The Voice

Sit vōx tua semper ūna cum mente meā.

Nocte et die fīat ēloquēns et laeta.

Sī vōx tua dēfessa sit īdem sīmus,

Nunc vōx tua ceu canna canat melliflua.

Translation of Rūmī’s quatrain #4, Foruzanfar, ed.

See blog entry for October 31, 2021 about Latin and Persian poetry.

We record the sound of everyone’s voice in our head and without too much trouble can tell who it is on the other end of the line, friend or stranger. But some voices—and let me be poetic—seem to be stamped on the heart: the voice of your mother or father, your lover, your most hated foe. And, if you are one of those very special people, the voice of God? I honestly don’t know whose voice Rūmī has in mind in today’s quatrain. Is it his friend’s, Shams-e Tabrīzī, or is it God’s? 

Here is the first line of today’s quatrain with one word طبع tab’ left untranslated for the time being, mainly because I can’t decide what the word means:

آواز ترا طبع دل ما بادا

āvāz-e torā tab’ -e del-ē mā  bādā

For your voice, may there be a tab’ of my heart.

Tab’ , it turns out, contains these main ideas:

stamp impression likeness temperament nature

The word ‘likeness’ seems to be central. A stamp creates the same likeness over and over. A person’s character is likened to outside as well as inside forces. In other words, it is molded by nature and nuture. 

Because Latin does not have a word that encompasses the meanings of tab’, I have made two translations of the first line. The first translation is a wish that the voice be like my heart. 

Sit vōx tua semper ūna cum mente meā.

May your voice always be one with my heart.

In this translation it is hard to understand whether the heart is to be like the voice or the voice the heart. The second translation is based on the meaning of ‘stamp, impression’ and seems to show what the relationship is between the voice and my heart.

Impōnet vōx tua in meum cor stigma.

May your voice mark my heart.

 Stigma, however, may be too strong, for it can mean a ‘brand,’ an identifying mark burned into animals as well as slaves. This notion of branding is not uncommon in Sufi poetry: 

مگر که بر رخ من داغ عشق می بینی

magar bar rox-e man dāgh-e eshq mībīnī

fortasse in faciē stigma amōris aspectās

perhaps you see the brand of love on my face 

(Rūmī, ghazzal 224, Foruzanfar, ed.)

But here Rūmī doesn’t use the word tab’. Instead he uses  داغ dāgh. Dagh is a searing brand. Tab’, on the other hand, is a bit more subtle in meaning and certainly less violent. Perhaps, in today’s poem, all that Rūmī is hoping for is that his heart be affected by the voice. The voice stamps the heart with words. If the heart is soft enough, open enough, the impression made will remain.

The rest of the quatrain helps to bring things into focus. Put simply: if the voice is happy, my heart will be happy.

اندر شب و روز شاد و گویا بادا

andar shab o rūz shād o gūyā bādā

آواز تو گر خسته شود خسته شویم

āvāz-e to gar xaste shavad xaste shavīm

آواز تو چون نای شکر خا بادا 

āvaz-e to chun nāye shakar-xā bādā

Nocte et die fīat ēloquēns et laeta.

Sī vōx tua dēfessa sit īdem sīmus,

Nunc vōx tua ceu canna canat melliflua*.

Literally in Latin:

Night and day, may it become eloquent and joyous.

If your voice tires, may I tire also.

May your voice now sing like a flute mellifluous.

The third line centers around the word خسته [xasta], with a wide range of meanings: wounded, tired, sick, beaten, jaded, and worn out. I suppose the exact meaning is not as important as the implication: I will be affected by what you say and how you say it. Here we see the potency of the voice. The voice, using intonation and intensity, can wound the listener. It can also subvert meaning  and turn a word like ‘good’ into ‘bad,’ ‘bad’ into ‘good.’ Sarcasm, joy, flippancy, disgust, envy—and here ‘fatigue’—are all tools at the disposal of the voice. Your lover may say reassuring words but the voice will either confirm or betray that sincerity. 

The last line speaks of the voice as if it were a reed flute, not just any flute, but a sweet-sounding (in Persian sugar-gnawing) one, perhaps one made of sugar cane. This comparison between voice and reed recalls the famous opening lines of Rūmī’s Masnavī (مثنوی), a six volume treatise in verse filled with the philosophy of Sufism told in a series of parables.  Here are those opening lines, which suggest that the entire work is the soulful sound of the reed flute. (the meter: — · —  —  —  ·  — — — · —)

بشنو این نی چون شکایت می کند

از جدایی ها حکایت میکند

کز نیستان تا مرا بریده اند

در نفیرم مرد و زن نالیده اند

beshno īn nē chon shekāyat mīkonad   

az jodāyīhā hekāyat mīkonad

kaz nēstān tā marā borīda and

dar nafīram mard o zan nālīda and

Hear this reed when it complains;

It tells stories of separation.

