800-year-old wisdom of Sa'adi

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msabaye
by msabaye
26-Sep-2009
 

These days, I am reading Sa'adi again. I read his Gulistan when I was 15. I remember marveling at his wisdom and thinking if one followed this man's pieces of advice, one could overcome anything. Now, I once again marvel at his wisdom, but this time I marvel equally at his language. How could this be? This man writing 800 years ago, so fluently, in a language that I can easily read and understand today. He is amazing where language is concerned. You are not convinced? Well, try reading Shakespear without using a dictionary and a reading-aid. Don't get me wrong; I love Shakespear who is also amazing where language is concerned. But his language is not comprehensible to us, well, most of us. And he is from about 400 years ago. Yet, I can comfortably read Sa'adi who was from about 800 years ago.

Anyway, you know that Gulistan is written in chapters. The chapter I just finished is on contentment or Ghina'at which is the opposite of greed. I highly recommend this chapter. It got me thinking how much we want nowadays. Not just financially, but in every aspect of life. We want to have everything and often we want them all at once: education, career, family, love, money, recognition, ... And with each one of these, we still want far more. We used to want a husband or a wife as the case may be to provide and parent our children and accompany us to old age. Now we want all of that plus a soul mate and a lover and ... all in one. Or a career used to be a way to earn a living; now it has to be fulfilling and nourishing and challenging and ... Not that anything is wrong with any of these. It is just that how feasible is it? How feasible is it to want so much? Or to have it? And to be happy if we happen to have it? Having things has a price; the more we have, the more we pay. What is the currency? Time. We get less and less time to enjoy whatever we have, the more we have. Also, stress of maintenance. To hold on to what we have gets us to worry, to stress, to accumulate anxiety. And at the end, we have a lot of many things but perhaps very little satisfaction and happiness.

What is the next chapter about? I am not telling you!!

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Farah Rusta

Persian owes its richness to Arabic

by Farah Rusta on

The best legacy left by the Arab conquest of Persia, was its lexicon. We would not have had such poets as Rumi, Saadi, Nizami, and Hafiz, was it not for the richness of Persian due to the rich influence of Arabic on its vocabulary. Ironically, even Firdowsi would not have written his magnus opus was it not to counter the Arabic enrichment of Persian. 

 

FR


msabaye

good point

by msabaye on

You are right. I have had the same experience with some other poets, say Rudaki who is from over a millennium ago. Of course, not all poets are equally accessible as their use of language and vocabulary is different. You raised a very good point; I had not thought of it that way.


bajenaghe naghi

One way

by bajenaghe naghi on

to explain the need to have more of everything is to say that to some it is a way of self fulfillment to acquire things, including a wife or a husband, as you mention in your blog. The other way to explain it is to say that there are so much more things to acquire today than were available 800 years ago.  Life was simpler then and also people were less well off to afford buying things they did not really need, I guess. I remember as a child I had one or two toys that I constantly played with. I also took very good care of them. Now a days children have box full of toys and demand more. It seems that we live in a different world. not necessarily better or worse, just different. 


Abarmard

msabaye

by Abarmard on

I have read Sa'adi here and there and enjoy his stories and writings. One important note here is that the language of Sa'adi alone is not the reason one understands him clearly today, but the Persian as a powerful language.  There are texts from 1200 years back that still make sense. The reason might be that the Persian language was more complete so the written and spoken language remained similar while new vocabularies were added to it. Those older words never left our language.

Interesting. Thanks for the blog.


فغان

«نصیحت پادشاهان مسلّم کسی راست،که بیم سر ندارد و امید زر»

فغان


اگر سعدی در این زمانه میزیست ؛ به شرط خلاصی جان از دست «فمینیست ها»،یا به دلیل سنّی بودن ممنوع الانتشار میشد وکارش به داغ و درفش میکشید یا به اتّهام «آنتیسمیتیزم» و ملحقّات و شمول بی حساب وکتاب آن سر از دادگاه بین المللی لاهه در میاورد.


msabaye

I am impressed! Did you know

by msabaye on

I am impressed! Did you know it or did you look it up?


Farah Rusta

در فواید

Farah Rusta


در فواید خاموشی

 

FR