The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi (2017) | Hacker News Reader

The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi (2017)

newyorker.com

37 pointssokols16 comments

A lot of "new-age" style spiritual/self-help contexts abuse and debase original intent to present a prepackaged "ready to eat" style of insight and guidance.

Though the motivations in undermining the context of Rumi by removing Islam may be more nefarious, the same thing happens with Stoicism. Take a few aphorisms, oversimplify them as an answer to a complex problem and repeat.

Much like Rumi can't be read without the context of Islam, Seneca or Epictetus can't be understood without the metaphysics of Stoicism, but endless volumes of self-help books disagree. I may be the wrong one in light of that.

Check out secular buddhism, same (general) thing is going on there as well. And don't get me started on Mindfulness.

It's hard to say with certainty where these things are 'back to basics' versus a high-brow form of cultural appropriation. Western, lower-case-p philosophy has been accused countless times of being reductive in nature (and our relationship to Nature is perhaps one of the clearest cases of this).

You would think that studying eastern philosophy and indigenous ways of thinking/being would counteract that, but even that is breaking down now.

I don't think this is something endemic to the West, or even America in general. America and the West has produced a lot of upper-case Philosophy, like Satre and Camus (although they're French). This seems more like a problem of our current moment, where previous religious doctrines -- like Catholicism, Orthodox Islam, & traditional American Protestantism -- don't really fit anymore, and new ones haven't taken hold yet. Mix that with our very busy and efficient culture, and you get all of this mindfulness stuff.

If it's any consolation, self-help literature doesn't do that just to other people's culture. The transformation of the Christian message into contemporary "Prosperity Gospel" is downright bizarre.

It's true, of course, but the alternative seems to be the erasure of poetry from the poetry of Rumi. Here's a sample of the translation they recommend at the end:

  I'm now compelled through uttering Shams' name
  To tell you of his gifts and spread his fame
  Hosamoddin has flung me by my skirt
  So I can breathe in scent from Joseph's shirt

https://books.google.com/books?id=icAlT_hrlTUC&pg=PA12&lpg=P...

Not an entirely fair comparison, but it makes the point. Barks' Rumi became such an unlikely best-seller because the poetry is breathtaking.

Ah, this is reminiscent of best-worst translation of the Tao Te Ching from Suzuki & Carus.

    The valley spirit not expires,
    Mysterious woman ’tis called by the sires.
    The mysterious woman's door, to boot,
    Is called of heaven and earth the root.
    Forever and aye it seems to endure
    And its use is without effort sure

Ouch. There's a conflict between the scholarly impulse and the poetic one. T.S. Eliot famously observed that great poets were shameless about stealing. Probably they're equally shameless about omitting things.

I read the OP a year ago, as well as a Twitter thread that was sharply criticizing Barks for what the critic felt was dishonest distortion in the famous "Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, there is a field. / I will meet you there." The next morning, by coincidence, I was listening to an online talk by a Sufi teacher (not a newfangled sort - from one of the ancient orders predating Rumi). To illustrate the theme of his talk, what did he quote? "Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, there is a field. / I will meet you there." I figure if the Sufi masters themselves are quoting Barks, that's got to count for something.

Perhaps, but I would be cautious in saying that even present-day Sufis from traditional orders are especially representative of a normative ideal of 'Sufism', especially those who have exposure by social media and the internet to huge audiences and to the West. This is partially what I think is common sense and partially from some personal experience. My working conjecture is that if such people like Rumi and other ancient Sufis like Hallaj, Junayd, Ibn Arabi, &c. genuinely exist today, they won't be easily found without intense search.

There is probably no doubt that the line from Barks' translation has much to offer readers who ponder it. If it provides benefit, people should keep using it. But they should be more clear in attribution - I would be happy if the quote was always presented alongside Coleman Barks' name, the same way Ezra Pound's translations of Li Bai are attributed more to Ezra Pound than to Li Bai.

I take your point and am interested in your perspective!

I do not see the point of reading translated literature, let alone translated poetry. It's like trying to appreciate an IOCCC submission by looking at a Java port that does the same thing. The beauty of it tied up in the specifics that you can't replicate 100%. Even if the translation is good, it ends up just being a different piece of work altogether.

I disagree. For example, I think the world is much better off with translations of 100 Years of Solitude and The Odyssey than without them.

I know I’m glad to have read these English translations. And of course a good translator puts their own stroke of literary creativity into their translation.

I agree with you that for a full appreciation of the author’s artistry, it’s best to read the original in its native language. But that’s not always accessible.

Eg, I wouldn’t even be able to begin reading the original Beowulf despite being a native English speaker. Even something more recent like Canterbury Tales is slow-going due to the archaic spellings.

Ouch. That's $36 I'll never get back…

Its hard to translate, but Rumis poetry is very profound in the original Persian.

Bark's content is, as the article describes, an unforgivable affront to Rumi, but also sounds quite poor to me (as a native English speaker), kind of like those stereotypical Instagram quotes.

Persian poetry is hard to accurately render in English.

Here's a Twitter account devoted to doing that (as well as exposing fake Rumi quotes in the wild): https://twitter.com/PersianPoetics

How perverse of the New Yorker to omit mention of William C. Chittick in an article regarding Western translation of Mowlana (Rumi) and Shams, and Islam. He is, after all, the definitive and authoritative English translator of Rumi.

I just opened my copy of The Sufi Path of Love by Chittick at random. The chapter is called Attainment to God. Here is (a sample of) Chittick's translation (indentations mine):

   Oh rose, 

      adorn the meadows and laugh
         for all to see!
         for you had to hide
      among the thorns for months.

   Oh garden,

      nurture well these new arrivals
         the tales of whose coming
         you had heard
      from the thunder.

   Oh wind,

      make the branches dance
         in the remembrance
         of the day you wafed
      over union.

        Behold these trees,
        all of them joyful
           like a gathering
           of the felicitous

   Oh violet

      why are you bent over
      in heartache?

        The lily says 
        to the buds:
           though your eyes are closed
           they will soon open,
           for you you have tasted
           of good fortune.

    ...

    I speak of roses, nightingales 
       and the beauties of the garden
    as a pretext.

    Why do I do it?
    For the sake of Love's Jealousy!

    At any rate, I am describing
    God's graces.
         
    The pride of Tabriz and the world,
      Shams al-Din [Sun of Religion]
    has again shown me
    favor.

https://www.williamcchittick.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Chittick

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/157126.Sufi_Path_of_Love

I've read Rumi. Now, if you know the C Jung quote paraphrasing that, in the end all human problems are unsolvable from inside the package in which they came, and that change happens from a new perspective which itself requires a new, higher charging life force you might like Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus.

It's so annoying that when talking about poetry and religion, the author just has to involve current politics.

> Islam is regularly diagnosed as a “cancer,” including by General Michael Flynn, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for national-security adviser, and, even today,

This was in the middle of a paragraph about new-age books. How is this relevant? It's so annoying how everything has to do with modern politics.

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