Since they cut it from reed bank,

Men and women have lamented with my flute

auribus cannae querēlās imbibe

fābulās disiunctiōnis narrat et

secta cannētō sum; ex illō diē

cum meā plōrent dolentēs fistulā 

Finally, here is today’s quatrain more freely translated:

Let your voice impress my heart

Let it be night and day eloquent and gay

Should it waiver, I will waiver.

Now, let it be a flute as sweet as cane.

*Latin poets shied away from alliteration. Perhaps I should change canat to sonet. 

A Roman Rumi

Up to now, the main emphasis of this blog has been on Latin and more specifically on Horace. But there is a Persian element in the title of this blog that I have largely ignored.

The other day, an odd thought occurred to me: what if I translated some of Rumi’s 13th-century poetry into Latin? After all, the name Rumi comes from ‘Roman’ and harkens back to the days of the vast Roman and Byzantine empires.

Of course, I should have dismissed this crazy notion as a waste of time, a foolhardy attempt at verbal leger-de-main. And for whom would I do this? For those brave few who still know Latin and have an interest in Persian poetry? But the more I thought about it, the more I became intrigued. 

Both Latin and Persian poetry have one important point in common:  both are based on a rhythm of long and short syllables. Here “long” and “short” describe how long it takes to say the syllable. In Latin it takes more time to say vēnit [he came] than it does venit [he comes]. As you can see, syllable length carries meaning. Persian, too, acts in the same way: āz [greed] and az [from]. (See my posting of a year ago, October 28, 2020, for my thoughts on Latin and Persian meter.) 

The poems I have chosen to translate are all from Rumi’s ruba’i. A ruba’i is a quatrain and comes from the Arabic root for "four." In Persian ruba'i each of the four lines has one of the two following dot-dash patterns:

1 _ _ . . _ _ . . _ _ . . _

2 _ _ . . _ . _ . _ _ . . _

( . . indicates that two short syllables can be replaced by one long syllable.)

In both Latin and Persian, a syllable is long if the vowel is long or is a diphthong. The syllable is short if the vowel is short, unless—and here is where the two languages differ—it comes into contact with a consonant or a vowel. This “contact” we will discuss as we go along.

The ruba’i I have chosen is the first of some 1,983 quatrains that Rūmī wrote following the disappearance of his beloved friend and teacher Shams-e Tabrīzī in 1248. These quatrains along with other types of lyric poetry were collected in the sixteenth century and the collection came to be known as the Dīvān-e Shams-e Tabrīzī. 

These poems were a way of Rūmī’s coping with the loss of his friend, and, in his grief, he describes what he is feeling and what he sees around him in mystical terms. The words he uses are often everyday ones, but behind them lies a deeper, richer meaning that defies translation. Is a rose a rose, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, or, as in Rūmī, a lover, a beautiful being, someone unsympathetic, something ephemeral? Such multilayered words you will meet again and again.

In the ruba’i I have chosen, you will encounter the word shab, night, a time of communion and contemplation. You will also meet dūst, friend, lover, whether real or spiritual. And you will meet joy and sorrow, manifesting themselves as shād and ghossa. 

In this ruba'i, Rūmī presents us with a night of darkness. The poet’s mind is alight with the image of his friend. He wants such a night to remain forever, as it would on the Day of Resurrection, when time ends. It is at this point, Rūmī dares the sorrow he feels for his friend to intrude. 

Here is the first line:

 

Ay shab, shād ī; hamīsha shād ā, shād ā

ای شب شادی همیشه شاد آ شاد آ

O night, you are happy; always happy come, happy come.

If I put this line into a grid, it is easy to see the pattern, which is pattern 2. The red indicates a long syllable, the turquoise a short one. A long vowel is indicated with a macron when transliterating Persian script.

1 ay —

2 shab —

3  4 shā ·  ·

5 dī —

6 ha ·

7 mī —

8 sha ·

9 shā —

10  dā —

11 12 shā ·  ·

13 dā —

Right off you will notice that all the long vowels create long syllables, the short vowels short syllables—all of them except the short vowel in shab [night]. Why? Because a syllable with a short vowel that ends in a consonant becomes long.

This consonant can get separated from the vowel. In cells 3 to 5, the words shād ī [happy you are] are divided like this: shā dī. The rule is: when a syllable ends in a consonant, it must give up its consonant to the next syllable, if the next syllable begins with a vowel. This rule also explains what happens to the words shād ā [happy come] in cells 9 to 13

Here is the line in Latin

Nox laeta es laeta tū venītō aeternum.

Night, happy you are; happy you, come forever.

