The Masnavi of Rumi, Book Two

A New English Translation with Explanatory Notes

Jalaloddin Rumi, Alan Williams

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781786726094
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Poésie du Moyen-Orient

Jalaloddin Rumi's Masnavi-ye Ma'navi, or 'Spiritual Couplets', composed in the 13th Century, is a monumental work of poetry in the Sufi tradition of Islamic mysticism. For centuries before his love poetry became a literary phenomenon in the West, Rumi's Masnavi had been revered in the Islamic world as its greatest mystical text. Drawing upon a vast array of characters, stories and fables, and deeply versed in spiritual teaching, it takes us on a profound and playful journey of discovery along the path of divine love, toward its ultimate goal of union with the source of all Truth. In Book Two of the Masnavi, the second of six volumes, we travel with Rumi toward an understanding of the deeper truth and reality, beyond the limits of the self. Alan Williams's authoritative new translation is rendered in highly readable blank verse and includes the original Persian text for reference. True to the spirit of Rumi's poem, this new translation establishes the Masnavi as one of the world's great literary achievements for a global readership. Translated with an introduction, notes and analysis by Alan Williams and including the Persian text edited by Mohammad Este'lami.

The Poem

This Masnavi has been delayed a while

– time was required that blood would turn to milk.

Until your fortune bears a new-born child,

blood does not turn to sweet milk, hear this well!

As when Hosāmoddin, the Light of Truth,

held back the reins at heaven’s highest point,

When he’d gone up to the Realities,

without his springtime, blossoms had not opened.

5When he came from the ocean to the shore

the Masnavi’s poetic lyre was tuned.

His reappearance was the day of opening

the Masnavi, the burnisher of spirits:

The dawn of this historic enterprise

has happened in the year six-sixty two.

A nightingale left here and it returned,

became a falcon, all to hunt these meanings.

Remain upon the Royal arm, O falcon!

that all can find His gate is ever open!

10It’s blocked by sensuality and lust:

instead, here is the drink to end all drinks!

Shut tight your mouth that you may clearly see

your throat and mouth are blindfolds on that world!

O mouth, you are the very hole of hell!

O world, you’re like the state of No Man’s Land!

Next to this lowly world is light eternal,

the purest milk is next to streams of blood.

If you should carelessly take one step in,

your milk shall turn to blood in your confusion.

15When Adam took one step in selfish pleasure,

his fall from Paradise became his shackle!

The angels fled from him as from a demon,

how much he cried his eyes out just for bread!

Though all the wrong he’d done was just a hair’s breadth,

but still, that hair had grown across his eyes.

This Adam was the eye of light eternal:

one hair upon the eye’s a mighty mountain!

If Adam had been prudent in this matter,

he would not have excused himself contritely.

20For when one mind is coupled with another,

it will prevent bad action and bad speech.

But when one ego’s friendly with another,

the individual mind is vain and useless.

When you are in despair from loneliness,

become a sun beneath the shade of God.

Go seek the friend of God! Be quick about it!

When you have done this, God will be your Friend

– He who has sewn his gaze on solitude

has surely also learnt that from the Friend.

25Seclusion is from strangers, not the Friend:

fur coats are for December not for spring.

When mind is doubled by another mind,

the light increases and the way is clear.

When ego’s chuckling with another self,

darkness increases and the way’s obscured.

The saintly friend is like your eye, O huntsman!

Keep it immaculate of sticks and straws!

Don’t let your rough-brush tongue stir up the dust!

Don’t give your eye a souvenir of rubbish!

30The faithful is the mirror to the faithful,

his face is to be free from all defilement.

The Friend’s the mirror to the soul in sorrow,

O soul, don’t breathe upon the mirror’s face!

Don’t make it hide its face against your breath:

your breath must be suppressed at every moment.

Or are you less than earth? When earth befriends

spring rain, it finds a hundred thousand flowers.

The tree that is in union with a friend

will blossom in sweet air from top to bottom.

35In autumn, when it sees the hostile friend,

it draws its head and face under the covers.

It says ‘The bad companion stirs up trouble!

Since he has come, my way ahead is sleep.

So I shall sleep – a Sleeper of the Cave –

and better than a Decius, though a prisoner.’

Their vigil’s caused by Emperor Decius’ doing:

their sleep’s the capital of their renown.

Sleep is a vigil when it is with wis...