/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3154952]

What does /lit/ think of Rumi?

[Anonymous No.3154960]

Fantastic, but a lot of the more popular English versions of his work are terrible. Stick to Chittick, Arberry, Nicholson, and Schimmel.

[Anonymous No.3154959]

Sexy beast

[Anonymous No.3154994]

>>3154952
I'd cum in that beard.

[Anonymous No.3155016]

>>3154994
>Sageing a poetry thread on /lit/

To what end?

[Anonymous No.3155038]

bumping to counteract sage in poetry thread

[Anonymous No.3155042]

So the translation is shit?

[Anonymous No.3155044]

I've always hated him. He's like halmark cards.

[Anonymous No.3155049]

>>3154952
Reading Rumi made me convert to Islam.

[Anonymous No.3155054]

You are the truth
From foot to brow, Now,
what else would you like to know?”
- Rumi

[Anonymous No.3155063]

“Grief settles thick in the throat and lungs: thousands of sorrows

being suffered, clouds of cruelty, all somehow from love. Wail and be

thirsty for your own blood. Climb to the execution place. It is time.

The Nile flows red: the Nile flows Pure. Dry thorns and aloe wood are

The same until fire touches. A warrior and a mean coward stand here

similar until arrows rain. Warriors love battle. A subtle lion with

strategy gets the prey to run toward him, saying Kill me again. Dead

eyes look into living eyes. Don’t try to figure this out. Love’s work

looks absurd, but trying to find a meaning will hide it more. Silence.
- Rumi


I'm sure people on /lit/ have had experiences where their most cherished friend or parent had died at a young age. Watching a loved one slip away in a hospital bed.

Grieving as hard as your body can handle, all thoughts of appearance or conduct burning away.

That's why I adore Rumi. He's been to that place. More important is he's been Through It.

[Franz !!8ZELb56UWUx No.3155064]

>>3155042
Coleman Barks translates Rumi gorgeously. I'm sure he's taking liberties, but I've never read an account of someone describing their own experiences reading Rumi's poetry in the original language (e.g., Elif Shafak) and felt that something of great significance (other than the gorgeousness of the tongue in which it was written) was lost.

[Anonymous No.3155065]

>>3155042

The versions by Barks, Helminski, and many others aren't actually translations (these people don't speak Persian); they're "creative reworkings" of real translations that inject New Age ideas into the poetry of an old Sufi. The translators recommended by >>3154960 are scholars who work with the original texts and try to produce pretty faithful English renderings.

>>3155044
His actual poetry is quite good if you're into love-mysticism and all that; the fortune cookie-like quality of some versions is something that comes from the interpreters mentioned above.

[Anonymous No.3155068]

>>3155064

Barks doesn't translate. Shafak would have been reading it in Turkish, right?

[Anonymous No.3155086]

“When a baby is taken from the wet nurse, it easily forgets
her and starts eating

solid food. Seeds feed on ground awhile, then lift up into
the sun. So you should taste

filtered light and work toward what has no personal covering.
That’s how you came here,

like a star with no name. Move in the night sky with those
anonymous lights.”
- Rumi

[Anonymous No.3155090]

The men of the Path looked for a remedy, but along with their own existence, none was found.
They lined up in the fire of Love, like iron, copper and granite.
In the manner of Men the were utterly drowned in the infinite Ocean.

[Anonymous No.3155094]

>>3155086
why is the nurse wet? was the babby born in a lake?

[VurtKonnegut No.3155097]

>>3155094
u srs?

[Anonymous No.3155108]

“There was a women who bore a child almost every year, but the
children never lived longer

than six months. Usually after three or four months they would
die. She grieved long and

publicly. ‘I take on the work of pregnancy for nine months,
but the joy vanishes quicker

than a rainbow.’ Twenty children went like that, in fevers to
their small graves. One night

she had a revelation. She saw the place of unconditional love,
call it the garden or source

of gardens. The physical eye cannot see its unseeable light.
Lamp, green flower, these

are just comparisons, so that some of the love-bewildered may
catch a fragrance. The woman

saw pure grace and, drunk with the seeing, fell to the ground.
Those who give the vision said

then ‘This morning meal is for those who rise with sincere
devotion. The tragedies you’ve

had came from other times when you did not take refuge.’
‘Lord, give me more grief.

