¹ Rumi, Jalal al-Din, The Mathnawi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi, ed. and trans. with critical notes and commentary Nicholson, R. A. (London, 1925–40)Google Scholar. All references to the Masnavi are indicated in the text by book number followed by line number; all of the translations are mine.

² Kashifi, Husayn Va'iz-i, Lubb-i Lubab-i Masnavi (Tehran, 1341/1940)Google Scholar.

³ Examples of these include Chittick, William, The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi (Albany, 1983) 163–170Google Scholar and 286–310 and Murata, Sachiko, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relations in Islamic Thought (Albany, 1992), 14Google Scholar.

⁴ Christoph Bürgel, J., “‘Speech is a Ship and Meaning the Sea:’ Some Formal Aspects of the Ghazal Poetry of Rumi,” Poetry and Mysticism in Islam: The Heritage of Rumi, ed. Banani, A., Hovannisian, R. and Sabagh, G. (Cambridge, 1994), 46Google Scholar.

⁵ Schimmel, Annemarie The Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Jalaloddin Rumi (Albany, 1993), 51Google Scholar.

⁶ Nicholson, Mathnawi, 6:vii. Rumi was around seventy years of age when most of these tales in Book 5 were composed. The historical reason for Nicholson's decision is perhaps found in the Victorian prudishness of his time. However, translating them into Latin in effect renders these tales obscure to modern English readers.

⁷ Nicholson, , Mathnawi, 6:ixGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Sprachman, Paul, Suppressed Persian: An Anthology of Forbidden Literature (Costa Mesa, California, 1995), 26–7Google Scholar.

⁹ Isti'lami, Muhammad, Masnavi: Muqaddima va Tahlil (Tehran, 1370/1991), 5:281–284Google Scholar, 5:371–2.

¹⁰ Zarrinkub, Abdulhusain, Sirr-i Nay: Naqd va Sharh-i Tahlili va Tatbiqi-i Masnavi (Tehran, 1364/1985), 1:298Google Scholar.

¹¹ With the popularity of Rumi in the West, the “commercialized” productions of translated bawdy tales strip them even from the meaning of the non-pornographic passages that precede or follow them. Coleman Barks' translations are good examples; see his Delicious Laughter: Rambunctious Teaching Stories from the Mathnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi (Athens, 1990)Google Scholar.

¹² Schimmel, Annemarie, A Two-Colored Brocade: The Imagery of Persian Poetry (Chapel Hill, 1992), 23Google Scholar.

¹³ Surieu, Robert, Sarv-e Naz: An Essay on Love and the Representation of Erotic Themes in Ancient Iran, trans. Hogarth, J. (Geneva, 1967)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ ‘Aziz Allah Kasib describes hajv in classical Persian poetry as the “ugly legacy” of Arabs. See his Chashmandaz-i Tarikhi-i Hajv: Zaminaha-yi Tanz va Hija dar Shi'r-i Farsi (Tehran, 1366/1987), 45Google Scholar; for the use of worldly imagery such as wine, youthful beauty, and profane love in the early Arabic poetry for expressions of factionalism, parody, satirical panegyrics, or mystical concepts, see, Wright, J. W. Jr., “Masculine Allusion and the Structure of Satire in Early ‘Abbasid Poetry,” Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature, ed. Wright, J. W. Jr. and Rowson, E. K. (New York, 1992), 1–23Google Scholar.

¹⁵ For Suzani, see Brown, Edward G., A Literary History of Persia (Cambridge, 1964), 2:342–343Google Scholar.

¹⁶ For some examples of the use of erotic material or entertainment to lighten the seriousness of mystical quest, see Meier, Fritz, Abu Sa'id-i Abu'l Hayr (Tehran, 1976), 205–6Google Scholar.

¹⁷ See al-Din Sa'di, Shaykh Mushrif, Kulliyyat-i Sa'di Shirazi, ed. Furughi, M. ‘A., intro. ‘Abbas Iqbal (Tehran, 1340/1960)Google Scholar; reprint, without Iqbal's introduction and “Khubsiyyat va Majalis al-Hazl” (Tehran, 1369/1990), 1–36—all references are to the 1340/1960 print.

¹⁸ Sa'di, Kulliyyat, “Khubsiyyat va Majalis al-Hazl,” 1.

