Having read the Majnun/Qais version earlier this year, I have now moved on to the Nizami version of Layla and Majnun. I am not 100% sold on the fake twee style of the French translation I am reading, but am making good progress nonetheless.
#poetry #Azerbaijan
painting of Majnun in the wilderness found on Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
pickGood parallel account of the meeting of Rumi with Shams, a Sufi, which made him become a poet, and a modern day woman trying to make sense of her loveless marriage, who also meets a modern Sufi. I learned about Sufism and can see its attraction and the need for love, but I am not as enthralled with it as others might be. Still it is good. I began following Shafak.
pickDubbo‘s book swap delivered the goods while I was home for the holidays!
Starting another one by Shafak that my Library has. About the poet Rumi.
pickElla‘s been a SAHM most of her married life, but now the kids are old so she has gotten a job as a reader for a literary agent. The first script is Sweet Blasphemy. A book about Rumi and his spiritual companion Shams of Tabriz. Shams is a traveling dervish, and he has 40 rules for life and love, and he follows a philosophy on unity of people and religion. Not everyone agrees with this
#Turkey #foodandlit #2009 #192025
so-soI really wanted to like this one, and as a piece of historical fiction, based on the meeting of Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, it‘s interesting - I had no knowledge of either men or of Sufism. But the parallel story set in modern era America is a bit mundane. If feels maybe it was added to make the novel palatable for Western tastes?
