love Rumi. I am Persian and so was he, although the comparison stops there, Rumi was brilliant.
In September of, I created a photographic gallery of Rumi quotations and used a few of the quotes from Coleman Bark's book with direct permission from the author I thought it was so cool that he emailed me back and was gracious about it.
This book has been sitting on my nightstand for months, I pick it up in between other books, read a page or two, let it sink and then go back to it a few nights later.
it's been slow.
The translation is great but the content is very hard to put into context, it's like reading about another person's dreams, they make very little sense except a few moments in time when something clarifying and brilliant happens, That's how I feel about this book, I enter a convoluted dream of someone else and emerge with maybe a few words of wisdom, I attribute it mainly to my own lack of appreciation and understanding of Rumi and wish I could grasp it even more but I will keep reading it.
Among all Rumi books, I do believe this is one of the best ones from all the reviews but you be the judge,
Here's one of my most favorites quotes by Barks from his translations: "What you seek is seeking you, " Beautiful!
I love that when I contacted Mr, Barks to get his permission to use some of his quotations on my own Rumi book on Amazon, he gave me full support in a personal email.
"A gnostic says little, but inside he is full of mysteries, "
Rumi
God I love Rumi, Obviously, I'm not the only one, But beyond just poetry, I have always loved the mystical side of the major religions, Sufism, Zen, the Kabbalists, and gnostic anything, I think there is a truth that floats in the dance and patter of thy mystics that the dogmatic and the bureaucratic impulses of religion miss.
Still, it isn't just Rumi's take on God although I could make an argument that ALL his poems thread back to God, but his take on friendship, love, sex, wine, nature, etc.
, that all stand out. Rumi feels like a silk strand that connects the earth to the divine, It twists and flutters, but never breaks, His words just dance and remind us that the divine exists and the divine is closer than we imagine,
I read this book right as the Coronavirus hit, but previous to this recent apocalypse, I took my wife and kids to Istanbul and one of the highlights was watching the dervishes in Galata twirl as the poetry of Rumi was chanted in a small, beautiful space, men spinning to God while the world seemed ready to veer into chaos.
I should also note that I went back and forth on whether to give this translationorstars, It is very approachable, but it also seems again, I'm not a translator so I'm relying on those who know and comparing poems to other translations to have muted a bit of the Islamic nature of the poetry.
At once, he makes the poems more approachable, but also misses some of the point, So, Rumi I givestars, but the translation drops it tostars, At least on this spin, actual .
definitely a rollercoaster of a reading experience, there were some poems that rewired my whole brain chemistry but there were others that i found no connection to both experiences valid and true.
listen to presences inside poems,
let them take you where they will Rumi needs no introduction, no rating, no recommendation, no.
He is above and beyond all of this he is a constellation unto himself, He is THAT magnificent a magician, And his readers in English, me included, cant just thank Coleman Barks enough for translating the beauty and spirit of his poetry brilliantly, I have read other translations of Rumi but those are mere translations but Coleman Barks is Rumi, Quintessentially. And this particular collection is brimming with gems, His poetry speaks to everyone, irrespective of all external layers, And thankfully there is no rhyme, the one characteristic of poetry, that really puts me off, But then his poetry needs no rhyme it has its own music, its own order of sorts underlying the free flow, But most unfortunately Rumi also happens to be the most widely quoted, used, abused poet, esp, on social networking siteswhich seems to me as such an affront to his creation, But then he does have universal appeal and a perennial relevance and the century he wrote in, virtual world was inconceivable or else he wouldve never written, I guess.
And ironically, Im saying this here, :. Personally for me, while being introduced to this poet about fourteen years back, was one of the best things that ever happened to methe only downside if I may call it so has been.
that since I read Rumi, I find it nearly impossible to read or appreciate any other poet/poetry except Zen poetry of course the same thing that happened to me after I tripped on Duras I have
to make a considerable amount of effort to read through another writer and the rate of failure of reading through another writer outnumbers the rate of success hugely!! : I've been dipping in and out of Rumi's Selected Poems for a couple of weeks and I don't think his poetry is for me.
I'm having the same reaction towards Rumi's work as I had towards Khalil Gibran's The Prophet, . . and Paolo Coelho's The Alchemist, I just want to tell the poems / books to move along and pester someone else,
It just doesn't grab me, So, I'll be passing this book on to a friend who seemed quite interested when I jokingly quoted "let darkness be your candle",
I think Rumi deserves a more patient reader than I am, Coleman Barks did not speak or read a single word of Farsi when he decided to “translate” Rumi, Others have compared this to translating sitelinkShakespeare while not knowing English, sitelinkDostoyevsky while not knowing Russian, or sitelinkHugo while not knowing French I agree with all of the above.
His “translations” are really more like paraphrases or interpretations if not flatout guesses based on previous English translations of Rumi Moyne, Nicholson, etc, . Barks also skipped entire lines, combined others, and blended multiple poems into one “translation, ” Majid Naficy explained the issue by saying that the “essential problem of Coleman Barks lies in the fact that in his version he intentionally changes Rumi.
”
As an example, here is a poem “translated” by Barks, perhaps one of the most famous in the Western world:
Out beyond ideasBut that is simply not what Rumi wrote, The original makes no mention of wrong or right instead, the words used are iman “religion” and kufr “lack of belief”.
of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.
Ill meet you there,
What Rumi is saying here is that, to paraphrase another scholar, the basis of faith lies not in religiosity but in an elevated space of compassion and love.
Even a lessthanliteral translation although I personally think any interpretation of the poem should explicitly say iman and kufrbeyond ideas / of belief and disbeliefwould be more accurate to Rumis original writing than Barkss flaccid nonsense.
A more literal translation of the poem c/o sitelinkPersian Poetics would be:
Beyond kufr and Islam there is a desert plain,This is insulting. It borders on outright Orientalism and Anglocentric cultural supremacy, Translation is not only an art but also a science, and highly political, The job of a translator is to present the work as it was in the original language, as close as is possible to the original text while being comprehensible to the audience in the target language its up to that audience to interpret and judge as desired.
in that middle space our passions reign.
When the gnostic arrives there hell prostrate himself,
not kufr, not Islam, nor is there any space in that domain,
Although it is true that all translation will inherently alter the original text to some extent, as is the nature of translation itself, there are degrees of accuracy to translation, just as there are to any type of scholarly interpretation.
If the translator or “translator” does not even try to preserve an authors work in such a way that it would be recognisable as the same text, the translator has failed.
What Barks has done is not the same as translating Rumis poetry, Interpretation is not translation, This is not a translation of Rumi, You cannot have the “essential” Rumi without the religion,
Rozina Ali sitelinkwrote that “the Rumi that people love is very beautiful in English, and the price you pay is to cut the culture and religion.
” Removing the Islam from Rumi is akin to removing the Christianity from Narnia, Its not merely inaccurate but also incredibly offensive, Barks has no scholarly background in Islam, Sufism, Persian history, or anything at all besides a degree in literature, He was given an honourary degree from Tehran University, but thats it, All the “work” hes done “bringing” Rumi to the Western world is for naught when its not actually Rumi hes brought,
Two English versions of Rumi that are actual translations from the original language are sitelinkRumi: Hidden Music translated by Maryam Mafi and sitelinkWords of Paradise: Selected Poems translated by Raficq Abdulla.
Both of these would be more accurate than Barkss whitewashed attempt, although that bar is low, I would also recommend sitelinkJawid Mojaddedis excellent translation, .