Shrilling Pen

Note on Baha'u'llah's Shrilling Pen

By John Taylor; 2007 January 07

A friend long ago professed disappointment upon inspecting my then-smaller book collection that I did not appear to have any old and valuable books. That, it seems, is what book collectors accumulate. Myself, I collect interesting books that are cheap because nobody wants to collect them. I go for intellectual rather than financial substance. A good example is Spike Milligan's war memoir, "Mussolini, His Part in my Downfall." I had ignored the several other volumes of this series but this beat up paperback I picked up for a quarter or two at our local Sally Anne, and to my surprise it turned out to be good, casual, bathtub, just-before-sleepy time reading. As a fan of World War Two literature it was a disconcerting reality check to learn that the daily life of a soldier was not blood and guts exploding all around you, at least not most of the time. It was traffic jams, bureaucratic entanglements caused by literal minded prigs, idleness, boredom, small talk, casual reading, complaints about the brass and various small-time subversions of authority, and yes, for Milligan's band of brothers, a lot of comedy and camaraderie.

Milligan was in the artillery, and judging from what he says here the gunners seem to have had it slightly easier than the grunts in the trenches, as long as they could escape being targeted by their counterparts on the other side. Milligan uses his wit not only to survive but to buck up the spirits of his brothers-in-arms. My heart warms to read this, as his Goon Show performances similarly warmed my childhood. They came to me in a strange way; we were living in an old farmhouse and my brother had left an old and obsolete-even-then reel-to-reel tape recorder in his room, with one reel on it. The reel contained two or three Goon Shows but they were not labeled as such. I listened to that inspired madness over and over, trying to make out what it was all about, where it could have come from. Only later on did I learn that it had been an old British radio show in the Fifties, that the Goon Show was the main inspiration for Monty Python's Flying Circus, and that Milligan was a sufferer of manic depressive disorder and used his weird non-sequitors to counter the gloom and anxiety of that affliction. His top witticism in this book is printed on the cover:

"Britannia rules the waves, ta-ra, but on occasion she waives the rules."

At the end of his war of liberation in Italy, Milligan is sent to carry some wire across a shooting gallery for enemy mortermen, and like the majority of soldiers in that war, falls victim to that particular instrument of destruction. His body makes it out of the trauma but not his mind. He suffers from what we now call post-traumatic shock syndrome. His superior refuses to allow him to recover properly and he is finally sent home, much to his chagrin. His was a tight group of friends and it is very sad for him not to be able to continue helping them with humor; if I were a professional humorist or entertainer I would probably be inspired by this, and by the seriousness of my paradoxically unserious calling. Milligan has a quiet moment just before bed, not long before his trauma, a moment that, surprisingly, gave me a new insight into Baha'u'llah's Writings. Everybody else is gone or asleep, it is very late at night and he is about to turn in. Another gunner is writing a lonely love letter to a girl back home in the next bunk.

"He continues his lovelorn missive. `Christ, it's quiet,' he says, `I can hear the nib scratching on the paper.'"

Milligan quips, "Haven't you got a silencer?" The friend bids him "Goodnight, kind sir." (Spike Milligan, Mussolini, His Part in My Downfall, Penguin, Middlesex, 1978, p. 264)

I pricked up my ears at this, since the sound of pen on paper is a major literary device of Baha'u'llah. Adib Taherzadeh's explanation is that the particular pen He used was loud, that it made a loud scraping sound on paper that could be heard from a distance and even varied according to the length of the Arabic letter being written -- see his full explanation at the end of this send-out. That may well be the case, but think about it. In order for a sound like the scratching of a pen, be it loud or quiet, to be heard in a room there must be a relatively silent background, as in that soldier's tent, or dormitory, or whatever it was. This alternative explanation is not entirely incompatible with Taherzadeh's.

