Blurb
In the first story of his book, Rumi tells us a triangular love story in which the king’s sweetheart at some point in their romance misses her ex-lover and starts covertly agonizing over their parting, so her moods fall off the cliff and endanger her health, making everyone in the castle worried and perplexed. Then just like so many other times, Rumi leaves his narration and starts describing the pain of love:
“Her whine was a symptom issued from her heart! Among the pains, the love pain is worlds apart!
No misery is the same as love miseries. Love is a means of revealing God’s mysteries.
I keep describing love a lot; however, Falling in love, I can’t explain it whatsoever!
Though tongue may sound very descriptive; Without it, love’s more indicative.
The pen was writing all words smoothly fast, But once it got to “love” it could not last!
Explaining it, the brain went into grief; Just love could give us its own perfect brief.”
The Book
The translation of the Rumi’s Masnavi (his most famous poetry book) in this book is rhymed and is in form of poem, and it is not intended to be a word by word or even verse by verse translation of the whole Masnavi (a.k. Spiritual Rhymes or Couplets). However, the main goal of translation in this book is to convey all the key points of the spiritual teachings of the first four anecdotes of Rumi’s Masnavi. Moreover, the translation is also rhymed like the original Iranian poem to make it more attractive and memorable to the readers and of course without compromising any of the original intended meanings. And The Translator
How would Rumi compose his spiritual poems if he was English? How could we make sure the poems presented to us as Rumi’s in today’s world do convey the actual meanings and teachings Rumi had in mind?
Well, Rumi’s poems were a magnificent masterpiece of ancient Persian literature, so we need a translator who not only understands Persian very well, but also has a deep understanding of spiritual works in Persian literature; one who understands all the symbols, similes and analogies widely used in Persian Sufism or spiritual literature.
Moreover, we need someone who studied, graduated and worked in an English-speaking country so that he knows all the idioms, and figures of speech in modern English language.
Amin has been living in Canada for more than 20 years, and he studied computer systems and worked in several companies in Vancouver, where he always had to deal with documentation, presentations and meetings with English-speaking patrons. In addition, Amin lived in Iran during his youth, and studied Persian literature courses in high school and university where his fanatism and enthusiasm for Persian spiritual literature has been growing ever since.
This book includes the first four anecdotes, prologue, and introduction of Rumi’s book of spiritual Couplets (Masnavi Manavi). To translate Rumi’s poetry in this book, Amin spent two years researching the works of well-known commentators of Rumi’s poetry.
