Selected Poems from the Divan-E Shams-E Tabrizi: Along With the Original Persian

Wow !

Please remove this book for the time being of the war between Israel and Hamas. It’s inciting hate.

This book is a re-edition of the first English translation of The Divan of Shams Tabriz. The Divan of Shams Tabriz contains a collection of poems by Rumi. It was translated by Reynold A. Nicholson and published by Cambridge University Press in 1898. The current edition was published by Ibex Publishers in 2016. This version also includes the Original Persian text and copious explanatory notes.The first manuscript of the Divan was probably completed within 25 years after the death of Rumi (Rumi died in 1273). A copy of the oldest manuscript is kept in the Mevlana Museum in Konya. The complete Divan contains three different types of poems, i.e., 3,229 sonnets (ghazals), 1,983 quatrains (rubaiyat) and 44 Persian ballads (tarjibands).Nicholson worked with several copies of the Divan that were published in the 15th century. In the Preface, Nicholson writes that he selected “the poems that pleased me best.” His translation contains 48 sonnets and quatrains, i.e., a tiny fraction of the Divan. When selecting the poems, Nicholson did not follow their original arrangement; he arranged them at random.Nicholson’s translation is an example of an extraordinary scholarship that is combined with a unique intuition. While working on Rumi’s poems, he felt inspired “with the strange and irresistible fascination which a religion of love and beauty exercises over certain minds.” Let’s note that Nicholson’s translation was published a hundred years before Rumi became the best-selling poet in the United States.It should be emphasized that Nicholson was the first among the scholars to recognize echos of Rumi’s poems in Shakespeare’s writings. In his explanatory notes to The Divan, he observed that Rumi’s thoughts, terms and concepts may be found in Shakespeare’s works. For example, he noticed that Rumi’s lines: “The pure elixir mingled with the wine-dregs/Came to the jar’s surface, and the lees settled apart” (XXII.6) corresponded to the divine principle pervading “this muddy vesture of decay”, i.e., Lorenzo’s line from The Merchant of Venice (V.1).When explaining the lines: “Silence, O brother! put learning and culture away/Till Thou namedst culture, I knew no culture but Thee” (XXXII.10), Nicholson made a comparison to Shakespeare’s words “But thou art all my art, and dost advance” from Sonnet 78.According to Nicholson, Shakespeare’s comparison of the stars to candles “those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air” (Sonnet 21) was identical to Rumi’s line “From these (stars like) inverted candles, from these blue awnings of the sky” (XXXVI.4).He noticed that Rumi’s “O soul, seek the Beloved, O friend, seek the Friend,/O watchman, be wakeful: it behaves not a watchman to sleep” (XXXVI.7) was equivalent to Shakespeare’s thoughts from Sonnet 61: “It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,/Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,/To play the watchman ever for thy sake.”In Rumi’s line “Since in the rose there is no constancy, why do you approach every rose?” (XLVII.7) Nicholson recognized Shakespeare’s theme from Sonnet 67: “Why should poor beauty indirectly seek/Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?”These were quite remarkable observations!However, Nicholson did not venture to explore further the relationship between Rumi’s poetry and Shakespeare’s writings. It looks that the exploration of the link between these two literary giants was left up to future writers. Only recently was it demonstrated that both poets belonged to the same school of thoughts. And it was shown that the enigmatic “rival poet” of Shakespeare’s Sonnets turned out to be Rumi.The Divan is a conversation between a Teacher and his pupil. Some of the poems are delivered by a Teacher; the others are the Poet’s reactions to his Teacher’s counsels. This is why Shams’ name appears in the title. Nicholson was wondering “Why then does his (Shams Tabriz’s) name appear on the title-page and at the end of most of the odes?” He was unable to resolve this seeming enigma. By arranging the poems at random, he could not see the teaching methodology that is encoded in The Divan. He sincerely admitted that “I do not, of course, pretend to have understood everything.”Yet, Nicholson’s translation is of great importance to all those interested in the diffusion of evolutionary concepts and ideas across Eastern and Western cultures. It would be difficult to overestimate the value of Nicholson’s translation. Ibex Publishers deserves full marks for preserving Nicholson’s work.

Rumi has been translated many times and in some cases in such a free manner that one doesn't know if it is Rumi or the translator that we are reading. This translation reads well and feels true all the way, so it is a joy to read the depth of Rumi's inexhaustible poetry.

je vais pouvoir chosir un poeme en farsi pour mon mariage en comprenant ce que cela veut dire en anglais ...

Der Diwan-e Shams-e Tabrizi umfasst im persischen Original zwei Bände. Hier findet sich vielleicht ein Zehntel des Originalinhalts, dafür aber mit von den schönsten Eingebungen Rumis. Das Besondere am Werk liegt jedoch in der editorischen Betreuung durch den Rumi-Experten Reynold Nicholson. Dessen Dissertation ging über den Divan und war wohl der Anlass für seine spätere Gesamtübersetzung des Mathnavi, die ich an dieser Stelle ebenfalls unbedingt empfehle. Über Amazon-Marketplace gelangt man günstig an indische Nachdrucke dieses Werks.Vorliegend führt er den Leser gekonnt in verdichteter Weise in das Werk ein. Dem persischen Text ist jeweils die englische Übersetzung gegenüber gestellt. Diese ist in einem kritischen Anhang kommentiert. Der persische Text selbst ist durch vorsichtige diakritische Zeichen für den Nicht-Muttersprachler besonders gut lesbar. Das Werk ist schließlich handlich klein (Quarto-Format) und ein idealer Wegbegleiter für den Freund persischer Dichtung. Besser geht es nicht!