Читать книгу The Mesnevi онлайн

61 страница из 127

“It so happened in the dark, that the grammarian slipped into the well, and fell to the bottom. There he set up a wail of entreaty: ‘O my most courteous fellow-traveller, lend thy help to extricate me from this most darksome pit.’

“The jurist at once expressed his most pleasurable willingness to lend him that help, with only one trifling condition—that he should confess himself in error, and consent to suppress the hiatus in the word ‘bi’r.’ The grammarian’s answer was ‘Never.’ So in the well he remained.”

“Now,” said Jelāl, “to apply this to yourselves. Unless you will consent to cast out from your hearts the ‘hiatus’ of indecision and of self-love, you can never hope to escape from the noisome pit of self-worship,—the well of man’s nature and of fleshly lusts. The dungeon of ‘Joseph’s well’ in the human breast is this very ‘self-worship;’ and from it you will not escape, nor will you ever attain to those heavenly regions—‘the spacious land of God’” (Qur’ān iv. 99, xxix. 56, xxxix. 13).