Arabic Literature and Language – serie

No poet of the twentieth century has captured the experience of Arabic-speaking people in the modern world better than Tayseer al-Sboul. One of Jordan’s most celebrated writers, educated in that country, as well as in Lebanon and Syria, he faced the dilemmas and contradictions of the Arab world during the Cold War years. Caught between tradition and modernity, he dreamed of a great Arab nation. With unflinching courage and brutal honesty, he revealed his life in poems: his family, his connection with his homeland, his rejection of tradition, his flirtation with leftist ideology, his love affairs, his politics, his experience of war and defeat, his inner struggle, his quest for truth. Through al-Sboul’s poems, we understand the struggle of one Arab man to make sense of a world gone mad. Caught between the restrictions of traditional life, the cruelty of war, and the political oppression of the modern Middle East, he was determined to find his own peace, though it proved impossible. After the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict, he lost all hope and took his own life. Featuring facing-page Arabic-English translations, this volume brings al-Sboul’s poetry into English for the first time.

This new volume of Rumi’s works, the first-ever English translation of his Arabic poems, will be exciting for the newcomer to Rumi’s verses as well as to readers already familiar with his mystical philosophy. The poems take the reader on a journey of spiritual exploration, ecstatic union, cruel rejection, and mystic reconciliation. Rumi reveals his soul and welcomes everyone to his spiritual feast.This dual-language volume opens a treasury of Rumi’s mystic thought and startling poetry. His verses pulsate with desire and longing, with sensuality, and with ecstatic celebration. Rumi found in his mystic poetry a vehicle for the expression of the endless spiritual bounties of love. He placed love at the center of his faith and doctrine, and he pronounced it to be the goal of his life and the only form of true worship. This collection is stunningly rendered in English by an award-winning poet and a distinguished translator of Arabic poetry.

Exciting to those unfamiliar with Rumi’s verse as well as to the veteran scholar, this volume, following on Love Is My Savior, offers more of the little-known Arabic poems of Mawlana Rumi. These poems take the reader on a journey of spiritual search, ecstatic union, universal salvation, and mystic reconciliation, in which Rumi reveals his soul and welcomes everyone to his spiritual feast. This dual-language volume, with its informative introduction, is one of the first to bring Rumi’s Arabic poems into English, and it opens a treasury of Rumi’s mystic thought and electrifying poetry. The poems pulsate with desire and longing, with erotic meaning, and with ecstatic celebration. Rumi found in his mystic poetry a vehicle for the expression of the endless spiritual bounties of love. The reader will find, at the center of his faith and doctrine, love and a strong belief in universal salvation and unlimited generosity.