Wani Nazir
Al-Jaḥiẓ, an eighth-century Arab writer and polemicist, while commenting on the difficulty of literary translation, particularly of the mystic poetry declared in his voluminous book, Kitab al-Hayawan (The Book of Animals): “Poetry [shi’r] is untranslatable; it cannot be transferred from one language into another. Translation breaks its metrical arrangements [naẓam] and spoils the rhythm [wazan], ruins its aesthetics [ḥusn], and flattens the element of wonder [muḍi’ al-ta’ajjub]. Translation turns poetry into prose, and prose originally written as such is preferred over what has been turned into prose as a result of translating verse.”
In his famous essay, “On Not Translating Hafez” (New England Review, 1999), Dick Davis, after essaying many facets of translating the Persian poet Hafiz Sheerazi, maintains at the end that his verse is untranslatable. He uses wine metaphors in the poetry of Hafez to further unpack this challenge. He writes: “It would never occur to a Western poet to express the forbidden intoxications of mysticism by alluding to the forbidden intoxications of wine, for the simple fact that the intoxications of wine have never (if we exclude the brief and local moment of prohibition in the United States) been forbidden in the West.”
For my money, the averments of Al-Jaḥiẓ and Davis are unequivocally true in case of translating mystic poetry. The fact is that mystical experiences are too epiphanic and awe-abounding to be translated into human language even by the mystic who goes through them because the spine of language breaks on heaving up the uncanny load of the illuminations a mystic gets glimpsed with. To translate mystical experience is near to impossible because to describe the indescribable, to speak the ineffable, and to say the unsayable is so onerous that even Eliot had to say:
Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break,
Under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.
So inexplicable it is that Saint Augustine, when tried to make this experience explicable, was rendered wordless, and admitted: “Not asked I know, if you ask me I know not!”
What I want to bring home to the readers is how come it is conceivable to translate what even to mystics is untranslatable in any human language. It is to grapple with the problem of translating what is half translated by the mystics as well. Isn’t it a kind of stupidity, or to say precisely, plunging into a smouldering conflagration on part of a person embarking on the task of translating a mystic like Rumi? If it is so, the next questions that hammer our grey matter are: Who can then translate such poetry, and how can such poetry and mystics as well be brought before the non-natives, especially in the era when global and universal literature has blurred the boundaries of local and national literatures? And, how can the message of universal brotherhood and cosmopolitan outlook mystics like Rumi want to foster be disseminated in the world cutting across the physical and political borders? The answer to these questions is simply the mystic or at least the quasi-mystic persons who, although not experiencing in entirety what the mystic poets they try to translate, have tasted such illuminating and epiphanic moments, in traces though. That is why no matter how hard they strain their nerves, they are not able to translate all that a verse of a mystic is fraught with.
Anyone who has read the thirteenth-century Persian poet–mystic Jalaluddin Rumi will always remember him. His poetry still communicates to individuals from all over the world, in all languages and at all periods. It touches on both the most important demands of the spirit and the most difficult questions of existence. People often have trouble translating Rumi’s work into English, even though he is modern. You can find his work on anthology covers, in quotes on social media, at scholarly conferences, and in devotional readings. His poetry is more than just a set of words. They are a musical, rhythmic, and symbolic world, and every metaphor has a spiritual, cultural, and cosmic meaning. Translating Rumi might either dampen the original’s exuberant essence or sever its strong ties to Persian and Sufi culture. Farrukh Dhondy’s Rumi: A New Selection is the result of a lot of hard work and contemplation. In his essay included in the book, “Rumi, Sufism, and the Modern World”, Dhondy says, “This can’t be a literary or historical introduction to Sufism, nor an adequate biography of Rumi, or even just a foreword to a clutch of poems I’ve translated. This is intended partly as all of these, and as a contention that in our times the identification of Sufism as the enduring interpretation of Islam is a political duty.” This is designed to be all of these things and to show that it is our duty as citizens to consider Sufism as the only true interpretation of Islam in our time.
From the start, Dhondy makes it apparent that his translation is more than just a language exercise. It is a cultural mediation, a deliberate attempt to connect Rumi’s vision with the present world while retaining the integrity of his mystical imagination. He wants to bring the poems to life, make them feel real, and have them connect, all while retaining the Sufi cosmology and Persian lyricism that they were originally written in.
It is hard to translate Rumi into English since there are a lot of complications that are related to each other. The ghazal and the masnavi are two types of Persian poetry that have their unique rhythms and rhymes that don’t necessarily function in English. His pictures of wine, the beloved, the veil, and the mirror are not only pretty, but they also symbolise a lot. They have ties to Sufi religious ideas and references in the Qur’an. Literal translations can render these analogies into dead abstractions, while translations that are overly open might make Rumi look like a mystical universalist character who is not from his time and place. This is hard, as early translators reveal it. Reynold Nicholson’s early translations were accurate and full of details, but they often made Rumi’s poetry sound stiff and smart. Coleman Barks, on the other hand, developed a beautiful, ecstatic translation that made Rumi famous in the West. However, it sometimes lost authenticity and cultural complexity. Dhondy, on the other hand, strikes a balance by retaining the original’s accuracy and musicality while making it easier for individuals who speak English today to read.
