It's the Heart of the translation that countsDecember 8, 2006 2 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is by far my favorite Rumi book, and Barks is my favorite translator.
Rumi is pointing at, living, something beyond words, something that resides deep in our hearts. For me, many of the poems in the book take me there. It is a huge blessing.
Not really a "translation" as suchApril 22, 2006 26 out of 32 found this review helpful
I have to say I agree with some of the other reviews here, that this collection of poetry by "Rumi" is in reality modern American poetry by someone drawing only very loosely on Rumi's work. It is rather a stretch to call it a translation! If one were cynical, one might think the large number of books from this "translator" indicates merely a money-making exercise.
Much better collections/translations can be found, like Maryam Mafi's and Azima Melita Kolin's, but I would personally recommend Juliet Mabey's Rumi: A Spiritual Treasury. This is not only a gorgeous book to look at, but more importantly, both its selection and English rendition demonstrate a deftness of touch that make you think you are reading something very close to the original sentiment. A rare achievement.
Some illuminationDecember 27, 2005 85 out of 92 found this review helpful
As a Persian I felt I can write some illuminating remarks here. I came to this verse from Mowlanaa Rumi in this book: "Let the beauty of what you do be what you love" and I looked a lot for the original poetry. It seems to be sth like this originally:
Today we are drunken(=in love) like everyday Dont start worrying and start playing instead For whom the beloved's (God's) face is prayer-niche There are a hundred ways of prayer. (seeing God's face in everything...Everything is one.)
and Barks' translation:
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
you see they are quite different and the traslation seems to be distorted.
Rumi Torrential and On FireDecember 11, 2005 6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I have never read anyone who captures the exuberant ecstasy of Rumi's spiritual outpourings better than Coleman Barks. There are no other versions of Rumi's expanded collection of poems that even come close. The Barks' translations fly off the page like rockets and into one's heart page after page and stay in the mind like the most glorious of diamonds. One can pick up this volume and turn to any page for a shot of verbal adrenaline, for Rumi talks about everything under the sun and is completely free of puritanical shame - so very refreshing.
Rumi's great ability as a teacher and storyteller is that he never seems to talk down to the listener. In fact, he writes as if the listener is on the same level and can ignite the identical inner spark that Rumi has through some kind of spontaneous combustion. Perhaps this is one of the essential messages he has to offer. But his words are not for the academic philistines who are more in love with the letter of the law of translation than its spirit and who lack the understanding and poetic sensibility to make Rumi's words leap off the page in the same way that Barks does.
I gave a copy of this book to a dear friend as a Christmas present at our favorite Italian restaurant and my friend was thrilled. We shared Rumi's poems at the dinner table and everyone within listening distance became enthralled, included the restaurant manager who treated our little dinner party to free coffee and desserts.
If you are new to Rumi I would suggest that you start here and fill out his academic background later. Most libraries also have the Barks' translations.
I'd also like to see a few hundred copies of Rumi circulated at our nation's capitol, since it's hard to imagine anyone there having read something even as basic and moral as "A Thousand and One Nights," either as a child or by their parents, to expand their perspective on the world as an adult - and unfortunately this contracted and limited view of life really really shows and the rest of us have to suffer for it... Free copies for everyone paid out of the military budget.
"Let the beauty you love, be what you do." - Rumi
Look right here for Rumi's essenceSeptember 16, 2005 116 out of 125 found this review helpful
Don't let the one-star Spotlight Review above entitled "Look elsewhere for Rumi's essence (November 16, 1999)" drive you away from a great read. This book captures Rumi's essence like no other. And despite what that negative reviewer says, author and poet Coleman Barks is very well qualified to bring Rumi to a modern English audience. Consider these four points:
1) First, and most important, Barks loves Rumi; he loves Rumi's poetry; he loves that presence Rumi's poetry celebrates and explores. In his negative review, "A Customer" implies Sufi poetry employs some kind of mantric magic when he says that "their poems are actually precise and carefully constructed technical instruments designed to have very specific effects on the reader under the right circumstances." Please. Rumi himself makes plain throughout his works that the point of his poetry - and of Sufism - is not technique. The point is love: "Rub your eyes, and look again at love, with love." Rumi would have been the last person in the world to insist on strict adherence to technique, or compulsive literal translation. He was about soul, and transformation, and he said over and over again that the only real magic was love. That's the real essence of Rumi. And maybe Barks has been able to translate Rumi's poetry so effectively because he's coming from the heart and the soul, and not just the head.
2) Second, Barks is a well-known American poet in his own right, a retired professor of English at Georgia University. He's studied the life and work of Rumi intensively for over thirty years. And he was a personal student of the great Sufi teacher Bawa Muhaiyaddeen for many years, so he knows something about Sufism and Rumi's "path of love" from direct personal experience.
3) Third, while it is true that Barks does not read Rumi in the original Persian, his modern English versions of Rumi are based on the painstaking study of the best critical English editions of Rumi available, including those of Moyne, Arberry and Nicholson - and, if you want to know why Barks chose to go beyond these literal translations and create his own modern versions of Rumi in plain English, try reading a critical edition like Nicholson's: yes, it's a literal translation, and it's very scholarly, but it's almost unreadable. In fact, it's torture. Scholarship is important, but poetry should be a joy.
4) Finally, Barks must know something, because he just got an honorary doctorate from the Department of Persian Language and Literature at the University of Tehran for his translations of Rumi. (Here's the announcement: "The Diploma of Honorary Doctorate of the University of Tehran in the field of Persian Language and Literature will be granted to Professor Coleman Barks, Poet and Professor Emeritus of English, University of Georgia, USA, for translating the poetry of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, the great Iranian poet and philosopher at 10:00-12:00 a.m. on Wednesday, May 17, 2006 at Ferdowsi Hall, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Tehran.") And Barks is respected by other modern Iranian-American writers. For instance, on page 286 of his new book "No god but God; the Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam", Reza Aslan - who was born in Iran and now lives in the US - acknowledges that "The best translations of Rumi include Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi (1995), and the two-volume Mystical Poems of Rumi by A. J. Arberry (1968)..."
There are lots of versions of Rumi out there, including the literal translations like Arberry's or Nicholson's. Barks' obviously respects these literal translations tremendously. They do capture the letter. But Barks frees the spirit. Let me conclude by quoting a wonderful story Barks tells about translating the essence of Rumi's poems. This is from page 180-181 of his new book, "The Soul of Rumi":
Barks writes: "Perhaps presence is so elusive because of those continually disintegrating and reconstituting motions called 'fana' and 'baqa': the wild longing to dissolve in God and then the coming back in the kind hand that reaches to help. That motion is the subject of Rumi's poetry, or it might be better to say that his poetry enjoys the play of presence and absence, through the mind, through desire, love, deep silence, the whole conversational dance of existence, the being of Being. Flowers and fish are doing calligraphy with their moving about. The great sun outside and the sun inside each human hum together. The bright core of their resonance is who we are. I love this Hasidic story about the transmission of such fire:
"When the Baal Shem Tov had difficult work to do, he would go to a certain place in the woods, where he made a fire and meditated. In the spontaneous prayers that came through him then the work that needed to get done was done. A generation later the Maggid of Meseritz was given the same work. He went to the place in the forest and said, "I no longer know how to light the fire and meditate, but I can say the prayers." What needed to happen, happened. A generation after that it came to Moshe Leib of Sassov to do the work. He went into the woods and spoke, "I do not know the fire meditation or the prayers, but I still come to this place where the Baal Shem and the great Maggid came. I hope that's enough." And it was. After another twenty years, Israel of Rishin was called to the task. "I do not know the place, the fire, the meditation, or the prayers but here, inside, sitting at table I can tell the story of how it used to go." The story had the same effect as the wilderness retreat, the fire meditation, and the prayers that came to the Baal Shem Tov, the Maggid, and Rabbi Moshe Leib."
Barks continues: "One might follow the sequence of the anecdote and say that it shows the diminishing of a living tradition. Or one can hear in it that the mystery of doing work takes many forms, and the same continuous efficacy is there no matter whether it's the Baal Shem in solemn silence before the fire in the woods or, generations later, Israel of Rishin indoors telling the story to a table of friends. The vital God-human or human-God connection can break through anywhere at any time. There's no diminishing of it and no fading of grace. I like to hope that Rumi's poems, even in translation, carry the essence of the transforming friendship of Rumi and Shams, that that sun can reappear, whole and radiant in any one of us at any moment." (Note: Shams was Rumi's spiritual teacher.)
"The mystery of doing work takes many forms...." I think this is the real answer to the question of Barks' translations of Rumi: the essence, the presence, is not carried by the literal translation of form, but by the living transmission of spirit. How this happens is a mystery. But when it does - as it does in Barks' work - "there is no fading of grace". Don't miss this great book.
