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    The Songs of the Reed by Rumi: A Hermeneutical Perspective
    The Songs of the Reed by Rumi: A Hermeneutical Perspective
    The Songs of the Reed by Rumi: A Hermeneutical Perspective
    Ebook207 pages1 hour

    The Songs of the Reed by Rumi: A Hermeneutical Perspective

    By Seyed Mohammad Hosseini Fard and Amin Karimnia

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    The present book encompasses all 23 English-translated versions of "The Songs of The Reed", the first 18 couplets of Masnavi Manavi, Book I by Rumi, the greatest Iranian Mystical poet, called Nei Name, from 1772 to 2015 and offers a hermetical model of refreshed innovation to shed some light of those aspects of any given literary text unknown or feebly-explored hitherto. It should not go unsaid that the proposed model provides copious examples to a better and more profound appreciation of these newly examined dimensions. Even though only one form of literary text, poetry, was dealt with through this model, it would be a gross underestimate to relegate its functionality to this only genre. However, as there are and will be infinite answers to any given question, the author firmly stipulates that the proposed model is far from perfect and hopes it would spur the interested readers into making attempt to reconstruct the model and improve its effectiveness.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu.com
    Release dateJan 20, 2016
    ISBN9781329841451
    The Songs of the Reed by Rumi: A Hermeneutical Perspective

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      Book preview

      The Songs of the Reed by Rumi - Seyed Mohammad Hosseini Fard

      The Songs of the Reed by Rumi: A Hermeneutical Perspective

      The Songs of the Reed

      by

      Rumi:

      Hermeneutical Perspective

      Seyed Mohammad Hosseini Fard, Amin Kaimnia

      Lulu Press, Inc.

      3101 Hillsborough St, Raleigh, NC 27607, United States

      Phone:+1 919-459-5858

      Copyright © 2016 Seyed Mohammad Hosseini Fard

      and Amin Karimnia

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

      Cover design and edition by Seyed Alireza Hosseini Fard;   Tel: 0098 936 545 1478

      ISBN: 978-1-329-84145-1

      Dedications:

      To my PARENTS

      For their Endless Love,

      Support  

      &

      Encouragement

      Summary

      The purpose of the present study was to validate the English translations of Rumi’s poem, ‘The Songs of the Reed’, through a hermeneutic perspective. For this purpose, twenty-three different translated versions of ‘The Songs of the Reed’ by Rumi were extracted for a descriptive analysis. Kharmandar & Karimnia’s (2013) hermeneutical model was used as a framework for evaluation. Two different Persian interpretations of Masnavi Manavi by Zamani (1993) and Forouzanfar (1987), along with two different English dictionaries, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary (2015) and Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2015), were also consulted to analyze the results of the data. The results indicated that Kharmandar & Karimnia’s model (2013) was helpful in comparative and evaluative studies. Moreover, it would help poetry translators to become more conscious about where the pitfalls lay and what strategies can be employed in poetry translation. Some modifications were also suggested to the model.

      CHAPTER ONE

      Introduction

      Introduction

      In what follows, statement of the problem, significance of the study, research question, hypothesis, the outline of the study, objective of the study, and finally definition of the key terms will be given.

      Poetry is the expression of feelings experienced by a poet. Nair (1991, p. 93) argues that poetry is an imaginative rendering of a poet's feelings and the experiences. According to the New Oxford Dictionaries of English, poetry is defined as "literary work in which the expression of feelings and ideas is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; poems collectively or as a genre of literature." (2001, p. 1430). As one can understand from the above sentences, poetry is a complicated network of a person’s feelings and thoughts that we call a poet.

      Additionally, Plato states that the poet is the light and winged holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and reason is no longer in him (as cited in Raffel, 2010, p. vii). According to Perrine, even the primitive people have used poetry, and it has been written and listened to by different people (1963). He states: The poet, forms his/her own store of felt, observed or imagined experiences, selects, combines and reorganizes. (1963, p. 553). So, the poet deals with his/her deep experiences, and expresses them in his/her poetry. How a poet gets those feelings and thoughts and writes in a piece of paper is a mystery, and it becomes more and more complicated when someone without poetic intuitions tries to translate a literary text. That’s why translation of poetry is a demanding job.

      Translation of poetry is considered as one of the most challenging and difficult jobs in translation world. Some experts sometimes claim that it is impossible to translate a piece of poetry. Translating poetry is so hard to the extent that Shelley (as cited in Bassnet & Lefevere, 2001, p. 58) once declared that:

      It was as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as to seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower.

