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=> Amble

Amble
Posted by Emil (Guest) squaremoon@emilsdiary.com - Thursday, November 10 2005, 1:29:58 (CET)
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F,
The first time I read Rumi as translated by Coleman Barks, some years ago, I remember having the same reaction as you. Usually upon reading something like... let's see...
Here!
"...These matters are as real as the infinite is real,
but they seem religious fantasies to some,
to those who believe only in the reality
of the sexual organs and the digestive tract..."
There's no way for someone like me, an average Atour, to know for certain if Rumi intended for his otherwise spiritual crescendoes to suddenly slip from their lofty apex, then spiral, and crash-land smack-dab right in the heart, or sphincter of physical human hungers and conflicts. ("in the reality of the sexual organs and the digestive tract", as it were...)
Is this Coleman Barks translating from an esoteric Persian to a more materialistic and immediate English of 1990?
Or, was Rumi in fact a poet of playful eccentricity, merely attempting to appeal to the very men and women of his milieu? After all, they WERE men and women in a deeply religious landscape, in an undoubtedly sumptuous era.
These "slips" startled me the first time I read from this particular book, mainly because of their extreme shift in speed, texture, tempo, and hemisphere.
But this time around I feel differently. I actually appreciate their disturbance.
These are after all "spiritual teachings", "rambunctious" no less, and I tend to think that Rumi was simply trying to tie, or connect the values of the heavens with the daily, human, bodily, and misadventurous goings-on of life on earth.
But as far as the word "amble" goes- I wouldn't necessarily associate THAT particular term as coloquial, Farid. I mean, how often do you hear contemporary American youth use the word? In speech or in writing. Or song for that matter.
In fact, it seems actually just right as one of my dictionaries has this for "amble":

am·ble (amÆbÃl), v., -bled, -bling, n.
–v.i.
1.to go at a slow, easy pace; stroll; saunter: He ambled around the town.
2.(of a horse) to go at a slow pace with the legs moving in lateral pairs and usually having a four-beat rhythm.
–n.
3.an ambling gait.
4.a slow, easy walk or gentle pace.
5.a stroll.
[1350–1400; ME < MF ambler < L ambul!re to walk, equiv. to amb- AMBI- + -ul!re to step (*-el- + s. vowel -!-; c. Welsh el- may go, Gk elaúnein to set in motion)]
—amÆbler, n.
—amÆbling·ly, adv.
—Syn.1. ramble, meander.

I don't know.
But you've definitely got my juices flowing...



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