Profound spiritual insights
Shortly after his birth in present-day Afghanistan in 1207, Rumi’s family were forced to flee Mongol invaders, eventually settling in Konya, in modern-day Turkey. It was there in 1244 that he encountered the eccentric Sufi dervish, Shams of Tabriz. Their intense spiritual friendship was shattered by Shams’s sudden departure – or possibly his murder – a devastating loss which changed the course of Rumi’s life, transforming him from orthodox Islamic scholar to radical ecstatic poet.
Over the next 30 years, he produced prodigious outpourings of verse and prose, addressing readers with rare directness. Rumi’s voice is by turns confrontational and playful, lyrical and abrupt, and his range is extraordinary: the pleasures and pains of love; the highs and lows of human behaviour; the everyday and the other-worldly; the path to the tavern and the path to God. Rumi’s universal truths might come from a religious text about the prophet Muhammad, a tender love poem, or an obscene folktale about an easily aroused masseur. With his inclusive vision of the world and his tolerance, wisdom and humour, this 13th-century mystic continues to speak to 21st-century readers with startling immediacy.
Coleman Barks first encountered Rumi’s poems in 1976, when a fellow author showed him academic translations with the suggestion that ‘these poems need to be released from their cages’. Barks responded by producing what he calls ‘playful palimpsests’ – epigrammatic free-verse translations that allow Rumi’s distinctive voice to bridge vast gaps of culture, geography, language and time. Barks’s Selected Poems capture Rumi’s spirit without imprisoning it.
This beautiful edition features a spectacular binding designed by Marian Bantjes. Her intricate Islamic-inspired geometric patterns also frame every page of text, evoking the music and whirling dances associated with Rumi’s poems, and encouraging us to lose ourselves in his words.