Well, one of my things is that I love Persia. I want to go to Iran in the worst way. And for a little while in the late aughts, I happened to pick up (what I thought was) Rumi and fell in love. Except there was a catch! The “translations” of Rumi that you typically see in the bookstores aren’t translations at all. It makes sense that you would think they are! Given that the covers say “translated by Coleman Barks.” But nope! I can’t exactly call it a hoax because if you inspect the book more closely, you can see that translation is not involved, but it’s at least very misleading. Coleman Barks, it turns out, doesn’t know Persian. He reads a bunch of existing translations of Rumi and makes them all poetical or something, and those are the most prominent editions of Rumi that exist. It’s fine. I’m furious about it. It’s fine.

Anyway, so Miami University Press just released this new translation of Rumi, by Geoffrey Squires, and I picked it up along with the same translator’s edition of Hafez, and BOY was that a great decision.

Hafez and Rumi are extraordinary lights of Persian literature, and my favorite, favorite thing is this trope that like, everyone who speaks Persian owns the Qur’an and a book of Hafez (and probs of Rumi also). I have no idea if it’s true, but it’s a trope that has come up in a lot of books I’ve read by Iranian authors, that if a Persian speaker has no other books they still have the Qur’an and the Divan. And I just find it very beautiful and moving that these medieval poets remaining so necessary and intrinsic to people’s lives. I want in on that, you know? I want to need a book that way.

Squires has worked hard to make the books accessible to the layperson, which means that you can basically open the books to any page and get your socks knocked off. For the purposes of illustration, I am going to do that precise thing, one from each book, and we can see the results together. Here’s a random page from the Hafez!

O you whose bright cheeks
gladden the garden of our lives
come back
for without the rose-bloom of your face
we shall come to the end
of the spring-time of being

if my tears fall like rain             it is only right
for because of the grief you cause me
my existence is nothing but a flash of lightning

PS another way in which I am That Bitch is that I read that second stanza and immediately thought of this moment from The Untamed. THIS IS WHO I FUNDAMENTALLY AM AS A PERSON.

Anyway, that was a great and very successful Hafez experiment. Let’s do Rumi now. Here’s a random page of Rumi!

Last night I renewed my vow
I swore an oath by your soul
that I would not take my eyes off your face
that even if you struck me with your blade
I would not turn away

that I would seek no succour from another
since in separation from you lies my pain
and if I let out a cry
when you cast me into the fire
I would not be a real man

I rose from your path like dust
and to dust will return again

A of all, that’s so gorgeous I am in physical pain from it. Secondly, this truly is a random page. I did not pick this on purpose to prove the emerging thesis of this post, which is that medieval Persian poetry is all just about The Untamed. However, it is also true that this is a moment that happens in The Untamed:

Primary season has been killer, and this weekend we had to spring forward, which blows. But if you need a pick-me-up, and your usual self-care strategies aren’t doing it for you, you should consider the Geoffrey Squires translations of medieval Persian poets Rumi and Hafez. Humans are not always garbage and sometimes we make things of such aching beauty that they endure for eight hundred goddamn years, and that’s these poems.

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A few weeks ago I went to see Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, with Robin Williams (this post is making my life sound so much more glamorous than is really the case), and although it had excellent moments, overall I thought it used big, dramatic events as a cut-rate way of getting emotional responses that the writing, plot, and characters didn’t merit. Whereas Arcadia does just the opposite. It has an elaborate, well-managed plot, interesting (apart from Chloe) characters, and writing that makes me rethink my long-held position that “the dialogue crackles” is a stupid turn of phrase. It takes tiny, insignificant objects and events and gives the characters (and the audience) a tremendous investment in them. A pencil portrait and a lit candle brought tears to my eyes in the final scene.

I’m not describing the final scene, although I want to. I’ve made this distinction before, I believe: I am mad about factual spoilers (X dies, Y and Z marry), but I want to discover the emotional beats for myself. I’ll just say, the final scene of Arcadia can hardly be described in words other than “heartbreakingly lovely.” Please read it, or if you are in New York, go see it! It is worth it, worth it, worth it! Just for the last scene it’s worth it. I’m going again in May. Don’t judge.

