M. Saadat Noury

THANK YOU ALL

WHO visited this thread. My thanks also go to Ari Siletz, Azarin Sadegh, Ladan Farhangi, All-Iranians, Immortal Guard, Baharan, Anahid Hojjati, and Mehrban for their informative comments, thoughtful observations, and very interesting suggestions

PS: گروهی رباعی "پندار" را منسوب به خیام دانسته اند ( برخی از رباعیات مولانا مولوی، پور سینا و دیگران را نیز به خیام نسبت می دهند). به باور نگارنده ، پاسخ به این پرسش که آیا کدام گروه درست می اندیشد ، نیازمند پژوهش هایی بیشتر و گسترده تر است.

I like "baadeh"...

Dear Mehrban,

Actually, I really like your idea about "baadeh"...especially that Khayam talks about the greatness of baadeh all the time! But as he seems considering "mey o baadeh" as something good, so maybe the word "baad" is the real word. It holds a kind of existentialistic despair. Because there is nothing left but the wind (which is also made of nothing tangible)

Dear Ari,

Yes, I like your story and I like even more your imagination of what has actually happened..:-)

BTW, the link I provided is the whole Taraaneh haay Khayaam, so no need to blog it....Thanks for the lovely discussion about "nist" and "hast"! I really enjoyed the exchange. 

Mehrban

Azarin

As for the robai in question, the version you cite with 'hast' instead of 'nist' is most likely the original version because when you replace the word with 'neest,' the long 'ee' throws off the cadence of the verse. So here's my new story about what happened: Khayaam wrote the original (so Hedayat is right). Later on Mahsati (or Mahasti) parodied it with 'nist'  instead of 'hast' knowing full well that her audience would recognize the reference. She sacrificed the cadence to pack philosophic meaning or perhaps humor (rather awkwardly) into the verse.

Obliquely it reminds me of Twain's parody of Shakespeare: "To be or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life...!!" 

Just a thought

could the first beyt be

چون نيست زهرچه هست جز باده بدست

 I do not have any of the books you have referenced but (maybe) Badeh makes more sense

 Also in the second beyt there is the word shekast which has an affinity with baadeh and not baad.  So maybe.....

Ps.  having said that, I am sure Foroughi and Hedayat, Ostaad Sadat Noury and all of you know much better, so I am probably wrong.

About poems sounding very similar, some call it stealing..

Several months ago, I wrote a blog which is related to the issue of some Persian poems sounding very close to each other.  It might help in this discussion about poem being from Mahasti or Khayyam. Here is the link to my blog:

//iranian.com/main/blog/anahid-hojjati/poetry-and-me-4-persian-poetry-waste-time

 And here are some sentences of that blog:"...So try this yourself, listen to some classic Persian song or read some poetry and come up with list of words which rhyme together. Then sit down and use these words and I bet you can come up with some poetry yourself. .."

Dear Ari

I love Khayaam's poetry and I have always felt this affinity with his philosophical (existentialist) view on life (and death, etc) and I know that I am no expert in Khayam...yet Hedayat's book is not the only book where this particular robai has been attributed to Khayaam

I own this wonderful expensive copy of Khayaam's robaais published by Morteza Hosseini (it also has Fitzgerald's translations of robaaiis) chosen by Dr. Elaahi Ghomshei and based on "Noskheh Mohammad Ali Foroughi" and I am sure you know that these people are real experts in Persian literature...and especially Khayaam

:In this version the robaai is like this

چون نيست زهرچه هست جزباد بدست
چون هست زهرچههست نقصان وشکست

 انگار که هرچه هست درعالم نيست

پندار که هرچه نيست درعالم هست

.If you like, I can send you a picture of this robai in my copy

to Baharan: As Orhan Pamuk in his speech (last year in LA) mentionned, stealing is something very common among writers, as long as they do it masterfully and with the right switch...:-) I have no doubt that Mahasti has been an amazing poet, and I have nothing against her...but this poem has always been my favorite Khayam robaai, and I had read it in many different books of Khayaam...so I was surprised to find it attributed to another poet who came way after Khayam. BTW, considering the fact that you don't know me and I don't even know your real identity...so telling me what to do (-:...or not to do in the future sounds totally silly, even funny

