Book: The Forty Rules of Love
Author: Elif Shafak
Publication Year: 2009
Genre: Fiction/Historical Fiction
Country: Turkey
Book: The Essential Rumi
Author: Rumi (translator: Coleman Barks)
Publication Year: 1273 (1997)
Genre: Poetry
Today’s books spans time and space from Turkey in the 13th century to modern day Massachusetts. Ella Rubenstein starts working as a reader for a literary agent. The first manuscript she is given is for a book called, Sweet Blasphemy, a historical novel about the friendship between the Turkish poet, Rumi, and his mentor, Shams of Tabriz.
The novel plays out as a ballet between the text of the manuscript (the novel within the novel) and the slow unravelling of Rubenstein’s home life. She contacts the author, Aziz Zahara, a Scottish born photographer and Sufi, resulting in a burgeoning relationship between the two.
The main plot reminds me of something Margaret Atwood would write (The Blind Assassin is the novel that springs to mind) combined with something by Nora Ephron (Heartburn is the only book I can think of as it’s the only one of hers I have so far read). Yet as we largely travel these roads for the countries from which they come and tell us about, the main focus in this entry is Zahara’s novel and the life of Rumi.
Indeed, when I had finished reading the novel, I found a short collection of Rumi’s poetry and read through it in the course of an evening, though admittedly not in any great depth. Of course we have to judge it based on the time in which it was written, but it is easy to see why Rumi’s work is still in print today.
At times his aphorismic verses are like something you would expect to find in The Little Book of Calm, or similar collections of inspirational quotes (I’m sure Rumi features heavily in such stocking filler books). But there is clearly much lost in translation. Poetry is arguably the hardest of all literary forms to translate faithfully into other languages.
We
are dealing here with Turkey, but Rumi was actually born in modern day
Afghanistan to Persian parents (he wrote mostly in Persian). His family moved
to Samarkand in what is now Uzbekistan when he was about five. However, he spent most of
his life in Konya, a city in Central Anatolia in the Asian part of Turkey. He
worked as a teacher and a jurist until, in his late 30s, he met Shams of
Tabriz, who transformed his life and turned him into the poet we remember
today.
The sort of thing posted by 'that' friend (we all have one).
Shams was also a Persian and a poet. Tradition has it that Shams instructed Rumi for forty straight days before fleeing to Damascus. Though as with any event that happened in the mists of time, there are any number of stories about the friendship between the two, including the idea that Shams was ultimately murdered by those who thought he was too close to Rumi and even suggestions of a physical relationship between the two men. Such prurient gossip is found in all ages of mankind.
This is then is the background against which Sweet Blasphemy is set. It is told by multiple narrators, including Rumi and Shams, as well as Rumi’s wife, sons and daughters. The mythology surrounded the relationship of the two men is spun for all its worth and many, though not all, of the most outlandish stories, rumours and outright fables are given their due.
The normal difficulties reviewing a book are exacerbated when there is a book within a book. We can never be sure what characterises the author’s beliefs and what is that of the characters and the author within the author. Even with a surface level novel, we must bear in mind what Sir Author Conn Doyle wrote in his poem, To an Undiscerning Critic:
Have you not learned, my
esteemed communicator,
That the created is not the creator?
That said, if there is one criticism of either Shafak, or more likely Zahara, it is that Rumi is shown to have never drunk wine in his life, in line with the general Islamic ban on the drinking of alcohol. Yet even in a cursory reading of Rumi’s poetry one can find many references to the drinking of wine, its deleterious effects and even the pain of waking up with a hangover.
The
Tales of the Arabian Nights, which contains stories told over many centuries across
the Middle East (although most of the ones we know in the west were written by
Europeans in homage to their form), feature frequent tales of drunken
debauchery. The prohibition on alcohol seems to have been only liberally
enforced during much of the Middle Ages. And as we have seen in A Curse on Dostoyevsky (see Afghanistan), even the Mujahideen were tolerant of its consumption.
It’s a minor criticism and isn’t even really a criticism, given that the author of Sweet Blasphemy is a convert to Islam and his positive portrayal of Rumi is understandable within the confines of the novel. There is much else in the enclosed novel that is fanciful, but there are very few novels about which one cannot say the same.
I am in no way qualified to opine on the significance of beginning each sentence with a ‘b’ word, but the Arabic form of the letters apparently contains a dot, considered within Sufi thoughtto represent the universe. Given Aziz Zahara is a Sufi in the novel and Rumi himself practiced Sufism for many years, the choice of each first word seems to unite the two narratives.
I suppose it also connects the story back to Islam. Although to make this truly work, the ninth chapter would need to start with a different letter, as that is the only surah in the Koran that does not begin with Bismillah ir Rehman ir Rahim. I’m very much nitpicking at this point (it’s the Joycean in me). The overall effect is impressive. Like poets who write tautograms: poems containing word that start with the same letter of the alphabet.
Anyway, it’s a satisfying novel with an ambiguous ending (the best kind). It is one of a number of novels I have recently read told by multiple narrators (see also: Trumpet by Scottish writer, Jackie Kay, which is excellent). Shafak is another writer to whom I will definitely return beyond this project..
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| Elif Shafak |
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