Spiritual Verses - the Masnavi
Jalaluddin Rumi, a new translation by Alan Williams; Penguin Books 2006; ISBN-13:9780140447910
Mevlana Jalaluddin was born in 1207 in what is now North-East Iran, but his family fled the advancing Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan, who by 1220 had devasted Balkh and Samarqand, the cities of Rumi’s childhood. His family settled in Konya, in Anatolia, where Rumi remained for most of his life.
In his late thirties he began a profound transformation as a result of meeting a spiritual master called Shamsuddin of Tabriz. He abandoned his life as a scholar and began the composition of a body of sublime lyric poems, totalling 35,000 lines, and later his mystical masterpiece, the Masnavi.
His unique insight into the human condition makes him one of the greatest spiritual masters of all time. Much of his work has been translated into modern languages and his influence today on modern thought and culture is profound. In the context of the significance of Rumi today see also a short paper: ‘…at the still point’.
From the introduction by Alan Williams: ‘To whom is the poetry of the Masnavi addressed? One of its most striking features is its psychological immediacy: the whole poem is addressed to the second-person ‘you’ of the human reader, and to the ‘You’ of the divine presence – though often the two are implicitly linked. Rumi addresses ‘you’ from the first line, when he commands ‘Listen’. The stories that run through the work are told in the third person (i.e. never in the first person) about characters from folklore, scripture and myth, but then Rumi’s gaze returns to ‘you’, addressed affectionately as ‘my son’, ‘father’, ‘dear reader’, ‘lad’ .’
‘Rumi is both a poet and a mystic, but he is a teacher first, trying to communicate what he knows to his audience. Like all good teachers, he trusts that ultimately, when the means to go any further fail him and his voice falls silent, his students will have learnt to understand on their own.’
Listen to a talk by Alan Williams, on the Masnavi and Rumi
(Beshara School, Chisholme House, 2007)
From ‘The King and the Slave Girl’ 110-120
The sign of being in love’s an aching heart;
there is no suffering like the suffering heart.
The lover’s suffering’s like no other suffering:
love is the astrolabe of God’s won mysteries.
No matter whether love is of this world
or of the next, it seals us to that world.
Whatever words I say to explain this love,
when I arrive at love, I am ashamed.
Though language gives a clear account of love,
yet love beyond all language is the clearer.
The pen had gone at breakneck speed in writing,
but when it came to love it split in two.
The explaining mind sleeps like an ass in mud,
for love alone explains love and the lover.
The sun alone is proof of all things solar:
if you need proof, do not avert your face.
Although the shadow gives a hint of it,
the sun bestows the light of life at all times.
The shadow brings you sleep like bedtime stories,
and when the sun comes up, ‘the moon is cloven.’
There’s nothing like this sun in all the world,
the spiritual Sun’s eternal – never setting.
Although the outward sun may be unique,
still you can contemplate another like it.
And yet the sun from which the aether comes
has no external or internal likeness.
How can imagining contain His essence,
and likeness of Him come into conception?
See also the paper: At the still point...