Another interesting point turned up when I tried to do a word search for "screeching" or "scratching" in the Writings. They are not there. The Guardian avoided those words, it seems. Instead he used the less common word, both a noun and a verb, "shrill." In Gleanings, for example, a prayer says,

"All praise be to Thee for having enabled me to hearken to Thy call ... and for having quickened my soul through ... the shrilling voice of Thy Pen, a voice Thou didst ordain as Thy trumpet-call amidst Thy people." (Baha'u'llah, Gleanings, 14-15)

The point here seems to be that Baha'u'llah is detached, uninvolved in the creative Writing process; unlike other writers, He is not expressing Himself, God is expressing Himself. Baha'u'llah is sitting back, as it were, and listening to the voice of Revelation coming from His moving, inspired pen. In other places, it seems to be expected that others will hear the shrilling of the pen, even the Shah of Persia, who banished Him in the first place.

"O King! Wert thou to incline thine ear unto the shrill of the Pen of Glory ... thou wouldst attain unto a station from which thou wouldst behold in the world of being naught save the effulgence of the Adored One, and wouldst regard thy sovereignty as the most contemptible of thy possessions, abandoning it to whosoever might desire it, and setting thy face toward the Horizon aglow with the light of His countenance." (Baha'u'llah, Summons, 99-100)

Again, it is not that the Pen itself is shrilling so loud, it is just that (as Milligan taught me) a silent, reflective person can so shut out the noise of the world that she can hear the shrilling clearly. Even, in many cases, as far as distant Persia. Even, in the case of the Faith's martyrs, under the threat of the roar of the tyrant's cannon. In other cases, the Pen is addressed directly. "O My Supreme Pen! Call thou to remembrance the She-Serpent..." (Epistle, 100) In other places, Baha'u'llah seems to personify the scratching of the Pen and has it address Him in the voice of inspiration,

"At this moment the shrill voice of the Most Sublime Pen hath been raised, and hath addressed Me saying: `Admonish the Shaykh even as Thou hast admonished one of Thy Branches (sons), that haply the breezes of Thine utterance may attract and draw him nigh unto God, the Lord of the worlds.'" (Baha'u'llah, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, 92)

There follows a repeat of the sublime set of admonitions called, as far as I know, the "Be generous in prosperity" Tablet. As He attests here, it was prescribed to one of his sons, one who turned out to be one of the baddest of a junkyard of bad family. Thus this Tablet explains in no uncertain terms the basic requirements of very basic faith, that is, action, faith, sincerity, the reverse of hypocritical opposition to truth. These are not just high sounding inspirational words, they constitute, as they say, strong medicine for a severe affliction, unbelief. The severest spiritual malady imaginable, for it was openly given both to a perfidious breaker of the Covenant and at the close of His Revelation to the Son of the Wolf, the most egregious persecutor at the time of the Baha'is in Persia.

And this leads us to another shade of meaning for the words "shrill" and "pen" by which the Guardian chose to translate this literary device. The word "shrill" is not necessarily the euphemism for scratch or scrape that I implied before. Shrill means, according to my dictionary, a scream, "an acute piercing sound." It can also imply strident or intemperate complaints or anger. A shrill critic is not one that uses understatement or gentle irony to get her point across. Interestingly, the Qu'ran forbids shrill language; it disallows speaking louder than the prophet in consultation with Him. It implies rather clearly that pride and a loud, shrill, contentious voice go together.

"And do not turn your face away from people in contempt, nor go about in the land exulting overmuch; surely Allah does not love any self-conceited boaster; And pursue the right course in your going about and lower your voice; surely the most hateful of voices is braying of the asses." (Qu'ran 31:18-19, Shakir)

As a result of this, I think, calling someone an ass is a more severe insult in Quranic-influenced languages than in English; an ass is not only stupid but arrogant and pretentious. The effect of asinine behavior in any forum, or family, is often seen. When one starts shouting everybody else, even the coolest head, has to shout loud as well in order to be heard. Therefore, quiet, gentle voices imply the same thing that hearing the shrill of a pen implies, a respectful, contemplative, silent background. The shrill of a pen, as opposed to a shrill voice, is heard when all around follow the advice in the "be generous in prosperity" passage, they are "fair in their judgment and guarded in their speech..." The most strident voice cannot be heard by one who does not meet this basic qualification of spirituality and consultation, as the Qu'ran teaches,

"... for those who believe not, there is a deafness in their ears ... They are (as it were) being called from a place far distant!" (Qur'an 41:44, Yusuf Ali)

Spirituality, then, is not done for its own sake, it is conditioning for consultation, and good consultation skills in turn are a prerequisite for spiritual hearing. "Those who have ears, let them hear." The spiritually deaf hear nothing, not even the shrill of the pen, much less its significance, until at the time of the end they do hear, finally, but what they do hear is the roar of hellfire.

