Dealing with Rumi fans in the Bay Area can be challenging. Here is a good commentary from the The New Yorker by Rozina Ali. I am glad that Rumi's close links to Islam are finally being acknowledged. As a translator myself, I find some changes executed under "translation" quite unfair to Rumi and to his readers (if not terrifying!)
***
A couple of years ago, when Coldplay’s Chris Martin was
going through a divorce from the actress Gwyneth Paltrow and feeling down, a
friend gave him a book to lift his spirits. It was a collection of poetry by
Jalaluddin Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet, translated by Coleman
Barks. “It kind of changed my life,” Martin said later, in an interview. A track from Coldplay’s
most recent album features Barks
reciting one of the poems: “This being human is a guest house / Every
morning a new arrival / A joy, a depression, a meanness, / some momentary
awareness comes / as an unexpected visitor.”
Rumi has helped the spiritual journeys of other
celebrities—Madonna, Tilda Swinton—some of whom similarly incorporated his work
into theirs. Aphorisms attributed to Rumi circulate daily on social media,
offering motivation. “If you are irritated by every rub, how will you ever get
polished,” one of them goes. Or, “Every moment I shape my destiny with a
chisel. I am a carpenter of my own soul.” Barks’s translations, in particular,
are shared widely on the Internet; they are also the ones that line American
bookstore shelves and are recited at weddings. Rumi is often described as the best-selling poet in the United States. He is typically
referred to as a mystic, a saint, a Sufi, an enlightened man. Curiously,
however, although he was a lifelong scholar of the Koran and Islam, he is less
frequently described as a Muslim.
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