Shams Martínez
It's always the same:
When I finish a poem
I'm overcome by a great silence
and I wonder why I thought of using words.
The version is by the Mexican poet Elisa Ramírez Castañeda for a book entitled La sed de los peces, published by CONACULTA in 2005, as part of the collection “Cien del mundo”. The author is Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi and, to put it in our hands, the poet translated texts by Coleman Barks, who, in turn, poetized classic translations made by Nicholson and Arberry, who took the originals from Persian. The selection and order are, as the versioner acknowledges, arbitrary and personal.
The revision of that text was perhaps the firmest step I took in my attempts to produce a detailed and honestly arid record of Mexican production in relation to the Persian poet, the result of which was reduced to this and a couple of other books. In the light of the publications, of what was said in public squares, of the official and the pseudo-official, Rumi is barely visible. Why does this happen? It is not very original to talk about anyone's short interest, much less to allude, for example, to little reading and too much television. Perhaps the root is in a Latin American destiny, eyes still enthralled with the descriptions of the world that Europe and the United States give us, or more profoundly, pupils with difficulty in making a movement that resolves the storm of our history (instead of repeating it by obsessively narrating it) and, therefore, a gaze to a certain extent impeded in perceiving new colors.
Well, it is not that we do not have books and magazines that do not mention Jalaluddin Rumi. They are few but they say a lot. Books, like the one mentioned, version him and show him in a personal and arbitrary way, which, curiously, does not seem to take away one iota of intensity from the poem. The Conaculta edition and another from PAX stand out among those printed in Mexico. As for the newspapers, only the newspaper La Jornada, in one of its supplements, looks at the poet, and very occasionally. At most, in the past decade, two articles were dedicated to him, both signed by the now famous Javier Sicilia, also a poet and called by some a mystic. The end of one of his texts says:
It was necessary for a great mystic and great poet to come to remind us,In a sea of books, pamphlets and megabytes, Rumi's image - reduced in the distance - is mixed with clarifications (pertinent or not) on politics or business and the rest is not silence, but more comments, clippings, reports, an overabundance of voices and advertisements. That's how newspapers are and we can only be content with what they give us. A more careful visit to their places, traditions and ways simply seems to limit itself to the "happy few", the happy minority that is here now, because we cannot even speak of the academy. But Rumi clearly did not think of this or this or that. He did not think, if we take what he says seriously, of anything that was not one thing, and that gives us a very wide freedom.
Rather than rigor, register and abstraction, we Mexicans prefer to approach through a movement more closely linked to emotion and opinion. The poet-translator we have mentioned, Elisa Ramírez, says of herself and her work:
My poetry points towards a pilgrimage. I have a great nostalgia for the feeling of totality, of fusion with the landscape. I am a deeply religious person but an atheist. Hence my investigation into rituals and in trying to make a mystical recovery through words, even if it sounds like a mamonsísimo.However it may sound, this land is approaching the new, even if this novelty has existed for more than 700 years, faithful to some unwritten tradition, avoiding systematicity, perhaps in favor of stealth, reference to flight, silent reading, Facebook meetings and the meeting of small groups in the moonlight. So, at least the first movement happened in the manner of Rumi. We fell in love and ended up here. Mexico carefully but without reticence takes the diffuse image of Rumi, holds it from the clearest and most universal angle - his poetry - and interprets and reinterprets it.
Half a century ago, Mevlana's work began to spread with a certain generosity throughout the West, to the point of making it a top seller in the United States of America. In his study "Why Rumi?", Shahram Shiva lists the reasons why his poetry mysteriously captivates. These are some: it is not intellectual (it addresses the heart, the instincts), its levels of meaning are vast, the more one learns about Rumi the deeper one goes in his appreciation, there is a sense of unity and brotherhood in each verse, reading Rumi's poetry implies a personal process, during its reading it is possible to feel the descent of something comparable to Grace, Rumi expresses himself as a close friend, Rumi is seductive even for those who do not like poetry, Rumi is a guide...