¹⁹ One line from his Divan should suffice to show how vulgar (and non-mystical) Sana'i's hajv could be. Taking someone as the target of his hajv, he writes: “May your beard be in the vagina of a menstruating woman/May a donkey's penis be in the vagina of your father's wife.” See Adam Sana'i Ghaznavi, Abu al-Majd Majdud Ibn, Divan, ed. Mudarris Rażsavi, M. T. (Tehran, 1341/1962) 1052Google Scholar.

²⁰ Adam Sana'i Ghaznavi, Abu al-Majd Majdud Ibn, Hadiqa al-Haqiqa wa Shari'a al-Tariqa, ed. Mudarris Razavi, M. T. (Tehran, 1359/1980)Google Scholar. The first book of Hadiqa is translated by Major Stephenson, J. as Hadiqatu'l Haqiqat, or The Enclosed Garden of the Truth (Calcutta, 1910)Google Scholar; see also The Walled Garden of Truth, trans. Pendlebury, D. (London, 1974)Google Scholar.

²¹ De Bruijn, Of Piety and Poetry, 169–170. This is not to diminish his importance to the later development of Sufi poetry. Certainly the beginnings of mystical contemplation in the ghazal and the masnavi of medieval Persian poetry can be traced to Sana'i.

²² Jami, ‘Abd al-Rahman, Masnavi-i Haft Awrang, ed. Gilani, M. M. (Tehran, 1337/1958)Google Scholar.

²³ Jami, Haft Awrang, Salaman va Absal, 342.

²⁴ Jami, Haft Awrang, Yusuf va Zulaykha, 683. The account of the same sexual encounter in Sa'di's Bustan is even more austere in describing the situation, see Sa'di, Kulliyyat, 236–237.

²⁵ Jami, Haft Awrang, Silsila al-Dhahab, 109.

²⁶ Jami, ‘Abd al-Rahman, Baharistan (Tehran, 1340/1960)Google Scholar; also see The Beharistan: Abode of Spring, no trans. (Benares, 1887); surprisingly, Jami is completely absent in Sprachman's anthology. After ‘Ubaid Zakani (d. ca. 1370), Sprachman makes a leap of several centuries to Iraj Mirza (1874–1924)—see Sprachman, Suppressed Persian, 76. Elsewhere Sprachman writes: “A jump from the fourteenth century to modern times will perhaps seem somewhat precipitous, and one may ask what happened in the intervening six centuries. For our purposes, the answer is, ‘Very little.’” See his “Persian Satire, Parody and Burlesque,” Persian Literature, ed. Yarshater, E. (Albany, 1988), 238Google Scholar.

²⁷ “kuss-i madarat,” Jami, Baharistan, 77.

²⁸ See ‘Uthman al-Jullabi al-Hujwiri, ‘Ali B., The Kashf al-Mahjub: The Oldest Persian Treatise on Sufism, trans. Nicholson, R. A. (1911; reprint, England, 1970), 393–420Google Scholar; for an historical overview of the legitimacy of the use of worldly imagery in poetry and preaching, see Lewis, Franklin, Rumi, Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teaching and Poetry of Jalāl al-Din Rumi (Oxford, 2000), 309–313Google Scholar.

²⁹ See Glünz, Michael, “The Sword, the Pen and the Phallus: Metaphors and Metonymies of Male Power and Creativity in Medieval Persian Poetry,” Edebiyat 6 (1995): 223–243Google Scholar.

³⁰ For a general discussion of humor in the socio-political satire of classical Persian literature, see Javadi, Hasan, Satire in Persian Literature (London, 1988), 99–135Google Scholar; also see Halabi, ‘Ali Asghar, Mughaddima-i bar Tanz va Shukh-Tab'i dar Iran (Tehran, 1364/1985), 45–96Google Scholar.

³¹ Sprachman, Suppressed Persian, 26.

³² For a similar use of Lacan's concept of the phallus, see Wolfson's, Elliott R. interpretations of medieval Jewish kabbalistic texts in his “Occultation of the Feminine and the Body of Secrecy in Medieval Kabbalah,” Rending the Veil: Concealment and Secrecy in the History of Religions, ed. Wolfson, E. R. (New York, 1999), 113–154Google Scholar; also see his Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism (Albany, 1995)Google Scholar.

