PODCAST #7: RÜCKERT THE MODERN SUFI
by
Martin Bidney
Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) knew 44 languages and translated poetry and scripture from many, including Arabic and Sanskrit. His spiritual diary, Wisdom of the Brahman: A Didactic Poem in Fragments (1835-1836) is a guidebook fashioned by what I would call a modern western Sufi pilgrim. His outlook often parallels that of medieval Sufi mystical expositor Ibn Arabi. Using opener-poems I wrote (in my God the All-Imaginer) to sum up the earlier writer’s thoughts, I’ll show applications of the wisdom in the later German poet’s lyrical journal, which my book The Boundless and the Beating Heart presents in the form of translated word songs with my own reply-poems. In effect I’m Rückert’s interviewer.
Love comes first for both the Persian and the German. Ibn Arabi gives us “Boundless Love” (xliv), and Rückert (4) praises the passions in their many forms and stages. On 28-29 my dialogue with R. centers on making friends in new places; on 29-30 we talk about how your child can become your best friend. R. loves jokes but on 36-37 he tells you not to joke too harshly with your child.
Humor, loved by Sufis (e.g. Nasreddin Hodja), may be shown by R. in the punch-line of a witty parable (99-100), also in my reply (100). In 109-110 the joke-stories of the eagle and donkey offer more Sufi humor. And a dialogue on 167 about the perils and opportunities of leaping clinches the humor-point.
Pilgrimage means we’re traveling always toward new “Waystations,” Ibn Arabi explains in my poem of that name (25). In 136-137 R. and I dialogue about the equal viability of endlessly multiple types and ways of living. Two dialogues between R. and me on 219-222 clarify the changing waystations as manifesting different Names, or aspects of God’s nature and of our own potential.
The Cup – all names of poems I wrote about Ibn Arabi (26) – expand the concept of waystation in ways that relate intimately to R. Symbols, religions, myths, poems are cups for the water of spirit, giving them form and color. So on p. 1 R. and I dialogue on the “bead” as a container for spiritual meanings. A colloquy on 36 is provoked by “mildness” as a waystation or cup. On 122-123 we’ve a comedy dialogue about cups or knots: a sentence – or a single letter – can be either one. On 177 we dialogue about the self-sufficiency of the fragment: a small cup. The human receptacle that’s filled with the feeling of ever-expanding horizon may seem a limited container, yet it is The Boundless and the Beating Heart.
