Rumi is one of the best-selling poets in America, and one of the most misquoted people on the internet. Some “Rumi” quotes are faithful translations, many are very loose modern versions, and some have no connection to him at all. Here is how to tell the difference.
Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273) was a Muslim scholar and Sufi master who wrote in Persian, steeped in the Quran. Most English readers meet him through the popular versions of the American poet Coleman Barks, who does not read Persian; he reworks earlier literal translations by scholars such as A. J. Arberry and John Moyne into free modern verse. The results are often beautiful, but they are interpretations, and they usually strip out the Islamic references. A widely read 2017 article in The New Yorker by Rozina Ali, “The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi”, traced how this happened. From there, it is a short step to lines that are not Rumi at all.
Tags: Free version based on a real poem, but heavily rewritten · Doubtful not in the scholarly edition of his poems · No source never found in Rumi.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
Free version Barks’s version of a genuine four-line poem. The Persian speaks of a place beyond kufr and Islam, unbelief and faith, where the lover’s passion lives. It is a religious, mystical image; “wrongdoing and rightdoing” and “I’ll meet you there” are the modern version’s own.
“Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system.”
Doubtful Widely shared from Barks’s Essential Rumi, and much loved as a statement of spirituality beyond religion. The scholar Ibrahim Gamard, who has worked on the critical Persian editions, counts it among the poems wrongly attributed to Rumi. The irony is that it is so often used to present Rumi as not Muslim.
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
No source Shared everywhere as Rumi, but it cannot be traced to his works.
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
No source A modern self-help line with no source in the Masnavi or the Divan.
“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”
No source Viral on social media under Rumi’s name, but untraceable in his poetry.
“Love is the bridge between you and everything.”
No source Another popular line with no source in Rumi.
The Masnavi, his great six-book poem, opens with a reed flute torn from its reed bed, crying with longing: the soul separated from God. These lines are from R. A. Nicholson’s literal scholarly translation.
“Listen to the reed how it tells a tale, complaining of separations.”Masnavi I.1 (tr. R. A. Nicholson)
“Every one who is left far from his source wishes back the time when he was united with it.”Masnavi I.4 (tr. R. A. Nicholson)
“Whether love be from this side or from that side, in the end it leads us yonder.”Masnavi I.111 (tr. R. A. Nicholson)
Read more on Rumi’s life and ideas, or see Quotes They Never Said and Fake Gandhi Quotes.
Rozina Ali, The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi (The New Yorker) · Dar al-Masnavi (Ibrahim Gamard) · Rumi on Wikipedia · Rumi
