Barking at Rumi

In our paltry, insufficient, one-day class discussion on Rumi, the question of the authenticity of the translations came up (for starters, because Coleman Barks does not read or speak either Classical Persian or Modern Farsi). I had done a little digging into this question, but we didn’t really have enough time to explore the issue as fully as it needed to be. To make up for that, here’s what I can tell you about the challenges of “Translating Rumi”: 

(1) Barks holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Tehran (presumably for his work awakening the Western world to Rumi’s teachings) and is himself a disciple of Sufism, having studied under Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, a well-known Sri Lankan Sufi mystic he met in Philadelphia. Barks is in fact very knowledgeable, at least about the mystical side of the religion.

(2) His translations are, without doubt, extremely free and for that reason have come in for considerable (and mostly valid) criticism. However, simply being free doesn’t necessarily mean false. You can find magnificent translations at points all along the free⟷literal continuum. For instance, the English versions Barks works from are hyper-literal—good for seeing exactly what Rumi said, but not very good as poems. Barks’ translations (interpretations?) are nearer the opposite end of that spectrum: great poems in a modern idiom, but emphasizing certain aspects of Rumi’s thought at the expense of others. As an example, check out the following side-by-side comparison:

NICHOLS On the Day of Resurrection every hidden     thing will be made manifest: every     sinner will be ignominiously exposed     by himself. His hands and feet will give evidence and     declare his iniquity in the presence of     Him whose help is sought. His hand will say, ‘I have stolen such and     such’; his lip will say, ‘I have asked     such and such questions’; His foot will say. 'I have gone to [enjoy]     things desired’; his pudendum will say,     ‘I have committed fornication.’ His eye will say, ‘I have cast amorous     glances at things forbidden’; his ear     will say, ‘I have gathered evil words.’ Therefore he is a lie from head to foot,     for even his own members give him     the lie, Just as, in [the case of] the specious     prayers [performed by the ascetic],     their fine appearance was proved to be     false testimonio testiculi. Act, then, in such wise that the action     itself, without [your] tongue [uttering     a word], will be [equivalent to]     saying ‘I testify’ and [to making] the     most explicit declaration, So that your whole body, limb by limb,     O son, will have said ‘I testify’ as     regards both good and ill. The slave’s walking behind his master is     a testimony [equivalent to saying],     ‘I am subject to authority and this man     is my lord.’   Reynold A. Nicholson (translator), The Mathnawi of Jalalu'din Rumi, Book V, vs. 2211-2220 (E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust 1926, reprinted 2001), p.133.

BARKS On Resurrection Day your body testifies      against you. Your hand says, ‘I stole money.’ Your lips, ‘I said meanness.’ Your feet, ‘I went where I shouldn’t.’ Your genitals, ‘Me too.’  They will make your praying sound     hypocritical. Let the body’s doings speak openly now, without your saying a word, as a student’s walking behind a teacher says, “This one knows more clearly than I the way.” Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi: New Expanded Edition (Harper Collins Publishers, 2004), p.111.

source: Wikipedia, “Coleman Barks”

Could there be a translation that followed the substance of Rumi’s lines more faithfully, yet rang more like a poem than Nichols’? I should hope so! On the other hand, I don’t know how you could cut to the essence of the poem as cleanly as Barks does—though my use of the word “cut” here points to one of the key issues that people have with Barks’ versions.

(3) The more serious issue to my mind has to do with the points made in Rozina Ali’s nicely argued piece in The New Yorker, “The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi,” which appeared in the January 2017 issue. To the extent this accusation of “spiritual colonialism” is true, this problem long predates Barks—but because these are some of the very translations that Barks works from to create his versions, they affect (infect?) his work as well.

Sufis dancing in front of Rumi's tomb

(4) There is another aspect of the controversy to consider. Sufism is an ancient Islamic sect, but it is not a mainstream one. Sufism represents the transcendental, mystical wing of Islamic faith, more concerned with spiritual ecstasy than religious orthodoxy. Practitioners dedicate themselves to seeking Allah through prayer, ascetic living, and, for dervishes, their famous twirling dance. It is this ecstatic, mystical aspect of Rumi’s teaching and poetry that speaks to Barks and which he highlights in his versions of the poems. This is also where Barks’ Rumi runs into New Age Mysticism—another item of contention with some of his critics.