1 nox —

2 lae —

3  4 ta es ·  ·

5 lae —

6 ta ·

7 tū —

8 ve ·

9 nī —

10  tō ae —

11 12 ter ·  ·

13 num —

A macron indicates that the vowel is long as in the word tū.

A short vowel can become long. Nox is long because two consonants follow the short vowel. In this case, x is really two consonants: k and s. Ter in aeternum is long because e is followed by r and n.  

Notice that in cells 2 to 4, the words laeta es [happy you are] become one syllable, pronounced laetas. This happens again in cells 8 to 13. The words venītō aeternum [come forever] coallesce into venitaeternum. The rule is: when a syllable ends in a vowel, it often loses the vowel, if the next syllable begins with a vowel. There is one exception, forms of the verb esse [to be] lose its first vowel and I suppose laeta es could be written laeta's.  

Line two:

Omrat bederāzīye qeyāmat bādā

عمرت بدرازی قیامت بادا

Your life to the length of the Day of Resurrection may it be.

1 om —

2 rat —

3  4 be de ·  ·

5 rā —

6 zī ·

7 ye —

8 qe ·

9 ā —

10 11 mat —

12 bā ·  ·

13 dā —

Here Rūmī has decided to use pattern 1. I have changed it to pattern 2. What has not changed is the length of time it takes to say both the Persian and the Latin lines. 

Sit vīta tua ultimī diēī punctum.

Be your life the Last Day’s time-point.

1 sit —

2 vī —

3  4 ta tu ·  ·

5 a ul —

6 ti ·

7 mī —

8 di ·

9 ē —

10  ī —

11 12 punc ·  ·

13 tum —

Notice that line 2 rhymes with line 1. The rhyme scheme in a ruba’i is  A A B A. Classical Latin poetry, on the other hand, does not rhyme. This is a huge difference between the two poetries. Moreover, Persian poets made a double rhyme. Here ā dā. Double rhymes were essential in a language where, unlike Latin, verbs almost always ended the sentence. I did not attempt double rhymes. I contented myself with single rhymes in Latin.

Line three is:

Dar yāde man āteshī st az sūrate dūst

در یادِ من آتشیست از صورتِ دوست

In my mind is a fire from the face of the friend.

1 dar —

2 yā —

3  4 de ma ·  ·

5 nā —

6 te ·

7 shī —

8 st ·

9 az —

10  sū —

11 12 ra te ·  ·

13 dūst —

Something important has happened in cell 8. The words āteshī st [āteshī ast, a fire there is] create a problem. St cannot migrate over to the next word az [from]. No words begin with st in Persian. This leaves us with shīst. Persians consider this as two syllables: long + short. This phenomenon is called “overlong,” and some Persian speakers say shīste, but most speakers ignore the short syllable.

The Latin translation is:

Mente est ignis propter amantis faciem.

The mind is a fire on account of the beloved’s face.

1 men —

2 te est —

3  4 ig ·  ·

5 nis —

6 prop ·

7 ter —

8 a ·

9 man —

10  tis —

11 12 fac i ·  ·

13 em —

The important thing to notice are the words mente [mind], ignis [fire], and propter [on account of]. Their first syllables are long because two consonants follow the vowel. Look at the -is of ignis. It too is long because the i is followed by at least two consonants: ignis propter. It doesn’t matter if the second consonant begins the next word, it still will affect length even across word boundaries.

 

Line 4 is:

Ay ghossa agar to zahra dārī yād ā

ای غصه اگر تو زهره داری یاد آ

O sorrow, if you have the guts, come [to] mind

1 ay —

2 ghos —

3  4 sa a ·  ·

5 gar —

6 to ·

7 zah —

8 ra ·

9 dā —

10  rī —

11 12 yā ·  ·

13 dā —

Ō maeror, sī audēs, mihi trānsītō animum.

O sorrow, if you dare, for me cross the mind.

1 ō —

2 mae —

3  4 ror ·  ·

5 sī au —

6 dēs ·

7 mi —

8 hi ·

9 trāns —

10  ī —

11 12 tō an i ·  ·

13 mum —

I will end this posting with the poem in Persian, Latin, and two translations in English.

Ay shab, shād ī; hamīsha shād ā, shād ā

Omrat bederāzīye qeyāmat bādā.

Dar yāde man āteshīst az sūrate dūst.

Ay ghossa, agar to zahra dārī, yād ā.

Nox laeta es laeta tū venītō aeternum.

Sit vīta tua ultimī diēī punctum.

Mente est ignis propter amantis faciem.

Ō maeror, sī audēs, mihi trānsītō animum.

O happy night! Come happy forever.

May you last as long as the end of days.

My mind’s afire with the beloved’s face.

Sadness, come, come. Cross my mind, if you dare.

Night, I am glad you are here with me. Stay.

Let this moment be eternity.

My mind’s ablaze with the face of my soul mate.

Sorrow, against this, you are powerless.