The Festival of Spring, from the Díván of Jeláleddín: Rendered in English Gazels after Rückert's Versions, with an Introduction and a Criticism of the Rubáiyát of Omar KhayyámJalal al-Din Rumi, Maulana
PhilosophySufism
The Festival of Spring, from the Díván of Jeláleddín: Rendered in English Gazels after Rückert's Versions, with an Introduction and a Criticism of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
Jalal al-Din Rumi, Maulana
Omar Khayyam. Rubaiyat; Sufi poetry, Persian
Rosen, who gives this quotation, and an excellent rhymed German
translation of part of the Mesnevi, refers to that poem as not only 'one
of the most celebrated productions of the Persian Mysticism, but as
being regarded by many Mohammedans as almost equal in holiness to the
Koran and the Sunna.' Being attached, at the time he wrote, to the
German Embassy at Constantinople, Rosen also mentions that not only did
the educated Oriental regard the Mesnevi as the most perfect Book of
Edification, which when its contents were received into his mind and
heart, made him certain of Salvation; but that even the poor Persian
retailers of the products of their home industries, on the streets,
could recite with enthusiasm long passages from the poems of Jeláleddín.
We believe that this holds true to-day, more or less, of the whole
Mohammedan world.[2]
But coming to more familiar names, we might gather a whole cloud of the
most approved witnesses in this connection. Thus Sir William Jones, the
first great Anglo-Indian Scholar, the Columbus of the new Old World of
Sanskrit and Persian Literature, enters with wonderful sympathy and
insight into possession of the Persian and Hindu Mystical Poetry; he
refers to their great Maulavi, and his astonishing work, _The Mesnevi_;
and he translates the celebrated opening passage in rhyming couplets
which would not have been unworthy of Pope himself.[3] Sir William Jones
did not, indeed, touch Jeláleddín's Lyrics, but he rendered some
precious morsels of Hafiz, 'Odes,' as they are called, both in English
and French, in a way that made young European students and poets, like
Herder and Goethe, turn again to the East with yearning expectant eyes.
Similar testimony might be adduced from Henry Thomas Colebrooke, one of
the very greatest of the successors of Sir W. Jones. The chief Historian
of Persia, and the best informed Persian scholar of his day, Sir John
Malcolm (of Langholm), if less sympathetic than Sir W. Jones in his
painstaking account of the Persian Mystics, gives likewise the first
place to Jeláleddín.[4] And then much more definitely Sir Gore Ouseley,
the first English Biographer of the Persian Poets, gives Jeláleddín due
recognition in connection with the unrivalled Mesnevi.[5] The Journal of
the Asiatic Society, an ever valuable Magazine of Oriental learning, and
the parent of many others of its kind, has been enriched by the
contributions of many enthusiastic English scholars following in the
footsteps of Sir W. Jones, and it contains the earliest fragments of
English translations of Jeláleddín.[6] Robert Alfred Vaughan, in his
_Hours with the Mystics_, 1856, a popular, sympathetic, and still
attractive work, appreciates Jeláleddín, and compares him with Angelus
Silesius and Emerson, but all his knowledge of the Persian Mystic was
derived from Tholuck and Sir W. Jones. At last competent scholars began
to deal worthily with Jelál's poetry in English. Sir James W. Redhouse
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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