(5) In light of all this, you might well be asking yourself, Should I read Barks? But I don’t think that’s quite the right question. A better one might be, Should you only read Barks? And I think the answer to that is clearly, No (depending, of course, on what you want to learn, and why). I rather think that this is the answer for anyone falling in love with writers and poets in translation. My library for this course contains multiple translations of many of the works we have read. Sometimes I have a clear preference for one above all others; in other cases, I love two or even three (the case with Homer). For Rumi, though, it so far contains only two volumes: the one translated by Barks that we have been reading from; the other, a collection of translations by a dozen different translators: The Rumi Collection, edited by Kabir Helminski, featuring many excellent, stylistically various translations of these amazing poems.

I found the webpage below to be a helpful overview of Rumi’s many translators. Maybe it can help you explore his poetry in more depth, too:

https://rumiscircle.com/translating-rumi/

Poor Margery

It is tempting to put Margery Kempe down as a simple nutcase, but there’s a danger in that assessment—because it unintentionally leads to dismissing and trivializing her life story as one of outrageous delusion, and therefore false. Regardless of the source of Kempe’s behavior—madness, psychosis, depression, divine torment—be it psychiatric or spiritual, she lived it real and she lived it hard.

Sparing neither herself nor the people around her, she drove herself to the utmost extremes of human tolerance. Just consider how far that drive took her: personally, in building (and sometimes losing) her businesses and successfully (if painfully) deconstructing her marriage; religiously, in her unsparing drive to win her place as a Christian holy woman; physically, for she was truly pitiless toward her own comforts (and when the weeping came upon her, that was literally draining as well!); even geographically, given how difficult travel just to France could be in that time—much less a journey to Jerusalem—and the fact that she undertook that journey essentially alone, as an unpleasant, unaccommodating, often embarrassing companion shunned by her fellow travelers. The diagnosis of madness, even if true, doesn't leave much room to acknowledge the gritty, desperate richness and sacrifice of her hard-fought life. 

As for the fascinating discussion on witchcraft (11/5) on the blog: If Margery had been born a century later, she might have been lucky that her madness (if indeed that's what religious intoxication is, as many would assuredly disagree) took the form it did, because her fixation on Christ instead of some other focus might have made it riskier for people to challenge her, having no way to know whether she was genuine or not. (Margery herself seems to worry about her legitimacy at one point, which takes her to visit Julian of Norwich, another and far more respected and accepted Christian mystic.)

But in the 14th century, my understanding is that most of the witch paranoia was focused on men, not women—warlocks, not witches. Women don't come under dark suspicion until the late 15th century, when things start to get really ugly for them; by the 16th century (17th in America), the “pogrom” is in full swing. (I await correction on my witch chronology, if someone knows it in better detail…)

Now, what post is complete without a soundtrack? Back in the day, I used to perform with some friends, and one of the tunes we played was about a witch, Susannah Martin. The words are taken from a newspaper account of her trial...

Ruminations on This Week's Conversation

On the gods…

There were some interesting posts and comments about the role of the gods on the blog this week. One of the more interesting threads questioned how much credit for heroism was actually due to Odysseus and Achilles, given how much help they receive from their godly champions. (When you think of it, shouldn’t we rank Hector’s fame actually higher, given that he achieved his feats largely despite the ill-favor of key gods and goddesses?)

Maybe the way to look at it is through our own experience of bravery, luck, and heroism. When something profound or amazing happens, what do we say? You win the lottery: God was smiling on me today. A child survives a deadly illness: Her guardian angel never left her side. Someone survives a should-have-been fatal crash: Jesus took the wheel. Did they? Well, maybe. But did anyone actually see that? Or was it luck, resilience, quick reflexes? Maybe yes, maybe no. It is an ancient human response to extraordinary fortune or acts of prowess in defeat or victory to see an unseen hand in those events.

But here's the key point: Do we think any less of the bravery or strength or persistence of these hometown heroes and survivors because we suspect they had an angel on their team? I think it was no more different for the Greeks of Homer's time than it is for us in our modern time.


The question of Odysseus’ culpability in the loss of his men…

So many of you have voiced exasperation at Odysseus as a leader—maybe especially for his seeming utter inability to bypass any island or country his ships come across in their voyage home to Ithaca—that I thought it made sense to address this issue here. And you are not wrong about it! Odysseus’ behavior certainly comports with the personality traits for which he is famous: an abiding curiosity about the world, coupled with a deep-seated drive to know all that can be known and experience all that can be experienced. But: that’s not all there is to it.