      For understating poetry, one must consider two different aspects: it is essential to know the literal sense as well as the symbolic or the meaning that is supposed to be understood by readers. On the other hand, the selection of words is also important because every word makes a special effect on readers’ minds. The first problem one faces in attempting to translate a piece of poetry is the importance of both its meaning and form; moreover, the message and impact that it creates on audiences’ minds. Hence, the translator should make decision whether scarify the form or the meaning. According to Nida & Taber the conflict between the dictates of form and content becomes especially important where the form of the message is highly specialized(1964, p. 126) as it is in poetry.

      As one can understand from the above paragraphs, it is not only one or two elements that make poetry difficult and sometimes impossible to translate. When someone is dealing with emotions, feelings, personal experiences, etc., it would be very difficult to understand the poet’s intention behind the words and to transfer it to the target language. According to Heylen, each text conveys a particular ideology and view point of the original writer through which the author expresses his or her opinion of the world. Since the form of poetry cannot be fully imitated and followed in the process of translating from one language to another, some changes might occur in the semantics as well as point of view of the original poem because the translator must transfer the profusion emotions, demonstrated by the original poet as well as the meaning. There are some troublesome aspects of poetry which might make the translator do some changes during the translation process in order to create the same situation in the target language (1993, p. 5).

      In such processes, we should identify some frameworks to check the outcome of the translation. Moreover, we need some tools to check the inputs as well. Such a framework can work as a criterion to evaluate the translation. A hermeneutical framework can help us during this process to take linguistic, cultural and authorial intention aspect into consideration and evaluate the translations and decide which one is better.

      1.2. Statement of the Problem

      Translation of poetry is the most difficult and demanding job for every translator. For some, this kind of translation seems impossible. Maybe, that’s why some believe that a poet must translate a piece of poetry.

      Moreover, Translation of poetry must be viewed not only as the translation from source language to target language, but also as a mediation between cultures. The translator should be aware of cultural and linguistic concepts in both languages: the source and the target language. Finding the proper equivalence is not only a difficult job for a translator, but also some times, it seems impossible. This derives from, sometimes, the fact that there is no concept in target language, and this absence makes it so hard. For achieving such a meticulous and challenging job, the translator should know all about the text, the interpretation(s) behind the original text and even the poet.

      The first eighteen verses of Masnavi Manavi, Book I, By Rumi Called       ‘The Songs of the Reeds’ and the essence of the whole six-volume book, accentuates the magnitude of these 18 verses that many translators attempted to render them into English. Some keywords including Beshno, Jodayee, Neyestaan, Asle khish, Jamiat, Ser, Naaleh, Nist baad, Nist baad, Harif etc have been selected on semantic and philosophical grounds. Each of these terms has so diverse definitions in different Masnavi interpretation books that it is hardly possible to catch the accurate meanings behind such words. Mystical language, the literary complexity of Rumi’s texts, especially Masnavi that was mixed with plain and sometimes difficult language, variety of Islamic educations, use of stories and folklores, Quran, religious sayings, Preaching methods, theology, Islamic and Eastern philosophy, are additional factors in demystifying such concepts associated with these terms and this, in turn, consequently makes ​​it difficult to understand and translate them into other languages.

      Beshno is the opening word of this grandiose masterpiece. Due mainly to being Molana’s choice to open up his word, this keyword has been selected. The next term is Jodaee. What does Jodaee mean? In an interpretation of Jodaaee by Zamani (1993), an alienation from the origin, spiritual world, has been cited. Rather than the term Nei, Neyestaan has been chosen, so that not two same terms be selected, and the more challenging one was chosen instead. The term Asle Khish implies man’s referral to himself. Man is a passenger who departs from himself to himself. This term has been selected in terms of semantic complexity. According to Zamani (1993), "Jamiat means meeting rather than crowd". Due to their semantic complexity and their differences in Persian and English; the terms Asle khish, Jamiat, and Ser have been selected. Naaleh implies Rumi’s poem. Understanding this meaning entails perception of its Persian interpretation which is highly hard and challenging for the translator. Nist Baad and Nist Baad are homonyms, although the spelling and pronunciation of both are the same; however they are divergent in meaning. Due to its semantic nuance in Persian interpretation, the term Harif has been selected. Here, Harif means man’s companion and not his opponent.

      Significance

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