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A review by jacobisaacs
The Essential Rumi by Rumi
Did not finish book.
1.0
I picked this up off my mom's shelf today on a lark. I read maybe one page before I began to have serious doubts. The choppy syntax, absence of imagery, aphoristic structure, lack of meter, and inability to string together a single compelling line of what I would call poetry made me wonder: was this really poetry per se, was this Rumi?
I do not speak or read Farsi, and I didn't want to make any rash assumptions about what 13th-century Persian poetry could or couldn't look like, so I kept reading, for another ten pages, maybe twenty, just to give the book a chance. At this point the monotony had not relented for even a single line. The egregious use of exclamation points, a rarity in literary writing of most any language, let alone in a script that does not usually make such distinctions, further contributed to this unease. More than any of this, however, I found it hard to accept that one of the world's most esteemed poets could be so, well, flat.
As it turns out, my instincts were right for once—a fast Internet search will reveal that Coleman Barks does not know a word of the Persian language. If The "Essential" "Rumi" reads like New Age pap you'd find in a fortune cookie or on a bathroom wall in Santa Cruz, that's because you very well might. What Barks has cobbled together in this book is, as his own dust jacket reveals, an "interpretation" of Rumi—meaning he paraphrases other English language translations of Rumi, bowdlerizing these already quite often inferior texts, and often scrubbing any mentions of Islam. A white hippie who used to live in Berkeley (no offense meant, I am from San Jose, but Bay Area residents will know the type), Barks was turned onto Rumi by a similarly dubious poetaster as a young man. That ought to say all we need to know.
Translation is a tricky business, and one that requires some scruples; we ought to have faith that what we're reading is at least what it purports to be. But it's a shame, a high literary injustice, that this is most Anglophones' introduction to Rumi. Not only is it not Rumi's words or spirit, it is not poetry either. This book is the basest kind of orientalism, like Coelho's The Alchemist, another book I will never attempt to finish, and one most likely with a very similar fanbase. (How strange it is to say books have fanbases! That ought to be a warning.) Whatever wisdom I might find in this book, if I combed through it as if I were rereading Hamletmachine, would be projecting onto Barks' deliberately enigmatic, sanitized fetishization of Islamic art. I am saddened by the knowledge that my mom bought this edition on a friend's recommendation—though I am not surprised in the least, given Barks' popularity.
Did not finish. Would not recommend. Until I learn to read Persian, I will seek out Mojaddedi's translations instead.
I do not speak or read Farsi, and I didn't want to make any rash assumptions about what 13th-century Persian poetry could or couldn't look like, so I kept reading, for another ten pages, maybe twenty, just to give the book a chance. At this point the monotony had not relented for even a single line. The egregious use of exclamation points, a rarity in literary writing of most any language, let alone in a script that does not usually make such distinctions, further contributed to this unease. More than any of this, however, I found it hard to accept that one of the world's most esteemed poets could be so, well, flat.
As it turns out, my instincts were right for once—a fast Internet search will reveal that Coleman Barks does not know a word of the Persian language. If The "Essential" "Rumi" reads like New Age pap you'd find in a fortune cookie or on a bathroom wall in Santa Cruz, that's because you very well might. What Barks has cobbled together in this book is, as his own dust jacket reveals, an "interpretation" of Rumi—meaning he paraphrases other English language translations of Rumi, bowdlerizing these already quite often inferior texts, and often scrubbing any mentions of Islam. A white hippie who used to live in Berkeley (no offense meant, I am from San Jose, but Bay Area residents will know the type), Barks was turned onto Rumi by a similarly dubious poetaster as a young man. That ought to say all we need to know.
Translation is a tricky business, and one that requires some scruples; we ought to have faith that what we're reading is at least what it purports to be. But it's a shame, a high literary injustice, that this is most Anglophones' introduction to Rumi. Not only is it not Rumi's words or spirit, it is not poetry either. This book is the basest kind of orientalism, like Coelho's The Alchemist, another book I will never attempt to finish, and one most likely with a very similar fanbase. (How strange it is to say books have fanbases! That ought to be a warning.) Whatever wisdom I might find in this book, if I combed through it as if I were rereading Hamletmachine, would be projecting onto Barks' deliberately enigmatic, sanitized fetishization of Islamic art. I am saddened by the knowledge that my mom bought this edition on a friend's recommendation—though I am not surprised in the least, given Barks' popularity.
Did not finish. Would not recommend. Until I learn to read Persian, I will seek out Mojaddedi's translations instead.