Ecotheology of Sohrab Sepehri: Consciousness on the Edge of Water
Ecotheology of Sohrab Sepehri: Consciousness on the Edge of Water
Bahar Davary
University of San Diego
Introduction
In the context of discussing the poet Hafez, Hossein Ziai wrote: “Persian poetic wisdom (hikmat-i sha’iranah) is thought to continue the divine revelation by constructing a metalanguage of metaphor, allegory and symbol that transcends periods of historical time ….”[1] He describes the poet as the link between the human and the realm of the “unseen,” in other words, as the “tongue of the unseen,” a veritable prophet-like “messenger.” [2] In a different context, the Spanish philosopher María Zambrano described the mission of the poet in a time of crisis as that of someone who creates a space in poetic form for accessing hidden reality. Challenging the boundaries between poetic and philosophical modes of thought, her razón poética (poetic reason) saw in poetry the “realization of lost time,”[3] a “creation of a new world and the opening up of a lost reality.”[4] For Zambrano, poetic reason is ethical reason.
In yet another context, the American novelist, playwright, and civil rights activist, James Baldwin emphatically declared poets as “the only people who know the truth about us.” He asserted that “something awful is happening to a civilization when it ceases to produce poets and what is even more crucial is when it ceases […] to believe in the report that only poets can make.”[5] Clearly, this lofty description of poetry and poets does not apply to any versifier, but to those who have acquired the ability to see and to reveal the truth of the “unseen.” Sohrab Sepehri (19281980), author of Hasht kitab, can indeed be counted as a truth-teller, a messenger, another “tongue of the unseen” in the Persian hikmat-i sha’iranah, and beyond. His vigilance for continual inner transformation, along with his interest in and attention to various cosmologies of the globe, particularly those of marginalized people, as well as his call for a de-hierarchization and equilibrium among all beings, positions his oeuvre among the most sophisticated works of eco-poesis and of ecotheology from the perspective of the comparative study of religion.
Within the field of religious studies, the term ecotheology appeared in the late twentieth century alongside questions about the role and impact of religious discourse—including myths, rituals, doctrines, etc.—on ecology and ecological discourse. Ecotheology pertains to the study of our relationship with eco, from the Greek oikos, meaning dwelling place or home. It entails not just one’s hometown, or country, but the entire cosmos including all beings and natural elements. In short, ecotheology is a re-evaluation of the notions of the sacred and profane in articulating the relationship between God/gods (in a theistic tradition), or the notion of transcendence (in a non-theistic one), on the one hand, and humans and non-human nature, on the other.
Hasht kitab: Ecotheology in Verse
Starting in the last two decades of the twentieth century, eco-poetics evolved into an intersectional paradigm for evaluating the unevenly distributed effects of environmental degradation. What distinguishes eco-poetry from nature poetry is that it invites social change, is cognizant of the interdependence of all creatures, and calls for an awareness of the superiority/inferiority complex in relations of human and nonhuman life. It is also skeptical of hyperrationality and the over-technologized culture of modernity.[6] Eco-poetry conveys a sense of responsibility and engages with the ethical question of what type of relationship humans should cultivate with the Earth and other beings in light of the crisis of environmental degradation resulting from the separation of humanity from the rest of nature.
Eco-poetics is, in short, a poetic project that comprehends the ecological imperative at a level higher than personal sensitivity. The greater task is to point to a deeper problem, i.e., the broken relationship resulting from unsustainable exploitation and the culture of consumption that has privileged economics and capital over all else. It derives from the awareness that we, Homo sapiens, have established ourselves as a major geological force on this planet, a rival to what we simply and reducibly call “nature.” It is aware that the speed and force of urbanization, industrialized agriculture, excessive production and use of fossil fuels, destruction of forests, and pollution of water and the atmosphere continue to determine the fate, life, and death of many species of animals, plants, and other aggregates.
While the first edition of Hasht kitab was published in 1976 as a complete collection of his work, much of Sepehri’s ouevre had previously been published. As early as 1965, Sepehri’s poetry spoke of the negative human effects of life on the Earth. For example, in his longest poem “The Sound of Water’s Footfall,” he wrote:
We should not wish the fly off the fingertips of nature
We should not wish the leopard to go extinct
We must know that if there were no worms, life would have been amiss.
