Elicit Confession: Simulacra, Desire, and the Divine Masculine in Postmodern Mysticism
Elicit Confession: Simulacra, Desire, and the Divine Masculine in Postmodern Mysticism
✦ Introduction
In an age saturated with images, spectacles, and hyperreal representations, desire is increasingly shaped not by the real, but by its simulations. Farheen Bhuiyan Nancy’s poem “Elicit Confession” operates within this paradox: it is a lyrical negotiation between erotic yearning, spiritual devotion, and the illusion of intimacy produced by postmodernity. Through the metaphor of the “forbidden elixir” and the invocation of Shams of Tabriz and Rumi, the poem invites a deeper reflection on how contemporary subjectivity navigates between sensual longing and the aspiration to access a divine masculine force that transcends both gender and form.
✦ The Poetics of Simulacrum and Satire
The opening lines—
“Elicit confession: Forbidden elixir attuned with satire, / Simulant simulacrum at its best attire!”
—immediately signal a Baudrillardian concern. In Simulacra and Simulation (1994), Jean Baudrillard argues that in postmodern society, signs and symbols no longer represent a hidden reality but rather create their own network of meaning. The “simulant simulacrum” in Nancy’s poem is dressed in “its best attire,” evoking the hyperreality of contemporary desire—a performance of love rather than love itself.
This is further “attuned with satire,” suggesting that the speaker is self-aware of the performative, possibly commodified nature of their longings. Yet satire does not diminish the truth of longing—it deepens it through self-reflexivity.
✦ From Nasty Desires to Devotional Yearning
The speaker confesses to experiencing both stimulated elation and nasty desires, evoking a kind of carnal intoxication:
“Wide bright eyes with a broaden smile decorated on heydays conspiring nasty desires!”
The juxtaposition of light imagery (“bright eyes”) with morally ambiguous desire suggests a conflict central to many Sufi and Gnostic traditions: the tension between the ego (nafs) and the soul (ruh). These “nasty desires” may be read as symptoms of a soul still entangled in the sensory world.
But rather than rejecting desire, the speaker wishes to transform it:
“Oh, I wish I could control the longings— / But, I could not—”
This confession echoes Rumi’s notion that desire, when refined, becomes a vessel of divine love. In Fihi Ma Fihi, Rumi writes:
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
✦ Shams, Rumi, and the Divine Masculine
The poet’s wish to “turn into a Dervish” and “walk like Shams of Tabriz” situates the poem in Sufi spiritual metaphysics, where the seeker aspires to annihilate the self in love (fana fi’l-mahboob). Shams, often portrayed as the majdhub—the intoxicated divine lover—acted as both a mirror and spiritual disruptor for Rumi.
The desire to “become a Rumi in his love” is not merely romantic but metaphysical—it signifies the yearning to be transformed by the encounter with the Divine Other.
Here, the “divine masculine” is not the patriarchal male, but a cosmic principle—the active, radiant, animating Logos. To “dive deep in the divine masculine” is to merge with the source of order, reason, power, and grace—not in opposition to the feminine, but as a completion of spiritual polarity.
✦ Feminine Voice, Spiritual Agency
Nancy’s speaker, presumably a female voice, claims the right to mystical longing, erotic spiritual agency, and sacred vulnerability. This destabilizes traditional male-centric mystical narratives. As Luce Irigaray would argue, reclaiming spiritual language for feminine subjectivity is an act of metaphysical resistance:
“Divine love must remain plural, like woman’s desire—spread out, fluid, shifting” (Sexes and Genealogies, 1993).
To wish to “become a Dervish” is thus also a wish to inhabit and transcend gender—to whirl until all distinctions dissolve.
✦ Conclusion: Toward a Sacred Eros
“Elicit Confession” performs a delicate alchemy—it begins with postmodern irony and ends with mystical longing. In doing so, it illustrates that even in an age of simulations and spiritual fragmentation, the longing for love as devotion remains a radical, redemptive act.
The poem stands as a sacred confession—not of guilt, but of irrepressible love, and a yearning for union that dares to move from eros to agape, from illusion to intoxicated truth.
✧ References
-
Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and Simulation. University of Michigan Press.
-
Rumi, J. Fihi Ma Fihi (translated by A.J. Arberry).
-
Irigaray, L. (1993). Sexes and Genealogies. Columbia University Press.
-
Schimmel, A. (1975). Mystical Dimensions of Islam. University of North Carolina Press.
Essay adapted from my poem
Comments