Sweet Lunacy: Divine Intoxication in Sufi Literature

“Divine Intoxication” is a common theme in Middle Eastern poetry. The “wine” on which the seeker becomes “drunk” is nothing less than the nectar of love. Such “inebriation,” however, often produces unconventional behavior, even hints of madness, marking the lover as one apparently lost to the ordinary world. In this mood, Kahlil Gibran wrote: “Only an idiot and a genius break man-made laws and they are the nearest to the heart of God.” And so, the poetry written by or about these “drunkards...