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Rumi: A New Translation of Selected Poems
Championed by the likes of Madonna, Donna Karan, and Deepak Chopra, Rumi has won such a following in this country that a few years ago he was proclaimed our bestselling poet. But translations that have popularized the work of this thirteenth-century Sufi mystic have also strayed from its essence. In this new translation, Farrukh Dhondy seeks to recover both the lyrical beauty and the spiritual essence of the original verse. In poems of love and devotion, rapture and suffering, loss and yearning for oneness, Dhondy has rediscovered the Islamic mystic of spiritual awakening whose quest is the key to his universal appeal. Here is at once a great poet of love, both human and divine, and the authentic voice of a moderate Islam—a voice that can resonate in today’s turbulent, fundamentalist times.
- GenresPoetry
184 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 1, 2013
28 people are currently reading
61 people want to read
About the author
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
1,170 books15.7k followersSufism inspired writings of Persian poet and mystic Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi; these writings express the longing of the soul for union with the divine.
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī - also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, Mevlânâ/Mawlānā (مولانا, "our master"), Mevlevî/Mawlawī (مولوی, "my master") and more popularly simply as Rumi - was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian and Sufi mystic who lived in Konya, a city of Ottoman Empire (Today's Turkey). His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages, and he has been described as the most popular poet and the best-selling poet in the United States.
His poetry has influenced Persian literature, but also Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Azerbaijani, Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu, as well as the literature of some other Turkic, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan languages including Chagatai, Pashto, and Bengali.
Due to quarrels between different dynasties in Khorāṣān, opposition to the Khwarizmid Shahs who were considered devious by his father, Bahā ud-Dīn Wālad or fear of the impending Mongol cataclysm, his father decided to migrate westwards, eventually settling in the Anatolian city Konya, where he lived most of his life, composed one of the crowning glories of Persian literature, and profoundly affected the culture of the area.
When his father died, Rumi, aged 25, inherited his position as the head of an Islamic school. One of Baha' ud-Din's students, Sayyed Burhan ud-Din Muhaqqiq Termazi, continued to train Rumi in the Shariah as well as the Tariqa, especially that of Rumi's father. For nine years, Rumi practised Sufism as a disciple of Burhan ud-Din until the latter died in 1240 or 1241. Rumi's public life then began: he became an Islamic Jurist, issuing fatwas and giving sermons in the mosques of Konya. He also served as a Molvi (Islamic teacher) and taught his adherents in the madrassa. During this period, Rumi also travelled to Damascus and is said to have spent four years there.
It was his meeting with the dervish Shams-e Tabrizi on 15 November 1244 that completely changed his life. From an accomplished teacher and jurist, Rumi was transformed into an ascetic.
On the night of 5 December 1248, as Rumi and Shams were talking, Shams was called to the back door. He went out, never to be seen again. Rumi's love for, and his bereavement at the death of, Shams found their expression in an outpouring of lyric poems, Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi. He himself went out searching for Shams and journeyed again to Damascus.
Rumi found another companion in Salaḥ ud-Din-e Zarkub, a goldsmith. After Salah ud-Din's death, Rumi's scribe and favourite student, Hussam-e Chalabi, assumed the role of Rumi's companion. Hussam implored Rumi to write more. Rumi spent the next 12 years of his life in Anatolia dictating the six volumes of this masterwork, the Masnavi, to Hussam.
In December 1273, Rumi fell ill and died on the 17th of December in Konya.
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī - also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, Mevlânâ/Mawlānā (مولانا, "our master"), Mevlevî/Mawlawī (مولوی, "my master") and more popularly simply as Rumi - was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian and Sufi mystic who lived in Konya, a city of Ottoman Empire (Today's Turkey). His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages, and he has been described as the most popular poet and the best-selling poet in the United States.
His poetry has influenced Persian literature, but also Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Azerbaijani, Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu, as well as the literature of some other Turkic, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan languages including Chagatai, Pashto, and Bengali.
Due to quarrels between different dynasties in Khorāṣān, opposition to the Khwarizmid Shahs who were considered devious by his father, Bahā ud-Dīn Wālad or fear of the impending Mongol cataclysm, his father decided to migrate westwards, eventually settling in the Anatolian city Konya, where he lived most of his life, composed one of the crowning glories of Persian literature, and profoundly affected the culture of the area.