و نخواهیم مگس از سر انگشت طبیعت بپرد
و نخواهیم پلنگ از در خلقت برود بیرون
و بدانیم اگر کرم نبود، زندگی چیزی کم داشت[7]
His connection with all living beings and with natural elements is strongly reflected throughout his work. In a poem titled “Ghurbat” (Exile) he writes:
I must remember not to disturb the law of the Earth.
[8].یاد من باشد، کاری نکنم, که به قانون زمین بر بخورد
In addition to his early awareness of the consequences of human action on the environment and its repercussions for humans, Sepehri had a broad vision, rich with philosophies and religions of the East (particularly of India), while remaining rooted within his own Persianate poetic Muslim tradition. He warns against the implications of a profit-driven relationship between human and nonhuman nature, expressing disdain for the notion of human superiority over other beings, and denouncing oppressive structures and systems of control and profit. Hailed as the sage “fluid in nature, as water,”[9] Sepehri produced an intricate body of work filled with koan-like poems soothing to the soul, while engaging with and opposing all forms of domination and subjugation.
Beginning with the title of his magnum opus composition, Hasht kitab, Sepehri reveals his depth of vision and his rootedness in the use of symbolic language. Hasht means eight, and kitab means book, rendered in English as The Eight Books.[10] Considering the importance of symbols in his work, and his peculiar sense of humor, it is possible to imagine that in selecting this title, Sepehri situates his work alongside sacred texts such as the Qur’an, referred to as The Book (al-Kitab), and the Bible, referred to as The Books, from the Greek τὰ βιβλία (ta biblia), in their shared mission of provoking an awakening. Sepehri’s mission was to stir and to arouse. His writing was far from simple, despite its ease of form. Hasht kitab is a meticulous revision of (mostly) previously published poems, composed between 1951-1974/75: a period of twenty-three years.[11]
Moreover, the number eight has a symbolic meaning, reflecting a connection between language and infinity. Sepehri’s notes, posthumously published as Utaq-i Abi (The Blue Room), is an important work for understanding Sepehri’s way of thinking and an indispensable key to his poetic symbolism. It is in the eponymous first essay of this work that Sepehri points to various cosmologies of the world, particularly those of the Yuchis of North America and the Dogon of Africa.[12] Similar to the Yuchis, the Dogon of Mali hold that there is a connection between the spiritual world of gods and ancestors and the world of the living, including animals and plants. The Dogon go back to their eight original ancestors. In Taoism, it is the eight immortals who are believed to know the secrets of nature. Eight is an auspicious number in China. In Christianity, the number eight corresponds to the New Testament. In Judaism, it evokes the letter H (pronounced hay), in Hebrew, and means life. In Islamic sources, eight is the number of gates to heaven. With a single number as the title of his book, Sepehri connects the world together with a symbol that represents the Earth and life.[13] It is in his posthumously published collection of essays, The Blue Room, that we read about his first epiphany, experience of the sacred. His experience is reminiscent of the rituals and cosmologies of Indigenous people, thus making an important point by centering the marginalized, and their ways of knowing and experiencing the sacred and the world around them, without referencing the role of imperialism and colonialism in the theft of information and of ways of knowing, imagery, creation, production, and identity.
God of the Plain of Nenuphar
If ecology is the web of life on earth, ecotheology looks at the relationships between the human, the sacred (often referred to as God), and the rest of the web of life. Sepehri’s ecotheology is conveyed distinctly in many of the works within Hasht kitab, such as The Green Expanse (Hajm-i sabz, originally published in 1967) and the books that followed. Yet, we see it emerging as early as The Torrent of Sun (1961), where he began with the search for the self by reflecting on the place of the human being in this world, human relationships with all beings, and with the transcendent. A transcendent God does appear in several poems in four of the eight books of Hasht kitab: The Torrent of Sun, The Sound of Water’s Footfall, The Green Expanse, and We Nothing, We Gaze. It is in these four books that Sepehri more explicitly delineates his ecotheology, rooting it in the notion of unity so central to Islamic thought, and with an attention to parallel concepts within the philosophies and religions of other parts of the world.
The first appearance of God in Sepehri’s Hasht kitab is in The Torrent of Sun (1961) where he calls out:
O! God of the field of nenuphar
Where is the silver key to the gates of awakening.
