All creation is translated from the source, and is a collaborative effort of the one interacting with the love for all. Within each is the sphere of desire that drives this connection forward, drawing from the great pool of beauty and grace which is available to all. When one is more closely joined with this sphere, swimming in its comfort and bliss, s/he finds the truths known to all.

That our current system of copyright and still limited sharing of knowledge, tends to prohibit the admission that we are connected in this way and that anyone can tap into this pool of knowing is the very thing which once seen will bring peace to this world.

Every*Word you see from this writer, comes from being tapped into that source, and is a collaboration with those who have come before me*.

BL*M
Global-Luvolution.blogspot.com

Even Barks himself states below that he is freely rephrasing
existing english translated words of Rumi....and calls his own result collaborative translations.

How many hand me down versions are we willing to accept and still call it accurate?

Why do scholars keep searching for old original historical texts rather than trusting
some one elses translation ?

Why does this scholar Barks pick and choose from various sources and
then create a new version ? Is this really a translation or just his own spiritual & imaginative rewrite ?

He may be making a wonderful contribution to having people read poetry.....yet accept that it is his 3rd hand rendition of a master that people are reading and not the words of the master. And this Barks seems to admit himself.
______________________________________________________________________

an excerpt from the inteview with Barks by the Yoga Journal Sept/Oct 2002

http://www.yogajournal.com/views/742_1.cfm

YJ: Do you consider your work translations or transliterations that take greater liberties?
CB: It could be called many things, but I call it collaborative translations. I try to create valid English free verse in American English—alive, not archaic or dead language. I try to be aware of what spiritual information is trying to come through. Rumi was an enlightened being, and it was an enlightened being, the Sri Lankan Sufi master Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, who told me to do this work.

YJ: Oh, so you're on a mission from God, like the Blues Brothers?
CB: Yeah, Elwood. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen lived in a scholarly community, as Rumi lived. For nine years, I was in his presence. He lived as Rumi did, and his spontaneous poetry was taken down by a scribe. There are a lot of similarities between Rumi and Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. Both lived their lives in an ecstatic state. Rumi is like a teacher for me. He helps me to know my own identity as something more and vast. My daily work on his poems is like an apprenticeship to a master. Rumi's definition of enlightenment is full awareness; the longing for the universe or a creative world; a place, or a life, surrounding the universe of the world. These values are found in Sufi poetry: loyalty and hard work. Be loyal to your daily practice, keep working, and keep knocking on the door. It's like yoga, sitting, meditation, or whatever. My practice consists mostly of listening to Rumi's art and tasting his awareness to his art.

YJ: What got you started?
CB: In 1976, I went to a conference held by Robert Bly, and we started reading scholarly translations of Rumi. Now, I have degrees from the University of North Carolina and the University of California, Berkeley in American Literature and English Literature, but I had never heard of Rumi. One afternoon, I was looking at scholarly translations from these poems and rephrasing them—trying to make them valid English poems. The minute I started I felt like I was being freed; I felt the presence of his joy and freedom.

______________________________________________________________________________

" May your voice be loving enough to silence your own fears." ..... silent lotus
www.silentlotus.net

I'm not so sure I'd put much stock in Lewis's criticism of Barks. I would venture to say that Zanjani would be more capable of judging how well Barks represented Rumi's work since Zanjani's language and world view is closer to Rumi's. Is Lewis jealous because all his purity and scholarship has failed to bring Rumi to the masses? If his only objection to Barks is that he is giving "versions" rather than "translations," I would argue that he is playing semantic games.

Editor, propeace.net

While the ideas and images in this poem are wonderful, there are doubts that it has been correctly translated. See below.

Translator of Rumi's poetry among most popular Americans in Iran
Sunday, September 3, 2006

Barks, 69, who has spent the better part of his three-decade career transforming the often elusive writings of Rumi into digestible verse, is largely credited with introducing the poet's works to the Western world

Dorie Turner

ATHENS - The Associated Press

Coleman Barks gets dreamy eyed when he talks about his favorite poet. But the retired University of Georgia professor's love for the ancient Persian mystic Rumi is more of a spiritual quest than a literary obsession.

