Rumi: Poet of the Heart Page #2

Write that down. No he said, let's

keep dancing. Let's don't.

That's only words.

Rumi says everything is for the beloved.

Everything is for the friend.

And my understanding of that...

is that there is... a presence...

that we feel in the beauty that we

see outside of us.

We feel it in a November sunset.

We feel it in a child sleeping, in a

child dancing, playing soccer...

We feel it in a group of friends making

supper on Sunday night.

He would say that feeling, is a presence.

That it's both outside of us, intending us,

and inside us.

When we feel the jewel like quality

of our own inner awareness.

That also is the friend. And this

inner/outer presence...

is addressed directly in many of

Rumi's poems.

When one says that wonderful pronoun

"you" and you don't quite know who it is...

it's that presence.

"When it's cold and raining, he says,

you are more beautiful."

"And the snow, brings me even closer

to your lips."

"The inner secret, that which was

never born..."

"you are that freshness, and I am

with you now."

"I can't explain the goings or

the comings..."

"you enter suddenly and I am

nowhere again..."

"inside the majesty."

"I... you..."

"he... she..."

"we..."

"In the garden of mystical lovers..."

"these...

"are not true... distinctions."

"I... you..."

"he... she..."

"we"

I feel very grateful to Coleman Barks

for having introduced me to a world...

that I knew existed, that I yearned for.

There was an agony of wishing in

my heart.

but I didn't know how to find it.

I'd found it through other means,

through other poets...

but never with the intensity and passion

of Rumi. So...

I owe a great debt of gratitude

to Coleman Barks.

for bringing me to that world.

We know Rumi through his poetry.

But in a sense that isn't his poetry...

because his poetry was in Persian, Farsi.

And we read him in English.

And the difficulties, the problems...

are also the mysterious connection

that occurs...

but also a difference in translation

is an abiding fester...

for all translators, but especially

for poets.

First time I ever heard of Rumi was at one

of Robert Bly's conferences in 1976.

When he handed me a book of

scholarly translations...

by A.J Arberry and said these poems need

to be released from their cages, you know.

And so I began rephrasing Arberry's English...

and in the course of that a sequence of

coincidences happened...

and I met a Sufi teacher...

Abdullah Nujaladeen.

And he told me to do this work.

And if I had not sat in his presence

for about 9 years on and off...

I would have no idea what Rumi was

about or what he did.

I believe in both translations and versions.

In the translation...

one has to know the language, for

example Spanish.

when you translate Neruda. And then

Neruda's a contemporary and so...

you can feel the turns and you can feel...

the sorrow, where it is in the sentence

and which words have tremendous sorrow...

even in Spanish and continue them.

And then you follow the emotional mood

of that line... and um...

Then there's a translator. I'm responsible

for the accuracy.

I still may make many mistakes I'll

always find a speaker who...

knew Spanish and English in the cradle.

Because that's where the sounds are

first heard.

Version is a different thing for me.

I found Kabir and I thought that

was so fantastic.

I thought what it would it sound like

if it were written today.

So I made a guess at the lines, and they

are not accurate.

You're making a guess. You're bringing

it up to modern times, you're putting in...

But the aim of those translations, the

aim of versions...

is to bring in poets so unusual,

so amazing...

that you'd rather have an inaccurate

translation then none at all.

I work with scholars who give me

literal versions...

of poems from the Persian. The more

literal the better for me.

So John Moyne's and evidently

Reynold Nicholson's...

version of the... I mean translation

of the "Mathnawi" is very literal.

I take what they give me, which is ...

literal English, and then try to make a poem

that's valid in American, right now.

LISTEN TO THE REED HOW IT TELLS A TALE,

COMPLAINING OF SEPARATIONS -

SAYING "EVER SINCE I WAS PARTED

FROM THE REED-BED...

MY LAMENT HATH CAUSED MAN

AND WOMAN TO MOAN."

- R.A. NICHOLSON'S TRANSLATION, 1926

LISTEN TO THE STORY TOLD BY THE REED,

OF BEING SEPARATED.

"SINCE I WAS CUT FROM THE REEDBED,

I HAVE MADE THIS CRYING SOUND.

ANYONE APART FROM SOMEONE HE LOVES

UNDERSTANDS WHAT I SAY."

- VERSION BY COLEMAN BARKS

So I put it into our tradition, which is...

most attuned to spiritual

questions...

and that is the free verse, of Whitman

and Emily Dickinson...

and Gary Snyder.

In terms of the musicality of the

Persian...

we don't try to reproduce that at all.

It's densely rhymed within words and

within the middle words...

and uh...

that's almost unreproducible in English.

Speaking in Persian.

Continues in Persian.

Continues in Persian.

I don't know. It's quite difficult to

understand and easy as well.

The more translators who work on

the text, the better...

because every version gives you

something else.

Because it's through the eyes of that

particular poet or translator.

He sees more this word or that version.

But somehow the cork comes out of

the bottle again.

And the Genie is out so to speak.

A reference to an old story where it

gets uncorked...

and the spirit of the thing comes

to life again...

which certainly happened to Coleman

Barks, Robert Bly and the other translators.

Rumi can keep a lot of trans... should

keep a lot of translators busy.

Because he is a kind of universe, and with

a lot of different moods and modes...

and I may be missing a lot of them.

"This is the story told by the reeds."

Speaking in Persian.

There's no "at".

Both speaking Persian.

I was born in Afghanistan, the land

where Rumi came from.

When I was a little girl, my father, I

remember him reading Rumi or...

or conversing through Rumi

with his friends in the moonlight until

2 or 3 o'clock in the morning.

I connected back to Rumi after my

father passed away, actually.

Speaking in Persian.

I went and found... bought a nice book

of Rumi's Mathnawi...

I came home and started reading it. I

realized that...

this is not something that I can do

by myself.

Who has not this love, it's nothing.

- It's nothing.

- Yeah.

- Like a wind.

- Yeah.

- Might as well die.

- Exactly.

Speaking in Persian.

I knew I needed a teacher, so I found

Zeri, through a friend.

And it's been really wonderful working

with her.

Somebody who has knowledge of the

poetry...

and Rumi and the culture...

- It's a metaphor for...

- It's wine...

but it's just all about love.

She's a very tough teacher, yes.

Have to do it right.

You know you can't deviate.

Maybe I should say it's the Afghan way. It

was the same way back home too.

"Listen to the story, told by the reed,

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