ای خدای دشت نیلوفر!
کو کلید نقره درهای بیداری؟[14]
In this poem he calls upon the God of the field of Nenuphar, while in other parts of his work, he finds God amidst the violets, under a cypress tree, on the consciousness of water, on the law of the plant. Sepehri’s theology is far from static. It implies—even necessitates—doubt. In a poem titled “A Dream in Chaos” in The Torrent of Sun, he curses life in an uncharacteristic tone, calling it a “blind tremble!” Then he wishes for non-being:
Do away with my being, O, you that I do not know, illusory God!
هستی مرا برچین، ای ندانم چه خدایی موهوم! [15]
His doubt reappears more vividly in a poem called “Hala” (Beware) in East of Sorrow, where he writes:
Hear the cricket: How sorrowful is the world And there is no God and there is a God and there is …
زنجره را بشنو: چه جهان غمناک است و خدایی نیست
و خدایی هست و خدایی… [16]
Then, in “Padma,” another poem from East of Sorrow, he starts with doubt, reaches for certainty, and ends with not naming that which is perceived. He sees God in the forest. He writes:
Growing. In the forest, silence was a dream …
And God in every …. Was it? …
The unseen, was seen,
Ou[17] was there, there it was.
میرویید. در جنگل، خاموشی رویا بود.
درها باز، چشم تماشا باز، چشم تماشاتر، و خدا، در هر … آیا بود؟…
نا پیدا، پیدا بود .
“او” آنجا، آنجا بود .[18]
Throughout his work, in almost every instance where God is mentioned, it is in nature. This is an indication that for Sepehri, being in nature, being in self, and being with God are interrelated. At the end of this poem, he speaks with certainty of the presence of the Unseen. Yet, as clear as the poet is, he cannot name it. The poem bears a Sanskrit title “Padma,” meaning primordial purity. At the same time, the last two lines of the poem relate to the essential element in Taoist thought as expressed in the first verses of the Tao Te Ching: “the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.”[19] Similarly, attempts to discern the nature of God in Islamic mysticism led to the famous Sufi saying: “لا اسم و لا رسم” “There is no name, and there is no shape [for God].” A more resounding example of the pervasiveness of the concept of an unnamable God in Islamic poetry can be found as early as the Shahnamah (The Epic of the Kings), by hakim Abul-Qasim Ferdowsi (c. 940-1025). The opening of the Shahnamah is a fifteen-line poem in reverence of the divine:
In the name of the God of life and of wisdom
whom our thoughts can never surpass
[who is] better than any name, trace, and supposition.
به نام خداوند جان وخرد
کزین برتر اندیشه بر نگذرد…
ز نام و نشان و گمان برتر است .[20]
Over a thousand years after Ferdowsi’s Shahnamah, Sepehri posited his own understanding of unknowing the eternal in the concluding verses of “The Sound of Water’s Footfall.” He writes:
It is not upon us to decipher the “mystery” of the red rose,
Perhaps we are to endeavor
to be afloat in the “incantation” of the red rose.
کار ما نیست شناسایی “راز” گل سرخ
کار ما شاید این است
که در “افسون” گل سرخ شناور باشیم. [21]
His use of multiple symbols and imagery of various traditions, such as the use of the terms padma, bodhi, vid, and Buddha, as well as his reference to reading the Vedas points to his steadfastness in the idea of perennial religion, that all religions of rays of the same Truth. In a poem titled “Shuram ra” (My Rapture) he specifically names several sacred religious texts:
The Qur’an above my head, the Gospels are my bolster,
the Torah my bedstead, the Avesta my garment,
I dream a Buddha in the water lily.
Wherever the flowers of adoration bloomed, I reaped.
I have a bouquet, your altar, far from reach:
[22] Ou, up high, me, down low.
قرآن بالای سرم، بالش من انجیل، بستر من تورات، و زبر پوشم اوستا، میبینم خواب:
بودایی، در نیلوفر آب…هر جا گلهای نیایش رست، من چیدم .
دسته گلی دارم
او بالا: محراب تو دور از دست
من در پست
In this last verse, God is up high, transcendent, while in The Sound of Water’s Footfall, where Sepehri’s ecotheology comes through vividly with the recognition of the connection of all things, of all beings, and elements, God appears as immanent, nearby. He parodies the idea of a God far away in the sky.
