Ten Greatest Poets – Rumi, Sufi Mystic

RUMI, SUFI MYSTIC

In 2015 Pew Research Center estimated total Christians at 2.3 billion or 31.2% of the world population, while the second largest population by religion, Muslims, was estimated at 1.8 billion or 24.1%. Islam, the religion of one quarter of the world population, defines, to say the least, a very populous cultural bloc, almost two-thirds of which hails from Asia-Pacific, nearly all the remainder from North and Sub-Saharan Africa. The size and scope of the total Muslim population inevitably indicates that Islam exerts a major cultural influence worldwide. Therefore, our selection of the ten greatest poets includes at least one representative from this cultural bloc.

At first it would seem logical to include the author of the Koran, the prophetic book of the Muslims, in our list. After all, the Koran consists of poetry and prose, intermixed.

However, authorship of the Koran is a controversial issue. Muslims claim the Koran is written, literally, by Allah, so that some of them even hold that the words of the Koran are uncreated, co-eternal with Allah. About these religious beliefs and related we do not wish to weigh in because our approach is secular, not religious. In addition, we decline to touch upon Muslim religious sensitivities, whether of individuals or groups. For the foregoing reasons, the Koran is excluded from our consideration.

If we had composed our list in the nineteenth century, we might have selected someone the likes of Omar Khayyám, whose poetry, written mostly in Persian, and translated into English by Edward Fitzgerald, among others, was very popular at the time in the Anglophone world.

Today we choose Rumi—or Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, his full name—because his work crossed the boundaries of the Islamic world to encounter a large, receptive audience in the postmodern West. English translations of his poetry have sold millions of copies. Several years ago he was described—accurately—as the best-selling poet in the U.S. His explosive mass appeal might be likened to the discovery of a medieval tahini recipe suddenly the rave in American restaurants.

Rumi is a fixture in the Islamic canon. He is widely esteemed in the Islamic world, especially in Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey. In Afghanistan, his place of birth, he is honored as a national poet. The same claim is advanced by Iran and Turkey, fellow heirs to Rumi’s legacy. In Iran his verses are set to music, taught in schools, and displayed on the walls of Tehran. In Turkey a shrine erected in the thirteenth century over the location where his remains have been laid to rest is regularly visited by millions of tourists and pilgrims.

Is his poetry really all that good?

Rumi’s output is prodigious. His poetry consists of the Masnavi, or Masnavi-i Ma'navi, translated “Spiritual Couplets,” six books of approximately 25,000 verses or 50,000 lines, and the Dīwān-e Kabīr, “Great Work,” or Dīwān-e Shams-e Tabrīzī, or “The Works of Shams of Tabriz,” about 40,000 verses long.

Rumi wrote about the depth and mystery of human experience, love and mysticism in particular. He created lyric poetry of enduring value and interest. A brief sampler of his work conveys a sense of its quality and range.

Rumi is direct and straightforward in this poem about the love between a husband and wife. The love of the spouses, Rumi says, is kept alive and flaming by time regularly set aside for mutual self-giving and tender affection. His insights speak to the present day.

A married couple used to come see me once in

a while. Among the many I knew who were wed,

they appeared the most happy.

One day I said to them, “What marital advice

could you offer to others that might help them

achieve the grace you found?”

And the young woman blushed and so did her

husband; so I did not press them to answer.

But I knew.

Their secret was this: That once every day, for

an hour, they treated each other as if they were

gods and would, with all their heart, do anything,

anything, their beloved desired.

Sometimes that just meant holding hands and

walking in a forest that renewed their souls.

Translation by Daniel Ladinsky was originally published in The Purity of Desire: 100 Poems of Rumi (2012).

See: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/their-secret-was

This next poem alludes to mystical experience, and it is characteristically Sufi in its musings. It expresses the belief that union with God—the Beloved—can be attained through personal spiritual devotion and regular ascetic practice. The poem makes this point by using simple, striking metaphors—“farmer of the heart,” “carpenter of my own soul.”

