Someone asked him: “Distraught fellow, what is this love?” The man replied: “Love is selling all of your wordly goods to buy a drop of wine.”
Last month, I went on vacation with two radically different books in my suitcase: a collection of short stories by Leo Tolstoy, and the 12th-century Sufi poem The Conference of the Birds, by Attar of Nishapur. I guess I just thought I’d switch from one to the other whenever bored. Well, I never got bored, and ended up reading both at the same time; turns out they’re not so unrelated.
Tolstoi and Attar delve deep into the topic of love and the whole rainbow of colors associated with the strangest and most powerful human emotion. They agree on one thing: love can be — and will be — devastating.
The truth is, that the whole affair [“falling in love”] has been exalted by poets and romancers to an undue importance, and that love in its various developments is not a fitting object to consume the best energies of men.
Overall, it’s not pretty in Tolstoy’s world. Two of the short novels I read are particularly noteworthy in understanding his stance on love and “romantic” relationships. Here is a very condensed outline of the account of love they make.
Family Happiness: Masha, a young orphan (~18 years old), and a family friend, Sergei (~35 years old), come to fall in love in the purest of ways. They talk for hours about everything and nothing, dream about the future, and care so deeply for one another — nothing in the world matters to their eyes more than one another. They marry, and Masha starts to feel bored of their country life, Sergei is considerate enough to suggest moving to Petersburg for a while and living a social lifestyle. Masha navigates this new life with great success and becomes adored by the whole Russian bourgeoisie, but her husband slowly grows exacerbated by all of this social nonsense. Distance builds up, and they build resentment towards one another and eventually completely disconnect. Masha feels extremely depressed, angry, and lost — and a good part of the novel is dedicated to describing how she navigates (or rather, fails to navigate) this resentment and frustration. The novel however ends on a positive note — they manage to love one another again, albeit not as lovers anymore, but as the mother/father of their child, and live “happily” ever after. Kreutzer’s Sonata: A man, “Pozdnyshev”, within a (60-page long) uninterrupted monologue to a stranger on the train, tells the story of how he murdered his wife. He had always dreamt of a happy and peaceful family life. He eventually fell in love and married a “gentle soul”, but quickly realized that they were not a good match (and argues there is no such thing as a good match — lovers always end up growing away from one another, however good the original match — c.f. Family Happiness). They grow apart and develop resentment and jealousy toward one another, which consumes their energy, morals, and souls. Pozdnyshev’s wife eventually fills the void of her marriage with music — she plays piano and invites a (male) violinist friend of hers to play duets. Pozdnyshev is jealous and suspects adultery. One day, he comes back home from traveling and finds them playing music together in the living room, and in a burst of anger, kills his wife. In Pozdnyshev’s words, there can only be two outcomes of marriage: suicide or murder of one’s partner. The character in this story chose the latter. While both these stories have rather different flavors and outcomes, I believe they both are clear on something: the love of two individuals for one another, no matter the circumstances, will always lead to great pain and destruction. The intensity and strength of the emotion constrain lovers to forgo reason and morals.
Tolstoy’s views on the topic, particularly influenced by the failure of his own marriage, turned increasingly grim and hopeless towards the end of his life — hence the much darker Kreutzer’s Sonata, where the beautiful and pure love only lasts for a mere few days (and is narrated within a few sentences only), as opposed to the years of happiness (and half the novel in writing) dedicated to narrating Masha and Sergei’s happy marriage.
To further comment on Tolstoy’s view on love, we should also discuss the afterword of Kreutzer’s Sonata, written a few years after the publication of the novel, where the author explicitly clarifies his views on marital life and the “fantasy of falling in love”. He argues that the only solution to a sane and elevated life is chastity and celibacy. Tolstoy is, especially at the end of his life, strongly influenced by his faith and biblical understanding in his warning and reservations with regard to marital life. Kreutzer’s sonata comes with not one, but two epigraphs from the Gospel of Matthew:
“But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Matthew 5:28 “The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.” Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given””. Matthew 19:10–11
It seems that Tolstoy sees no difference between lust and love and that no matter what, besides it unavoidably leading to despair, is actually also sinful. A noteworthy justification of this argument is the fact that neither Jesus nor the apostles ever married — and they exemplify The Right Way in Christianity. Tolstoy however acknowledges that “not everyone can accept this word”, and that is the curse of mankind — only a handful few are capable of abstaining from love (or lust?) to manage living elevated lives.
It is interesting to remind oneself that in the two other Abrahamic religions, marriage is the most natural of things for human beings, including for people of significant importance — for example, the Prophet Mohamed married multiple times, and two of his wives (Khadija and Aicha) have been of notoriously positive influence in his life — a life committed to God.
This article (from which much of this section is paraphrased) makes a great account of the Sufi tradition and practice.
