HENRY CORBIN Avicenna AND THE VISIONARY RECITAL Translated from the French by WILLARD R. TRASK BOLLINGEN SERIES LXVI PANTHEON BOOKS copyright 1960 by Bollingen Foundation, New York, N. Y. Published for Bollingen Foundation by Pantheon Books Inc., New York, N. Y. CONTENTS Prefaceace IX THIS IS THE SIXTY-NINTH IN A SERIES OF WORKS PART I. THE CYCLE OF AVICENNAN RECITALS 1 SPONSORED BY AND PUBLISHED FOR BOLLINGEN FOUNDATION I. Avicennan Cosmos and Visionary Recital 1. Avicennism and Philosophical Situation 3 2. The Cosmic Crypt: The Stranger and the Guide Originally published in French as 16 3. Ta'wil as Exegesis of the Soul 28 Avicenne et le recit visionnaire 4. The Cycle of Recitals or the Journey into the Orient 35 departement d'Iranologie de I'Institut Franco-Iranien, Teheran, and II. Avicennism and Angelology 46 Librarie d'Amerique et d'Orient Adrien-Maisonneuve, Paris, 5. The Angel, Spirit and Intelligence 46 6. The Archangels-Cherubs or Intelligences 56 7. The Celestial Angels or Souls 68 8. Angelic Pedagogy and Individuation 77 9. The Number of the Celestial Spheres 93 10. Latin Avicennism, and Iranian Avicennism 101 III. The Recital of Hayj ibn Yaqzan 123 11. Composition and Authenticity of the Recital; Commentaries and Manuscripts 123 12. Translation of the Recital of Hayy ibn Yaqzan 137 13. Orientation . 151 IV. The Recital of the Bird 165 Library of Congress Catalogue Card No.: 59-5335 Manufactured in the United States of Am erica 14. The Celestial Ascent (Mi'raj-Namah) 165 by Kingsort Press, Inc., Kingsport, Tennessee 1/5. The Bird as Symbol 178 10". The Avicennan Recital and Its Persian Translations 183 Design by Andor Braun Contents Contents 17. Translation of the Recital of the Bird 186 18. The Kingdom of the Soul 346 18. From Avicenna's Recital to 'Attar's Mystical Epic 193 19. The Demons of the Soul 353 20. The Genii of the Soul 355 V. The Recital of Salaman and Absal 204 21. The Terrestrial Angels 357 19. The Two Versions of the Recital 204 22. Angels-Souls of the Spheres and Angels-Cherubs 362 20. The Hermetic Version of Salaman and Absal 208 23. The Beauty of the King Who Is Like unto None Other 372 21. The Avicennan Version of Salaman and Absal 223 24. Those Who Emigrate Toward the Kingdom 374 25. "If Thou Wilt, Follow Me" 379 Epilogue; or, Avicennan Perspectives 242 List of Works Cited 383 Avicennism and Imamism 243 Symbolism and Presence 257 Postscript. Recent Studies on Avicenna's "Oriental Philosophy' 271 PART II TRANSLATION OF THE PERSIAN COMMENTARY ON THE RECITAL OF HAYY IBN YAQZAN 279 1. Prologue 282 8. The Encounter with the Angel 3. The Salutation 289 4. Beginning of the Initiation: The Name and Person of the Angel 292 6. Physiognomy 295 6. The Two Ways for the Soul 297 7. The Soul's Three Evil Companions 299 8. How to Treat the Three Companions 305 9. The Conditions of the Journey 308 10. The Orient and Occident of the Universe 319 11. The Spring of Life 321 12. The Darkness about the Pole 324 1.1. The Occident of the World 327 14. The Clime of Terrestrial Matter 331 15. The Clime of Celestial Matter 333 16. The Celestial Spheres 33G 17. 'Inward the Orient: The Clime of Elementary Forms and the Forms of Species 343 PREFACE TO THE EDITION IN ENGLISH THIS study was written at the invitation of the Iranian National Monuments Society on the occasion of the Millenary of Avicenna, celebrated at Teheran in the spring of 1954. So I shall begin by summoning up, with all the melancholy charm of remembrance, the splendors of that celebration, which was the occa- sion for redisclosing many forgotten aspects of the great thinker, today claimed by both parties but whose life in any case (980-1037) was spent within the boundaries of the Iranian universe and who was able to write both an accom- plished and personal Persian and the Arabic language that is the "liturgical tongue" of Islam. It was a great festival of the spiritual culture of Iran, a celebration all the more opportune because, except for a few great names, chiefly of poets, the lineage of philosophers, theologians, and mystics who have given that culture its originality within the Islamic universe is to all intents and purposes absent from the horizon of Western man. Its deeper meaning has no more been eluci- dated than the necessity for its mediating function between the Arabic world and the universe of India has been understood. For this reason many more works will be necessary before the Iranian spiritual universe at last finds its place and its genuine expression in modern philosophical consciousness. Only then will it be comprehended how and why the same spiritual spring that gave the Iranian soul the power to pattern