(I have) A God who is nearby:
Among these violets, at the foot of that towering Cypress.
On the consciousness of water, on the law of the plant.
و خدایی که در این نزدیکی است:
لای این شب بو ها، پای آن کاج بلند.
روی آگاهی آب، روی قانون گیاه .[23]
Again, in much of Hasht kitab, almost every time God is mentioned, it is in proximity with a natural element, landform, animal, insect, tree, or plant.
The valley was moonlit, and mountain so bright, that God was palpable.
دره مهتاب اندو د، وچنان روشن کوه، که خدا پیدا بود .[24]
Let Us Not Muddy the Water
In one of his most proverbialized poems, titled “Water” (1967), Sepehri sees the footsteps of God by the tipis/lodges of the people who live up the river and who did not muddy the water:
People up the hill, how pure they are! …
No doubt, the footstep of God is by their lodges…
People up the river, understand water.
They did not muddy it.
Let us not muddy the water.
مردم بالادست، چه صفایی دارند… !
بی گمان پای چپرهاشان جا پای خداست… .
مردمان سر رود، آب را می فهمند.
گل نکردندش، ما نیز
آب را گل نکنیم .[25]
In this poem, published in the 1960s, Sepehri emerges as a water protector at a time when few would have been aware or concerned about the ensuing water crisis. Few could have predicted that in six decades from his writing of the poem almost one-fifth of the world’s population would live in water scarcity, that almost a quarter will face economic water shortage in the very near future, and nearly half could be facing water scarcity by 2030.[26] In addition, more damage to water resources is bound to happen with the expansion of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking (the process of extracting natural gas from deep shale rock formations), the construction of more dams, and other violent practices such as blast fishing. Most of the world’s major dams have been completed within the last eight decades without regard for their long-term and irreversible environmental impacts. In Iran, lake Urmia, once the world’s second largest salt lake, has shrunk drastically.[27] Urmia is not the only casualty of humans muddying the water. Karun and Hamun are among other lakes that have greatly suffered.
In the US, expansive pipelines, such as the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and other projects, continue to threaten water sources, particularly for Indigenous communities. Mni wichoni, which in the language of the Lakota means “water is life,” became the #NoDAPL protest anthem, implying a spiritual connection to water as a living being, not simply a resource. Sepehri’s reference to “mardum-i bala dast”—“people up the hill”—referred to the original people of the land. Like the Kumeyaay, the indigenous people of the land on which I reside, Sepehri was aware not only of the importance of water for human consumption, but also its necessity for the pigeon, the goldfinch, trees and other plants. His concern for water and his plea for its protection shows a deep awareness of human-imposed damages on nature, reminding us to recognize our responsibility towards all of nature. He does not speak only of water as an actual essential necessity for living beings, he also points to the spiritual role of water, ever so succinctly, by alluding to how water washes away sorrow from the heart. Sepehri then reminds the reader of the significance of clean water for the poor: “Hand of a poor man might be dipping a piece of dried bread in the water, a beautiful woman came by the water.”[28] his reference recognizes the millions of women around the world who to this day have the burden of a long walk while carrying a heavy—at times 40-pound—jug of water on their heads, often on difficult terrain.[29] In Indigenous cultures, women have a special relationship with water. The attention of Indigenous traditions to the spiritual significance of water means that they understand it to be “sentient with different levels of power and purpose.”[30] To them, disrespecting water, or carelessness in managing our relationship with it, affects not only our physical health but the spiritual well-being of the individual and the community.[31] Sepehri’s subtle references to the politics and spirituality of water call us to an understanding of the iniquitousness of the colonial relationship and its effects on water, at the same time recognizing water to be connected with the sacred.
Consciousness of Rock, Not the Scent of Gunpowder
Sepehri was a sophisticated worldly painter and poet, with a feeling of belonging to the flowery desert town outside of Kashan, yet, in exile on this earth. In a poem titled “Ghurbat” (Exile), he describes a moonlit village. The poem is only twenty-three verses. In it he names at least twenty-five insects, plants, trees, fruits, animals, or natural elements, before speaking of the shadows of loneliness that he describes as the melody of God:
The mountain is close to me: behind the maples, and the mountain ash
And the desert is visible.
The rocks are not, the florets are not.