یاد آوری

معین‌الدین محرابی، در کتاب “مهستی گنجه‌ای” (انتشارات توس، ۱۳۸۲ چاپ اوّل) می‌نویسد: “مهستی گنجه‌ای پس از خیام، برجسته‌ترین رباعی سرای ایرانی است و اولین پایه گذار مكتب شهرآشوب در قالب رباعی بشمار می‌آید. شهرآشوب يكی از انواع شعر فارسی است كه در آن از اسامی كارافزارها، حرفه‌های رايج و صنايع دوره‌ای خاص سخن به ميان آمده است. از اين رو با مطالعه در شهرآشوب‌های موجود می‌توان از مشاغل، پيشه‌ها و نيز از لغات و اصطلاحات فنی ادوار گذشته آگاهی‌های ارزشمندی بدست آورد. مهستی در شهرآشوب‌های خود با چيره‌دستی ،دقايق و ظرايف اين فنون و صاحبان اين فنون را نشان می‌دهد: بزّاز، پاره‌دوز، تيرانداز، بافنده، حمّامی، نانوا، سوزن‌ساز، خيّاط، كلّه‌پز، سرّاج، صحّاف، حجامت‌كننده، قصّاب، گازُر، كفشگر، كلاه‌دوز، محتسب، ميوه‌فروش، نجّار، نعل‌بند و…"

To Azarin Sadegh

I agree with Ari and this poem does not belong to Khayyam. In your first comment you used the strong term of 'stolen'; it had a disrespectful tone toward Mahsati who is one of the greatest female poets of Iran. Please never do it again!

Dear Dr Noury

Thank you for this wonderful post.

Immortal Guard

 Basically I think Mahsati is mocking the (neo)platonic mindset of her contemporaries by pointing out the absurdity of their argument. Here's an explanation for the reader. 

Roughly speaking, Platonists believed that reality came in two grades, the world of matter and the world of form. As an example, we can try to draw (or find) the most accurate circle with better and better technologies but we can never produce or find a perfect circle in the physical universe. At some level of examination our circle turns out not to be quite the ideal circle. So the question comes up that if an ideal circle has never been nor can ever be experienced where does our idea of "circle" come from? The Platonists (and neoplatonists)say that every perceived object (like a circle) or quality (like goodness) has a perfect counterpart in a higher reality that contains its essence in an abstract form. To them this realm of form is a higher reality because forms do not change or decay whereas the physical world does both. There is no noghsan and shekast in the world of essences. 

Mahsati seems to be pointing out the absurdity of the Platonic concept with a more obviously absurd argument: there is no noghsan and shekast in non-existence either, so should we say non-existence is a higher reality than the physical universe? Her philosophical joke, perhaps on the likes of Khayaam. So perhaps her philosophy was more rooted in everyday life, like the existentialists.

As for existentialim. In some ways--though not all--platonism and existentialism are opposites. Schools of the Platonist ancestry believe that life has an essential meaning and purpose already existing in the perfect realm and the individual must strive intellectually or spiritually to find it.  Existentialists on the other hand say that life is intrinsically meaningless and individuals must experience the world to create meaning or purpose into their lives (their essence) , not just through the intellect but through actions and feelings very much of the material world . This is what existentialists mean when they say "Existence precedes essence." To them the idea of form preceding existence would seem absurd, just as it seems to have been the case with Mahsati. 

Interestingly, Sadegh Hedayat--who compiled the Khayaam quatrains Azarin has kindly linked to --is supposedly an existential writer. Given that he was almost certainly also familiar with the Shirazi Mola Sadra (born 1571) who first said, "existence precedes the essence," I wondered if Hedayat paused to think about the quatrain in question before prefering the "hast" to the "nist" version and claiming the verse belonged to Khayaam.  

Just some thoughts. Good poetry does that!