³³ Lacan, Jacques, Écrits: A Selection, trans. Sheridan, A. (New York, 1977), 287Google Scholar.

³⁴ Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, 263.

³⁵ Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, 284.

³⁶ Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, 285.

³⁷ Evans, Dylan, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (New York, 1996), 143Google Scholar.

³⁸ This is related to Lacan's argument that the human subject is constituted by three modes of psychical organizations, or “registers.” These three are the register of the Symbolic (the order of language), the Imaginary (the order of the visual), and the Real (the order not captured or controlled by the Symbolic or the Imaginary). The drives appear in each register as desire, demand, and need. See Bracher, Mark, “Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Postmodernism,” Psychoanalysis at Its Limits: Navigating the Postmodern Turn, ed. Elliott, A. and Spezzano, C. (London, 2000), 149Google Scholar.

³⁹ Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, 286.

⁴⁰ DiCenso, The Other Freud, 45.

⁴¹ Evans, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, 46–47.

⁴² DiCenso, The Other Freud, 45.

⁴³ Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, 175, emphasis in the original.

⁴⁴ Muller, John P. and Richardson, William J., Lacan and Language: A Reader's Guide to Écrits (New York, 1982), 12–13Google Scholar; Evans, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, 113–114.

⁴⁵ Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, 275.

⁴⁶ Evans, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, 36.

⁴⁷ Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, 167.

⁴⁸ Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, 264. Commentators on Lacan, like Muller and Richardson, have noted that it is not quite clear how Lacan arrives at this conclusion. Muller and Richardson also note that the “Other” in this conclusion is not necessarily “someone” of whom a demand is made, hence they write: “We are left to our own resources here to understand how the subject's desire is ‘desire of the other.’” See their Lacan and Language, 281–282; Evans also explains several complementary ways that his oft-repeated formula can be understood. See his Lacanian Psychoanalysis, 37–39.

⁴⁹ Muller and Richardson, for example, find this hermeneutical obscurity as being “all the more infuriating for being so deliberate.” See their Lacan and Language, 3.

⁵⁰ For a discussion of why Lacan has been variably identified as a product of Enlightenment and a modernist or postmodernist, see Bracher, “Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Postmodernism,” 145–172.

⁵¹ For example, Grosz, Elizabeth, Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction (London, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵² For example, Mitchel, Juliet, and Rose, Jacqueline, eds., Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the École Freudienne (London, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵³ Derrida, Jacques, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, trans. Bass, A. (Chicago, 1987), 413–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a detailed analysis of the encounter between Lacan and Derrida, see Johnson, Barbara, “The Frame of Reference: Poe, Lacan, Derrida,” The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida And Psychoanalytic Reading, ed. Muller, J. P. and Richardson, W. J. (Baltimore, 1988), 213–251Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Evans, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, 143–144.

⁵⁵ For example, in of Grammatology, Derrida describes “the final intention” of his book as: “To make enigmatic what one thinks one understands by the words ‘proximity,’ immediacy,’ ‘presence.’” See his Of Grammatology, trans. Spivak, G. C. (Baltimore, 1976), 70Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Sarup, Madan, An Introductory Guide to Post-structuralism and Postmodernism (Athens, 1989), 45–49Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ For example, Paul Ricoeur, Julia Kristeva and Kaja Silverman; discussed in DiCenso, The Other Freud, 54, 72, 129–133.

⁵⁸ Freud, Sigmund, Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. and ed. Strachey, J. (London, 1953–74), 4:277–338Google Scholar, 5:339–508.

⁵⁹ Evans, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, 160.

⁶⁰ For a treatment of the use of paradox in Persian mystical poetry, see Keshavarz, Fatemeh, Reading Mystical Lyric: The Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi (Columbia, 1998), 31–48Google Scholar.

⁶¹ The former term is Rumi's, see his Divan-i Shams-i Tabriz, ed. Furuzanfar, B. (Tehran, 1336–46/1957–67), 6:2897Google Scholar. For the latter term, which is Shihab al-Din Yahya Suhravardi's (d. 1234), see Corbin, Henry, Temple and Contemplation, trans. Sherrard, P. and Sherrard, L. (London, 1986), 264–5Google Scholar.