When his father died, Rumi, aged 25, inherited his position as the head of an Islamic school. One of Baha' ud-Din's students, Sayyed Burhan ud-Din Muhaqqiq Termazi, continued to train Rumi in the Shariah as well as the Tariqa, especially that of Rumi's father. For nine years, Rumi practised Sufism as a disciple of Burhan ud-Din until the latter died in 1240 or 1241. Rumi's public life then began: he became an Islamic Jurist, issuing fatwas and giving sermons in the mosques of Konya. He also served as a Molvi (Islamic teacher) and taught his adherents in the madrassa. During this period, Rumi also travelled to Damascus and is said to have spent four years there.
It was his meeting with the dervish Shams-e Tabrizi on 15 November 1244 that completely changed his life. From an accomplished teacher and jurist, Rumi was transformed into an ascetic.
On the night of 5 December 1248, as Rumi and Shams were talking, Shams was called to the back door. He went out, never to be seen again. Rumi's love for, and his bereavement at the death of, Shams found their expression in an outpouring of lyric poems, Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi. He himself went out searching for Shams and journeyed again to Damascus.
Rumi found another companion in Salaḥ ud-Din-e Zarkub, a goldsmith. After Salah ud-Din's death, Rumi's scribe and favourite student, Hussam-e Chalabi, assumed the role of Rumi's companion. Hussam implored Rumi to write more. Rumi spent the next 12 years of his life in Anatolia dictating the six volumes of this masterwork, the Masnavi, to Hussam.
In December 1273, Rumi fell ill and died on the 17th of December in Konya.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 1, 2020
I thoroughly enjoyed this selection of Rumi’s poetry. Having heard a lot about him and his works, and often reading snippets of his insightful poetry online, it was nice to finally indulge in an easy-to-read modern translation/interpretation of his works. The author has made Rumi accessible to all through a work that is stylistically contemporary and familiar; the reader is unhesitant in grasping the tempo of the poetic verse and rhyme. One thing I particularly valued in this work was the pages dedicated to the rise of nascent Sufism, that is, it’s relation to other faith traditions and the role it plays in the world today. Alongside this, we discover more about Rumi as a man - his upbringing, his family and the life-changing event that sparked his ineludible mission to discover the meanings of love and loss, particularly in the context of religion and God. The intimate, often unreserved nature of his poetry, prompts one to marvel at his genius. I see this version as a primer for his works and I am now inclined to read the rest in a more primal format, as oftentimes translated works lose the originality and the unique dimension of the untranslated verses. Who knows - perhaps I’ll just have to learn Persian to fully comprehend the words of one of the worlds greatest mystics.
Side note - amongst the selected poems was one coincidentally entitled ‘Quarantine’:
“There is no cure for the sickness of the heart
Quarantine all lovers, keep them apart
Affliction though it seems to be, love is God’s gift
Anchoring to beauty, the human soul adrift.”
❤️
Side note - amongst the selected poems was one coincidentally entitled ‘Quarantine’:
“There is no cure for the sickness of the heart
Quarantine all lovers, keep them apart
Affliction though it seems to be, love is God’s gift
Anchoring to beauty, the human soul adrift.”
❤️
June 24, 2022
The first third of the book is about Rumi, Sufism in general, and how Sufi spirituality motivated Rumi’s work. It’s great information, but fairly dry.
The rest of the book contains a selection of Rumi’s poems, which were arranged to emphasize the divine and Islam (as originally intended by Rumi), rather than romantic love (which is the emphasis of popular English translations). To me, the fact that the verses were neatly fit into rhyming couplets made the poems feel trivial and Dr. Seussy. The language wasn’t lyrical, and didn’t encourage me to linger over the verses. It made me wonder what had been lost or changed in the translation.
Also, an afterward explains a bit about the author’s methodology. Dhondy was motivated to do a “new translation” of Rumi’s poetry when he read another English translation and noticed that all the original context of Islam and Sufism had been stripped away. His version seeks to correct that. That said, Dhondy also writes that he doesn’t speak Persian and he’s not a poet. He relied on the help of Persian-speaking friends to develop his new arrangements of Rumi’s poems. The rhyming couplets are an attempt to recreate the original meter of the verses in Persian.
I would recommend this to people interested in Rumi as a historical figure, Sufism, and Islam, rather than someone casually interested in reading poetry.
Three stars because the book fulfills Dhondy’s goals fairly well, but I did not enjoy reading it. The historical information was dry and (to me, someone without a particular interest in Sufism) the poetry was also dry.
