Love's Alchemy

Poems from the Sufi Tradition

David Fideler, Sabrineh Fideler, David Fideler, Sabrineh Fideler

• Publisher: New World Library
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781577317494
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

Working from the original Persian sources, translators and scholars David and Sabrineh Fideler offer faithful, elegant translations that represent the full scope of Sufi poetry. These concise, tightly focused meditations span only a few lines but reveal worlds of meaning. The poems explore many aspects of human life and the spiritual path, but they center on the liberating power of love.

APPENDIX 1

Translating Persian Poetry

Most popular translations of R

m

into English have been made without careful reference to the Persian text of the originals, and many are actually adaptations of literal, dry-sounding English-language translations made decades ago by scholars. While these adaptations or “English-to-English translations” are often beautiful, distortions arise, and meanings present in the original poems often become lost in the process.

The word translation means “to carry across” and is never just a mechanical undertaking, but an art, especially in the case of poetry. Regardless of a translator’s approach, it is simply not possible to produce a literal translation of a poem from Persian—or from any other language—and have it automatically “work” in English.

All our translations are made directly from the Persian text, and we follow three basic rules that we hope allow the original works to be carried over gracefully into modern English:

1. The translation must work in English as a poem (or as an epigram, in the case of quatrains).

2. Rephrasing a line is permitted, if doing so helps to transmit the meaning more clearly.

3. Otherwise, each translation is kept as literal as possible.

Following this method allows us to remain faithful to the ideas and meanings of the original poems, while granting enough freedom to produce good translations.

To illustrate how this method shapes our work, compare our version of a famous R

m

quatrain to a strictly literal translation:

Literal translation:

Today, like every day, we are ruined—ruined.
Don’t open the door of thinking; pick up a lute.
There are a hundred kinds of prayer (n

m

z),

bowing (ruk

), and prostration (suj

d)

for the one whose prayer niche (mi

r

b) is the

beauty of the Friend.

Our translation:

Today, like every day,
we are ruined and lonely.

Don’t retreat,
fleeing your emptiness
through the doorway
of thinking.

Try making some music instead.

There are hundreds of ways
to kneel in prayer—
hundreds of ways to open
toward the heart
of the Friend’s beauty.

While the literal translation would work well in an academic study, as Robert Frost once noted, it’s the poetry that gets lost in the translation. Because of the numerous technical references in the last two lines, such a literal version does not really work as a poem for English-speaking readers; it also lacks a lyrical sense of rhythm that knits the work together into a whole.

Our translation maintains the sense of the original poem but also works in English. It maintains R

m

’s reference to the practice of prayer, and alludes to the opening of the heart-shaped prayer-niche (mi

r

b) in Ruml’s original. While preserving this fidelity, the translation also works for the general reader who is not versed in the intricacies of the Islamic ritual prayer. Finally, in poems like this with meanings or technical terms that cannot be gracefully carried over into English, we provide notes for readers who’d like to go deeper into the Persian text.

MUSIC, STRUCTURE, AND VERSE

Rub

’

literally means a poem of four lines—a quatrain. In the original Persian, each four-line poem possesses a rhythm and a rhyme scheme. Like the poetry of other cultures, Persian poetry has a musical dimension in its very structure. Mystical and spiritual poetry was often sung or recited with musical accompaniment at Sufi gatherings. To highlight this dimension, a rub

’

is sometimes called a tar

na, a “song” or “melody.” Even without musical accompaniment— or an English-language translation— hearing a poem recited in Persian is a sonorous, magical experience.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to reproduce the rhythms and musical qualities of Persian poetry in English translation. But working together, we have arranged some translations to be recited with musical accompaniment, in conjunction with the original versions in Persian. In the case of quatrains, Sabrineh recites the poems in Persian with a light musical accompaniment offered by David on the Persian setar, an instrument long associated with Sufi mystical poetry. After the presentation in Persian, David offers the work in English. This way of presenting the poems works well, allowing listener...