sufis

 

way back in the day when i briefly studied a tiny bit of islamic history i kept bumping up against these sufi poet guys and, even at that age, i really liked what i read. over the years i kept coming across them and they still number against the poets i'm most intrigued by. i say intrigued as i can't speak or read any of the languages they're actually written in so the issue of translation is a real one. coleman barks, it seems, is taken as a particular offender in this respect. i don't know enough to give an informed opinion but i note on his wiki pages his work is described as 'interpretations' rather than translations. as for their treatment of islam, again as a european anglophone reader, it's impossible for me to say but i did read sholeh wolpe's conference of the birds recently which was utterly, beautifully, rooted in the idea of faith, so much so that, reading it, i kept saying to myself that, in the original, as a believer, this must be fantastic.

anyway, i'm happy aeon came up with the goods in my feed over the weekend with a discussion of sufism and the video above