact which adds considerably to the difficulties of translation, since the invariable rule of Sadi, like that of every other Persian poet we have read, is to sacrifice sense to the exigencies of rhyme and metre. In not a few cases the meaning is so confused on this account that even the native commentators, who possess a fund of ingenuity in explaining what they do not properly understand, have been compelled to pass over numerous couplets through sheer inability to unravel their intricacies and the abstruse ideas of the poet.

      Probably in no other language in the world is poetic license so freely permitted and indulged in as in Persian. The construction of sentences follows no rule; the order of words is just that which the individual poet chooses to adopt, and the idea of time — past, present, and future — is ignored in the use of tenses, that part of a verb being alone employed which rhymes the best.

      Notwithstanding idiosyncrasies of this kind,. the Bustan is written in a style that is delightfully pure and admirably adapted to the subject. The devout spirit by which Sadi was characterized throughout his chequered life is revealed in every page of the book. In the Gulistan he gave free rein to the quaint humour which for many centuries has been the delight of the Eastern peoples, and which an ever-increasing body of English readers is learning to appreciate and admire. In the Bustan the humour is more restrained; its place is taken by a more sober reasoning of the duties of mankind towards the Deity and towards their fellow-men. Devotion to God and the inflexibility of Fate are the underlying texts of every poem, and the ideality of the one and the stern reality of the other are portrayed in language the beauty of which, it is to be feared, the English rendering does not always adequately convey.

      The poems abound in metaphor, a figure of style which Eastern writers employ to a degree that is always exaggerated, and sometimes tedious; but for the purpose of this translation, which aims at a happy medium between literal accuracy and the freedom requisite in order to render Oriental phraseology into polite English, numerous of the more far-fetched allusions have been discarded, to the benefit of the text.

      Although a memoir of Sadi’s life is included in another volume of this series, it may not be out of place to give here a brief outline of the poet’s career, especially as the Bustan contains several references to his childhood and travels.

      Sheikh Muslih-ud-din Sadi was born in. Shiraz, in Persia, A.D. 1175; that is to say, 571 years after the flight of Muhammad from Mecca to Madina. He was the son of one Abdu’llah (servant of God), who held a Government office under the Diwan of that time. Sadi was a child when his father died, as is made clear from the pathetic poem in the second chapter, ending with these words:

      Well do I know the orphan’s sorrow,

      For my father departed in my childhood.

      But poorly endowed with earthly riches, Sadi endured many hardships in consequence of this bereavement, and was eventually obliged to live, together with his mother, under the protection of a Saracen chief. How long he remained there it is impossible to say, for the reason that his biographers are the reverse of informing. This much is, however, known, that being imbued from early childhood with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, he eventually journeyed to Baghdad, then at the zenith of its intellectual fame, and was enabled to enter a private school there through the generosity of a wealthy native gentleman. Making full use of the opportunity so favourably presented, the young aspirant progressed rapidly along the path of learning, and at the age of twenty-one made his first essays in authorship. Some fragmentary poems which he submitted with a long dedication to Shams-ud-din, the Professor of Literature at the Nizamiah College of Baghdad, so pleased that able and discerning man that he at once fixed upon Sadi a liberal allowance from his own private purse, with the promise of every further assistance in his power. Soon after this, Sadi was admitted into the college, and ultimately gained an Idrar, or fellowship. In the seventh chapter of the Bustan he narrates an instructive story reminiscent of his studies at Nizamiah, and, prone to conceit though he often is, he tells the story against himself.

      His scholastic life did not terminate until he had reached the age of thirty. Of the value of this prolonged period of study he himself was fully cognisant. Dost thou not know, Sadi he asks in the seventh chapter, how Sadi attained to rank? Neither did he traverse the plains nor journey across seas. he In his youth he lived under the yoke of the wise: God granted him distinction in after-life. And it is not long before he who is submissive in obedience exercises command. No better example of the truth of this passage could be cited than that afforded by his own case.