Knowledge of the shores and islands and waters of the Mediterranean is  indispensable for the sailor. And the most reliable knowledge is that gained from personal observation and exploration. Let’s remember, too, that ships had to stop frequently on long journeys to take on fresh water and replenish food supplies. Most of the times when Odysseus and his men make landfall, it is because they are damaged, having been battered by some storm and in need maintenance, or hungry and in dire need of replenishing their stores. So it’s not all for the adventure of new lands and peoples, though it's that, too...



Cheating on Penelope?

Well yeah, but. Do not underestimate just how formidable a demigoddess can be, either in her powers of seduction or in her powers to completely mess you up long-term if you cross her. No less than male gods, they are dangerous, unpredictable beings, however beautiful. Odysseus’ bondage to Círcë and later Calýpso is not just sexual: his crew are essentially hostages, whose lives depend on how happy he makes his beguiling captors. Only more important and powerful gods, intervening at Athena's request, can finally break their spell and set him free.

I'm not saying it was exactly torture for poor Odysseus, but, in the end, as we see him weeping beside the seashore on Calýpso's fragrant, wafty isle, we realize the end he has reached: these goddesses are not his wife, and their islands are not his home...

Seedpost Reminders

I thought I would take this opportunity to reinforce a few of the conventions of this here blogging enterprise. But while I'm at it, let me seize the moment to share with you some of the more inventive attempts to visualize the Archery Contest from Book XXI...

Nice try, boys. But no...

Not even.

• Every post should be profusely illustrated adorned with at least one illustration—so yes, you will have to spend a little time beachcombing on the internets for interesting images pertinent to the topic of your post.

• The easiest way to do this is to save the image(s) to your desktop and upload them to the blog.

• Those of you "on" for this week: it's not too late to add images to your posts. (The INSERT IMAGE dialog gives you the option of left, right, or center alignment and small, medium or large size...)

Seriously‽

• Don't forget, part of your responsibility as a seedpost author is to moderate the discussion your post generates. 

Looks cool, anyway...

• I see most of you this week have found the Labels menu and tagged your posts accordingly. Thanks! (BTW, I have gotten rid of the "seedpost" label; it's actually pretty redundant, since all your posts have been seedposts so far...

As actually described in the actual Odyssey

Same, up on a table. Shall we consider this a "friendly amendment"?

New Series: "Meme o' the Day"

Find a cool WorldLit-related meme? Make one yourself? Add to the series!

Musings on This Week's Blog Conversations

Well, the Week 1 posts made for a promising start for our blog. Good seed posts and pretty vigorous discussion, too. I’m looking forward to Week 2’s conversations…

Naturally, I discerned a few main themes among this week’s various posts and comments, which I would like to address, so here goes…

GODS & HUMANS
It’s an all-too-human tendency to judge the behavior of the gods by our own contemporary sense of morality. We can’t help from doing this (and actually should do this as readers, because it helps us clarify our own principles), but it can also lead us to misdiagnose sometimes.

Gods and goddesses are not mortal, nor are they shaped by the psychological burdens that mortality confers. They may be human-like (we are typically made in their image, after all), but they are not human. And they have responsibilities. Each god and goddess typically has a charge or suite of charges (rivers, the heavens, crops, war, fertility, the Sun and the passage of time, death, knowledge, justice, winds, what-have-you). It’s their job to keep that facet of creation running and in good order. If they neglect those responsibilities, the world gets out of whack. People and animals, even the gods themselves, can suffer.

Inanna

This is relevant to Inanna because she is the goddess of a suite of related domains: fertility, sexuality, crops, and abundance, among others. Perhaps it was hubris (something we are more forgiving of in a man, by the way, than in a woman, where it more often translates to “selfishness”) that she acted on her wild notion to experience the underworld. But when she died there—had she remained there, dead forever—what would have happened to the world? No Spring, no offspring, no crops, no abundance, no sacrifices of meat and drink to the gods. The world dying and out of whack, winter without end.

That’s why so much effort was put into Inanna’s resurrection and retrieval from the Underworld. But even so, her return is achieved only through compromise: she is free to leave, but only if someone takes her place.