Dhondy shows this balance right away in his translation. “All pronouncements are one — / the word is ‘God’. / The syllable that permeates all things / Exploding stars and songs / the robin sings.” This simple sentence hides its complexity and reveals how broad Rumi’s view is. The cosmic and the earthly can dwell together in this area without any worries. The pictures of stars going out and the robin’s singing make one think of how big the universe is and how close the natural world is. This is a typical example of Rumi’s mystical vision, which is plainly stated in English without losing its poetic impact.
Dhondy is really adept at getting over Rumi’s ideas about suffering and transformation. When he writes, “The surgeon has to use the knife and score / The skin in order to effect a cure,” he is using simple, direct language to illustrate a Sufi idea. In this sense, sorrow and suffering are not merely things to avoid; they are the ways that the soul is cleaned and brought back to life. The lyrics, “To be born you must first renounce each breath / And on the journey turn / towards that death,” show the paradoxical interplay between life and death that is at the heart of Rumi’s mysticism. The lines’ slow, steady pace makes the rules seem rigors, and it reminds the reader that spiritual birth requires a conscious confrontation with death. Rumi’s poetry is quite interesting since he talks about love, both human and divine.
Dhondy does an excellent job at showing this. He progresses from being close to individuals on Earth to being one with the universe, and from being devoted to friends to being devoted to God. The lines, “Remember Haji wherever you roam / His love will have to make / your heart his home,” show how warm and close human love can be. In the cosmic thought, “The crack that rends and stills a broken heart / Is that which forces heaven’s doors apart,” broken-heartedness is a way to reach to the beyond, a figurative crack that lets the soul view infinity.
Dhondy maintains these little things in mind without getting into too much detail, which makes the reader feel both near and ecstatic at the same time. There is a lot of cutting humour and irony in Rumi’s writings that can be hard to translate. Dhondy quickly catches up on this light-heartedness: “O wisest Mullah that has ever been / With the longest beard the world has seen / Look in the mirror of the world and time / Behold the timeless barber shaves you clean!” The humour is quick and easy to get, but it still has the sharpness of the original. This indicates that Rumi could make fun of people who thought they were better than everyone else while simultaneously alluding to higher spiritual realities. Dhondy accomplishes it over and over again, but it is not simple to preserve both lightness and profundity in translation. Dhondy demonstrates his proficiency in employing cadence and compression throughout the collection. The pictures are full, but not too full. For instance, “By two—the sound the stones made as they sank / into the water was like wine—he drank.” Listening, or hearing the sounds of nature, is a mystical thing in and of itself.
In the same way, he makes Rumi’s gnomic wisdom obvious in “How futile form and harmony / If ears don’t hear or eyes don’t see,” by reminding the reader that spiritual and aesthetic forms only have meaning when they are seen and heard with consciousness and insight. Rumi’s words about wisdom, humility, and God’s presence are incredibly clear and beautiful. “Knowledge like water flows from high to low / Be humble then, my brother, and let His presence flow,” Dhondy adds. This illustrates the analogy of knowledge to water and the virtue of humility.
The religious saying, “God taught the earthly Adam / To name all things although / He taught the angels only / What he wanted them to know,” is a clear example of how contradictory human understanding is. It emphasises the Sufi idea that the heart of man has more possibilities than rational or angelic understanding.
Dhondy understands Rumi’s mystical images, which glide easily between the big picture and the small picture. The lines, “The knock of rocks, the churning ocean’s swell / Do not affect the pearl inside the shell,” are a strong picture of how the soul keeps strong even when the world is breaking apart. Dhondy utilises the deceptively simple lines, “Earthly loves, / are shattered mirrors,” to highlight how short-lived human love is, while also hinting at the eternal oneness of divine love. The verse has humour, paradox, and spiritual insight, like “Laughter is the caged beast in your breast / Unleash it now before you go to rest.” This illustrates that release of joy is both physical and spiritual, which is like how Sufis focus on experiences that are centred on the body.
Dhondy also talks on the conflict between worldly experience and heavenly direction, which is a theme that runs through all of Rumi’s literature. The poet advises the reader not to want paradise but to be satisfied with God’s love, this land, and these heavens. This signifies that the poet wants the reader to find God in the real world, not in rewards that are far away or hard to understand. The lines, “Embrace God’s love and come to Him alone / — And make the scaffold of this world / Your throne,”also show how closely the physical and spiritual are connected, which is a big aspect of Rumi’s worldview.