Barks, 69, who has spent the better part of his three-decade career transforming the often elusive writings of Rumi into digestible verse, is largely credited with introducing the poet's works to the Western world.

It's a skill that landed Barks at the University of Tehran in Iran in May for a ceremony honoring him -- a prestigious honor that's rare in a time when relations between the United States and Iran are frosty at best.

Though some see Barks' work as a link between the U.S. and the Islamic world, Barks balks at such a suggestion.

"Rumi is the bridge," he said during a recent interview at a coffee house in Athens, Georgia, where he lives and home to the University of Georgia. "He is the Afghan national poet, and he is one of the most read poets in the United States in the last 10 years. For a medieval, 13th century Islamic mystic to be a favorite poet of American culture and Afghan culture when we're at war with them, that's something."

The Chattanooga, Tennessee native has sold more than 500,000 copies of his 17 books of Rumi translations, a feat that is unheard of in poetry circles. Those sales are in part thanks to tensions between the U.S. and Islamic countries, which has sparked an interest in the ancient religion among Americans, Barks said.

Jalal al-Din Rumi was born in 1207 in what is now Afghanistan. His family moved around the Persian Empire, eventually settling in present-day Turkey. His poems are transcribed from spontaneous verse that he spouted while talking to groups. Rumi was a Sufist, which is the mystic branch of Islam, and he founded the Mawlawi Sufi order, better known as the "whirling dervishes" where followers dance in circles as a form of worship.

Mark Tauber, deputy publisher with HarperSanFrancisco, which prints Barks' books, said the texts reach a wide audience, ranging from Sufi Muslims to college students. The company markets the book under general spirituality and poetry.

"He's got such great word-of-mouth," Tauber said.

During the ceremony in Tehran three months ago, where Barks received an honorary doctorate, the university's chancellor Ayatollah Abbasali Amid Zanjani told Barks that the professor "introduced Rumi to English speakers around the world."

"You did a great job -- magnificent," Zanjani said. "We appreciate that very much."

Recognizing his unique expertise, the U.S. State Department sent Barks to Afghanistan last year to talk about the poet -- the first time the agency has sent a lecturer to the country since the U.S. invasion in October 2001.

Steve Lauterbach, who helped arrange the trip for the State Department, said Barks' visit to Afghanistan launched an effort to bridge the two cultures. Sending U.S. speakers to other countries is common, but it is much more rare to send them to countries like Afghanistan where tensions run high, he said. "It's an opening," Lauterbach said. "It shows that the two peoples have more in common than you might think otherwise."

Barks didn't set out to become one of the world's foremost experts on Rumi's poetry. The creative writing and American literature teacher hadn't heard of the poet until well into his career while at a conference in 1976, where he was talking with poet Robert Bly about favorite writers. Bly pulled out a book of Rumi poetry and said to Barks, "These poems need to be released from their cages."

Barks began going to a local cafe after finishing class to work on translations, which he did for seven years before ever publishing anything by Rumi. "It was a spiritual practice to heal me from a day of teaching," said Barks, who describes his religious affiliation as "everything."

He never lectured on Rumi in his university classes, instead saving his translating work for after hours and weekends. He kept the two passions separate, seeing Rumi as more of a spiritual outlet.

In 1984, Barks published his first book of Rumi translations, which he takes from English versions of the poems and writes them in free verse rather than rhyme. He has been criticized by some scholars for not translating the verse directly from Persian, which Barks cannot speak or read.

Franklin Lewis, a Rumi scholar who teaches at the University of Chicago, said Barks' work, while critical in making Rumi a household name in the U.S., loses the nuances and the Islamic undertones of the original works.

"I don't think they should be called translations -- they should be called versions," Lewis said. "They're not really appreciated as scholarly contributions. But it is certainly amazing the extent to which he has been able to create an audience for this kind of work."

Barks says his goal is to "unlock" Rumi's poems rather than translate them literally, which would make little sense to the American mind. The poems are written in rhyme and are difficult to understand when translated directly into English.

"I hope I'm not diluting his wisdom," he said. "I wait for Rumi's poems to come through me."

© 2005 Dogan Daily News Inc. www.turkishdailynews.com.tr