Rumi: A New Translation by Rumi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

" Their melancholy is soothing, and their joy elevating, to a degree I never experienced in studying the authors of any other country. When you read their writings, life appears to consist in a warm sun and a garden of roses, in the smiles and frowns of a fair enemy, and the fire that consumes your own heart. "
-Victor Frankenstein on Oriental Poetry
(Mary Shelley's Frankenstein )


I begin my review, or rather, I sum it up in the words borrowed from Mary Shelley, who said it all about the likes of Omar Khayyam, Khalil Gibran, and Rumi, in those two lines. Yes, this is exactly what reading Oriental poetry feels like, even to a person from the Oriental world! This is exactly what reading this little pink book feels like.

In fact, I'm glad I got my hands on it before that little three-year-old girl, who was probably eyeing it keenly because it's pink and cloth bound. I still shudder to think where Rumi's wisdom would have lain, in a doll house perhaps, surrounded by Barbie dolls, instead of a bookshelf!

Anyway, what about this translation of Rumi? Is it as good as Barks? Better than Barks? Is it different?

Well, I am not going to compare it with Barks, because, I am yet to read it. As to what I think of this translation, it certainly is amazing but it isn't what one would call brilliant. Somewhere, while trying to keep the rhyme scheme intact, the translator lost that key essence of Rumi: depth! I don't mean that the poems are not deep anymore or have suddenly become simple and shallow and meaningless-no! However, the original beauty of Rumi is lost in the use of more colloquial words and all this just to get the whole things rhyme. Certain quatrains are so vague you just lose track of what you're reading and there are places where the translation is simply clumsy.

I do not claim to be an expert on Persian poetry like my grandfather was however, I know for sure that if this collection had been translated in the same way as Navtej Sarna translated Zafarnama or Vikram Seth translated certain couplets from Arabic, Persian and Urdu in his A Suitable Boy , I, for one, would have loved this book slightly more than I do now.

That being said, I have still adored the book. Who couldn't? Rumi's poems are like music to the soul, and even if they seem a little too casually handled, they still leave a mark on you, hit the nail, touch a nerve somewhere. I throughly enjoyed the book but I just feel that it could have been better!

A MUST read, nonetheless!

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