Shadows, apparent, from afar,
like the loneliness of water,
Like the melody of God.
کوه نزدیک من است: پشت افراها، سنجدها.
وبیابان پیداست .
سنگ ها پیدا نیست، گلچه ها پیدا نیست .
سایه هایی از دور، مثل تنهایی آب، مثل آواز خدا پیداست .[32]
What is reflected in this poem is that Sepehri does not hold a dichotomy between the profane and the sacred; saving the life of the butterfly and not offending the law of the earth are in the same category as washing his towel. In his own words:
I must remember to quickly fetch every butterfly that falls in the water.
I must remember not to do anything that offends the law of the Earth.
I must remember tomorrow, by the stream, to wash my towel with chubah.[33]
یاد من باشد، هر چه پروانه که میافتد در آب، زود از آب در آرم
یاد من باشد کاری نکنم، که به قانون زمین بر بخورد .
یاد من باشد فردا لب جوی، حولهام را هم با چوبه بشویم
His sister remembers his sensitivity to nature even in his childhood. She recalls one very early morning when Sohrab, standing by damask rose bushes, claimed that he could hear the budding of the flowers.[34] This sensibility enters his poetry:
In this house, I am familiar with the damp obscurity of the grass,
I hear the breath of the garden,
And the sound of darkness as it falls from a leaf,
And the sound of the cough of light from behind the tree,
The sneezing of water from every rupture in the rock.[35]
من در این خانه به گم نامی نمناک علف نزدیکم
من صدای نفس باغچه را می شنوم
و صدای ظلمت را، وقتی از برگی میریزد
و صدای، سرفه روشنی از پشت درخت
عطسه آب از هر رخنه سنگ
By attributing senses and human sounds like coughs and sneezes to plants and water, his verse dissolves boundaries, breaking down the imposed and oppositional human/nature dichotomy. He has no interest in describing nature in the abstract or as a basis for a political or artistic theory. Rather, his verse makes nature tangible, taking the reader on a contemplative journey to “the freckles on the wing of a butterfly,” “the reflection of the swan in the water,” “the crossing of the fly from the alley of loneliness,” “the bright hope of a sparrow when it descends upon land, from atop a sycamore tree,” and “the consciousness of the rock.”[36]
With his keen awareness of the vitality of nature, he points ever so delicately to the manifestations of human violence against the Earth. In his poem titled “To the Garden of Fellow Travelers,” he writes:
In these dark alleys
I fear the multiplication of doubt and matches
I fear the cement surface of the century.
Come so that I do not fear the cities whose black dirt is pasture for the excavators.
در این کوچه هایی که تاریک هستند
من از حاصل ضرب تردید و کبریت می ترسم
من از سطح سیمانی قرن می ترسم.
بیا تا نترسم من از شهرهایی که خاک سیاشان چراگاه جرثقیل است .[37]
In “To the Garden of Fellow Travelers” he writes of “the age of the ascent of steel,” and “the scuffle of the armored tanks” running over “the child’s dream,” and questions the science that “uncovered the positive scent of the gunpowder.”[38]
In this manner, Sepehri’s work embodies the overarching characteristics of eco-poetics with its “humble appreciation of wilderness, a skepticism toward hyperrationality, and its resultant overreliance on technology.”[39] All three are gracefully bestowed to us through this poem, as well as in the larger frame of his work. His subtle reference to the heavy mining of the Earth reveals itself in his deploring of “the collision of metals,” and his longing for “the discoverer of the mine of the morning.”
Open me, like a door to the descent of the pear, in this age of the ascent of the steel
Put me to sleep under a tree branch far from the night of the friction of the metals.
Wake me up if the discoverer of the morning mine arrives.
مرا باز کن مثل یک در به روی هبوط گلابی در این عصر معراج پولاد.
مرا خواب کن زیر یک شاخه دوراز شب اصطکاک فلزات.
اگر کاشف معدن صبح آمد صدا کن مرا.[40]
He speaks of the atrocities of war with a similar brevity, yet with colorful imagery, like the abrupt flight of ducks at the sound of a bomb and the passing of an armored tank over a child’s dream. Together, these images express his dissatisfaction with the social and cultural structures of modernity.
