Customer Reviews

Rending the Veil: Literal and Poetic Translations of Rumi

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This is the best book for understanding the poetry of Rumi. It invites readers to see the exquisite calligraphy of these words, to hear their resonance in Rumi's Persian language, and to see for themselves how these words have been translated into English poems. This is the most complete experience of Rumi found in English translation -- beginners to scholars could benefit from this work. Each page is magical and meticulously well-wrought. I was inspired to examine Rumi's poetry for myself and the experience transformed my own poetic ideas. This is the only Rumi book out there like this. It is a gift -- especially if you buy it for yourself!

This translation gives you a smooth English rendition, a beautiful calligraphic version, a structural, word-by-word English explanation, as well as a romanized version of the original language. If you are interested in trying to see *beyond* the final translation, this book is very interesting! I do not know Farsi at all, much less Farsi of Rumi's era, but I learned *much* from this set of translations. It has also made it much easier for me to refer to and talk about Rumi's poems with Irani friends.

I am a student of Persian with a particular interest in Rumi. I found this volume very helpful in both regards. It consists of 252 quatrains by Rumi in an elegant and legible nastaaliq hand, which I found very useful as a way of familiarizing myself with this script which can be quite challenging to beginners. Each quatrain is followed by a transliteration, a word for word translation, and a clear translation in contemporary English. This is ideal for someone learning to read, write and pronounce Persian. There is a glossary of terms which is good as far as it goes but is quite brief. Something along the lines of the notes to Nicholson's Selected Poems from the Diven-e Shames-e Tabrizi would have made the volume even more useful for the student of Rumi.

Screw that chump selling it new for 400 bucks, but seriously, this is the best, really the only legitimate, translation of Rumi I have ever seen. On each page, you have: 1) the Persian script, 2) the transliteration of the poem into the Roman alphabet, 3) a word-by-word translation in Persian order that allows you to match each parcel of meaning back to each original word (called a "gloss"), and 4) the actual English translation. Most books only have 4), some have 1) and 4), but 2) and 3), which are truly essential to a complete understanding and appreciation of the poems, are to be found in NO OTHER translation. There are some inconsistencies between the written Persian and the transliteration, but I have a feeling they are mostly the result of inconsistencies between writing and pronunciation. By the favor, I found a copy at my local bookstore without the dust jacket for $40. I would get another one, but I don't want to be a hoarder and deprive someone of the opportunity to own this most valuable translation. I URGE any fan of Rumi to snatch up one of these volumes until they are all off the market. Godspeed!