Rumi's Fables
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Authors
Negar Niazi; John G. Oster
Issue Date
2012
Type
Book, Whole
Language
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Abstract
At last I have a chance to read some of Rumi's tales. There are forty-three numbered tales here. Each receives a page of text on the right and a full-page acrylic-on-canvas painting on the left. There is a T of C at the beginning of this large-format paperback. I have read the first ten and enjoyed them. Several are known fables, like "The Farm Animals and the Lion" (3). This is the "Kalilah and Dimnah" story of regulated sacrifice. "The Lion, the Wolf, and the Fox" is the story in which the wolf's fate teaches the fox to divide lion's spoils appropriately (11). Some stories have surprising turns. In the first, a man with more than medical insight understands why the beautiful girl is ill (1). The prince had fallen in love with this girl, but did not know that she was in love with a young man from her village. The prince had taken her from him. He returns the two to each other, but soon the young man from the village dies, and the prince and girl get together despite it all! A thief steals a snake from its owner but is fatally bitten by the snake (13). The owner finds the dead thief and thereby discovers that his snake was poisonous. Lucky for him! In maybe the cleverest of this set, a parrot-owner will travel to India and asks his whole household what souvenir each wants (5). His pet parrot asks him to tell the parrots at the Taj Mahal that he is imprisoned in a cage. The traveler does that, and one of the parrots there immediately falls to the ground, apparently dead. The traveler comes home and tells the parrot what happened. The pet parrot immediately falls over, apparently dead. Soon enough the owner takes him out of his cage -- and the smart parrot flies away!
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Publisher
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform