Written by Amanda Smith
On the afternoon of March 19th, I had attended Theresa Steward’s lecture from the Mysterium Humanum series on madness. Her topic of discussion was on “Musical Interpretations of Love and Madness in the Persian Epic Leili o Majnun” (translated as Layla and Majnun). The main objective of Steward’s lecture was to look at the story of Layla and Majnun and compare its meaning of madness with its modern musical interpretations.
To start off the lecture, Steward went over the story’s history and plot. Layla and Majnun story is known as the “Romeo and Juliet of the East”. It traditional epic story was written by Nizami, a poet from the early 12th-century era. The story is placed in 7th century Bedouin, Arabia were two lovers meet. The story begins with the meetings of a beautiful women Layla and a man named Qays. They meet in school at the age of ten and since that moment they have been in love with each other- so much that they believed that touching one another is not needed to know how much they love each other. One day, Layla’s parents prevented Layla and Qay from seeing each other and even arranged a marriage for Layla. From the torture and toil of not being able to be with Layla, Qay had become Majnun (which translates to madness, crazy, mad). Now, Majnun escapes to the desert and becomes a hermit who gives up all of his earthly possessions- like his clothes- and vows to not eat or hunt animals, he states that he has “eaten the eater.” At the end of the story Layla becomes ill and dies, then Majnun visits her grave and dies laying on it (it is assumed that died from heartbreak). As a result of death, Layla and Majnun are united in heaven and live happily ever after. From this story, Steward gathered that this is more than a simple tragic love story.
Steward stated that the story represents Sufism. Sufism is the religious belief that finding divine love will transcend an individual and awakening the true spirit into divine madness. To transcend, one must take their soul on a journey towards God, annihilate one’s ego, and transcend earthly desires. Looking at the story of Layla and Majnun, Majnun can be seen as a character who inherits divine madness. With his isolation in the desert, his support for animals, his “letting go” of ego, and his unconsummated love with Layla, he has fulfilled each stage of transcendence. Because of this, God has brought them together in heaven with their immortal love. Steward stated that Sufism shows that divine madness is known today as mental illness. With this evidence, Steward surprised her audience with a completely different interpretation of the divine love story shown in music.
Steward first introduced Hajibeyli’s Leyli and Majnun Opera. First performed in 1908, the performance tells the story through the orchestra, choruses, and individual vocals. The vocals, however, are presented using mugham (a traditional vocal improvisation). Reflecting on this Opera the orchestra shows madness with repetition of the chorus “Night of Separation” in different tones. These tones change along with the visual tethering of clothes and progressive weakness in the character portraying Majnun. What this Opera doesn’t show is the divine love and madness within Majnun in the end. Instead, they show the tragedy of mad love with the abrupt ending of him dying on her tombstone. This opera is still performed today but still has not changed its meaning. Therefore, showing negative affliction. So does it ever change?
We ventured on into the modern interpretations of this story and found one piece from 1992 named “Song of Majnun” by Bright Sheng. Instead of a tragic love story, the meaning is twisted into love and suffering after being separated from one’s homeland. Sheng was, in his youth, exiled to Tibet, to where he escaped to the United States to become the composer he is today. His composition introduces instrument and voices that create the sounds of a “mad men” by using Greek chorus (two people gossiping to narrate story), dissonance (ugly sounds that don’t go together), and shifts in meter, and repetition of words, Sheng produced what can be interpreted as a sense of madness and the experience of an unstable mind. “Though this not exactly divine madness, it is as close as we have gotten.
In conclusion, she stated that western civilization stigmatizes divine madness as a negative affliction and descent towards madness, like a descent towards hell. Whereas divine madness is actually a positive journey and an ascension upwards towards the divine. She exclaims that the story is not a tragedy but a happy love story, and is waiting for someone to tackle the story from this angle, musically!
