{"id":9407,"date":"2009-12-30T21:20:38","date_gmt":"2009-12-31T04:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9407"},"modified":"2009-12-30T21:20:38","modified_gmt":"2009-12-31T04:20:38","slug":"translating-classical-persian-poetry-why-retranslate-attars-ilahi-nama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9407","title":{"rendered":"Translating Classical Persian Poetry: Why Retranslate Attar's "Ilahi-Nama?""},"content":{"rendered":"

Farid Al-Din Attar is one of the most important writers in the Persian canon. Not only is he a major poet<\/a> in his own right, but his work offers crucial insight into Sufi thought and experience, while prefiguring other important poets like Rumi<\/a>, Saadi<\/a> and Hafez<\/a>. As well, once translations of classical Persian literature began to appear in English in the 18th<\/sup> and 19th<\/sup> centuries, Attar\u2019s work\u2014along with, among others, that of the three poets I just mentioned\u2014played an important role both in helping the English-speaking world of the time understand Persian and Islamic culture and in bringing into English literature an influence felt by the likes of Matthew Arnold and Lord Byron, and that contemporary writers like Robert Bly continue to find important. It is both ironic and a shame, therefore, that only one of Attar\u2019s major works, Manteq al-Tayr<\/a>,<\/em> exists in a contemporary translation for a general English-language readership, The Conference of the Birds<\/a>, <\/em>published in 1984 by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis. Readable, enjoyable and poetically powerful, The Conference of the Birds<\/em> is the kind of translation we deserve of a literature that has influenced ours in such significant ways. Unfortunately, whatever its merits on scholarly grounds, the same cannot be said\u2014at least not with the same enthusiasm\u2014for John Andrew Boyle\u2019s out-of-print translation of Ilahi-Nama, The Ilahi-Nama or Book of God<\/a>, <\/em>published by the University of Manchester Press in 1976.<\/p>\n

In an essay called \u201cRepresentations of Attar in the West and in the East,\u201d Christopher Shackle criticizes Margaret Smith\u2019s 1932 translation of Manteq al-Tayr <\/em>for being written \u201cin a prose whose archaisms, including biblical \u2018thee\u2019s and \u2018thou\u2019s, cover Attar\u2019s studiously clear style with a patina of reverence\u2026.\u201d (187). Boyle\u2019s Ilahi-Nama <\/em>suffers from the same weakness. Here, for example, is his rendering of the passage in \u201cThe Tale of Marjuma\u201d where the woman berates her brother-in-law for trying to have his way with her:<\/p>\n

She said to him: \u201cArt thou not ashamed before God? Dost thou thus show respect to thy brother?
\nIs this thy religion and thy probity? Dost thou thus keep trust for thy brother?
\nGo, repent, return to God, and eschew this wicked thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

That man said to the woman: \u201cIt is no use; thou must satisfy me at once,
\nOtherwise I will cease to concern myself about thee, I will expose thee to shame, I will slight thee.
\nStraightaway now I shall cast thee to destruction, I shall cast thee into a fearful plight.\u201d (32)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As well, Boyle too often relies on a literalness that ends up being unintentionally comic and\/or almost impossible to comprehend. The first line of the final section of the \u201cExordium,\u201d in which Attar praises and meditates upon the greatness of God\u2014\u201cCome, musk of the soul, open thy musk-bladder, for thou art the deputy of the Vicar of God\u201d (27)\u2014is an example of the former. In \u201cThe Tale of Marjuma,\u201d to give an example of the latter, when the female protagonist is on a ship at sea, about to be raped by the entire crew, she prays to God to save her. This is Boyle\u2019s rendering of that scene:<\/p>\n

When the woman learned of these wicked men\u2019s feelings, she saw the whole sea as a liver from her heart\u2019s blood.
\nShe opened her mouth [and said]: \u201cO Knower of Secrets, preserve me from the evil of these wicked men.\u201d (38)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The phrase \u201cthe whole sea as a liver from her heart\u2019s blood\u201d clearly relates to the idea in Persian culture that the liver, not the heart, is the seat of emotion, but what the phrase means, except in the vaguest of senses, is far from clear. By way of comparison, here is my version of those lines:<\/p>\n

When she learned
\nwhat the men intended, she turned
\nand saw in the sea surrounding her,
\nfilled with her heart\u2019s blood, a liver
\nwide enough to hold all she felt.
\nHer mouth fell open. She knelt,
\nprayed: \u201cProtect me, Knower of Secrets!
\nSave me from this wickedness.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I make no claim that this is great poetry, or that there is no better solution to the \u201cheart\u2019s-blood-liver\u201d metaphor; and I am very aware that whether or not my translation will endure is a question that only time and readers will answer, but the value of bringing Ilahi-Nama<\/em> into 21st<\/sup> century American English poetry is not only, and not even primarily, that it might be successful in these terms. Rather, the value lies in the sustained engagement translation is\u2014both in the writing and the reading\u2014with another culture.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, the value of such engagement is, or ought to be, self-evident, requiring no further justification. On the other hand, however, given the current national and international political moment, it is, or ought to be, impossible to talk about translating Persian literature without also talking about both the state of relations between Iran and the United States and the political unrest that has focused world attention on Iran since the contested presidential elections there in June 2009. Each of those dynamics demands that the people of the United States learn as much about the Iranian people, their culture and their history, as we possibly can, especially since our collective ignorance about Iran has been profound since diplomatic relations between our two countries ended after the Islamic Revolution in 1979-80. Boyle\u2019s translation of Ilahi-Nama<\/em> is not a text to which people are likely to go for that kind of learning, most immediately because it is out of print, but also because its archaic diction and biblical style is more likely than not to alienate them.<\/p>\n

I am neither na\u00efve nor arrogant enough to assume that my translation of Ilahi-Nama<\/em> will by itself effect any change, large or small, in US-Iran relations or that it will alter even one reader\u2019s notions about Iran and\/or Islam. I do know, however, that each translated book made available to a reading public increases the likelihood of such change taking place. At the very least because it offers a radically different view of Islam from the version practiced and promulgated by the current Iranian government and can therefore help to combat the anti-Muslim stereotypes currently in fashion, but even more significantly because it is a great work of literature written by one of the world\u2019s greatest poets, whom we in the United States deserve to know better than we do, a new literary translation of Ilahi-Nama <\/em>should be among the books making such change possible.<\/p>\n

Sources<\/h3>\n

\u02bbA\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101r, Far\u012bd al-D\u012bn. The Il\u0101h\u012b-N\u0101ma Or Book of God of Far\u012bd Al-D\u012bn <\/em>\u02bb<\/em>A<\/em>\u1e6d\u1e6d<\/em>\u0101r.<\/em> Trans. John Andrew Boyle. Persian Heritage Series, Vol. 29 Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976.<\/p>\n

Shackle, Christopher. \u201cRepresentations of Attar in the West and in the East: Translations of the Mantiq Al-Tayr<\/em> and the Tale of Shaykh \u1e62an\u02bb\u0101n.\u201d Attar and the Persian Sufi Tradition: The Art of Spiritual Flight<\/em><\/a>. Eds. Leonard Lewisohn, and Christopher Shackle. London: I. B. Tauris, 2006. 165-93.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Farid Al-Din Attar is one of the most important writers in the Persian canon. Not only is he a major poet in his own right, but his work offers crucial insight into Sufi thought and experience, while prefiguring other important … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[133,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iran","category-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}