Hampstead Authors' Society No. 51 Issue 9 March 2005
HASTalk by Nicholas Spice
LRB Editor
and Publisher
Is
the London Review of Books an anomaly:
a 19th century magazine beached in the 21st century?
7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. Monday, 21st March
Nicholas Spice has been Publisher of the London Review of Books since 1982 and has seen it grow from a small magazine with a circulation of 5,000 into the largest literary magazine in Europe with a circulation of 45,000. He has written for the LRB on fiction and music.
A chance to meet the editor and publisher of the largest literary magazine in Europe. Places are limited. To book, email Robert Solomon on robertcsolomon@aol.com
HASWalk
via Wild Meadows
Led by Jenny Cox
Author, Landscape Architect and Photographer
Jenny Cox, ecologist, landscape architect and landscape photographer with exhibitions, has published books about India and China, and did the ecological report about and the management plan for Highgate Cemetery. Currently she is training to be a bereavement councillor.
Followed by
HASTalk
by Muriel Maufroy
Author, Broadcaster in conversation with Robbie Lamming
Love Poetry and History - A Persian Poet
5:00 p. m. - 8:30 p. m. Saturday, 23rd April
There have been places in history where civilizations met - and didn't clash. Instead, their impact on each other brought an extraordinary flowering. Such was Sarajevo in the 1990s before Milosevich, thirteenth century Spain before Ferdinand and Isabella, and again in the thirteenth century, the city of Konya in Anatolia. Here Byzantium and the Persian Empire embraced each other to create a multicultural society known for its tolerance and the greatness of its artists, poets and craftsmen.
Among them was the poet and mystic Jalaluddin Rumi - known in the West as the founder of the Whirling Dervishes - whose works are currently reaching an astonishingly large audience, especially in North America. Yet the time when Rumi lived was also a tumultuous time. The Byzantine Empire was in decline, the Crusaders had appeared on the scene, and the Mongols were razing whole cities, slaughtering their populations, and burning their books. In her recent novel, Rumi's Daughter, Muriel Maufroy brings back to life this chaotic period with some of the people who lived in it: Rumi, his family and his adopted daughter Kimya, and Shams - the mysterious traveller who was to turn his life upside down and make him the fabulous poet and mystic that we know.
Muriel Maufroy worked as a journalist and radio
producer for the BBC for many years. Through her travels and personal
quest, she has become involved with the various cultures of the Near
and Middle East. She is the author of Rumi's Daughter, a novel
based on the life of the Persian poet Jalaluddin Rumi, and is currently
studying Persian at SOAS. She has also published a book of Rumi's
quotations, Breathing Truth.
Robbie Lamming has contributed short stories to magazines and
anthologies, and published two novels: The Notebook of Gismondo
Cavelletti and In the Dark. Her recent novel, As in
Eden, will be out in June
| Time:
5:00 p.m. Meet in South End Green. Come in walking shoes. Leave for brisk walk across the wild meadows at 5:15 p.m. sharp, led by Jenny Cox. Walk followed by refreshments and HASTalk by Muriel Maufroy. If it rains, we'll skip the walk, and start and finish the talk earlier. Date: Saturday, 23rd Saturday April 2005 Venue: Upon registration. Cost: Cheques received before 1st April: £6.00 for HASMembers; £8 for guests. Cheques received afterwards: £8 for HASMembers: £10 for guests. Places are limited. Email: robertcsolomon@aol.com |
HASWalk
and Garden Party: 2:00 p. m. - 5:00 p.m. Sunday,
June 5th
HASFilmFest films featured at the London Jewish Cultural
Centre (LJCC). The LJCC Contemporary
FilmFest 4:00 p. m. - 7:00 p. m. Sunday 20th March features four short
films originally screened at the HASFilmFest at the Everyman Cinema:
There's
Something I Must Tell You
by David de Keyser
Allegro Barbaro
by Zsuzsanna Ardó
Change Alley
by Martin Jago and Alexander Brown
The Herb Garden
by Jacob Sager Weinstein
The
films vary from visual poem to comedy, each with very different narrative,
lighting, sound and editing styles. Each film will be followed by
a discussion and the opportunity to ask the directors of the films
questions.
Venue: LJCC, King's College, The Old House, Kidderpore Avenue London
NW3 7SZ (www.ljcc.org.uk).
Tickets (£7) from LJCC Office 020 7431 0345 or email admin@ljcc.org.uk
Further details here
HASMembership
Renewal: many thanks to all who have already renewed their membership.
HasMembership
and contributions to HASNotes
HASMembership is £8 for SoA members; otherwise £12/year.
To apply, mail your short bio and list of publications to Zsuzsanna
Ardó: ardo 'at' pobox.com
Contributions to HASNotes are welcome. Copyright remains with the authors and HASNotes. Permission is hereby granted for any article published herein to be reproduced in full or in part, subject to the consent of the Author(s), as long as HASNotes with its URL (http://www.hasweb.org) is clearly indicated as the original source.
Weaving
Imagination into History
Even when you tear its petals off one after another,
the rose keeps laughing and doesn't bend in pain.
"Why should I be afflicted because of a thorn?
It is the thorn which taught me how to laugh."
Whatever you lost through fate,
be certain that it saved you from pain.
A Sheikh was asked: "What is Sufism?"
He said: "To feel joy in the heart when sorrow appears."
Breathing Truth Trans. Muriel Maufroy
I didn't intend it. I mean, to write a historical novel. And in fact, I am not entirely sure my recent and first novel, Rumi's Daughter, is a historical novel, though it takes place in a specific time and in a specific place.