The rest of the book contains a selection of Rumi’s poems, which were arranged to emphasize the divine and Islam (as originally intended by Rumi), rather than romantic love (which is the emphasis of popular English translations). To me, the fact that the verses were neatly fit into rhyming couplets made the poems feel trivial and Dr. Seussy. The language wasn’t lyrical, and didn’t encourage me to linger over the verses. It made me wonder what had been lost or changed in the translation.
Also, an afterward explains a bit about the author’s methodology. Dhondy was motivated to do a “new translation” of Rumi’s poetry when he read another English translation and noticed that all the original context of Islam and Sufism had been stripped away. His version seeks to correct that. That said, Dhondy also writes that he doesn’t speak Persian and he’s not a poet. He relied on the help of Persian-speaking friends to develop his new arrangements of Rumi’s poems. The rhyming couplets are an attempt to recreate the original meter of the verses in Persian.
I would recommend this to people interested in Rumi as a historical figure, Sufism, and Islam, rather than someone casually interested in reading poetry.
Three stars because the book fulfills Dhondy’s goals fairly well, but I did not enjoy reading it. The historical information was dry and (to me, someone without a particular interest in Sufism) the poetry was also dry.
February 4, 2025
0 stars, only showed 1 for Goodreads.
I've read a couple of poems by Rumi before and thought they were beautiful, so when I saw this bind-up with a new translation, I thought, "why not?" BOY WAS I WRONG.
The entire set of poems was forced into a very specific rhyming pattern, even when it made no sense to do so. The translation was neither beautiful nor faithful; it was ugly, jarring, and abrasive. By about half-way through the poems, I started looking them up to see what other translators had done for those poems, and had an incredibly difficult time finding any of them because this translation had changed them so much, they were no longer Rumi's poems.
At that point, I flipped to the back of the book to read the translator's appendix and see what his methodology was in translating. Come to find out, the "translator" does not speak Persian, is not Sufi, is not a poet, and has never translated anything before. Additionally, he does not know and never bothered to look up the meaning of "transliteration" (which, by the way is not the same thing as translation, yet he uses the terms interchangeably).
Never in my life have I hated a book so bad that I wanted financial compensation for the waste of time I spent reading it, but that is what I want for this abomination.
I've read a couple of poems by Rumi before and thought they were beautiful, so when I saw this bind-up with a new translation, I thought, "why not?" BOY WAS I WRONG.
The entire set of poems was forced into a very specific rhyming pattern, even when it made no sense to do so. The translation was neither beautiful nor faithful; it was ugly, jarring, and abrasive. By about half-way through the poems, I started looking them up to see what other translators had done for those poems, and had an incredibly difficult time finding any of them because this translation had changed them so much, they were no longer Rumi's poems.
At that point, I flipped to the back of the book to read the translator's appendix and see what his methodology was in translating. Come to find out, the "translator" does not speak Persian, is not Sufi, is not a poet, and has never translated anything before. Additionally, he does not know and never bothered to look up the meaning of "transliteration" (which, by the way is not the same thing as translation, yet he uses the terms interchangeably).
Never in my life have I hated a book so bad that I wanted financial compensation for the waste of time I spent reading it, but that is what I want for this abomination.
February 15, 2019
I really enjoyed this poetry selection by Rumi. Some of it was beautiful, many of it was relating to Islam religion, and even more was intelligent observations of life and people. The collection was easily readable probably due to a fairly modern interpretation, which I felt partly took away from the genuine feel of 1200s writing.
November 10, 2019
This was a beautiful selection of poetry that was made very readable due to Farrukh Dhondy's choice of translation style. I enjoyed the explanation about Rumi's history, as well as the personal note about Dhondy's connection to the poetry and why he chose to do these translations. Overall, a lovely set of poems.
Read
August 25, 2021I have thought long and hard about rating this poetry collection and finally decided that, for me, it would feel presumptuous to do so. I am not a member of the faith that sits at the heart of these verses. They constitute a paean of praise, perhaps analogous in a way to the Psalms of the Old Testament. There is beauty here, and wonder, though I am sure I caught only a glimpse or two.
May 28, 2019
I have always loved Rumi and I believe Dhondy did his best to translate in a way that could convey Rumi's message in his native tongue. My favorite part was the detailed recount of Rumi's life and how he became the poet that we all know. Highly recommend!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews