Ghazal my Dear,

you might have asked why I wrote this recent critical post about an Indian guru (Yogananda), and why I suggested that a modern singer like Maryam Akhondy is a much better interprete of classical Persian poetry by Omar Khayyam. Here is an example of an original Omar Khayyam rubbayat and the silly Yogananda interpretation. Also, at the end of the post, don’t miss Nancy Sinatras song “You Only Live Twice”, and tell me if you see any similarity to Omar Khayyam.

Here is the Rubbayat No 41 from Omar Khayyam (1018-1113) Translated by E.Fitzgerald 1859)

AWAKE! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light.

And here comes the

Keys To Meaning (Hic!!)  by Paramhansa Yogananda, (“Cristal Clear Publications” Hic!)

Morning — The dawn of awakening from delusive material existence.

Bowl of Night — The dark night of soul-ignorance.

Stone — Delusion-shattering acts of spiritual self-discipline.

Stars — Falsely attractive material desires.

Hunter of the East — Eastern wisdom, hunter and destroyer of delusion.

Sultan’s Turret — The kingly minaret of pride.

Noose of Light — The light of wisdom, which, like a lasso, haloes

Expanded Meaning  (For experts only !!)

Forsake delusion! Absorb into your innermost Self the calm light of wisdom.

Listen! your soul calls you to embrace a new adventure. As the sun travels from east to west across the sky, so does the light of civilization and of knowledge move across the earth. From the east comes Wisdom’s call: Awake! all you who sleep in ignorance.

What has pride brought you but melancholia and pain?—dark products of soul-ignorance. Dispel gloom forever: Abide from today onward in the light of inner peace.

What a rediculous attempt by this 20th century wanna-be spiritual leader to understand Omar Khayyams wunderful Rhubbayat. Since Yogananda has not the slightest clue of Omar Khayyams world of thoughts, his deep love for science, pure mathematics, astronomy, and his second love for wine, beauty and the attractions of woman, he can not do anything else than spoiling the clear language of Omar Khayyams rubbayat with “interpretations”.
Karl Marx, the great analytic of human society, would have called Yoganandas rediculous “Wine of the Mystic” the clearest example of “Religion as opium for the people”. But Marx died 10 years before Yogananda was born.

Omar Khayyam, this outstanding spirit of classical Persian poetry and science, did not only gave us the collections of rubbayats, but invented the binomial coefficients (important for combinatorial calculations), which in the west were attributed to B.Pascal.

Here is an interpretation of his rubbayat, that he would have definitely liked much more. It is by Nancy Sinatra, from her great song “YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE”.

In this 1967 title song for a 007 – James Bond movie one is indeed reminded of Omar Khayyams rubbayat. Read yourself, and build your own opinion. You don’t need a guru to understand this.

You Only Live Twice or so it seems,
One life for yourself and one for your dreams.
You drift through the years and life seems tame,
Till one dream appears and love is its name.

And love is a stranger who’ll beckon you on,
Don’t think of the danger or the stranger is gone.

This dream is for you, so pay the price.
Make one dream come true, you only live twice.

And love is a stranger who’ll beckon you on,
Don’t think of the danger or the stranger is gone.

Ghazal my Dear,

you might have asked why I wrote this recent critical post about an Indian guru (Yogananda), and why I suggested that a modern singer like Maryam Akhondy is a much better interprete of classical Persian poetry by Omar Khayyam. Here is an example of an original Omar Khayyam rubbayat and the silly Yogananda interpretation. Also, at the end of the post, don’t miss Nancy Sinatras song “You Only Live Twice”, and tell me if you see any similarity to Omar Khayyam.

Here is the Rubbayat No 41 from Omar Khayyam (1018-1113) Translated by E.Fitzgerald 1859)

AWAKE! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light.

And here comes the

Keys To Meaning (Hic!!)  by Paramhansa Yogananda, (“Cristal Clear Publications” Hic!)

Morning — The dawn of awakening from delusive material existence.

Bowl of Night — The dark night of soul-ignorance.

Stone — Delusion-shattering acts of spiritual self-discipline.

Stars — Falsely attractive material desires.

Hunter of the East — Eastern wisdom, hunter and destroyer of delusion.

Sultan’s Turret — The kingly minaret of pride.

Noose of Light — The light of wisdom, which, like a lasso, haloes

Expanded Meaning  (For experts only !!)

Forsake delusion! Absorb into your innermost Self the calm light of wisdom.

Listen! your soul calls you to embrace a new adventure. As the sun travels from east to west across the sky, so does the light of civilization and of knowledge move across the earth. From the east comes Wisdom’s call: Awake! all you who sleep in ignorance.

What has pride brought you but melancholia and pain?—dark products of soul-ignorance. Dispel gloom forever: Abide from today onward in the light of inner peace.

What a rediculous attempt by this 20th century wanna-be spiritual leader to understand Omar Khayyams wunderful Rhubbayat. Since Yogananda has not the slightest clue of Omar Khayyams world of thoughts, his deep love for science, pure mathematics, astronomy, and his second love for wine, beauty and the attractions of woman, he can not do anything else than spoiling the clear language of Omar Khayyams rubbayat with “interpretations”.
Karl Marx, the great analytic of human society, would have called Yoganandas rediculous “Wine of the Mystic” the clearest example of “Religion as opium for the people”. But Marx died 10 years before Yogananda was born.

Omar Khayyam, this outstanding spirit of classical Persian poetry and science, did not only gave us the collections of rubbayats, but invented the binomial coefficients (important for combinatorial calculations), which in the west were attributed to B.Pascal.

Here is an interpretation of his rubbayat, that he would have definitely liked much more. It is the great song “YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE”, originally by Nancy Sinatra but this modern version by Bjoerk I like better .

In this 1967 title song for a 007 – James Bond movie one is indeed reminded of Omar Khayyams rubbayat. Read yourself, and build your own opinion. You don’t need a guru to understand this.

You Only Live Twice or so it seems,
One life for yourself and one for your dreams.
You drift through the years and life seems tame,
Till one dream appears and love is its name.

And love is a stranger who’ll beckon you on,
Don’t think of the danger or the stranger is gone.

This dream is for you, so pay the price.
Make one dream come true, you only live twice.

And love is a stranger who’ll beckon you on,
Don’t think of the danger or the stranger is gone.

While I have been away in the lab,  Shava must have found a link to your blog.  When she red the short profile of persian-cat.de, she first thought that your blog is all about child stories (o.k., I have to tell you that sometimes even your posts appear a bit fairy-tale kids-style to me !!).

Anyhow, Shava was surprised to read that the blog is a “dialogue between a cat and a mouse”, and she asked me if this is part of the european and western idea that all social conflicts will eventually be settled peacefully and all creatures in the society will have equal rights to express their opinion ? She says in her opinion this is a big illusion, because there are natural differences between different people, same as there are natural differences between creatures. She came up with an old comic from her child-hood (Moosh o Gorbeh - موش و گربه),  which is about cats (persian) and mice (also persian).

Moosh o Gorbeh 1

And here you see the reality: The last thing that a cat will do to mice is to have a long conversation with them about science or the meaning of life. If a cat does not eat the mice right away for dinner, it might “rule them” from its high thrown (perhaps only to keep the poor mice nearby and have it ready to be eaten for the next meal).

On the other picture from this nice old book you can see the typical situation in a “civilized society”:  Those who are in power (the fat cat) can sit, and have their subordinates (the other cats) standing below them in rows, awaiting an order.

The picture we found at Shahre Farang.

Take Care   /ghazal

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Dear Ghazal,

This blog is phantasie, I agree. But my intention is just to defend the right of mice against the cats. A cats are widely considered a lovely pet, and benefical to man, whereas mice are always seen as vermin. But who (except us scientists) know how much the mice have contributed for the progress in bio-medicine ? Without mice, we would know very little about tissue- and bone-marrow transplantation. Our knowledge about the generation of blood cells and the regulation of the immune-system would be very basic. The first oncogenes involved in leukaemia and breast-cancer were identified in mice that developed a tumor. And the evolving field of stem-cells (which are the key for life of multicellular organisms) was 95% based on laboratory mice. As compared to all these achievements, the perception of mice and its role for mankind is too negative.  When Shava finds it strange that cats and mice could live peaceful together, she is absolute right. But I am wondering if the two could not have a distant dialogue, an exchange of thoughts ?  Couldn’t it be that the natural relationship of a predator and its victim would turn into a intellectual partnership as soon as they are separated from each other ?

I like very much these old pictures from the persian book “Moosh o Gorbeh”.  Too bad I cannot read the story in original persian language. But I found a german and english version of the book, by Farangis Yegane, who also draw modern illustrations for the book. I think I will read it on his website. In particular he announces a chapter where the mice plotted a rebellion against the cat.  I am really curious how they are doing this.

Dear Michael,

Do you remember that you promised me last year that I will become famous for the translation I did of this essay by Lars Gustafsson, about the Berlin Wall ? You told me that Gustafsson will probably receive one of the next Nobel prizes for literature. I had to remember your prognosis today, when on my walk through Stockholms old town I passed along Sweden Book Shop. During a rather long walk from the university through Norrmalm the weather was nice and dry, but when I arrived in the old center a chilly rain started. The shop windows of Sweden Book Bookshop looked very hospital and therefor I decided to look inside for shelter from the rain. The shop is specialized for Swedish literature, and there was a big collection of books on display by the 2011 Nobel Prize winner Thomas Transtroemer. To be honest, I did not knew him before, I can not even remember having heard about him in school during the Swedish lessons. But he is a Swedish writer, isn’t he ? I just would like to know how long I have to wait to see Lars Gustafssons name on the news paper head lines and his books in the shop windows decorated with a Swedish flag, a Pegasus and a copy of the Nobel medaille? I’d like to show my parents that with the translation of Mr. Gustafssons text I not only did something that I enjoyed a lot, but also that I made the right guess of the most recognised contemporary Swedish author.

Take Care
/ghazal

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Ghazal, my Dear,

I’m not sure if it is good to tell you how much I was surprised to read that you took shelter from the rain in a book shop. Not in a fashion store, not in Addidas or H&M or Victorias Secrets outlets, let alone in a sweets bar like Coffee Break French or Cake Studio, all of which I am sure would also be around Stockholms old center when the cold rain cought you.
During the last two years you made a tremendous transformation, my dear. When you have been here in Munich in the summer 2010, you shocked me with the confession that you hate to read books. Last september, suddenly, you told me how much you enjoyed to read Charlotte Brontes “Jane Eyre”. And now you even looked for shelter in a book store, initially simply to escape the cold rain, but once inside you began to look for a book by Lars Gustafsson, the great Swedish writer about whom we talked about two years ago.

When I heard last year that another Swedish writer, Thomas Transtroemer (whom I knew perhaps even less than you did) was awarded the Nobel prize, I was disappointed and even got angry with the decision of Swedish Academy. I strongly believe that Lars Gustafsson deserves the honour to the best contemporary writer, at least from Sweden. But we are perhaps not the only people who like good books but don’t really feel that the list of Nobel prize winners is of big use as a recommendation (the only exception was Gabriel Garcia Marques, the books of whom I really discovered only after he received the prize).

Every year the world of readers like us, but also literature critics and book traders hope that one of their favorite writers will finally be selected by the Swedish Academy to receive the most prestigeous international award for literature. But usually, the surprising news that are always released one day in October cause eyebrow raising rather than a celebration, and too often people have to listen twice to realize that in fact they have not heard the name of the winner before. Usually, it is not the artistic quality of the books who guides the Swedish Academy to their decision, but clandestine political reasons.

Therefor, writers who coined the 20th century literature and became essential members of the world-wide cultural canon, such as James Joyce, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Franz Kafka, Berthold Brecht, Marcel Proust or Vladimir Nabokov, were permanently ignored by the Stockholm board of old school teachers. Other writers, which are largely forgotten today, were awarded the price apparently more with the intention to give them publicity and financial support. Otherwise, the small readership of their books and limited success would let them vanish into oblivion. The motivation of the Academy to give the price to them reminds me a lot of the socialist way of providing support and resources: Help those who show missing success, and refuse support to those who are successful. Who still remembers the names of – or even read a book by – Nobel price winners such as Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson, José Echegaray, Giosuè Carducci, Verner von Heidenstam, Carl Spitteler, Jacinto Benavente, Grazia Deledda, Vicente Aleixandre, Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Roger Martin du Gard, Frans Eemil Sillanpää, Saint-John Perse, Patrick White ? And who really trusts that Hertha Mueller, J.M. Gustave Le-Clesio or Derek Walcott will have a big readership after their books are removed from the shop windows of “must-known” Nobel-price winners and returned to the back-room bookshelfs or even further away into the Amazon category of “currently not available” items ?
It is also no big surprise that a strong bias exists related to the nationality of the Nobel prize winners. Since the Swedish Academy board is exclusively made up of Swedish authorities, they have a preference to give the award to writers from their own or other skandinavian countries. During the last 110 years Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland together had 15 Nobel prize winners among their authors. Sweden alone had 8, the same number as the United States. Does this imply that Swedish literature is as influential as the North American ? This of course would be a very subjective judgement, but some more statistics might help here, since numbers are just numbers and they tell you only facts (for the same reason you did the statistical genetics during your MSc project). If we relate the frequencies of literature Nobel prizes in Sweden and the US to the population size of both countries than we come to the surprising conclusion that a Swedish person has a more than 30fold higher chance to be selected for the prize than anybody from the US. So if you are a writer and reach for the Nobel prize, you should try as quickly as possible to get a Swedish citizenship. If you are  american, than better reach for something else (like the Oscar for the best movie script). Does this mean that Swedish people have a 30 times greater literature talent than Americans ? According to Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, this is the true. In an interview in 2008 he declared that “Europe still is the center of the literary world” and that “the US is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature.“

No other country has received more Nobel Prizes for literature per capita than Sweden, and in absolute numbers is more succesful than all of Asia, as well as all of Latin America. There is just one exception, better described as a singularity. And this is Lars Gustafsson, whom the Swedish Academy with mind shaking consistence refuses its recognition. There is no doubt about the exceptional literature qualities of Mr. Gustafsson, about his influence on other writers worldwide and his recognition by readers, critics and academics in his own country and abroad. He is both a very productive writer with a broad horizon and interest in psychology, natural science, politics and history, and a great entertainer. His novels and stories deal with issues of our modern society, but are narrated in a fine and classical style. And all of his books are at least in part cosmopolitan. And here starts the problem of the Swedish Academy with their own compatriot writer Lars Gustafsson: He “deflected” for 23 years to the US, where he was lecturer at the University of Texas in Austin. He also lived for two years in Berlin and made several extensive trips to other countries. Reading his books like “The Tennis Player”, “The Dean” or “Bernard Foy’s Third Castling” shows that his style of writing and his sujets and his views about the individuum and the society is much closer to the contemporary US literature than to the scandinavian world. And this is the reason why the Swedish Academy ignores this great writer from their own country with stubborn resistance. In this view, literature as a global medium of communication has a poor stake in the Swedish Academy.

Take Care, my dear            Michael

Hello Michael!

Sorry for the late mail!! There is just a lot to do every day. Go to university every day and them come home eat and spend time with family. Or meet a friend after work and come home late. But Now i found some good time to sit and write. Hope that everything is fine with you. The weather here is around 10 degrees, but it has been sunny and not so windy this week. so its nice.
So nice that you invited omid and his family. they are very kind, I met them.
I am not going to shajarian, its not the type of music that I usually listen to. Nice that you went, so you liked it.
YES!! Believe it or not, I am reading Jane Eyre… and its so pitty but I have not so much time to read either! But I have started.

take care
/ghazal

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Ghazal my Dear,

It was so nice to read your e-mail.
And it gave me a big relieve to hear that life is exciting,
the PhD project goes as well as do the experiments,
that you can use pipettes which don”t harm your joints,
that you discivered a nice book and that in addition to all of
this you still have time to write a nice and – this time – funny e-mail.

I always knew that your comment from last year about books, and that you hate reading and so on was perhaps a temporal feeling, maybe due to a single bad book that you tried once.
So this time you very likely got a better choice. I never red Jane Eyre myself, but my sister (who works in a library) told me a lot about it. It is by one of the Bronte sisters, as I remember. I think it is a long novel. And it has some tragic moments. But it is concidered a key literature for female liberation, at least liberation from the old victorian and religious stereotypes. I hope you like it a lot.
When we lived in England (in a suburban village south of London), our Landlady was a Ms. Reed (she was 72 years old, but still wanted to be called Miss, not Misses. She was a real dragon. We were not allowed to open the window to the garden side of the house, and she always switch off the heating, so we had to survive in winter time in 12 degrees cold rooms.
My sister, when she visited us, and we introduced her to the Landlady, she said to her “O nice to meet you. I know another Miss Reed, from Charlotte Brontes “Jane Eyre”" When I asked my sister later on who on earth is this Miss Reed from “Jane Eyre” she told me that in the book this is perhaps the most disgusting character. I had the feeling that our Landlady did not understand
the meaning of my sisters comment.

Maybe I should also read the book, eventually.
Maybe I first wait till you have finished it, and hear your opinion.
Do you have a swedish translation, or you read the english original ?
I red recently (within one afternood sitting in a large Munich book shop a novel by Fattaneh Haj Seyed Javadi called “The morning of drunkeness”. In the intro it was described as a iranian bestseller and key book for womans liberation. But I found it pretty boring and conventional. I guess compared with Jane Eyre, it will appear even more mediocre.

I hope every day is a sunny day for you, Ghazal.
Take Care,
Michael

Dear Michael,

Fattaneh Haj Seyed Javadi wrote her Iranian bestseller novel “Bamdade Chomar” in 1995. It has since been translated only into german.
Keith Hitchins wrote about it in World Literature Reviews “…The charm of the novel lies in the finely drawn portrait of Mahbube, in effect a self-portrait as she gradually reveals herself. Equally complex is the character of Rahim. (…) Masterly also is the novelist’s delineation of character through dialogue and his depiction of extended dramatic scenes” . The comments following its german translation in 2002 where less enthusiastic, accusing the author for showing that Mahbubehs initial battle to live a selfdetermined life and choose a partner of love rather than of family compatibility has to fail and that she finds eventual happiness only in the frame of a very traditional but slave-like role as a secondary wife of a cousin.

In particular Fahim eh Farsaie, iranian himself blamed Haj Seyed Javadi in a review in the german weekly paper “Die Zeit” of following in her book a political agenda, namely that of the official policy of Teheran by opposing any modern and liberal life in particular when it comes to the relationship between men and woman.

http://www.perlentaucher.de/autoren/3900/Fattaneh_Haj_Seyed_Javadi.html

I am wondering if people who pushed ”Bamdade Chomar” or its german translation “Morning of Drunkeness” into the best-seller ranks of the book market ever  red “Jane Eyre” in their live.  In an exclusively deep-thought essay Danusha Goska compares Janes couragement to that of Leonidas, whos army was defeated by the massive predominance of the persian army.

best greetings from Stockholm
take care
/ghazal

take care
/ghazal

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Hi Ghazal my Dear,

In case you are in the mood for some time out today, send a message. I would be happy to accompany you to go to town or to the lake or whereever you want.
Otherwise, I will spend the day in the lab.