an Islam that is so typically its own likewise bestowed on it a special vocation in the face of the dangers that, in the Orient as every- where else, threaten the very existence of the world of the soul. And every Oc- cidental who comes to understand this, be he man of science or man of good will, must inevitably become a co-operator. Indeed, the researches and developments necessitated by this book led us much farther than we had foreseen when we undertook the enterprise, and obliged us to encroach upon tasks that, then, were still to come. That is why we should have wished, at the time, to allow the theme to ripen more, had it not been for the insistence of our Iranian colleagues and friends. Today we could not "touch up" this book without making certain extensive Preface revisions in it; and to do so would be to destroy what was, after all, an essential prehending symbols is an act that takes place in "time present"; it cannot consist moment that determined our later researches. It was, too, a moment that has its in situating the past in the past as such—that is, in absence. In this "putting into place in a whole congeries of events. Because of the troubles by which Iranian the present," we were guided both by the dialogues that we were to have with public life was affected at the time, the schedule originally laid down for the certain students in the University of Teheran and by a wish to interest philoso- celebration of the Millenary of Avicenna suffered a lag of several years. And this phers and psychologists in general in the world of Iranian symbols, access to had its effect on the present book. which is still so difficult for the nonspecialist. For the use of future bibliographers it may be well to record the following So, as we said some lines before, the years having passed, we could not data. A first edition of this work was brought out in the Collection du Millenaire "update" this work without violently severing it from the Iranian context from published by the Iranian National Monuments Society. But its paradoxical order which it emerged, existentially, at a particular moment. For the same reason, reflects the vicissitudes referred to above. In 1952 appeared a first volume, con- too, its bibliography, aside from the original texts, is confined to what bears on tuining the second part of the work. In the spring of 1954 appeared a second our particular intention. volume, containing the first and third parts. Some months later a new printing In general, this intention serves a twofold purpose. On the one hand, it is to enabled the work to appear in a second edition as Volumes IV and V of the elucidate the structure and inner progression that make Avicenna's mystical Bibliotlieque Iranienne, a collection founded by the author at the Department of recitals an organic and consistent whole, a trilogy. These recitals, in which the Iranology of the Franco-Iranian Institute, in Teheran, and to which he devoted thinker recaptures his spiritual autobiography in the form of symbols, belong to his best efforts during the long years of his continuous residence in Iran. a literary genre that is characteristic of Persian culture. Hence the title we have This second edition, at last, appeared in the rational order. The first volume given this book: Avicenna and the Visionary Recital. If it is true that Avicenna's contains the first part of the work—that is, the general presentation of the recitals were not entirely unknown hitherto, at least the Persian commentary at- "cycle of Avicennan recitals." A second volume contains the original Arabic tributed to Juzjani had remained in obscurity. Then too, it was the organic text of the Recital of Hayy ibn Yaqzan and the editio princeps, in a critical edition, wholeness of this trilogy as such that had never been analyzed in relation not of the Persian commentary that may reasonably be attributed to Juzjani, Avi- only to the philosopher Avicenna's own experience but to the very meaning of cenna's disciple and famulus, together with a French translation of this com- Avicennism. mentary, followed by notes and glosses (Paris, Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1954). This, furthermore, completes the definition of our intention. Some fragments It is, of course, the order of this second edition that is followed in the pres- of his works having had the privilege of being translated into Latin in the twelfth ent English translation. The only difference is that the original Arabic and century, in the West Avicenna has chiefly, if not entirely, engaged the attention Persian texts are not included. The specialist can easily find them if he so wishes.