3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
spectacularly beautiful expressions of love, December 17, 2006
in this book of selected poems by rumi, interpreted by raficq abdulla, illustrated with persian and islamic manuscripts and published for the "bargain" aisles of barnes & noble, i found the most extraordinary introduction to islamic poetry.
i am interested in reading more about islam, because i don't understand it at all, and i want to learn more from the poets about the kind of belief system that inspires young men to commit a bloody jihad in the name of allah and the 41 virgins. i will never understand 911, or where that kind of hate comes from, or the perpetuating historical circumstances that continue to fan the flames of hate from arabs toward jews, jews toward arabs, arabs toward america, america toward arabs. i will never understand how the muslims i've met and loved, observed from afar as a friend or neighbor or fellow mom, can be part of the culture of terrorists we take off our shoes at airports because of.... i imagine these terrorists are like the clansmen of my race--ones i would not claim as indicative of my kind of christianity. and since we are at war because of some disagreement among the gods, and the contempt their devotion inspires, i thought i might spend a little holiday time learning what i could from this very beautiful and intriguingly affordable book.
on the whole, this work is eloquent, beautifully illustrated, an extraordinary and in some places highly erotic interpretation of islamic devotion. in abdulla's introduction, he says, "reading rumi's poetry is like making love. we should be ready to lose ourselves in it, as only then will we find the Other, that greater energy which contains us." he is right, of course, the learned man who interprets this extraordinary work, and conveys the author's meaning with a devoted touch.
i could not bring myself to write in this gem of a book due, in part, to the pure beauty of the illustrations, with each page appearing as a piece of art. where usually i regard my scribbling as a way of loving a book better, this edition kept me wanting to preserve the pristine pages. as a consequence, i cannot list for you, as i usually do, all the brilliant lines and passages that affected me so deeply.
another difficulty i face is in telling you about the individual poems--as they are unnamed. there is, however, scripture like notations at the bottom of each passage. one i particularly love, for the universal story of acceptance of all religions, is mathnavi ii, 3668. with deference to the author, rumi, and his interpreter, abdulla, i will retell this one work here:
o friend do you see this sky-planted
tree of knowledge, you who know?
see how high, how generous
the rich tapestry of shade from it flows,
the merciful vein of water as great
as life-giving as pliant as the ocean.
but in your ignorance you see only
the opaque husks, the futile motions
of forms, for you fail to drink from
the fountain-head of the one: you only see
the names which crush and crowd
the traffic of your senses--sun and tree
capricious lake dressed in silver, growling clouds
heavy with thunder -- make their entry
as auspicious names, glinting facets
of the diamond of the one again and again
countless words and notions kissing
the fine compliant air like a curtain of rain.
the One may be father to you, to me another,
to yet another a new-born son,
he is justice and wrath, mercy and vengeance,
revelation of faith, cherished. he runs
like a river through the fertile eden
of particular forms disposing of dancing names,
all this show seems sundry different, contradictory,
paradoxically it's all the same;
made up of a million prancing disruptions
which our credulous minds deceive
as we chase the froth of names as truth and destination
to the end of life and only believe
in what we see and say, we miss the mark,
the salt which makes us thirst we cannot conceive
of in what is inconceivable - so why tie yourself
so closely as your blood with seductive labels
only to be sullied, taken apart, besmirched,
gulled and clogged like dung-filled stables?
travel lightly o friend with your enchanted senses,
take careful stock leaving names behind
so you may be guided to the pity and pith of things
where resides the One; there your heart you'll find.
we quarrel and coral our faiths in walled enclosures
of demeaning words, those preposterous names.
but only pierce the surface of your eyes, see
beyond your blinding sight, bathe in his eternal flame.
this, beyond the love-making poems of devotion that remind me of the bible's song of solomon, beyond the whirling dervish poems and the access they open up for me to the ecstatic experience of the devoted, beyond the loss and loneliness poems of being human, here, without the beloved god...this poem gives me access to the thing i, too, believe. all the gods are the one big creative force that gives us all life. if we could just quit trying to label that one god, and quit fighting about who's brand and version of the one god is better than another, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, we could take a closer look at our humanity and find it is the same, too.
i know this is simplistic. i know this is too easy. i know what i'm saying is naive and just like a girl...and it is. just like a girl who grows up to be a woman who grows up to have children she loves, to want as i want my children to be able to live in a world with muslim mothers who love their children, and jewish mothers who love their children, and hindu mothers who love their children, and buddhist mothers who love their children and to entrust, to all our children, the love of our particular devotions, too. and for those devotions to be seen as a spectacularly beautiful expression of love--and never to be used to start wars our children will have to fight by spilling each other's blood.
anyway, this beautiful book gave me a better glimpse at something--and in it, i found a place to begin to try to reach toward understanding. of course politics is not poetry...and this whole war torn world is again at the mercy of the righteous and devoted. devotion, in any religion, is always beautiful in words...just not always in the world. in this book, islam is conveyed through rumi, as something beautiful.
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