Ereshkigal

That non-negotiable “deal” sets the stage for Inanna’s desperate search to find a hostage to trade for her release. It’s a terrible choice, yet she must make it. But who? Ninshubur? Unthinkable. Ninshubur, her protector and enforcer, has been with her since she was a girl, and she relies on her special powers. Her own sons? How could a mother make that choice? She can’t bear the thought. But who else could be close enough that their sacrifice would hurt? It can’t be some luckless passerby who means nothing to her. (For one thing, I doubt that a mortal could survive the horror of hell for one day, much less the decreed term of half a year.) No, it pretty much has to be a god or demigod—and that narrows the choice down pretty drastically: Dumuzi, poor bastard. Didn’t help that he doesn’t seem to have noticed she was gone…

GILGAMESH & ENKIDU
How many movies have we seen where two macho hombres square off in a bar fight, beat the crap out of each other for an hour or so, then suddenly start laughing their heads off, bond over it, and—boom—BFFs forever? (Yeah I know, Department of Redundancy Department, but rhythmically, the “forever” was required…) It’s a Y-chromosome trope, from time immemorial. You can find parallel X-chromosome examples (usually without the brawling) in literature, life, and film as well…

SEXUALITY

Sexuality is a major theme in Mesopotamian literature (let’s face it, all literatures, even if driven underground by taboo). It is certainly plain that sexual matters had no need of being whispered behind drawn curtains or disguised inside elaborate metaphors. (The line between metaphor and reality in the Inanna hymns is vanishingly small...)

Inanna

It is also an important topic for American readers to confront, because of the stark contrast between the treatment of sexuality in Sumerian and Akkadian literature and its treatment in the literature of the three great Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam—where matters of sexuality are often severely and substantially repressed. Christianity, especially, has taken this suppression to great lengths. This rejection of the flesh and suspicion of earthly pleasures, which is our troubled Western inheritance from that tradition, can warp our initial responses to the Mesopotamian materials. American readers may experience something almost like shock at the openness of sex and sexuality in these religious and cosmological works—so different in this regard from our own religious texts! Such shock can be an impediment to understanding and appreciation...

INANNA’S LIFE HISTORY
Many people commented Inanna’s character and possible character flaws, contrasting her more loving earlier nature with the more cruel persona of her resurrection and return. There is a change in her nature as she matures from adolescent to young woman, from lover to mother, from queen to goddess.

Inanna

That’s what I find so extraordinary about the Inanna hymn cycle (especially as Diane Wolkstein has chosen and arranged the disparate fragments into a single, chronological narrative): we see Inanna in the round, through time, in a fullness rarely seen for a female character in this mythic genre. (There are few to no comparable longitudinal portrayals of women in ancient Greek or Biblical or Egyptian literature—at least that I am aware of…) No, we must wait for the development of the novel for that kind of character development…

It’s easy to see the Ishtar of Gilgamesh as simply a continuation of Inanna as we last see her in the Hymns. Dumuzi was just the first of her many conquests, none of which ended well for the chosen one. Ishtar is indeed an organic continuation of the goddess Inanna by another name, but remember: Inanna and Ishtar are separated from each other by culture (Sumerian vs. Old Babylonian), language (Sumerian vs. Akkadian), and some 800 years of history (2000 BCE vs. 1200 BCE). Over that time-span, though retaining many of her earlier Sumerian traditions and attributes, Inanna has been passed through the long filter of a new language, changing cultures, and complex histories—somewhere along the line adding War Goddess to her portfolio—to emerge as the wrathful Ishtar whom Enkidu smacks with the Bull of Heaven’s thigh.

In short, it’s not entirely fair to treat Inanna and Ishtar as the “same” character…

So this is our blog...

...and guess what? You will all be making weekly posts and/or comments to it for our mutual admiration and enjoyment—perhaps even edification. Every week, some of you will contribute a "seed post" (say, 150+ words) on topics of your own choosing, designed to stimulate discussion from the rest of your classmates. Those of you not making seed posts are responsible for reading those posts and commenting—non-trivially—on that week's posts. (You will find more specific instructions on D2L; the roster for seed posts is now on the syllabus...)

The main requirement is that your posts and responses be rewarding for the rest of us to read, either because it presents an interesting insight, or makes us want to argue or contribute, or maybe just makes us chuckle.  It should go without saying (though I'm saying it anyway), that your posts should always refer ultimately to our readings and/or class discussions—even if you are making connections to other things you have seen or read (films, novels, current events, whatever) or personal experiences you have had.
 
P.S.  And make 'em pretty! Nothing spices up a post more than an interesting graphic or image, even if it's mostly gratuitous, like this one..;-)