Tell me about the bombs that were dropped, as I was asleep. Tell me about the cheeks, wet with tears,
tell me how many ducks flew into the sky, from the face of the sea. In the scuffle, when the armored tanks ran over the child’s dream, To the foot of what feeling of tranquility
did the canary tie its yellow string of melody.
Tell me: What innocent goods arrived at the ports?
Which science discovered the fine tune of the scent of the gunpowder?
حکایت کن از بمبهایی که من خواب بودم و افتاد.
حکایت کن از گونه هایی که من خواب بودم و تر شد…
در آن گیر و داری که چرخ ذره پوش از روی رویای کودک گذر داشت
قناری نخ زرد آواز خود را به پای چه احساس آسایشی بست.
بگو در بنادر چه اجناس معصومی از راه وارد شد .
چه علمی به موسیقی مثبت بوی باروت پی برد.[41]
In this part of the poem, he questions scientism—i.e., the idea that science is the only way to truly access reality, and that it is this way that always yields positive results. He points to the connection of science and militarism by reference to the discovery of the positive scent of gunpowder. Sepehri’s epistemic doubt gives him the capacity to venture into other ways of knowing, and to adjust his ideas about the way things are, and the way they could be/should be.
The strong mystical overtones and symbolic elements of Sepehri’s poetry give further insight into the meaning of his verse. He invokes the pear, for instance—long a symbol of abundance, divine sustenance, and longevity—to describe the falling of humanity from abundance. In contrast to the “descent of the pear,” he warns of the “ascent of steel,” one of the strongest pollutants of surface and ground waters, thereby challenging the structures of economy, trade, and science, which leave nature (including all of us humans), in a state of depletion. He restructures and transforms the common hierarchical framework that has long placed the human at the top and other species and aggregates at its service.
Contesting Anthroparchy: “The Hazy Human”
One of the major points of Hasht kitab is the rejection of anthropocentrism and anthroparchy, the idea that humans are the center of the universe and that the universe, and all therein, was created to benefit and privilege humanity alone. Even a cursory reading of Sepehri’s work shows that he puts the spotlight on beings that are often deemed insignificant, or lifeless. He names animals, insects, plants, trees, and birds more than he speaks of humans. At times, he refers to individual humans by their relationship to himself, such as “father” “mother,” “sister,” or “friend.” At other times, he names specific people, like Manoochehr (his brother), Parvaneh (his sister), Ra’na (an unidentified woman). Sometimes he refers to a specific boy, girl, peasant, people (mardum), or generally to humanity, with its variant nomenclatures (adam, adami, adamizad, insan). In all these cases, we see no indication that humans are, or should be viewed as superior to other beings. One exception is perhaps his mother and friends. He writes: “I have a mother better than the leaves of the tree,” and “friends better than the running water.”[42]
In speaking generally about humans, he uses the term, adami which can mean either a human being or the state of being human. He does not privilege the state of humanness simply to any human body, but rather to a human person who has acquired the characteristic of humanness, and who practices compassionate empathy toward others. In The Life of Dreams (1953), he mentions human in three different instances. In a two-page poem, “Lulu-yi shishah’ha” (Monster in the Glass) the phrase “hazy human” (insan-i mah alud) is repeated three times, for example:
Lost in darkness,
without a key,
you hazy human.
و تو در تاریکی گم شده ای
انسان مه آلود![43]
In another poem, “Bagh-i dar sada” (Garden in the Sound), Sepehri describes having been abandoned in a garden where soft light shines on him, when he begins to question whether he came to the garden, or whether the garden came to surround him:
A figure fallen on the grass.
A human, with a far distant resemblance to self.
The garden in the depth of the figure’s eyes.
پیکری روی علفها افتاده بود.
انسانی که شباهت دوری با خود داشت .
باغ در ته چشمانش بود.[44]
In another instance, in a poem called “Yadbud” (Reminiscence) describes the beginnings of humanity:
The long shadow of the anchor of time,
Was oscillating on the unending desert
It came, and it went, it came, and it went …
I bent down on the self
An abyss opened in my being ….
And I was alongside the live image of my dream
The image whose veins pulsated in eternity ….
سایه دراز لنگر ساعت
روی بیابان ب یپایان در نوسان بود
و من کنار تصویر زنده خوابم بودم
تصویری که رگ هایش در ابدیت می تپید.[45]
In The Torrent of Sun, written in 1958, a poem titled “Niayish” (Devotion) he also speaks of the beginnings, the time when God and human were one. Upon separation—parting from the mountain ridge—the human landed on dust and became bandah (servant), not simply adam (human, made from the dust of the Earth).
