/lit/ - Literature

>>20172895
I heard it's not that different from Indo-European languages, unlike Arabic

>>20172895
The farsi in Rumi and Ferdows is far removed from every day farsi that people speak. I can speak the language fluently but the poetry still takes some work to understand.

>>20172945
Thanks anon. Assuming you are not native, how long did it take you to get fluent? Would you say it was worth your time?

>>20173201
Why would you assume he's not native (i.e his parents are native)? Who the hell learns persian?

>>20173354
>Who the hell learns persian?
PIE linguists
Academic historians
zoroastrian larpers
and aparently a guy who wants to read Rumi

>>20173429
>PIE linguists
>academic historians
If you think linguists actually learn the languages they study, you are sorely mistaken.

>>20173354
>Who the hell learns persian?

>>20173201
My native is Pashto but Farsi was mandatory in school. I did grow up with it so I don't know how long it would take to learn as an adult.

>>20172918
it is an indo european language...i've also heard its not that hard however, except for the fact that the written language differs quite a bit from the spoken one.

>>20172895
Chinese poetry is better.
But yeah, both Persian and Chinese poetry are better than European.

>>20174993
Could you provide examples? Not trying to refute you, I just want to know your recommendations

>>20172895
Iranian here.
>I need to know if by studying Persian I will one day be able to truly enjoy the poetry of Rumi
Yes of course. There is no reason to suppose you wouldn't.
>Is literary Farsi far too removed from what you can learn in a language academy?
The grammar is the same, but older poetry uses a set of limited older vocabulary which you can get used to pretty quickly.
>I'm mostly interested in literature
Rumi is easily the best poet I've read, and I've studied English as well as German poetry (only Goethe comes close). I feel sorry for people who miss out on him. I would absolutely encourage you to learn it even if it's just for the sake of Rumi.

>>20175220
Wang Wei. He is tough to translate, but here's my favorite poem of his:

http://www.chinese-poems.com/peach.html

Han Shan (Red Pine transl)
Shiwu (Red Pine transl)

There's a lot more I haven't read as much like Li Bai who seems very good. Japanese poetry was heavily influenced by the Chinese too. I like Ryokan a lot. Best translation is Nobuyuki Yuasa.

>>20175386
Rumi is quixotic and has his head up his ass. Best Persian poet is Saadi Shirazi. My opinion is absolute.

>>20175391
Thanks anon! I wrote it down

>>20172895
to understand poetry would take some dedicated study. Iranians study old literature in part to understand fully the Persian language used in classic poems. It takes a little dedication but Persian is pretty easy to learn for an English speaker and it could only take a few weeks of study (there are study materials online) to fully understand poetry

>>20175998
Can you recommend free resources

>>20175386
>>20175998
Great to know, thanks anons.
I know Farsi is a lot more feasible than Arabic because of it being an IE language and it's the only non European language I have any interest in learning apart from Sanskrit (which to be honest I will probably never actually try).
Do you know which are the best resources to learn? I have a language school in my city that offers it, but I'd like to get down the basics before enrolling.

>>20176195
Wheeler Thackston's "An Introduction to Persian". I've used his introduction to Arabic and I can vouch he is pretty good but very difficult. Aside from that, I've heard some people have used "The Routledge Introductory Persian Course".

>>20172895
E. G. Browne said that Farsi is probably among the easiest languages to learn in the world.

>>20176759
Seconding the Thackston intro, as well as his “Millennium of Classical Persian Poetry.” It’s exactly what you’re looking for, OP.

Ganbate fren. You can do it. It’s hard to express how worthwhile learning literary Persian is. Some of the most wonderful poetic and philosophical (see Suhrawardi and the illuminationist post-Neoplatonic tradition) treasures of the world will be within your grasp. It’s a shame that Persian poetry used to be considered a basic part of the education of a learned Western and Asian person up until less then a hundred years ago (Emerson, Forster, and Hegel are noteworthy appreciators who come to mind) but because of political idiocy, an unfortunate decline in literate culture, and the pathetic excuses for translation done by New Age Orientalists, predominantly in the US, it’s now been relegated to relative obscurity.

>>20176856
What's wrong with those translations?

>>20174993
>>20175391
>>20175386
What makes Chinese and Persian poetry superior to European poetry? You're probably right. Homer, Ovid, and Virgil aren't very deep. Shakespeare's poetry is good but overblown and shallow. However, what I've read of Rumi and some Chinese poets aren't extremely deep either.

>>20177063
Which poets would you consider deep?