And yes, Rumi is a guide, and more explicitly so for his dervishes, many of whom are still active. The Mevlevi order, founded by Mevlana (that is, “our master”) Jalaluddin Rumi, also breathes in Mexico. At the end of the eighties, in the center of the country, there were at least two mobile centers where one of the most peculiar traditions inherited by our man was repeated, in addition to his already very peculiar poetry. It is the sema, or turn, a practice that forms a basic part of the Sufi ceremony of remembrance of the order, in which the dancer turns on his own axis, to the sound of percussion.
At the end of the eighties, the Nur-Ashki-Al-Yerraji order would also arrive definitively, and although it was not Mevlevi in name, it was Mevlevi in fact, by lineage and conviction. The sema was a basic part of their tradition, just as it was perhaps the influence of the Mevlevi order (and of Mevlana) that fostered a certain exuberance in their devotional manifestation. Later, other exponents of the tradition founded by Mevlana would find a place in a country dedicated precisely to that: to receiving and hosting with open arms; a country always ready to put on new masks, Octavio Paz would say, one that does not give rise to orderly elaborations (something that Rumi could have done well in his monumental Mathanasnavi and that remains practically ignored in the Spanish-speaking world), a land that is, on the contrary, at ease allowing the sudden brilliance of that which shines and moves.
We could not speak, certainly, of an expansion of Sufism in Mexico, although we could speak of a real interest in reviewing and being surprised by its artistic manifestations and its religious proposal, all of this largely due to Mevlana. It is also clear that tradition, like Rumi's poetry, is quick to show its true face: a methodical character and, when going a step further, an abysmal depth. What we see is the pleasant glow of some movements that remain on the sidelines, not out of a desire for secrecy or for any specific desire (there is no intention of religious vindication, for example), but perhaps because their goals have more to do with something else, although one never really knows, in reality, with us, Mexicans. Or perhaps one knows very well what motivates us, what frightens us, and that is why one never knows. Jalaluddin Rumi takes us to another place.
What can I do, oh Muslims? For I do not recognize myself. I am not a Christian, nor a Jew, nor a magician, nor a Muslim. I am not from the East, nor from the West, nor from the land, nor from the sea. I am not from nature's mine, nor from the revolving skies.Together with Mevlana, we no longer recognize ourselves. Because of him, for an instant, we know ourselves beyond our name and our form. And who makes this dangerous game more explicit if not poets? Who could make it clearer if not those who follow it from the affinity in rhythm and images? Like a meticulous parade, some Mexican poets have taken it for themselves, as an influence that ends up becoming a path. In a long poem preceded by an epigraph from Rumi, the Tabasco poet Francisco Magaña, born in 1961, wrote at the beginning of the last decade:
The look of love that comes thanks to HimPoetry, a privileged discipline, in a certain way, due to its total distance from the commercial aspects that shape the art of our time, has, however, also been touched by a background of reluctance, irony and desperate exaltation of the self, not to mention the taxidermic intervention of the critic. In the light of Mevlana, curiously, this can be understood very well, but in the light of that self (that hall of mirrors), Mevlana Rumi cannot be seen as anything other than an author of electronic postcards. Drusila Torres, a poet from Mexico City born in 1987, published a trio of poems explicitly inspired by Rumi in Cuadrivio magazine two years ago, even preceded by a quote from Elisa Ramírez, the poet who wrote the version we have already mentioned. One of the compositions goes like this:
—Do you feel me at this moment, do you perceive me?Searching poets, finding Rumi in the vastness. Afhit Hernández, a poet from Morelos born in 1980, declares himself a follower of Rumi, and writes in his 2010 collection of poems, entitled The Winged Lion, the following:
Those afternoons, when my sister saw me, she would break awayWhen the market is the only means of distributing wealth, the fundamental indicator for power decisions and also for almost all our life choices, then poetry comes to indicate order, under a hierarchy that no one sees, but one that is, above all, inviolable. And it is surprising to think that, although Rumi gives us that in abundance, poetry was not something that mattered much to him. In any case, everything he does seems even more rooted and much more relaxed than the recurring expressions in our forums and meeting places. Mexico rewrites Rumi and dances to the rhythm of his breathing, but what is behind all that? The vision of the poet makes no effort to stay alive and without any problem embraces the voices where the truth comes to light. The voice of the poet envelops and precedes that of the lover and the teacher, whose fundamental language is silence.