We parted from the mountain ridge.
Landing on dust, I became servant.
You ascended and became God.
از ستیغ جدا شدیم:
من به خاک آمدم و بنده شدم.
تو بالا رفتی و خدا شدی .[46]
Sepehri’s portrayal of the human condition is deeply rooted in the web of life and intertwined human relationships, as well as in the relationship between the human, the divine, and all beings in the broader realm of the cosmos.
Conclusion
The idea of the connectedness of all beings in Sepehri’s work is a negation of the oft-common notion of human beings as separate, supreme, and entitled to dominion over the rest of the cosmos. Instead, he envisions an alternative loving gaze governing our relationship with all beings from the stars to the water, the rock, the clover, the willow, the toad, and the starling. The idea that we—all beings—are part of each other is central to his vision, a vision that is neither confined to parochial social relations and conventions, nor limited to a particular nation, geography, religion, race, gender, ability/disability, etc. Sepehri warns against the implications of a profoundly changed relationship between human and nonhuman nature; he negates the human superiority complex, and denounces oppressive structures and systems of power and control.
Sepehri questions the sacral quality that modern science and technology have attained even as they seem to be leading the Earth to the brink of destruction. His expressions are simple in form, yet powerful and enigmatic, making his work timeless, universal, and inspiring.[47] I started this piece by a quote about Hafez. I will end it with a quote from a woman poet of Iran, Forough Farrokhzad (1934-1967). She said this about Sepehri: “He was not like any other … [he was] vast [and] different … [he] did not speak of a particular city or of a particular time or of a specific nation, but rather of all of humanity, and of all of life.”[48]
[1] Hossein Ziai, “Ḥāfeẓ, Lisān al-Ghayb of Persian Poetic Wisdom,” in Gott ist schön und Er liebt die Schönheit [God is Beautiful and He Loves Beauty]: Festschrift für Annemarie Schimmel, eds. Alma Giese and J. Christoph Bürgel (Bern: Peter Lang, 1994), 449-469.
[2] Ziai, “Ḥāfeẓ”, 449.
Bahar Da vary is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of San Diego, in San Diego, California. Her research and publications are broadly within the field of comparative study of religion with a focus in Islamic Studies. She is the author of Ecotheology and Love: The Converging Poetics of Sohrab Sepehri and James Baldwin (London Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). She has also published articles in academic journals, encyclopedias, and other forums. davary@sandiego.edu
[3] María Zambrano, Algunos Lugares de la Poesía (Madrid: Trotta, 2007), 74. Italics in original. 4 Alberto Santamaría, “Poetry and Realization: Towards a Knowledge of the Poet’s Place,” in The Cultural Legacy of María Zambrano, ed. Xon de Ros and Daniela Omlor (Oxford: Legenda, 2017), 102-3.
[4] Alberto Santamaría, “Poetry and Realization: Towards a Knowledge of the Poet’s Place,” in The Cultural Legacy of María Zambrano, ed. Xon de Ros and Daniela Omlor (Oxford: Legenda, 2017), 102-3.
[5] James Baldwin, “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity” (Lecture, Community Church, New York,
NY, 1963). www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-IyamaAbxM
[6] J. Scott Bryson, ed. Ecopoetry: A Critical Introduction (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2002), 5–6.
[7] Sepehri, Hasht kitab (Tehran: Tahuri, 1376/1997), 294.
[8] Sepehri, Hasht kitab, 354.
[9] Shahrokh Meskoob, “Qissah-yi Suhrab va Nushdaru” in Bagh-i tanha’i, ed. Hamid Siahpoosh (Tehran: Mu’assissah-yi Intisharat-i Nigah, 1389/2010), 288.
[10] Several translations of his most popular books, particularly Sada-yi pa-yi ab and Hajm-i sabz have been published in journals or booklets in English and other languages, starting in the 1970s. The earliest was Massud Farzan, “The Neo-Sufic Poetry of Sohrab Sepehri,” Books Abroad 47, no. 1 (Winter 1973): 85-88. Farzan’s full translation of “Sada-yi pa-yi ab” as “The Sound of Water’s Footsteps” was published in Mundus Artium 1&2 (1972).
