Do you know any East poet but Omar Khayyam?

[caspian]

It's just curiosity. Do you know any East poet but Omar Khayyam? (By the way he's Tajik poet, not persian.) East poetry is oldest (X century) and there's so great poets and poems. I just wonder have you ever heard about them?

[Scheherazade]

How east are you talking about?
Rumi is another one...

[Logos]

caspian, I'm moving this from General Literature to the Poems, Poets and Poetry section. You may get better responses there.

[rocksea]

Rabindranath Tagore is a great bengali poet [India]. His Gitanjali won the Nobel Prize,,
many of his lines are mesmerizing. He wrote in English too and most of his famous writings are available in english.

Mind Without Fear by Tagore,,

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action---
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

[rocksea]

Tagore is a modern poet but (1861-1941)

[rocksea]

Ya there are old poems and poets scattered around in east. One of the problems is they are in their native languages, most of them never translated and never known to outer world. So one cannot recommend them for anyone outside the language. Like if you take India,we have so many languages and in my language malayalam, we had many great old poets. We do learn them when we are in schools but the poetry never goes out of our malayalam world.

[trismegistus]

Some of my favorite poems are by Hafiz. I only wish I didn't need to rely on a translator.

[subterranean]

Ya there are old poems and poets scattered around in east. One of the problems is they are in their native languages, most of them never translated and never known to outer world. So one cannot recommend them for anyone outside the language. Like if you take India,we have so many languages and in my language malayalam, we had many great old poets. We do learn them when we are in schools but the poetry never goes out of our malayalam world.

I have a Beghavad Ghita at home and i think the words in it are beautiful :)

[rocksea]

Bhagavat Gita is a part of epic called Mahabharata.. Gita is mostly a divine talk between Krishna and Arjuna on the battlefield where the Pandavas including them fought the great battle against their cousins, the Kauravas.

[subterranean]

yea, mahabharata is awesome. i read the comic book (there was a comic version in my place) and saw the movie series as well. My fav part of the story, beside the war, was when the Pandavas lost the game agains the Kauravas, and as the price, there was this woman (i forgot her name) which must be undressed. But there's this god (and i forgot the name also) who do a little "magic" , so when one of the Kauravas pull her fabric, it keeps going and going,,as if the fabrics has no end..

[rocksea]

:) the woman is draupati, also known as panchali as she was wife to the five pandavas (panch means five). the god is krishna who came to rescue her. the pandavas felt helpless to save their wife and krishna came to rescue by providing an infinite length of saree..

[subterranean]

Indeed..you know i live i Indonesia, and in the story of Mahabharata and Ramayana are very well known here. And the stories were assimilated with local stories and traditions. we have a puppet show called "wayang" which tells the stories of Mahabharata and Ramayana.

But personally, i think Ramayana is not as terrific as Mahabharata :)

[rocksea]

are you basically indonesian? you know, the indian subcontinent, sri lanka, indonesia all are connected in ramayana. bali is one significant point in the epic.

ya mahabharata is much more terrific as it involves so many siginificant characters and the story is much complicated if you want to know all the threads and links.. and you find it more and more interesting if you get into all these..

[mono]

The Bhagavad Gita, as with every religious text, has inspired me greatly; book 6 of the Gita would have to prove as my favorite. Though I consider more Buddhist, I spend time every now and then at a large Hindu temple in my city with monks who have studied the text for decades.

[subterranean]

are you basically indonesian? you know, the indian subcontinent, sri lanka, indonesia all are connected in ramayana. bali is one significant point in the epic.

ya mahabharata is much more terrific as it involves so many siginificant characters and the story is much complicated if you want to know all the threads and links.. and you find it more and more interesting if you get into all these..


yes, I'm Indonesian by birth. :)
And please do advise me the links ..aprriciate tyour info :)

[caspian]

Actually I meant Middle East poetry. yeah, Rumi is as famous as Khayyam in west. I'm really surprized that Nizami Ganjavi who lived in 12 century(1141-1209) and wrote 5 long narrative poems ("The Treasure house of Mysteries"(1773), "Khosrow and Shirin" (1181) "Leili and Majnun (1188), Seven Beauties (1197) isn't so well-known in west. His works are so great that it's said Shakespeare is the Nizami of the West. He's the author of best love poem "Leyli and Majnun". "The virtue of Nizami's poetry lies in his ability of expressing people's desires and yearnings, in humanism common to all mankind, in highest artistic skill, in delicacy of progressive ideas, in their fluency and simplicity, perceptibility, actuality and profoundness." He's the only poet that reached his goal expressing all his ideas and thoughts by his works. At his last poem "Iskandar-Nama" (about (Alexander the Great)) "He created a social Utopia -- an ideal society, many centuries before the Western Utopists Charle Fourier, Robert Owen and Saint-Simon advanced this idea. In the society he depicted, people used to live happily without the state administration and its implements of the compulsion: the army, jails, etc. The people never fought each other, no blood was ever shed, all were willing to observe the rules of collective life. Nizami noted the possibility of establishing a similar society only through the moral and spiritual perfection of the Man."

Firdovsy, Nasimi, Fuzuli, Saadi and etch are also very great poets and I’m really sorry that they are not so well-known.

[caspian]

Rabindranath Tagore is a great bengali poet [India]. His Gitanjali won the Nobel Prize,,
many of his lines are mesmerizing. He wrote in English too and most of his famous writings are available in english..

Honestly I like his short stories very much ... more than his novels and poems. Especially I was impressed too much by one where he talked about two poor brother, actually about their wives that didn't live in peace.

I saw "The Bhagavad Gita" on my sister's book-shelf, but never get idea to read it. By your talks it sounds quite interesting.

Sub, I read about Indonesia very interesting two books with pics. About your traditions, culture, customs, history, life. It seemed so exotic and quite pretty. I found interesting that muslim women had never worn hijab and muslim holidays were celebrated mostly by national way, with national music. But the books were of 80's years and poor economy also reflected there.

[subterranean]

I saw "The Bhagavad Gita" on my sister's book-shelf, but never get idea to read it. By your talks it sounds quite interesting.

True...it contains words of wisdom..great book for spritual needs:)


Sub, I read about Indonesia very interesting two books with pics. About your traditions, culture, customs, history, life. It seemed so exotic and quite pretty. I found interesting that muslim women had never worn hijab and muslim holidays were celebrated mostly by national way, with national music. But the books were of 80's years and poor economy also reflected there.

Yes, Indonesia is the biggest Muslim country in the world (in term of numbers of believers), but it's not a Muslim country, like Iraq and Iran. Means that it doesn't apply Islamic laws. That's why wearing hijab is not an obligation to Muslim women. But, there's an area here which does apply Islamic laws, where hijab is a must and Friday is public holiday. But in other areas hijab is a choice and Sunday is still the public holiday.
Well I dont know, in the 80's, Indonesia actually is one of the most advanced developing countries. The capital income was increasing, as well as the country's revenue. Indonesia even got an award from FAO for rice productions. There were of course poverty and unemployments. But if you compare it with today's condition, the 80's was a little better. Today, the gap between the rich and poor today is so wide, and unemployment rate is so high, that some social experts afraid that there's going to be social unrest sometime in the near future if the goverment doesn't take an action asap.