>>20177047
Sorry if that was unclear. I meant “Orientalist” in the pejorative sense, and was thinking of “translators” like Daniel Ladinsky and Coleman Barks, who don’t even know Persian and yet feel confident enough to produce “translations” that reflect more of their own pseudo-spiritual ideas of the “exotic East” than any aspects of the original text. They even admit their own ignorance, and yet their books are published by reputable presses, widely sold, and allowed to distort the English-reading public’s reception of great poets like Hafez or Rumi, to name just two examples. It’s hard to imagine people allowing this kind of thing to be done with German and French poetry, for whatever it’s worth. And I have no issue with the contemporary equivalents to what we used to call “Orientalists,” specialists and academics who have some focus on Asia and its history, culture, religion, literature, etc. They tend to be fine translators. M.L. West is great when it comes to older Iranian and Indo-European texts.

>>20177063
I can read Persian, English (obviously), French, German, Italian, and am decent enough with Latin, Greek, and classical Chinese to make my way through poems with a lexicon at hand, and as far as I’m concerned, this kind of ranking and haphazard comparison is completely infantile. If anything, one of poetry’s virtues is its capacity to liberate readers from this kind of thinking.

>>20177063
>He reads poetry for "depth"
Absolutely soulless

>>20177206
Nah, that's bluntly dumb thinking, but still better than muh tiers shitposters. Whichever tradition has the greatest value and breadth of truth, seeking of meaning, and glory, as expressed in its poetry, would generally be considered the best tradition(s). I don't know what those traditions would be, but they'd express authentic, authoritative, and the best examples of their spiritual, ritualistic, social, and personal understandings of the world. I like Chinese poetry, but the example about seclusion, which has had a cyclical effect of stagnation and degeneration on China, though not necessarily good or bad in itself, seems very emptily and falsely spiritual in its yearning for immortaility, and in its case it isn't real immortality. Persian poetry, from what I've seen, has higher contact with spiritual values. I strongly suspect there is a hidden wealth of Sanskrit or Indian poetry resembling it in spirituality, though certainly not the generally self serving, strange, and vile collection of Indian classics we know of in the West, our perceptions gatekept by our so called intellectuals.

>>20176759
>>20176856

Thanks for the recommendations! I'm not OP but I've been thinking about starting Persian for similar reasons. I looked into Thackston's book and it looks very useful, especially the handwriting which seems to be missing in many other books, and decided to order the book.

Since the topic of translations is brought up, I was wondering if you would have an opinion on C.S. Nott's translation (from a French translation by Garcin de Tassy) of The Conference of the Birds? It's one of my favourite books but I noticed that it's a translation of a translation, which is a bit dismaying.

>>20177304

>>20177357
Dick Davis and Peter Avery’s translations are great contemporary translations, if you’re interested in reading Conference of the Birds again. Not familiar with the Nott unfortunately, but I’m glad it got you interested in the work!

I like A. Hart Edwards' translation of the Bustan of Saadi.

>>20173435
I'm not sure I'd call myself a linguist but I have two professors that are. They know lots of languages and know them quite well. If you're talking about the Noam Chomskys of the world, yeah, they don't know too many languages, but most of his career wasn't about linguistics anyway.

>>20177176
No, it was perfectly clear, I''m just curious. I'm a translator myself, so it kinda helps and can even prove to be an interesting field of study. I'm now even contemplating learning farsi. Thank you for your response!

>>20173733
There are many puns to be made about learning Pashto.
>Whatcha doin', buddy?
>Nothing much. Working out of this textbook.
>Want to join us for dinner?
>Sorry, can't. I must continue my Pashtoil.

>... Kid, you're asking me if learning Pashto is worth it. No, it isn't. I've lost all my teeth, my friends, my family. Everyone thinks I have sex with animals. Don't learn Pashto. Don't pay the Pashtoll.

You know how in many language classes students sing songs and play games? To learn body parts, students will sing Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Pashtoes. Hokey Pashtokey will be played too. For the sake of authenticity and malevolent confusion, the teacher will loosely point at a burka-clad woman to introduce the body parts. Then, the teacher will deduct points (and strike the student, depending on the jurisdiction) for not doing the Hokey Pashtokey correctly (wrong word, bad pronunciation, use of native language, not correctly inserting, removing, or shaking the required body part).

That's all for now. Time for me to Pashtoke some Afghan hash.

>>20175386
>I've studied English as well as German poetry (only Goethe comes close).
I've heard many Germans say that Shakespeare is better than Goethe. You not only think that Shakespeare is worse than Goethe but that Rumi is better than both of them? What if you include Shakespeare's plays as they are in iambic pentameter?

