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4.21 AVERAGE
4.21 AVERAGE
One of my favorite yoga teachers quotes Rumi all the time during class, so I finally dove into his poetry. Highly recommend, especially a book like this which offers a framework and a little historical context.
Sometime around 1998 I picked up this book, knowing very little about Rumi, except that his work had inspired a favorite album. I haven't thought about this book for over a decade, but it has had a large and lasting influence on how I think and express myself.
As I understand it, these "translations" are more more like interpretations - but that is a new development for me. These are the words and poems that I experienced, and which changed me, however they came to be.
If this isn't actually what Rumi wrote, then I am content all the same with whatever combination of writer and translators created it.
While I often feel more like an agnostic, I am an atheist. However, I was raised with a relatively gentle kind of religion that has made me comfortable with those undeniably reverent aspects of Rumi's writing. Sometimes it is allusory, sometimes it is direct, sometimes it's merely expressive - but it's always there.
I read this when I was around 20. I can remember the writing in this book changing how I thought. Changing the language patterns of how I would write and communicate. Demonstrating how to express myself in a clearer, more honest way.
Not every line in this book is golden to me. But, even if I stripped it down to a handful of pages, I'd still consider it a fundamental part of my makeup. There are things here that I've not found elsewhere.
As I understand it, these "translations" are more more like interpretations - but that is a new development for me. These are the words and poems that I experienced, and which changed me, however they came to be.
Friend, our closeness is this:
anywhere you put your foot, feel me
in the firmness under you.
If this isn't actually what Rumi wrote, then I am content all the same with whatever combination of writer and translators created it.
While I often feel more like an agnostic, I am an atheist. However, I was raised with a relatively gentle kind of religion that has made me comfortable with those undeniably reverent aspects of Rumi's writing. Sometimes it is allusory, sometimes it is direct, sometimes it's merely expressive - but it's always there.
When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you're gone, I can't go to sleep.
Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.
I read this when I was around 20. I can remember the writing in this book changing how I thought. Changing the language patterns of how I would write and communicate. Demonstrating how to express myself in a clearer, more honest way.
Not every line in this book is golden to me. But, even if I stripped it down to a handful of pages, I'd still consider it a fundamental part of my makeup. There are things here that I've not found elsewhere.
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
I wanted an intro to Rumi and his works and I felt this book provided that for me
This is my third time reading this book, and I was inspired to read it again after reading Glennon Doyle’s Untamed. Rumi provides comfort and reminders that inside of us is something bigger (“God”; the universe) than what we choose to preoccupy ourselves with in the everyday. It was a good read especially right now during this crisis. I recommend it to anyone who is on a journey of self-discovery or anyone who wants to recommit themselves to self-love.
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
How does a part of the world leave the world?
How can wetness leave water?
Don’t try to put out a fire
by throwing on more fire!
Don’t wash a wound with blood!
No matter how fast you run,
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes, it’s in front!
Only full, overhead sun
diminishes your shadow.
But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.
I can explain this, but it would break
the glass cover on your heart,
and there’s no fixing that.
How can wetness leave water?
Don’t try to put out a fire
by throwing on more fire!
Don’t wash a wound with blood!
No matter how fast you run,
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes, it’s in front!
Only full, overhead sun
diminishes your shadow.
But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.
I can explain this, but it would break
the glass cover on your heart,
and there’s no fixing that.
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
The beloved is in your veins though he or she may seem to have a form outside you.
reading rumi's works feels like being washed clean, turned inside out, becoming a vessel for the emptiness he tells us to embrace in ourselves. what are we if not reeds separated from the ground? flutes playing the music of our homesickness, unaware that the beautiful sound of out existence is just a result of being apart from our true love? rumi speaks of a love that hits a part of you waiting to he spoken to, a love that loves the artist more than the painting, a love that cares not for possession but of being possessed, a love that cuts the bounds we have formed with all our unhappinesses and letting that love consume us whole. it is a love that we must turn towards, the stream running by our face while we believe we are mad with thirst, the shout we must shout from the mountain of the world to enjoy the echo that comes back. what a beautiful collection of works. rumi makes me look around at my life and see not just the world, but also my own soul, split apart into rays by the one who has created us.
challenging
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
i (once) loved this book. carried it around like a holy text for a time. fell away from it when it came to my attention that coleman barks doesn't know Persian and much of the work in his (and daniel landinsky's) translations are fake and hold little if any connection to the original works of Rumi and Hafez. The whole thing felt like a huge betrayal. I'd love to read the work of Rumi and Hafez in more faithful translation. In the meantime, I still hold a complicated fondness for this book, what it meant to me for a time, and some of the beautiful poems it holds... I just don't kid myself about their authorship, and I wouldn't buy this book again (nor any other book of barks' or landinsky's translations) because I don't want to further support these people. No more white americans' "translations" of Persian poetry, thanks!!
Content Warnings
poor/unfaithful translation, cultural appropriation by author/translator