Mahdi Arising

Plaisir d’Amour for Mirza Mihdi

By John Taylor; 2007 Nov 06, 03 Qudrat, 164 BE

I love listening to music but have never taken it seriously. However, yesterday was an exception. I had a lingering migraine, so it was a write-off as far as getting anything done. I watched a Hugh Grant film called "Music and Lyrics," then I ended up glued to Youtube listening to song after song, chasing up melodies that I always liked but never bothered finding out about. One that has haunted me whenever I heard it had, I seemed to recall, something about "your face" in it. That tiny fragment was, thanks to Google, enough to track down the complete lyrics, and thanks to Youtube I could compare the renditions of several artists. The two finalists in my little private contest to see who got onto our iPod were Celine Dion and Roberta Flack. Both made it there, but now if it came down to a winner I think I would give it to the latter, not because she sings more beautifully, but because she does not slur her words. In the case of Dion, she goes so far as to elide entire phrases. Anyway, the lyrics suit my mood, so here they are.

 The first time ever I saw your face

 "The first time ever I saw your face I thought the sun rose in your eyes, and the moon and the stars were your gifts you gave to the dark and empty skies, my love.
 "And the first time ever I kissed your lips I felt the earth move in my hands like the trembling heart of a captive bird that was there at my command, my love.
 "And the first time every I lay with you, I felt your heart so close to mine and I knew our joy would fill the earth and would last till the end of time, my love.

 In other words, this is not a song, it is a prayer to the Manifestation of God. And it is interesting that it inhabits such high registers that only women seem able to sing it. Which to my mind makes it a philosophical song. Why? Well, I am listening to the audio book version of a philosophical novel right now called "Sophie's World," and one of many things I learned from it is that the Greek word "sophos" refers to the female half, the feminine virtues of God, His compassion, gentleness, and so forth. So a philosopher, which means a "lover of Sophos," is someone who is so enamored that he or she becomes that female side of the Deity. One the other hand a non-philosopher settles for His ostensible, male attributes.

 Another romantic song that has always moved me, especially when love hits rocky shoals, is called "Plaisir d'amour," whose refrain is,

 "Plaisir d'amour ne dure qu'un moment,"
 "Chagrin d'amour dure toute la vie."

 The Elvis Presley adaptation starts off with "Wise men say, `Only fools fall in love,'" which, now that I think of it, is probably a better translation than the more literal, "Love's joy lasts but a moment, its anguish a lifetime." The Youtube entrants in this contest were also female vocalists, except for one, a Chinese male counter-tenor (I had never heard of such a thing). Of them, the best in my opinion were the divas who sang it in classical styling, Janet Baker, Yulia Townsend and, of course, the incomparable Nana Mouskouri, my overall winner.

 The surprise was that going over the French lyrics, which are either left out or hopelessly slurred by all singers except Nana, I stumbled across my daughter's name, Silvie. The lyrics say, (in my translation)

 "`I will love you,' Silvie repeated to me, `As long as the waters of this brook run gently down the meadow,' I gave up everything for her, but now she has left and found another lover. The waters still flow, but it is she who changed. The pleasure of love lasts but a moment while love's agony endures forever."

 Which is why I say, be faithful in love, be chaste out of marriage and exercise fidelity within that holy estate. And do it, Silvie, for pure motives, for the love of God. Do not be like me, doing it from naked, unadulterated fear of that horrible chagrin d'amour. Of all the pains you can suffer in life, the kind I can endure least is that. Oh, and migraine pain. That too.

 Sad as being personally lovelorn is, even worse "chagrin d'amour" hits when you think of the Latin root of "silvie," which means "forest maiden." This sad song takes on environmental overtones when you think that even if we could find lasting pleasure in love, so many streams and meadows are polluted, swallowed up by development or dried up by climate destabilization. Even nature is no longer lasting as once it seemed.

 Separation anxiety is basic to worldly love, but the love of God is the reverse, the pleasure lasts forever, the agony, well mostly it is brief -- but for Baha'u'llah it really did go on for a lifetime. But most of it, in my opinion, came from the chagrin one feels when you watch helplessly as a line of toddlers stumble one by one off a cliff into an abyss of certain death -- the toddlers being all of humanity.

 It was in 1870, in the midst of His time in the Most Great Prison, separated even from His followers, when the worst possible thing for any parent happened to Baha'u'llah. He witnessed His son, Mirza Mihdi, crash through a skylight, pierce his ribs on a wooden box, and then take almost twenty-four hours to die. He later wrote,

 "Thou art the Trust of God and His Treasure in this Land. Erelong will God reveal through thee that which He hath desired... I have, O my Lord, offered up that which Thou hast given Me, that Thy servants may be quickened, and all that dwell on earth be united." (GPB, 188)

 These words were written in the utmost chagrin d'amour. Shoghi Effendi in his history of these events said that this prayer, "exalts his death to the rank of those great acts of atonement associated with Abraham's intended sacrifice of His son, with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the martyrdom of the Imam Husayn..." Remember, atonement means literally "at one-ness." That is, we only become one if and when we go through crisis and feel the redemptive suffering. Only then will Mirza Mihdi's dying wish to be a ransom for those "prevented from attaining the presence of their Lord" be granted, deep down in our plaisir d'amour.