>>20176195
I’m irani and speak Farsi and Arabic, honestly neither is too difficult to learn other than learning the guttural mudblood Arab noises required to speak it properly. Learning Chinese was far more difficult. It was even easier than English honestly with your language’s sometimes having grammatical rules that make no sense except to English speakers

>>20172895
Study these nuts on your chin so one day these nuts can travel to your chin and finally rest

>>20174993
Fuck, are you that Zoroastrian LARPer?

I would really like a well thought case of what makes Chinese and Persian poetry better than European. In terms of virtue and universal spirituality, I think they respectively in totum have a strong chance of being superior.

>>20174993
I can't simply get over how absolutetly atrocious Mandarin sounds. Maybe if there were any authoritative reconstruction of spoken Classical Chinese that weren't so painful to the ear I could try and invest the thousands of hours required to get at least some level of proficiency, but as of right now I don't think this sounds poetic at all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M21AZ0io_4
Just compare it to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP9FWA1_Xrw
Farsi sounds pleasant, calm and elegant, overall a beautiful language. In comparison, Chinese sounds harsh and overacted, as if it was completely subject to whatever mannerism Chinese of today project on their tradition, it feel salmost neurotic.
And I didn't even go out of my way to pick the worst possible Classical Chiense recording, quite the contrary in fact.

>>20176856
>>20175386
>>20177176
Thank you my Persian frens.
One last question I have to ask is if you know if it's difficult to get your hands on books edited in Iran? Or if there are any good bilingual editions of the complete poems of some of the most prominent classics? I can comfortably in read English, French, Spanish and Italian, so bilingual editions in any of those languages would be great.
I know the complete poems in the original would probably be a bit difficult to find but I absolutely hate antologies.
This is more of a long term thing obviously, it's just to write them down to keep them in mind once I start getting comfortable reading (I guess at least a couple of years down the line).

>>20177891
The only (born, raised) Iranian I knew left because "its a country completely filled with retarded monkeys"
I think about that alot.

>>20178097
I don't think there's a vast difference in talent or quality as was claimed earlier in the thread. Individual greats undoubtedly have their strengths and weaknesses, which inevitably appeals to some more than others.

However, I agree with you about cultural views shaping poetic expression. The verse forms in a given culture have also reflected modes of thought and feeling, as well as the diction. For instance, Persians with their pious fondness of refrains and the Chinese with their frequent parallelism. But, to echo an earlier statement, a lot depends on the individual poet. To what degree their character is capable of meeting their task: noble feeling, sensitivity, truth, and the rest.

Yesterday I crushed a Persian in chess and he swore at me in Farsi. I put it in Google translate and it translated to “go away”. Apparently he couldn’t take the Aryan BVLL checkmating him.

>>20179351
I think Shakespeare is great but overrated. "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy blah blah", well there are more things in Persian and Chinese poetry than to be found in an Anglo windbag, who got average grades in school, and whose own philosophy is pretty shallow compared to even a short fundamental treatise that says more with less like Dao De Jing. But do their best poets outrank the best of Europe? Who said the best things ever about God, eternity, time, nature, religion, society, and the self, and so on? Ovid and especially China are the best at nature poetry. China's the best at expressing religion as its society, with no other poetic tradition meshing the two so seamlessly. China probably also for showing ordinary life by ordinary people. Europe has some but it's interrupted by its histrionic bent and ends up showing unbalanced extremes, which is fine for Rimanticism, but muddled for ordinary life. The English are probably the best at verses expounding the self. The Persians at seeking God and spirituality. Where does everything else fall into place?

>>20178652
https://ferdosi.com/pages/product/?product=0&id=9649283420
This is a translation of the Gulistan by Saadi, with the original Persian first, followed by the definitions for every word, finally followed by the revised translation.
Historically most students in the Persianate world, Ottoman Empire, Mughal Empire, etc. would learn Persian and Islamic morals by reading the Gulistan first so it's not a bad place to start if you dislike graded readers.

>Aryan BVLL
I fucking hate how arrogant you people are

>>20178712
Most Iranians you meet in western countries are self-hating Persians who yearn for the days when their country was run by a US puppet, because they wanted to larp as a degenerate "le westernized" country. Now that Iran is strong and independent again, they hate it, because the mindset of being America's stooge (and liking it) is still inside the psyche of many people. Also I think there's a chance I'm just replying to a glowie anyway