It all happened because for years I read translations of the poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi, the great Persian poet and mystic of the thirteenth century. He is known, among other things, for being the founder of the Whirling Dervishes, and his poetry has made him a bestseller in America of all places. Sufi poetry, for that is what Rumi's work is, talks of love and beauty as the best ways to God. It has a unique fragrance, and once tasted, it takes you under its spell.
There came a point when I wanted to know more about Rumi himself and about his time. That was not difficult. Books about Rumi are in abundance. I discovered that he lived in Anatolia, at the time part of the Persian Empire, now in Turkey. I discovered that he spent most of his life in the city of Konya, the old Iconium where St Paul was once imprisoned for trying to convert a young Jewish girl to Christianity. I discovered that he died there, and is now lying in a sarcophagus in that same city of Konya where thousands of pilgrims come all year round to express their love for him. I too went there. Many times. I made friends among the carpet sellers who line the streets around the Mevlana Museum where he is resting. Mevlana means Our Master, and that is the name under which Rumi is known in Turkey.
The time when Rumi lived was as fascinating as it was tumultuous. This was the time of the Crusades. The Byzantine Empire was beginning to weaken under the pressure of the Turks. And behind them the Mongol hordes were rapidly advancing, bringing devastation in their wake. Konya, then a crossroads of civilization and cultures, was spared, possibly due to the intervention of Rumi himself who, it seems, advised the grand vizier that it would be wise to accept the suzerainty of the Mongols rather than risk their wrath.
This long-standing love affair with Rumi's life and work drew me to put together a play with the help of two storytellers equally in love with Rumi. Musicians were found and the play was performed several times during a period of five years.
Rumi' s life mainly revolves around his meeting with Shams, a mysterious dervish who came from the East. There are several slightly different versions of their encounter but all acknowledge that from that moment, the great religious teacher that Rumi was became a different man. He stopped teaching in his college and became inseparable from Shams. He, who had been against music, brought musicians to his house, and to the dismay of his students began to whirl in the streets of Konya.
But you see, here I am, letting myself be carried away. For, you may ask, what has all this to do with writing from the imagination? I would answer that facts are one thing, however they need flesh around them; colours, smells, touch, all things history books are not very generous with. Yet it is also for that very reason that history can be the stuff that triggers the imagination. Frustrated, it looks for clues everywhere, and adds its own way of knowing, closer to intuition than academic knowledge. This is what happened to me.
One day, a small paragraph caught my eyes in a tiny book I bought in Konya. It was a rather bad translation of a text written by a Turkish authority on Rumi. It was also badly printed. It mentioned the name of a young girl, Kimya, who was apparently adopted by Rumi, and then married Shams. Not much more was said, except that she died soon after the marriage. According to the gossip of the time, the marriage was unhappy, and this led to her death. The poor girl was so miserable that she died of despair.
For some reason the story caught my imagination. Here were some facts, but they could be interpreted in many ways, and they needed a lot more to come to life. Where did Kimya come from? How did she happen to be in Konya? Had she really died of despair? Where was she born? Could it have been in a village? With the help of one of my Turkish friends in Konya I managed to organize a trip to a Turkish village. It was high in the Taurus Mountains, a few hours from Konya. There the air was crisp, and in the eyes of the people there was light. I decided I would spend some time there soon. A few months later I was back and settled with one of the families of the village.
I wonder: does imagination creates events or do events feed imagination? Probably both. In the village I shared for a short time the life of those hard working and simple people. I walked with them along the mountain paths, picked mulberries in the trees, sat around large dishes of food on roof terraces, looked at blazing sunsets over the mountain ranges, and, of course, I took photographs. It is only once I was back in London that I discovered among these photographs the face of a young girl who, I knew, was Kimya. She was about nine. She had dark eyes shaded by long eyelashes, but more than anything, her innocence and her beauty were so intertwined that looking at her left you with a gnawing longing for something precious one had known once, then lost.
It is around that time that I started to write. And that is another story. I was not sure I could write in a language which, after all, is not mine. I was not sure either that I could sustain the writing of a whole novel. I buried myself in more history books. This time about the Seljuk Turks who ruled over Anatolia at the time of Rumi, about the Mongol invasions, about the Greeks who lived in that part of the world. Research can be a good excuse to postpone real writing. I took masses of notes. Wrote down lists of dates, the names of some famous battles, the names of some traditional food of the time, still prepared now in Turkish villages. Until there was no more escape. I had to write. It was a curious thing. I quickly discovered that my piles of notes were not that useful. Much more useful was what I was actually experiencing. I often had to close my eyes in order to know what Kimya, her father, Shams himself were feeling. Then I knew without any doubt.
What is reality? What is truth? I dont think that at the time I asked myself those questions as clearly as that. Something, someone in me just knew. I discovered that one can betray the truth in a manner which has nothing to do with historical facts. And yet this truth of the imagination has an astonishing way of weaving itself with these very facts history abounds with. Born out of my imagination, people appeared who were well aware of the time they were living in: a hermit, a Greek priest. The priest knew all about the changes that were affecting the villages at the time; and the hermit knew the exact words Rumi had spoken in Konya.
Conversely,
known historical facts such as the passage through Konya of Frederick
Barberossa and the famous defeat of the Seljuks by the hands of the
Mongols sneaked into the novel. And even more curiously, imagination
started to infiltrate my own life. In my book Kimya was learning Persian,
and there I was beginning to study Persian at the School of Oriental
and African Studies - something I would never have thought of doing
before writing this novel. I did not know it at the start: writing
is a strange process, full of wonder as wells as difficulties. I had
thought of the difficulties only; I had not bargained for the wonder.
© Muriel Maufroy and HASNotes
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