Tear me to pieces, if it leads here.’ She said this and
Walked into the presence

she had seen. Her children were all there, ‘Lost to me,’ she
cried, ‘but not to you.’

Without this great grieving no one can enter the spirit.”
- Rumi

[Anonymous No.3155115]

Once again we have left our heart, intellect, and spirit behind--the Friend has come into the midst and we have disappeared.
We have turned back from annihilation and become woven into subsistence; we have found the Traceless and thrown away all traces.
Stirring up dust from the ocean and smoke from the nine spheres, we have discarded Time, the earth, and the heavens.
Beware, the drunkards have come! Clear the way!--no I said that wrong, for we have been delivered from the way and the travellers.
The spirit's fire has lifted its head from the body's earth; the heart began to shout, and like a shout, we rose up.
Let us speak less, for if we speak, few understand. Pour more wine, for we have entered the ranks of the self-deniers!
Existence is for women--the work of men is nonexistence, Thanks be to God, for we have risen as champions in nonexistence! (Diwan 1601)

[Anonymous No.3155148]

“…smiles come best from those who weep.”
- Rumi

[Anonymous No.3155159]

“A Christian goes to his priest and tells a year’s worth of
sin: fornication, meanness,

hypocrisy. He wants to be forgiven, and he hears the priest’s absolving as grace.

The priest himself may have no experience of that mercy,
but the Christian’s imagination

gives it to him. Love and imagination do many things. They
conjure up a sweetheart’s form,

so that you can speak to it, ‘Do you love me?’ Yes, yes. A
mother beside the new grave

of her son says things she never said when he was alive. The
ground there seems to have

intelligence. She lays her face on the fresh earth, giving
her love as never before.

Days and weeks go by. Grief for the dead diminishes. Soon
there is nothing but

oblivion at the grave site. Let your teacher be love itself,
not someone with a white

beard. In the state of fana, love without form says, I am
the source of sober clarity

and drunken excitement. You have loved my reflection in forms
so well that now there’s

no mediating. When a Christian longs to be forgiven,
the priest disappears

in that longing. Water flows out of the ground over a stone.
No one calls it a stone

anymore. It’s the pure substance pouring over it, a
spring. These forms we’re

in are like bowls. They acquire value from what pours
through to serve as nourishment;

then they’re washed and put away for the next use.”
- Rumi

[Anonymous No.3155171]

“If you could wake up, you would see that every stumbling unconscious action gives birth to a response, an indication, a hint from God. You could be so different, unsotted, observant, subtle, pure. As a dark granular iron surface can be polished to a mirror full of transparent hilarious beings, so you could shine with usefulness, as the rusty saw blade, scoured and polishes, reveals a resplendent world of lights darting new energy. The agent that polishes is reason. What does the work is prayer. Pray! And let the unseen streak its glints through you!”
- Rumi

[Anonymous No.3155177]

>>3155171
>Hint from God

Is that guy like idiot?

[Anonymous No.3155183]

>>3155177
You don't belong here.

[Anonymous No.3155200]

Oh people! Oh people! You will not find human nature in me! Even a madman could not conceive of what I have conceived in my heart!
The madman's star has been eclipsed, he has fled from my commotion--I have mixed with death, I have flown into nonexistence. (Diwan 14490-91)

Do you not see that the moth of madness keeps on throwing itself upon the candle because of Love's overpowering force? (Diwan 29744)

[Anonymous No.3155201]

“Essence is emptiness. Everything else, accidental. Emptiness brings peace to your loving. Everything else, disease. In this world of trickery emptiness is what your soul wants.”
- Rumi

[Anonymous No.3155208]

What kind of spam is this

[Anonymous No.3155210]

>>3155177
protip: all of his poetry is about God/the Absolute.