The Right to Joy

Causā gaudiī nōbis amor dōnātur

Gaudiī jūs est id quod amōre affertur

Nec māter nos creāvit atque ille amor

Illī mātrī bis mīliēns laudētur

Translation of Rūmī’s quatrain #449, Foruzanfar, ed.; 

pg 17 in Houshmand’s Moon and Sun; 

quatrain # 1469 in Gamard’s The Quatrains of Rumi.

See blog entry for October 31, 2021 about Latin and Persian poetry.

Love lets us have joy. It gives us the right to joy. It created us not just with a corporeal reality but a spiritual one as well. And for this, Rūmī declares that love, as our true mother, deserves all the praise. He is more emphatic than I am: our mothers did not give us birth. Love did.

عشق آن باشد که خلق را دارد شاد

عشق آن باشد که دادِ شادیها داد

مارا مادر نزاد آن عسق بزاد

صد رحمت و آفرین برآن مادر باد

eshq ān bāshad ke xolq rā dārad shād

eshq ān bāshad ke dād-e shādīhā dād

mārā mādar nazād, ān eshq bezād

sad rahmat o āfarīn bar ān mādar bād

Love is what has happiness for the people

Love is what gives the right to joys

Us mother did not bear; that love bore [us]

100 congratulations on that mother let there be.

 

The words dād-e shādīhā (literally: law of joys) is a pun because it resembles dād in the same line, which is the past tense of dādan, ‘to give.’ Dād means both ‘law’ and ‘gift.’ Perhaps it doesn’t really matter which of the two meanings Rūmī had in mind. What is important here is that love has given us joy. What for? Perhaps to chase away all of the opposites of joy: sadness, dispair, depression, unbearable grief. In the Persian language dictionary compiled by a man named Dehkhodā (دهخدا)—a dictionary on par with the O.E.D.—we find this line attributed to Rūmī under the entry for shādī ‘joy’:

شادی بی غم در این بازار نیست

Shādī bī gham dar īn bāzār nīst.

There is no joy without sadness in this bazaar.

The word ‘bazaar’ here sounds humorous if not sarcastic. Perhaps it is both, but often words relating to the marketplace are used in Persian poetry to describe this confusing world. Rūmī wants to tell use that love, once given, confers on us the justice of joy, the right to joy, even when grief and sorrow lurk behind every moment of happiness.

Here is a free English translation:

Love is what keeps the world happy.

Love is what gives us the right to happiness.

A mother did not give us birth. Love did.

Upon that mother let there be all our praise.