Sufism can be described as Islamic mysticism or asceticism, which through belief and practice helps Muslims attain nearness to the Almighty by way of direct personal experience of God. Belief in pursuing a path that leads to closeness with God, ultimately through encountering the divine in the hereafter, is a fundamental component of Islamic belief. However, in the Sufi tradition, this proximity can be realized in this life.
There is a rich body of Sufi literature, with its most prominent representant being the well known poet Rumi, whose many poems on the theme of Love are widly read and quoted in today’s world. His influence on the Sufi world is very significant — and we should note that Rumi’s repeatedly aknowledge as his main master and influence our very own Attar:
“Attar traveled through all the seven cities of love, While I am only at the bend of the first alley.”
The Conference of the Birds is a Sufi poem telling the story of a group of birds who seek spiritual meaning and elevation. They seek advice from the wisest bird they know — the Hoopoe — who advises them to embark on a spiritual journey to meet their Almighty. The journey is long and arduous, and many birds give up along the way. Those who stay eventually discover that the Almighty was there all along the Way — within themselves.
On their way to find God, the birds must go through the notorious 7 Valleys of 1) Quest, 2) Love, 3) Understanding, 4) Independence and Detachment, 5) Unity, 6) Astonishment and Bewilderment, and 7) Deprivation and Death. Love is discussed all around the poem, but we can start looking into Attar’s account of Love by discussing the passage of the birds through the Valley of Love.
Next comes the Valley of Love. Walk here and drown in fire, for in this valley only fire lives. If you are not a lover of fire, then leave, because a true lover is one with fire; a true lover ignities, burns and flares like fire. […] Here, a lover joyfully gathers and throws a hunder worlds into the fire. Here, right and wrong are mates, because in love two becomes one.
Love occupies a central place in Sufism, it’s the most noble pursuit of mankind, but also the most dangerous and difficult one. The above quote clearly exemplifies this — love is fire, with its danger, high spirit, and beauty. It’s also clear that, just like in Tolstoy, true love forces us to forgo reason. However one must note an important nuance — the love mentioned in the previous quote is the love of the Beloved, the Almighty — God. The quest to find God’s love and give all love to God is the most important pursuit in life in Sufism and Attar’s text.
What about the love of other things? “Earthly things”. Attar is quite clear on the topic: nothing compares to the love of God, and anything that is not the love of God is not worthy of one’s time, but also doomed to vanish with time. For example, one chapter is dedicated to the story of a bird whose love of gold made him hesitant to embark on the quest to find God, he had all the happiness he needed in the gold he already had. The sage Hoopoe bird answers “Gold is merely a metal with a nice hue — you’re seduced by its color like a child. If gold diverts you from your Beloved, then it is an idol; throw it aside and be on the ground.” No surprises there, of course a spiritual text will warn one against the love of gold and material things. But what about the love people around you?
A long parable tells the story of a sage (Sheik) who falls in love with a young Christian woman, so much that he abandons his faith to convert to Christianity, accepts to bow before an idol (the worst sin in Islam), eats swine, and drunk wine, all to please and seduce the woman he fell in love with. His earthly love completely corrupted him out of his faith, forced him to cease all his spiritual duties and abandon all his followers. While the love was strong, sincere, and “pure”, the Sheikh not only lost reason but at no point found true fulfillment, satisfaction, and peace which he had when in love and devoted to the Almighty.
“In love’s wilderness, slaughter the swine, burn the idol or else become like the luckless sheik, disgraced in love”
In the end, in Attar’s world, any “earthly” love is idolatry, and while not necessarily considered sinful in Islam, is clearly regarded as perilous and leads to the loss of the self and of The Way. The purest and only love that must be given is love to the Almighty.
Earthly love is fire, and won’t bring any human to supreme peace and happiness. Reaching God is human’s best chance at finding everlasting peace. However, the perceptions of the paths to God are very different for Attar and Tolstoy, and this is what I find most interesting. Tolstoy is, especially at the end of his life, clear on the idea that chastity and celibacy (and essentially, renunciation of all other earthly pleasures) are the only way to reach a stable and trouble-free, elevated life. Attar and the philosophy of Sufism are much more forgiving, and narrate countless stories of kings and peasants who have fallen into the trap of earthly love (or other “egocentric” and “earthly” traps), but every time, forgiveness is possible as long as the true search continues and the soul remains pure and honest. The search for God remains the purest of quests, and the one most likely to find peace in. It is also a source of great struggle, but these struggles, as opposed to the love of earthly things, are not caused by the source of Love itself (e.g. God), but rather by the earthly distractions of it all which corrupt the soul along The Way.
While the path to an elevated life is very obvious and clear for Tolstoy, the search rarely ever ends for Sufis — finding God is the quest of a lifetime, and this will, exactly like the love of earthly things, come with its fair deal of struggles.