"But they reject the hour, and We have prepared a burning fire for him who rejects the hour. When it shall come into their sight from a distant place, they shall hear its vehement raging and roaring." (Qur'an 25:11-12, Shakir)

Another interesting thing I learned in this morning's investigation is the importance of the word "pen" in the Qu'ran, which of course provided both the background and the language of the Revelation of Baha'u'llah.

We like to think of modern communication theorists as the first to teach about the importance of written language, "the pen," in human history. However, for anybody who has read the Qu'ran that is old news. Another verse elsewhere highlights the fact that writing is the most important invention ever, and that it is a gift of God. It does not come from man.

"Proclaim! And thy Lord is Most Bountiful,- He Who taught (the use of) the pen,- Taught man that which he knew not." (Qu'ran 96:3-5, Yusuf Ali)

Indeed, there is an entire Surih called "The Pen." This 68th Surih begins,

"In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful
Nun. By the Pen and the (Record) which (men) write,-
Thou art not, by the Grace of thy Lord, mad or possessed.
Nay, verily for thee is a Reward unfailing:
And thou (standest) on an exalted standard of character.
Soon wilt thou see, and they will see,
Which of you is afflicted with madness." (1-6)

Here a pen is used to address the apparent madness of a prophet. Muhammad, an illiterate, presumed to dictate his verbal inspirations into the written word. Only a privileged few could read or write, and like all experts facing amateur contributions, they did not smile on lay writings. Today a similar miracle would be for someone who does not know mathematics to churn out streams of abstruse formulae. If the result turns out to make sense and advance the state of the art, the Source must be some supernatural intelligence. At the same time the great irony is that God is in the same position, in His role as Divine Pen, of expert versus lay. He sees our presumptuous attempts to write about faith when have not mastered the basics of devotion. We are spiritually illiterate.

"Do ye not see that God has subjected to your (use) all things in the heavens and on earth, and has made his bounties flow to you in exceeding measure, (both) seen and unseen? Yet there are among men those who dispute about God, without knowledge and without guidance, and without a Book to enlighten them!" (Qur'an 31:20, Yusuf Ali)

Here Baha'u'llah's association of the divine Pen with the "be generous in prosperity" Tablet, and His recommending it to the betrayer and the persecutor, starts to make sense. While both pretend to be on the side of God, at heart they are deniers, hypocrites, far more atheistic than the most committed atheist.

"And could you see when they shall become terrified, but (then) there shall be no escape and they shall be seized upon from a near place. And they shall say: We believe in it. And how shall the attaining (of faith) be possible to them from a distant place? And they disbelieved in it before, and they utter conjectures with regard to the unseen from a distant place." (Qu'ran 34:51-53, Shakir)

Here, as promised, is Taherzadeh's take on Baha'u'llah's shrill pen.

"I recall that as Mirza Aqa Jan was recording the words of Baha'u'llah at the time of revelation, the shrill sound of his pen could be heard from a distance of about twenty paces."

A footnote elaborates:

"The Persian and Arabic scripts are commonly written with reed pens. This type of pen often makes a shrieking sound when moved in a certain way. The calligrapher could control this sound to a certain extent. For instance, he could allow the sound to accompany the writing of a particular stroke or curve throughout. This sound not only revealed the extent to which a single letter had been drawn out, but also aroused feelings of excitement in the calligrapher and the onlookers. Baha'u'llah has, in many of His Tablets, referred to the Most Exalted Pen, signifying thereby the Manifestation of God and His Revelation. He has also referred to the shrill voice of that same Pen. This expression is symbolic of the proclamation of His Message among the peoples of the world." (Adib Taherzadeh, The Revelation of Baha'u'llah v 1, p. 35)