[11] The revelation of the Qur’an is generally regarded by Muslims to have occurred within a period of twenty-three years. Sepehri’s Surah-yi tamasha (Chapter of Gaze) has been seen as an attempt to emulate the style of the Qur’an. See David L. Martin, The Expanse of Green: Poems of Sohrab Sepehry (Los Angeles, CA: Kalimat Press, 1988).
[12] Sohrab Sepehri, Utaq-i Abi, ed. Piruz Sayyar (Tehran: Soroush, 1392 HS/2013 AD), 17-18.
(The text is in Persian, and it has been translated as The Blue Room).
[13] Bahar Davary, Ecotheology and Love: The Converging Poetics of Sohrab Sepehri and James Baldwin (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), 1.
[14] Sepehri, Hasht kitab, 147.
[15] Sepehri, Hasht kitab, 204.
[16] Sepehri, Hasht kitab, 218.
[17] Ou,او third person singular pronoun in Farsi, can refer to “she,” “he,” and “it.” It is not gender specific.
[18] Sepehri, Hasht kitab, 219-20.
[19] Laozi, Tao Te Ching: A New English Version, trans. Stephen Mitchell (London & New York:
Harper Perennial, 1998), 1.
[20] Abul-Qasim Ferdowsi, Shahnamah, ed. Parviz Atabaki (Tehran: Shirkat-i Intisharat-i ‘Ilmi va Farhangi, 1386 HS/2007 AD), 3. The first hemistich of the fourth verse of the opening.
[21] Sepehri, Hasht kitab, 298.
[22] Sepehri, Hasht kitab, 238.
[23] Sepehri, Hasht kitab, 272.
[24] Sepehri, Hasht kitab, 333–34.
[25] Sepehri, Hasht kitab, 346-47.
[26] “International Decade for Action ‘Water for Life’ 2005-2015,” United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), accessed on September 19, 2021, www.un.org/ waterforlifedecade/scarcity.shtml.
[27] “World of Change: Shrinking Aral Sea,” NASA Earth Observatory, accessed November 20, 2021, https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/AralSea.
[28] Sepehri, Hasht kitab.
[29] A study in 2016 reflects that in countries such as Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire, for example, “an estimated 13.54 million women (and 3.36 million children) are responsible for water collection trips that take 30 minutes or longer. When the chore is a kid’s job, there’s still a major gender gap: 62 percent for girls versus 38 percent for boys.” Vicky Hallett, “Millions of Women Take a Long Walk with a 40-Pound Water Can,” NPR, July 7, 2016, accessed October 1, 2021, www.npr.org/ sections/goatsandsoda/2016/07/07/484793736/millions-of-women-take-a-long-walk-with-a40-pound-water-can.
[30] Dina Gilio-Whitaker, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock (Boston: Beacon Press, 2019), 85.
[31] Kim Anderson, Barbara Clow, and Margaret Haworth-Brockman, “Carriers of Water: Aboriginal Women’s Experiences, Relationships, and Reflections,” Journal of Cleaner Production 60 (2013):11–17.
[32] Sepehri, Hasht Kitab, 352–55.
[33] Chubah is a plant used for washing.
[34] Paridokht Sepehri, Suhrab: Murgh-i muhajir (Tehran: Tahuri, 1375 HS/1996 AD), 27.
[35] Sepehri, Hasht Kitab, 286.
[36] Sepehri, Hasht Kitab, 267.
[37] Sepehri, Hasht kitab, 396.
[38] Sepehri, Hasht kitab, 396-97.
[39] Bryson, Ecopoetry, 6.
[40] Sepehri, Hasht Kitab, 396.
[41] Sepehri, Hasht Kitab, 397.
[42] Sepehri, Hasht Kitab, 272.
[43] Sepehri, Hasht Kitab, 100-103.
[44] Sepehri, Hasht Kitab, 109.
[45] Sepehri, Hasht kitab, 86-87.
[46] Sepehri, Hasht kitab, 192.
[47] Davary, Ecotheology, 131.
[48] Kamyar Abedi, Tapish-i sayih-yi dust [The Tenor of the Friend’s Voice] (Tehran: Kamyar Abedi, 1377 HS/1998 AD), 130.