One of Dhondy’s most outstanding skills is being able to explain such difficult topics in plain English. Rumi’s ideas about friendship, community, and relationships are equally interesting. The poet writes, “All brothers should be like grapes on a vine / pressed together to make wine.” This indicates that the things that hold us together can change.
In “My friend, in friendship as you nearer drew / My faith in love’s religion stronger grew / How is it that your creation can see / The worlds you made and still they can’t see you?,” Dhondy explains how love and spiritual awareness are quite similar. The tension, contradiction, and depth of these sensations are retained in English in a way that honours both form and meaning. Rumi’s writing also discusses a lot about mortality, giving things up, and sacrifice.
Dhondy translates them in a dark and obvious way: “As Ishmael turned his bare breast to the knife / To Abraham and Him I give my life,” and “To be born you must first renounce each breath / And on the journey turn towards that death.”These lines explain how giving up on your body, feelings, and spirit are all linked. They also discuss about how quitting can transform your life and your poems. These parts have additional meaning since Dhondy pays close attention to rhythm and phrasing. This allows the reader to feel both the weight of giving up and the freedom of surrender.
Rumi’s point of view is also moral and political. Dhondy puts Sufism at the heart of the translation. This puts it in the centre of the present argument over tolerance, pluralism and universality of spirituality. The lines, “The word of the Book can be spoken by the dumb / Say in your heart, ‘When the help of God shall come,’” talk about how heavenly knowledge is available and how it is your moral duty to be open. Also, the lines, “For each one kills the thing he loves / Mortals will not understand / Prepare themselves for sacrifice / Or trust their lives into His hand,” show the conflict between not understanding others and giving up spiritually, which reminds readers of the moral and spiritual themes in Rumi’s work. Dhondy does a great job of turning Rumi’s Persian music and images into English. The expression, “In ecstasy. His colours will waylay / Your mind. Become the tiger stalking prey,” call up the violent and playful feelings of the mystical experience.
The mix of immediacy, vividness, and moral relevance is what makes Dhondy’s technique work. For example, in thoughts about materiality, “Material is the earth and material the stars / O Rumi, seek the spirit — the water not the vase!” or in the intricacies of love and perception, “My beloved is hidden by that veil / Try and bring her face to mind and you will fail.”
Dhondy is easy to understand even when he talks about the Bible and the Quran. The lines, “The child and that faith in Mary grew / And Issah was born to heal me and you,” and “God’s fabric comes from Adam and Eve / As intertwined as threads of the weave,” are examples of how Rumi’s mystical interpretations of the Bible and the origins of humans are made into clear, elegant, and easy-to-understand English. The translation retains Rumi’s cosmology, which shows readers the Sufi idea of God’s presence everywhere and how everything is connected.
Farrukh Dhondy’s Rumi is a translation that does something few others have been able to do: it goes past the philosophical, melodic, and cultural parts of Rumi’s poetry without losing its clarity, lyricism, or immediacy. The translation keeps the original’s humour, contradictions, and tremendous energy, but it makes it easier for people today to understand. Dhondy’s work shows that translation can be more than just a technique to learn a language; it can also be a form of art. At a time when Rumi is being turned into a product and made easier to understand, Dhondy brings back the voice of the mystic with love, care, and knowledge.
He utilises phrases like “Your leaving is the drought, my lips are dry / The only moisture, wells up in my eye” and “Laughter is the caged beast in your breast / Unleash it now before you go to rest,” to show how Rumi’s universe is both real and not real. His translation does more than connect the past and the present; it also lets Rumi’s mystical concepts keep fighting, beating, and playing with each other. Rumi is neither dead nor tamed in Dhondy’s paws. He is full of life, vitality, and light. He bursts like stars and sings like robins beyond language, culture, and time.
This translation makes Rumi clearer, more nuanced, and more beautiful for individuals who are meeting him for the first time or who are coming back to him after a long time. It is a good translation of the mystic’s words in every aspect. It illustrates that Rumi’s speech still speaks to everyone who wants love, understanding, and God, not just to seekers and experts.
Farrukh Dhondy’s Rumi: A New Selection can be ordered here.
A postgraduate gold medalist in English Literature from the University of Kashmir in Srinagar, Wani Nazir, from Pulwama, India, is the author of the poetic collections, …and the silence whispered and The Chill in the Bones. Presently working as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Education, Jammu and Kashmir, he has been writing both prose and poetry in English, Urdu, and his mother tongue, Kashmiri. Wani has poetry and prose in Kashur Qalam, The Significant League, Muse India, Setu, Langlit, Literary Herald, Cafe Dissensus, Learning and Creativity – Silhouette Magazine, The Dialogue Times, and elsewhere.
