All The Rumis In The World
Mar. 24th, 2024 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo I read a piece about Rumi on the Al-Jazeera website. It was called something like "A Tale of two Rumis."
And when I'd finished it I thought, "What! Only two?"
The two in question are the Rumi of conservative Islam- who is a venerated saint- and the Rumi who has been taken to the heart of millions of Westerners- who is a non-sectarian guru.
The Islamic scholars say the poems in modern English translation have been sieved of all traces of medieval Islam- and I've no doubt this is the case. What the groovy Westerners say in response is nothing very much because they are mostly unaware of the criticism.
But once a writer dies- or indeed as soon as the ink dries on the paper- their words cease to belong to them and become the property of whoever reads them and takes them to heart.
So now there as many Rumis as he has readers- and none of them are "wrong"
W,H, Auden put it succinctly in his poem about the death of W.B. Yeats.
Firstly, " He became his admirers"
And secondly, "The words of a dead man/ Are modified in the guts of the living."
And when I'd finished it I thought, "What! Only two?"
The two in question are the Rumi of conservative Islam- who is a venerated saint- and the Rumi who has been taken to the heart of millions of Westerners- who is a non-sectarian guru.
The Islamic scholars say the poems in modern English translation have been sieved of all traces of medieval Islam- and I've no doubt this is the case. What the groovy Westerners say in response is nothing very much because they are mostly unaware of the criticism.
But once a writer dies- or indeed as soon as the ink dries on the paper- their words cease to belong to them and become the property of whoever reads them and takes them to heart.
So now there as many Rumis as he has readers- and none of them are "wrong"
W,H, Auden put it succinctly in his poem about the death of W.B. Yeats.
Firstly, " He became his admirers"
And secondly, "The words of a dead man/ Are modified in the guts of the living."
