From the issue dated January 19, 2001
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Rumi at the TopAmerica's best-selling poet is a 13th-century Persian mystic, who often danced while reciting to his disciples. Now he is whirling circles around Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Walt Whitman. Jalal al-Din Rumi composed more than 70,000 lines of verse about love and desire and the human condition before his death in 1273. More than 700 years later, readers can experience Rumi's unique blend of spirituality and humor in numerous translations, in concert, and on CD's. We asked a panel of experts to explain the Rumi phenomenon.Franklin Lewis, assistant professor of Persian language, literature, and culture at Emory University, and author of Rumi: Past & Present, East & West (Oneworld Publications, 2000): The reason that he's popular now has something to do both with New Age alternative religions in the United States and the reemergence of performance poetry. The foundations for the boom in Rumi's popularity began in the 1970s, when UNESCO hosted a cultural commemoration for the 700th anniversary of his death. At that time, the whirling dervishes, who are the descendants of the spiritual order that was founded in Rumi's name, started to come to the United States to perform. He also started to attract attention among American poets. There's a much more popular manifestation of Rumi, which involves Deepak Chopra, who has done an edited version of some so-called translations of Rumi's poetry. Now there are at least half a dozen other translators -- most of whom don't work from the Persian. There are practicing representatives of his spiritual order, so there are a number of people who actually look to him for spiritual inspiration. But I think people are responding in large measure to an ecumenical spirit that's reflected in his writings, which are interpreted in the West as not being grounded in an organized religion -- although if you look at his original ideas, they're very soundly grounded in the theological tradition of Islam. In the West, he simply represents a noninstitutionalized form of ecumenical spirituality. *** Fatemeh Keshavarz, associate professor of Persian languages and literatures and director of the Center for the Study of Islamic Societies and Civilizations at Washington University (Mo.), and author of Reading Mystical Lyric: The Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi (University of South Carolina Press, 1998): Rumi's mystical vision includes the side of humanity that's mundane and earthy. He doesn't have us in two separate compartments, spiritual and mundane. The point he is making is that they are both part of the same human experience. This combination makes him extremely attractive to a contemporary reader who wants to be spiritual. He's a committed Muslim who is firmly rooted in the Islamic tradition. So he brings all that richness -- quotations of Muhammad's sayings, Koranic anecdotes -- but he is able to transcend the tradition. Critics until very recently used to say, he's not a poet, he doesn't care about poetry. They thought a mystic should be concerned with inner feelings, and poetry is about playing with words. They thought he was not a good poet, because he broke so many traditions. You cannot renew any tradition, and break it, unless you love it and know it well. He's extremely well read, and he's trilingual: Persian, Arabic, and Turkish. He borrows from the traditions and puts things together in his own way. Instead of telling us what mystical love is about, he makes his poetry an embodiment of it. That vision is so holistic that I'm not surprised at all that American readers have responded to it. *** Edward Brunner, professor of English at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and author of Cold War Poetry: The Social Text in the Fifties Poem (University of Illinois Press, 2000): It's true there are numerous editions of writings by "Rumi," by various translators, but these versions are about as different from each other as night from day. They range from a plain-speaking Rumi who writes in a down-home American free verse (Barks) to a prim and slightly fussy Rumi who chooses words with the fastidiousness of a Cambridge don (Arberry) to the jovial Rumi who could match wits with the sloganeers on a Hallmark card (Chopra) to the Rumi who aspires to write good old-fashioned metered verse in rhymed couplets (Abdulla). As to which of these is the real Rumi -- or are any? -- I couldn't say. Rumi is really closer to a concept than to a poet. "Rumi" reflects an idea about what publishers believe they have discovered about what Americans might want poetry to be. From that (albeit highly skeptical) perspective, what Americans seem to want is a writer who is insistently upbeat, who is sophisticated about the sexual, and who can speak boldly about passion. What is perhaps a bit more surprising is what "Rumi" is not: There is little nature writing in Rumi, little that centers on concrete and specific description, and very few moments in which there are long and thoughtful and intricate pauses. What there is instead is much generalization, much speedy summarization, much quick encapsulation and rapid conceptualizing -- the form of the parable is never very far away. Meanings get extracted from events. These meanings are not always little capsules of knowledge. Sometimes they have to do with bolstering one's sense of confidence. It is impossible to imagine Rumi moping. It's not his style, and he does not want it to be ours. Up and at 'em, whether in pursuit of love or in the ups and downs of friendship. http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Page: B4
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Copyright © 2001 by The Chronicle of Higher Education