Billy Crudup, the reason I went to see the production (that is such a lie, I’d have gone to see it if Robin Williams had played Bernard Nightingale — or no, maybe not — well, yes, I probably would have), played Bernard Nightingale as a semi-caricature of an academic. It was extremely funny, because you’ve had that professor, but there was something slightly insincere about the way Crudup played the part. I’m having trouble making the distinction between the insincerity the character possesses, and the insincerity of the way Crudup played the part, and where the problem was. I think it’s this: Bernard-the-character treats academia as a rhetorical game he’s playing, but a game in which he has (however much he jokes about it) a serious stake. Crudup’s Bernard lacks the stake. It’s insincerity all the way down.

This, plus the gaspy Lia Williams, who subscribes to the gasp-emote-repeat style of dialogue delivery as Hannah (shouldn’t Hannah be brisk?), rendered the modern sections of the play less satisfying than they might otherwise have been. Fortunately they had Raul Esparza playing Valentine, making longish expository speeches about science resonate (his Valentine has a stake in it, and it shows). Then, too, the payoff of the modern scenes is not, as in the scenes set in the 1800s, the relationships between the characters, but rather the solving of the mystery of the past. This aspect of the play could not have been written or staged to better effect. As Hannah tells Valentine, “It’s the wanting to know that makes us matter.”

Tom Riley was absolutely superb, flawless, ideal, as Septimus Hodge. I worried at the beginning that he and Thomasina were too shouty, and Thomasina was, but about him I shouldn’t have had a moment’s concern. Septimus is the play’s center – the Byron connection, the turtle owner, the genius (-spotter) of the house of Sidley, the wry un-self-pitying lover of Chater and Croom – and Riley carries it all off with quiet humor. He’s making jokes to himself, not to the audience, and that is why they’re funny. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway because I’d have forgiven him anything after the last scene (I can’t describe it, there’s no use asking me to describe it; if describing it did it justice I’d have been gushing like this after reading the play).

(What’s that you say? I was gushing like this after reading the play? Okay, yes, I was, but not about that final scene.)

Thomasina, on the other hand, is a little shrill. I was glancing back at my post on reading Arcadia, and I am unduly pleased with myself by something I said in a comment: “Every time I read this play, I think it would be so easy to play Thomasina shrill, for laughs. She’s a funny character, but she’s only funny as long as the actress playing her commits to playing it straight.” Solid call, Past Jenny! Bel Powley plays Thomasina shrill, for laughs. The writing carries her, or Septimus does, but it would have been far better if the actress had committed to playing her straight, without the cartoony hand-waving. I know that it would have been better because she dispensed with the shrillness and excessive hand gestures in the last scene, and it was better to a factor of infinity.

I’m going again. I don’t care! I’m going again, if I can in any way afford to. I have to see this play again. Also, if anyone reading this happens to be in charge of the universe, I want The Invention of Love to be revived. I would go see it no matter what it cost, probably twice, and I would tell my friends about it. Promise!

Going to see good theater in New York City ranks very high on Bentham’s hedonic calculus (first encountered in this book, wow, ages ago). Intensity, or strength of pleasure, very high. Duration, three hours or so, better than most pleasurable things, right, so let’s call it pretty high. Certainty (that it will be pleasurable), pretty solid if you’re me and are addicted to live theater. Propinquity, just across town. Fecundity (likeliness to recur), excellent, and the more theater I see the more I want to see, so this gets better as it goes. Purity (meaning, you won’t feel shitty afterwards — binge-drinking rates low on purity), excellent, I am still buzzing from Arcadia. Extent (how many people share in the pleasure?), superb, a whole theater full of people will share it with you. By contrast, cooking dinner rates pretty low. Intensity is low, duration is low, propinquity and fecundity good, purity medium, extent poor, and certainty very poor indeed. If I starve to death in New York City it’ll be because I spent my money on theater tickets instead of groceries.

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