LEYLI AND MAJNUN
HajMa Group of Companies
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
This is the love-story told at the camp fire and among the tents in the desert. Both girl and boy, Leyli and Majnun, are children of two little wandering tribes. Syd Omri, chief of his clan, has a son Kais. Kais and Leyli, the daughter of another petty chief, are children together. Side by side they sat in the schools, and the lesson they learnt is read in each other's eyes. But the poet hurries us on to his tragedy. He spares us only a little of their early spring and the dreams and ideals of childhood, and passes on to the long, pitiless summer of separation and fruitless desire. Leyli is taken away with the rest of her tribe from the city of Bagdad into the distant hills, and Kais being left alone, deprived of his Leyli, is no longer Kais, but Majnun - mad of love. Like all the inspired madmen of old, he seeks the wilderness. Like them, he has dominion over wild beasts; the lion is his friend, and the jackal his servant. Syd Omri sets forth to find the father of Leyli, and implores her hand for his son. But no one wants a madman for a son-in-law. In the East, where madness and inspiration go hand in hand, the madman is always a man of God, a man of awe, one to propitiate, but never to love, pity, and heal. So Ibn Salam rides by with his money bags and his sound mind in his sound body, and Leyli, like a well-bred young lady, is passed to the wealthy bidder, and Kais remains immortally Majnun.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this substantial volume, Davis offers the first verse translation of the 12th-century Persian poet Nezami, whose love story between Layli and Majnun has been likened to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Similarities abound between the two texts, which both relay the trials of lovers thwarted by their families: "Their mingled scents were sweet, as though no care/ Or sorrow could survive when they were there,/ But even so their mingled, bitter cries/ Proclaimed their sadness to the morning skies./ Love came; its sword did not discriminate/ But cleared the house, and left it to its fate." Written in a highly regular rhyme scheme, Davis's rhythmic translation is full of lush imagery, with each title signaling a section of the story ("Majnun's Father Advises His Son," "Majnun Frees Another Deer from a Huntsman"). As Davis states in his introduction, these poems are "hybrid affairs in which... mores and sensibilities are blended with something that has originated in a remote time or place, or both," and the story shares notable affinities with the prose romances of other cultures. This is a highly engaging tale of impossible love.