⁶² The call of “Return” is a reference to the Qur'anic verses: “O soul in tranquility. Return to your Lord well-pleased and well-pleasing” (Qur'an 89:27–28). For some instances of Rumi's use of the call of “Return,” see the Masnavi II:1161, 1169.

⁶⁴ Juha or Juhi is the Arabic name for Khvaja Nasr al-Din, a legendary figure known for his satirical anecdotes. In the context of this story the translation of this word as “prankster” best conveys the mischievious character of this literary figure playing a practical joke; for a survey of the presence of this figure in Persian literature, see Marzolph, Ulrich, “Molla Nasr al-Din in Persia,” Iranian Studies, 28.3–4 (1995): 157–174CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for bibliographical references to this figure in early Arabic literature see Rosenthal, Franz, Humor in Early Islam (Philadelphia, 1956), 9–10Google Scholar n. 4.

⁶³ For a full translation of this tale, see Nicholson, , Mathnawi, 6:200–201Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ The transformation of the hearts of the magicians is a reference to the well-known Qur'anic tale (which would have been familiar to Rumi's readers) of the encounter of Moses with Pharaoh's magicians. In this encounter, the magicians defeated by Moses acknowledge the greatness of his God. Pharaoh becomes angry and orders their hands and feet to be cut off alternately and that they be crucified. They say: “There is no harm (la dayr), indeed to our Lord we return” (Qur'an 26:50). In the tale of the prankster Rumi incorporates this utterance of the magicians into the text: “Their cry of ‘There is no harm’ reached the heavens/[they said to Pharaoh]: ‘lo, cut [them off], for the soul is liberated by such pain’” (5:3339).

⁶⁶ For example, in 4:1069–73.

⁶⁷ He relates the story of an old man who married a beautiful young woman, but on the wedding night his “staff” slept and would not become erect. See Sa'di, Kulliyyat, 152. For a study of Sufism of Sa'di, see Katouzian, Homa, “Sufism in Sa'di, Sa'di on Sufism,” The Heritage of Sufism, vol. 2, The Legacy of Medieval Persian Sufism (1150–1500), ed. Lewisohn, L. (Oxford, 1999), 191–201Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, 285. It should be noted that the phallus does not symbolize penis and clitoris in the same way. The phallus symbolizes the clitoris as penis envy, that is, as not having the penis. For a discussion of the implications of this negative signification see Butler, Judith, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York, 1993), 263Google Scholar n. 30.

⁶⁹ Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, 315–19.

⁷⁰ Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, 288.

⁷¹ Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, 289–90.

⁷² Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, 289–90.

⁷³ Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, 289–90.

⁷⁴ Lacan, Jacques, “God and the Jouissance of The Woman, a Love Letter,” trans. Rose, J., Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the École Freudienne, ed. Mitchell, J. and Rose, J. (New York, 1985), 144Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Lacan, Jacques, “God and The Woman's Jouissance,” trans. Fink, B., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX, On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge, Encore 1972–1973, ed. Miller, J. A. (New York, 1998), 73Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ Lacan writes: “The woman can only be written with The crossed through. There is no such thing as The woman, where the definite article stands for the universal.” See his “God and the Jouissance of The Woman,” 144.

⁷⁷ Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, 1999), 56Google Scholar, 58.

⁷⁸ See Muller and Richardson, Lacan and Language, 22; Alan Sheridan in Écrits: A Selection, xi.

⁷⁹ In formulating this sentence, I have benefited from Butler's discussions in her Gender Trouble, 163–180.

⁸⁰ For a study of the sources and variations of this saying, see Altmann, Alexander, “The Delphic Maxim in Medieval Islam and Judaism,” Biblical and Other Studies, ed. Altmann, A. (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 196–232CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸¹ As Chittick, William C. notes: “The whatness of that which the veils veil can never be known.” See his “The Paradox of the Veil in Sufism,” Rending the Veil: Concealment and Secrecy in the History of Religions, ed. Wolfson, E. R. (New York, 1999), 85Google Scholar.

⁸² My formulation of the phallus as both veiled and veiling is based on Butler's question: “If Lacan claimed that the phallus only operates as ‘veiled,’ we might ask in return what kind of ‘veiling’ the phallus invariably performs.” Butler suggests the “lesbian phallus” as an answer to this question, which she argues, in its imitative function can subvert the privilege of the phallus by recirculating it as a “transferable” phantasm. See her Bodies that Matter, 57–92.