      On leaving Baghdad, he went in company with his tutor, Abdul Qadir Gilani, on a pilgrimage to Mecca. This was the first of many travels extending over a period of thirty years, in the course of which he visited Europe, India, and practically every part of what are known as the Near and Middle East. A trip through Syria and Turkey is specifically mentioned in this book as inspiring the composition of the Bustan. Not wishing, as he tells us, to return empty-handed to his friends at Shiraz, he built the Palace of Wealth, and offered it to them as a gift. He does not conceal the high opinion which he himself placed upon this product of his gifted pen. The gracefully worded phrases with which he predicted the undying popularity of the Gulistan finds a parallel in the dedication of the Bustan to Atabak Abu Bakr-bin-Sad, the illustrious monarch of Persia beneath whose protection Sadi spent the latter half of his life.

      Although not wishing to sing the praises of kings, he writes, I have dedicated this book to one so that perhaps the pious will say that Sadi, who surpassed all in eloquence, lived in the time of Abu Bakr Sad. Then, addressing the king, he adds: Happy is thy fortune that Sadi’s date coincides with thine, for as long as the moon and sun are in the skies thy memory will remain eternal in this book. This conceit is pardonable, since it has been amply justified by time.

      After the thirty years of travel, Sadi, becoming elderly, settled down in Persia, where, as has been said, he gained the favour of the ruling prince, from whom he derived not only the dignity and the more tangible advantages of the post of Poet-Laureate, but his takhallus, or titular name, of Sadi. He died at the ripe age of 116, and was buried in his native city.

      If the Bustan were the only monument that remained of his genius, his name would assuredly still be inscribed in the roll of the Immortals. One feature of his great intellectual faculties needs to be emphasized, and all the more so because it is apt to be overlooked. That is the increasing power which they assumed as he advanced in years, the truth of which can be understood when it is stated that he composed the Bustan at the age of 82, the Gulistan appearing twelve months later. Few, if any, instances of such sustained mental activity are to be found elsewhere in the entire world’s history of letters.

      Under the several headings of the various chapters a wide range of ethical subjects is discussed, the whole forming a compendium of moral philosophy the broad principles of which must remain for all time as irrefutable as the precepts of Scriptural teaching.

      Sadi’s spiritual message is not that of a visionary. His religion was an eminently practical one — he had no sympathies with the recluse and the ascetic. To fulfil one’s duties towards one’s fellow-men is to fulfil one’s duty towards the Deity. That is the root-idea of his teachings. Religion, he observes, consists only in the service of the people: it does not lie in the rosary, or prayer-rug, or mendicant’s habit.

      This couplet, occurring in the opening chapter, is put into the mouth of a certain pious man whom one of the kings of Persia is said to have visited in a repentant mood for the purpose of seeking counsel. The story, like many others in the book, may or may not have any foundation in fact, the histories of ancient kings, which the poet frequently quotes as his authority, being rather too vague to be convincing. At the same time, the historical allusions form an interesting and instructive background to the legends and the moral precepts so abundantly interwoven among them.

      Although Persia is only yet in the process of readjusting her ideas of government and the prerogatives of rulers, principles more advanced than seem compatible with despotism have been for many centuries current among her people, in theory, at least, if not in practice. Muhammad said that a little practice with much knowledge was better than much practice with little knowledge. On that ground Persia has defence, for the knowledge certainly was there. What could better describe the true relationship between king and people than Sadi’s thirteenth-century epigram? —

      Subjects are as the root and the king is as the tree,

      And the tree, O son, gains strength from the root.

      In 1910 the autocratic tree at Teheran was rudely severed from its root; perchance the successors of Abu Bakr were not of those to whom the words of Sadi are agreeable.

      The saving grace of benevolence is illustrated in the second chapter by means of some entertaining anecdotes, of two of which the hero is Hatim Tai, the famous Arabian chief, whose generosity was such that he preferred to die rather than disappoint the messenger sent by a jealous king to slay him. The story of the Darwesh and the Fox is noteworthy inasmuch as it throws a much-needed light upon the Eastern interpretation of all that is implied by  qismat. It is commonly supposed that the sense of inevitability removes from the Eastern’s mind the necessity for individual effort. This view is distinctly erroneous. No such pernicious doctrine is, at any rate, subscribed to by the educated classes; to the lazy and ne’er-do-well who plead Fate as their excuse, Sadi points the moral.

      After demonstrating in the two succeeding chapters the powerlessness of man to avert the decrees of Fate, and the virtues

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