With every breath I plant the seeds of devotion—

I am a farmer of the heart.

Day and night I see the face of union—

I am the mirror of God.

Every moment I shape my destiny with a chisel—

I am the carpenter of my own soul.

Translation by Jonathan Star was originally published in Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved (1997), page 170.

Sufi poetry is famous for expounding the spiritual quest and celebrating mystical love. Two more examples below allow us to develop a better sense of this type of poetry.

I said, This longing in my heart

is more a curse than a cure.

He said, What is your cure?

I said, Union.

He said, And what is my cure?

I said, Union.

Translation by Jonathan Star was originally published in Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved (1997), page 176.

Underlying the poem is a spiritual theology which says that the goal of the Sufi quest is union, oneness with the Beloved, to the extent that it is possible in this mortal life. Union is attained by reverting to a primeval state of innocence.

This poem about a mysterious dream uses paradox very effectively. Paradox in mystical literature is a vehicle for describing the ineffable.

I dreamt that the Beloved entered my body,

pulled out a dagger,

and went looking for my heart—

He couldn’t find it.

So he struck anywhere.

I woke up

counting this as a blessing.

Translation by Jonathan Star was originally published in Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved (1997), page 104.

Besides inciting our attention with provocative metaphors, Rumi in the following poem instructs us about the universal human condition. He observes, for example, that laughter and compassion reside covertly in our hearts. Implicitly, we are challenged to consider what might persuade them to leave their hiding place.

What is the body? Endurance.

What is love? Gratitude.

What is hidden in our chests? Laughter.

What else? Compassion.

Translation by Coleman Barks was originally published in The Essential Rumi: New Expanded Edition (2004).

See: https://blog.mindvalley.com/poems-about-life/

The symmetric structure of the short poem makes it more memorable.

Rumi’s popularity in the West is due in no small measure to his profession of Sufism, a development of Islam that cuts across the two major denominations, Sunni Islam and Shia Islam. Sufism has been described as esoteric Islam, in contradistinction to exoteric Islam, which is satisfied with fulfilling the explicit teachings of Muhammad.

Mainstream Islam is exoteric. Sufi adherents have been approximated at 5% of the total Muslim population.

Sufism focuses on cultivating interior devotion and ascetic practice. The way of the Sufi is concisely described by Huston Smith in Islam: A Concise Introduction (2001), page 77:

“…Sufis were impatient for their reward, if we may put the matter thus. They wanted to encounter God directly in this very lifetime. Now.

“This called for special methods, and to develop and practice them the Sufis gathered around spiritual masters (shaikhs), forming circles that, from the twelfth century onward, crystallized into Sufi orders (tariqahs). The word for the members of these orders is faqir—pronounced fakir; literally poor, but with the connotation of one who is “poor in spirit.” In some ways, they constituted a spiritual elite, aspiring higher than other Muslims, and willing to assume the heavier disciplines their extravagant goals required. We can liken the tariqahs to the contemplative orders of Roman Catholicism, with the difference that Sufis generally marry and are not cloistered. They engage in normal occupations and repair to their gathering places (zawiyahs, Arabic; khanaqahs, Persian) to sing, dance, pray, recite their rosaries in concert, and listen to the discourses of their Master, all to the end of reaching God directly.”

The above excerpt should suffice. It is not our purpose to go into detail about the Sufi way.

Sufism is a moderate, tolerant form of Islam—the very opposite of violent jihadist extremism—and it is probably for this reason, besides Sufi promotion of the mystic way, a pursuit that Sufism shares with other major world religions, that Rumi’s outstanding lyric poetry has been warmly acclaimed in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West.

Dante Alighieri, Quintessential Poet of the Middle Ages:

https://poetryofgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2018/06/ten-greatest-poets-dante-alighieri.html

Rumi Statue (2003) by Eray Okkan, Buca, Turkey