In Persian poetry a certain characteristic called Shukhi is given to the beloved woman. The charm which the Persian poet describes by Shukhi is more usually found in woman than in man, although it is possible that many women would consider it a characteristic of the men whom they love. This character of the beloved can scarcely be called beautiful, although it is alluring. Its chief property is heedlessness, or a kind of careless independence that is touched with insolence.

Changeable, she shows and yet she does not show herself; quick to laugh, she is quick to seize upon the amusing or ridiculous side of things; and yet she herself is sensitive to ridicule and to attentions; trying very daintily to test just how deep her lover's feeling for her has gone.

Selfish and amiable, she responds and yet refuses to respond; light-hearted and talkative, mocking and perpetually amused, though ready to take offence, she is a constant source of surprise to her lover, who feels he must ever be on the alert if he would really hold her; and too, that he must move gently, lest he should injure a being that seems to him so much gayer and lighter, so much weaker and softer, so much more delicate and airy and graceful than he knows himself to be.

This beloved is life to her lover; and thereby in truth lies the secret of her attraction for him. She is always fluttering outside the reach of his comprehension. Her sunshine and laughter invigorate; her mockery and ridicule, her thousand demands are incentives; even her light-hearted insolence is a spur to prompt him to efforts in all kinds of directions, where otherwise he would never have ventured.

But what reason does he give to himself for his love? He will give a hundred reasons, and yet be puzzled to give even one that is sufficient. He despairs of making her understand the depth of his feeling; he imagines himself ill and dying, and her answer when the news is brought to her:

She lightly laughed; "And so is Mazhar dead? Alas, poor helpless one! I knew not, I, what was his trouble." Then again she said: "I did not think him ill enough to die."

Or the lover imagines himself dead and in his grave; and he pictures her, as she lightly steps over the grass that covers him, drawing her draperies closely round her lest perchance he should stretch up his hands and touch them. And yet love, like the fire, dies out unless it is fed with fuel; and the lover in his despair recognizes this too, and blames her for giving the encouragement that he desires. She represents in herself the evanescence of joy, the swift passing of laughter, the difficulty of holding the moment of beauty.

The heart's unending malady is she, And she herself the only remedy.

Vol. 3, Life's Creative Forces: Rasa Shastra

6. The Character of the Beloved

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Vol. 3, Life's Creative Forces: Rasa Shastra

6. The Character of the Beloved