A Lover of Life
Jan. 28th, 2006 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvessel14 Dec 2004
Like This - Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks - Maypop 1990
* * * *
(This was written over a year ago, but I have delayed its publication because it includes a poem about death. I think that enough time has passed now, but if anyone is upset by it, then I apologise.)
Those who know me will be rather surprised to see a book of poetry on my reading list, just as they would by the rather twee picture of three whirling dervishes that I have facing me as I type this. They are a result of a holiday in Turkey where I visited Rumi's tomb in the Mevlana Tikkesi in Konya. Rumi was the founder of the Mevlevi order of Sufism, a mystical version of Islam notable for its openness and tolerance and which uniquely features song and dance in its rituals. I was interested to find out more about it and its founder.
Rumi was a prolific versifier - even his book of Sufic instruction, the Masnavi, is written in rhyming couplets. Most of his poems were composed following the death (or, if you believe the legend, the disappearance) of his friend, the mystic Shams of Tabriz. Actually, "friend" is a misnomer - it's clear that their relationship went far beyond that, into a realm where, to quote Coleman Barks' introduction, "the categories of teacher and student, lover and Beloved, Master and disciple, dissolved." No, I don't know what that means either, and nor did some members of Rumi's community, who evidently feared that a more earthly love was corrupting their leader and appear to have arranged for Shams to be killed. Whatever - Shams was the inspiration for much of Rumi's poetry and his name appears at the end of many of his odes. Shams also means "sun" in Persian, conveniently allowing Rumi's feelings for his friend to become a metaphor for the love of all creation. The conflation of the personal and the mystical is at the heart of Rumi's philosophy - the personal longing for God, he implies, leads eventually to a mystical ecstatic union with the whole of creation, a state which no words can express and which therefore can only be contemplated in silence (another word which appears frequently in the poems).
This philosophy leads to some delightful odes which manage to combine highly abstract spritual meditation with an earthily sensual appreciation of temporal things. He makes much use of (occasionally bizarre) domestic imagery and there is even the odd joke. My favourite poem was allegedly Rumi's last, spoken as he lay on his deathbed to his son Bahauddin (ode 2039).
Go to your pillow and sleep, my son.
Leave me alone in the passion
of this death-night.
Let the mill turn with your grieving.
But stay clear. Don't fall
into the river with me.
There's no way out,
no cure but death.
Last night in a dream I saw an old man
standing in a garden.
It was all Love.
He held out his hand and said,
Come toward me.
If there is a dragon on this path,
that old man has the emerald face
that can deflect it.
This is enough.
I am leaving my self.
Bahauddin, my son,
if you want to be impressively learned,
memorise a famous historian,
and quote him as someone else!
One has to admire a man whose last words to posterity consist of a joke at his son's expense. Though this does illustrate one area where I disagree profoundly with Rumi's philosophy. In a number of his poems, he contrasts lovers and intellectuals - an intellectual, he says, tries not to drown, while "the whole purpose of love is drowning". Actually, the intellectual way of looking at the world is simply another way of loving it. Rumi advocates an ecstatic union with the whole of the universe by meditation and dance (the dervishes enter a trance-like state when they spin and angle their hands, one up, one down, to channel the power or love of God from heaven to earth). But our awe of and fascination with creation can be just as readily expressed through the study of a tiny part of it. A pebble or a leaf holds the mystery of creation, and to understand precisely the chemical reactions by which a leaf turns sunlight into energy, or the mighty geological processes that made the pebble what it is, is to experience a revelation every bit as marvellous and mystical as that achieved through meditation. It's horses for courses - some most readily achieve enlightenment through meditation, others through thought. Let's not decry either.
Like This - Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks - Maypop 1990
* * * *
(This was written over a year ago, but I have delayed its publication because it includes a poem about death. I think that enough time has passed now, but if anyone is upset by it, then I apologise.)
Those who know me will be rather surprised to see a book of poetry on my reading list, just as they would by the rather twee picture of three whirling dervishes that I have facing me as I type this. They are a result of a holiday in Turkey where I visited Rumi's tomb in the Mevlana Tikkesi in Konya. Rumi was the founder of the Mevlevi order of Sufism, a mystical version of Islam notable for its openness and tolerance and which uniquely features song and dance in its rituals. I was interested to find out more about it and its founder.
Rumi was a prolific versifier - even his book of Sufic instruction, the Masnavi, is written in rhyming couplets. Most of his poems were composed following the death (or, if you believe the legend, the disappearance) of his friend, the mystic Shams of Tabriz. Actually, "friend" is a misnomer - it's clear that their relationship went far beyond that, into a realm where, to quote Coleman Barks' introduction, "the categories of teacher and student, lover and Beloved, Master and disciple, dissolved." No, I don't know what that means either, and nor did some members of Rumi's community, who evidently feared that a more earthly love was corrupting their leader and appear to have arranged for Shams to be killed. Whatever - Shams was the inspiration for much of Rumi's poetry and his name appears at the end of many of his odes. Shams also means "sun" in Persian, conveniently allowing Rumi's feelings for his friend to become a metaphor for the love of all creation. The conflation of the personal and the mystical is at the heart of Rumi's philosophy - the personal longing for God, he implies, leads eventually to a mystical ecstatic union with the whole of creation, a state which no words can express and which therefore can only be contemplated in silence (another word which appears frequently in the poems).
This philosophy leads to some delightful odes which manage to combine highly abstract spritual meditation with an earthily sensual appreciation of temporal things. He makes much use of (occasionally bizarre) domestic imagery and there is even the odd joke. My favourite poem was allegedly Rumi's last, spoken as he lay on his deathbed to his son Bahauddin (ode 2039).
Go to your pillow and sleep, my son.
Leave me alone in the passion
of this death-night.
Let the mill turn with your grieving.
But stay clear. Don't fall
into the river with me.
There's no way out,
no cure but death.
Last night in a dream I saw an old man
standing in a garden.
It was all Love.
He held out his hand and said,
Come toward me.
If there is a dragon on this path,
that old man has the emerald face
that can deflect it.
This is enough.
I am leaving my self.
Bahauddin, my son,
if you want to be impressively learned,
memorise a famous historian,
and quote him as someone else!
One has to admire a man whose last words to posterity consist of a joke at his son's expense. Though this does illustrate one area where I disagree profoundly with Rumi's philosophy. In a number of his poems, he contrasts lovers and intellectuals - an intellectual, he says, tries not to drown, while "the whole purpose of love is drowning". Actually, the intellectual way of looking at the world is simply another way of loving it. Rumi advocates an ecstatic union with the whole of the universe by meditation and dance (the dervishes enter a trance-like state when they spin and angle their hands, one up, one down, to channel the power or love of God from heaven to earth). But our awe of and fascination with creation can be just as readily expressed through the study of a tiny part of it. A pebble or a leaf holds the mystery of creation, and to understand precisely the chemical reactions by which a leaf turns sunlight into energy, or the mighty geological processes that made the pebble what it is, is to experience a revelation every bit as marvellous and mystical as that achieved through meditation. It's horses for courses - some most readily achieve enlightenment through meditation, others through thought. Let's not decry either.