⁸³ Hence the term “Active Imagination” that Henry Corbin explains as the Divine element of the soul corresponding to the primordial imagination that transmutes sensory data or rational concepts into symbols that correspond to the images within the heart. It is by recognizing these symbols that the symbolic imagination can intimate the realm of incorporeality. See his Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi, trans. Manheim, R. (Princeton, 1969), 187–189Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ Silverman, Kaja, The Subject of Semiotics (New York, 1983), 18Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Lacan, Jacques, The Seminar, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, trans. Sheridan, A. (London, 1977), 20Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ Evans, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, 97.

⁸⁷ Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts, 207.

⁸⁸ Evans, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, 187.

⁸⁹ Lacan, “God and the Jouissance of The Woman,” 147.

⁹⁰ DiCenso, The Other Freud, 44, emphasis in the original.

⁹¹ DiCenso, The Other Freud, 123.

⁹² DiCenso, The Other Freud, 6. To Lacan's credit, DiCenso continues: “Overall, however, I believe that Lacan's work transcends the playful, if sometimes irresponsible, dissolution of the subject” emphasis in the original. The dissolution of the subject can certainly be attributed to Derrida's philosophy, but so can a vision of unrestrained subjective freedom. For a discussion of the former and the latter positions respectively, see Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 489Google Scholar and Smith, Paul, Discerning the Subject (Minneapolis, 1988), 50Google Scholar. In this context, the comments of Vincent Descombes may be noted, that the dissolution of the subject has actually fostered the proliferation of new subjectivities. See his Modern French Philosophy, trans. Scott-Fox, L. and Harding, J. M. (Cambridge, 1980), 77, 186–190Google Scholar.

⁹³ Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, 152–54.

⁹⁴ DiCenso, The Other Freud, 146.

⁹⁵ This vision of transcendental Signifier, which is the prime cause of the interpretive possibilities, can be contrasted with “the absence of the transcendental signified,” as Derrida puts it, that permits the “play” of the signifiers. See Derrida, Of Grammatology, 50.

⁹⁶ Being “spoken” for Silverman means being constituted by all that constitutes the subject and exist prior to the existence of the subject, such as language, desire, and history. See her The Subject of Semiotics, 198–9. Hence, the essence/Signified can never be literalized because it transcends any particular construct of subjectivity.

⁹⁷ For an in-depth analysis of the hermeneutics of Rumi's poetry see Tourage, Mahdi, “The Hermeneutics of Eroticism in the Poetry of Rumi,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25.3 (2005): 600–616CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹⁸ Chittick, “The Paradox of the Veil in Sufism,” 81.

⁹⁹ Traditionally, the mystical discourse of Sufis speaks of a journey. However, it is more beneficial to view self-knowledge as a “process” as opposed to a journey, because in the context of Muslim societies, journey and traveling is generally a male privilege. The term “process” is devoid of the cultural and social connotations of the term journey. For example, a Muslim woman requires the permission of her male guardian or husband to embark on a journey. For a discussion of this issue in the context of contemporary Iran, see Mir-Hosseini, Ziba, Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran (Princeton, 1999), 66–7Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁰ Subtelny, Maria E., Le monde est un jardin: Aspects de l'histoire culturelle de l'Iran médiéval, Cahiers de Studia Iranica 28 (Paris, 2002), 154Google Scholar.

¹⁰¹ Rumi, Divan, 6:2897.

¹⁰² The call of “Return” is a reference to Qur'an 89:27–28: “O soul in tranquility. Return to your Lord well-pleased and well-pleasing.”

¹⁰³ Chittick, William translates fana as “passing away from self.” See his The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-'Arabi's Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany, 1989), 93, 207Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁴ Corbin, Creative Imagination, 187–189.

¹⁰⁵ This is related to the non-existence of the feminine. According to Butler, the implication of the non-existence of the feminine for gender relations is that the woman embodies the phallus and becomes the site into which it penetrates; she becomes the site of “masculine self-elaboration.” See her Gender Trouble, 56.

¹⁰⁶ Subtelny, Le monde est un jardin, 152.