Nizami Quotes Quotes

“Nizāmī of Ganja (d. 598/1202), the leading author of epic romantic poetry in Persian literature, must be counted among the chief prophets of the Religion of Love in Persian belles lettres. In his romantic epic poem Khusraw and Shīrīn, Nīzamī teaches that the only role that man is fit to play in the entire theatre of Existence is that of the lover in the following verses, where Love is featured as a kind of Anima Mundi:

Naught else but love's my labour: that's my logo;
So long as I'm alive, don't offer me another motto.
All face towards love to supplicate in every
Temple under Heaven's eye. The galaxy
Itself wouldn't have an earth unless across
The surface Eros' water coursed to save its face. Become a slave to love! All righteous thought consists
Of this, for that's the task of the heart's adepts.
The cosmos is love in sum and all the rest deceit;
Save Amor's play, all else's an idle game and sport.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Nizami, long before Newton, had posited that the entire scale of creation and nature was permeated by a reciprocally acting gravitational force that he named 'Love':

Attraction works on human temperament its lure
And that attraction sages predicate of love,
So when you ponder this in depth then you'll. perceive
That Eros holds the cosmos up: all stands through love,
And if once Eros lose its grip on Heaven's wheel
The great globe itself would forfeit its bloom and weal.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz