"I have bad habit of reading too many things at once, but among those is Rumi's Masnavi, which I've been slowly working through in a bilingual edition to teach myself Persian. I'm about 1,200 of 24,000 couplets of the way in and would, at least on that basis, recommend it."
"The skepticism about the popularization of Rumi is in some sense justified-in addition to the " erasure of Islam" in so many recent translations, the poetry is also far weirder, funnier, more didactic, and in parts more playful and verbose than those translations let on."
"Much of the Masnavi 's first book, for instance, is devoted to stories about humans and their talking parrots, which have a slapstick quality and simultaneously function as allegories for spiritual progress."
"I would provide quotes, but it is quite difficult to extract a line or two of his writing without entirely losing its effect-this accounts for why, quite independently of the quality of translation, the versions of Rumi made up of individual couplets presented as self-standing nuggets of pseudospiritual wisdom are good for airport sales and little else."
Rumi’s Masnavi is being read in a bilingual edition to learn Persian, with progress through a large portion of the couplets. The skepticism toward popularized versions is considered justified because many translations erase Islam and present the poetry as less strange, funnier, more didactic, and more playful than it actually is. Early material includes stories with humans and talking parrots that feel slapstick while also serving as allegories for spiritual progress. Extracting short lines can remove much of the effect, so standalone couplet “nuggets” become suitable for casual sales rather than meaningful engagement. A six-volume translation by Jawid Mojaddedi is noted for distinguishing itself.
Read at Apaonline
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]