Although the question of literary form does not enter very largely into a version so literal as this, I have attempted to preserve the idiomatic flavour of the original[1]—which can be more firmly caught and retained in a prose translation—and also its variety of style, ranging from a plain semi-colloquial manner of expression to a noble and elevated diction like that employed by the author in his mystical odes. On certain topics he is too outspoken for our taste and many pages are disfigured by anecdotes worthy of an Apuleius or Petronius but scarcely fit to be translated into the language of these writers. To omit them, however, would defeat the object I have in view, namely, to provide a complete version of the work which, notwithstanding the author's passion for self-effacement, reveals the breadth and depth of his genius most adequately. It is important for our comprehension of him, to know that he could tell ribald stories in the easy tone of a man of the world, and that the contrast often drawn between him and Saʿdí takes no account of some marked features which the authors of the Mathnawí and the Gulistán possess in common.
This is a translation for students of the text, but I venture to hope that it may attract others neither acquainted with Persian nor specially concerned with Ṣúfism. To those interested in the history of religion, morals, and culture, in fables and folklore, in divinity, philosophy, medicine, astrology and other branches of mediaeval learning, in Eastern poetry and life and manners and human nature, the Mathnawí should not be a sealed book, even if it cannot always be an open one.
The prose headings inserted at short intervals throughout the poem, transliterated words with the exception of proper names, and all direct quotations from the Qurʾán except such as occur in the headings are printed in italics. A few foot-notes have been added, some of them for the benefit of the general reader.
- ↑ It may be said that this aim is inconsistent with the translator's duty to write his own language idiomatically. That is true, and no compromise will unite the contraries, but I have done my best to combine them.
CAMBRIDGE,
December 1925
POSTSCRIPT
It would not be fitting that this volume, the first to appear in the "E. J. W. Gibb Memorial" Series since the death of Professor E. G. Browne, should leave my hands without giving some expression to the great sorrow felt by the Trustees at the loss of the Scholar who presided over the foundation of the Trust, took the
