Sevdah

The following is from this site (by Dr. Semir Vranic), and describes the background of sevdalinka, an urban Bosnian folk genre:

“The meaning of the word sevdah in the Turkish language denotes amorous yearning and ecstasy of love, and has its origin in the Arabic expression “säwdâ”, which encompasses and specifies the term “black gall”. Namely, ancient Arabic and Greek doctors believed that the black gall, as one of the four basic substances in the human body, affects our emotional life and provokes a melancholic and irritable mood.

There from derives the expression in the Greek language “melancholy” with a figurative meaning of the direct projection of its basic meaning: melan hôlos – black gall. Since it is love itself that causes the same mood, in the Turkish language these terms were brought into a close link with the semantic identity, accomplishing a conceptual result of a dual projection of the basic meaning. Linking these two meanings has opened the process of a poetic transfer of symbolic and emotional qualities from one term to another. This resulted in the birth of a new term related to specific lyrical and psychological features.

In our society, the feeling of love expressed by the word “sevdah”, retaining the basic tone of its emotional commitment has got a melancholic notion of the Slavic-Bogomilian transience of space and time. In essence, our sevdah is both, the passionate and painful longing for love, as well as the melancholic and sweet one, the feeling when you are incapable of enduring the pain caused by love, and the pain transforms into the ecstasy of the intoxication of love that compares to the slow process of dying. Pain, because love cannot be fulfilled at that time, sometimes because space and time act as a wall and obstacle to it, sometimes because there are obstacles of individual, social, familial, traditional or simply emotional and psychological nature. Sevdah expresses itself as torture by others and oneself, and the pleasure of whipping deriving from the identification with the yearning and masochistic experience of love despite the awareness of its futility.” (Muhsin Rizvić, Literary Historian)

“In my opinion, sevdah is an aura surrounding you, it is of invisible and non-material form, but every individual who defines aesthetics as part of his/her life, may feel sevdah in its slightest form and in the smallest space.
It is a gift of God for those lucky ones who view and live life optimistically, and find elements of beauty and pleasure in such view.  And once your soul is filled with the beauty of sevdah, you feel sevdalinka is refreshing and gladdening your heart: “Play and sing to gladden my heart”.

Sevdah is not just a word – it is rather an imaginative ambience of beauty, in whose immense expanse, souls feel, find grains of joy, thus forming a mosaic and making their lives beautiful.

Unfortunately, life is not just love, and sevdalinka as a peak expression of sevdah is not just a love song. Sevdah is a style, a Bosnian lifestyle, and sevdalinka is a historical note-keeper of the lives of Bosnians.” (Omer Pobrić, Musician)

Read more…

Sweet and Sour Apples, and Gratitude

Here is one of my favorite passages from The Conference of the Birds by Farid ud-Din Attar, translated into English by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis.  Apples seem to figure prominently in Persian literature and even film, often as metaphors; does anyone know why? And does anyone know where I can get Conference of the Birds in Farsi?

 
A good kind-hearted monarch one day gave
A rosy apple to his favourite slave,
Who seemed to eat the fruit with such delight
The laughing king said: “Here, give me a bite!”
The slave returned him half, but when the king
Bit into it it seemed a paltry thing,
Unripe and tart.  Frowning he said: “And how
Is what appeared so sweet so bitter now?”
The slave replied: “My lord, you’ve given me
Such proofs of constant generosity,
I could not find it in my grateful heart
To grumble just because one apple’s tart –
I must accept whatever you bestow;
No harm can come to me from you, I know.”
If you meet tribulations here be sure
That wealth will come from all you must endure;
The paths of God are intricate and strange –
What can you do? Accept what will not change!

Anyone for some Chinese and Japanese poetry?

From this site:

A DREAM AT NIGHT

(Mei Yao Ch’en)

In broad daylight I dream I
Am with her. At night I dream
She is still at my side. She
Carries her kit of colored
Threads. I see her image bent
Over her bag of silks. She
Mends and alters my clothes and
Worries for fear I might look
Worn and ragged. Dead, she watches
Over my life. Her constant
Memory draws me towards death.

(Narihira)

I have always known
That at last I would
Take this road, but yesterday
I did not know that it would be today.

(Ki No Tsurayuki)

Out in the marsh reeds
A bird cries out in sorrow,
As though it had recalled
Something better forgotten.

(Yosano Akiko)

Not speaking of the way,
Not thinking of what comes after,
Not questioning name or fame,
Here, loving love,
You and I look at each other.

From this site:

(Lady Izumi Shikibu)

I picked an azalea
And brought it home.
Now when I contemplate it,
In its crimson dye
I see the color
Of my lover’s robe.