Take Care, my dear,

Michael
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Hi Michael,

yesterday i went to the centrum to look around a bit and then i was home and looked up some genes and saw the movie “a space odysseys”. it was good. but i didnt like the ending. didnt understand.

today i was invited to omid to eat something and to watch the football.

i liked the story about the cat and the dog. good that they became friends at last.

ooh, you found a persian place. i think i saw it before in march, i missed it then as well. and also this time. yes maybe they will have something in august. thank you for finding the website.

have a good day

/ghazal
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Ghazal, my dear,

When I came to the institute today the first thing I recognized was your bike. You see I”m really crazy, the first thing I though was that you might have also come to the lab on Sunday. It would be a terrific thing, hoewever, if somebody as magnificent and young and charming as you would spend such a nice day here.

Later on I red your e-mail and I was absolut happy to hear that you had a nice program over the weekend. I can imagine how much you enjoyed to talk with Omid nand his family in your mothers tongue. I really would like to watch a vidoe-record of this evening (of course with english or german sub-titles), and I can imagine that it would remind me of some scenes from the movie “woman without man” (where the educated people meet and discuss about the meaning of life).

Ghazal, do you remember the picture on the exhibition we have been together, the one with the wooden floor and the two big sculptures in the corner. I told you it shows the house-museum of the biggest german poet/writer J.W.von Goethe. I completely forgot one aspect of Goethe: He was very much fascinated by the oriental poetry. I”m 100% sure one of his most personal collections of poems, called the “West-Eastern Divan”, must have been translated into persian. Goethe absolutely adored the persian poet Hafiz. And the museum in Weimar (the one shown on the picture at the exhibition) was visited in the year 2000 by the late iranian president Khatami. But be careful, the report is published by a fundamentalist-marxist news-paper, which is a bit extreme in its opinion. However, everything they write about Goethe and his universalism and openess to oriental culture is o.k.

Another link for you, my dear, just to prove that not everything I tell you is phantasy, is this paper by Dutton and Aron about the psychological experiment on the dangerous bridge. You remember I told you about it when we crossed the “highway” with the dangerous traffic last week. The paper is so nicely and clearly written, I cannot imagine the two authors ever considered that two people crossing a dangerous street in Munich on a sunny Thursday in 2010 would consider their scientific conclusion relevant for their own situation.

I have to apologize ones again for this long and mind-blasting e-mail.

I wish you a relaxing evening and night.

Michael

What can I say ? For sure you defend your position with great verve, of course you have your experience with books, I have mine. For sure, we probably read different sorts of books. Strange enough, if I would read once again the type of books that I liked when I was in your age, I probably would be bored in a similar way you are.
Sometimes I get books as a present that are so bad that I burn them in an open fire. But with other books I could completely forget time and place and escape into another world. Once beeing back from there, I may see the real world with different eyes.

Your last e-mail reminded me of a cat, that everybody only knows for its lovely purring voice. And suddenly, this cat stands up, starts hissing and shows it claws. At the end, it is not the purring cat that earns our respekt, but the one who can defend its position. Well done.

Good night

Michael

finally u got my email right.
i dont like to read.i think its boring. but i have tried. i start to read some pages and then i never open the book again. other things are more interesting than the book. but you are right. it is good to read. and my parents like to read.

yes i booked the ticket to sweden. i will go on friday. it is not for the food! it is because my mum really wanted me there for my birthday. but i am not planning on going to sweden again soon.
yes maybe we can go to ikea on wednesday. i will ask chrysi too, think she wanted to go there before.

see you tomorrow and have a good night.

/ghazal