Ari

I find the following statement that you mind quite amazing:

So in this sense non-existence has a permanence that existence does not, giving non-existence a higher reality than existence!! This is an absolutely breath taking turn of phrase and I have not seen it reflected in any of the English translations.

Is this something to believe or something to accept? Is this supposed to be an abstract thought meant to tickle/tease our mind or a concrete concept? And in what way is existence here defined? Any links with the philosophy of existentialism?

Thanks Azarin

Please note the difference in line 2 between "Mahsati" and "Khayaam."

Maybe Mahsati saw that with a tiny change from "hast" to "nist" a strong rebuttal can be made to Khayaam, as per my reply to All-Iranians.

Many thanks, All-Iranians

For discussion: 

 In the 1979 Penguin Classic translation of Khayaam, the verse is translated as follows:

Since all that is leaves us empty-handed,
The only return from all that is, loss and ruin,
It can be supposed that what the world has not, is,
And what it has, is not.

As with the unknow translator above, the Penguin translators (Peter Avery and John Heath Stubbs) avoid (or miss) the crucial paradox that the quatrain presents in the second line: there is no noghsaan and shekast in non-existence. So in this sense non-existence has a permanence that existence does not, giving non-existence a higher reality than existence!! This is an absolutely breath taking turn of phrase and I have not seen it reflected in any of the English translations. It is also a most playful attack on the neo-platonist idea of "The One."

 From Wikipedia article on neoplatonism: (I have bolded the most relevant thought)

The totality of being may thus be conceived as a series of concentric circles  fading away towards the verge of non-existence, the force of the original Being in the outermost circle being a vanishing quantity

Since Khayaam is considered to be a neo-platonist, I incline to disagree with Hedayat that this should be considered an "authentic" Khayaam verse. It's attribution to the rebellious Mahsati feels aesthetically more apt. Unless, of course, Western  Khayaam critics have mistaken Persia's unique variety of spiritual nihilism as neoplatonism.

Robaai number 106 in Hedayat's book on Khayam

//www.medad.net/pdf/khayam.pdf

I found this link where you can read Hedayat's whole book. The poem number 106 is my favorite one.

Dear Ari Siletz

How do you like this translation for the poem you cited:

"Nothing is eternal but a gusty wind

Everything can be worn out and has an end

You better think nothing exists in this global atmosphere

And just imagine the things that do not exist are really here somewhere": MSN. Posted by All-Iranians.

Dear Dr Saadat Noury

Good informative article; thank you for sharing.

Azarin

ترجمه ای دیگر

از مهستی گنجوی
يک دست به مصحفيم ويک دست به جام
گه نزد حلاليم وگهی نزد حرام
مائيـم دراين گنبـد ناپختـه ی خام
نه کافرمطلق نه مسلمان تمام

Source: //efsha.co.uk/kaafar/charaha/Mehsati.htm

"There is goblet in our one hand, Quran is in other
We are sometimes awake, sometimes drunken
Who are we in this frail world?
We are not giaour, but not real Muslim too": Unknown Translator
Source: //www.persons.girdman.com

She might have stolen this robaai from Khayam!

In my copy of Taraane haay Khayam by Sadegh Hedayat this one robaai (my top favorite) belongs to Khayam and not to Mahasti Ganjei.

I think she has stolen it from the great master...:-)

Wonderful !

Thank you for this expostion on Mahsati G. 

However the given translation of one of the poems by the unknown translator garbles the crucial insight of the poem. 

"Since there is nothing left for whatever exists except wind through the hand
Since everything is immutable and has an end
Think that everything that exists, does not exist
And that which does not exis it is like it exists."

You have kindly provided the original in your Farsi blog, and I would be curious to see the poetically inclined on IC have a go at restoring Mahsati's ingeniously poetic observation. 

چون نيست زهرچه هست جزباد بدست
چون نيست زهرچه نيست نقصان وشکست
پندار که هرچه هست، درعالم نيسـت
وانگار که هرچه نيست، درعالم هسـت