Richard Jeffrey Newman will be reading from his translation of Saadi's
Gulistan:
Saturday, November 12
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (between Bleecker & Houston)
212) 614-1224
Free Admission
WHY PERSIAN LITERATURE? WHY NOW?
SAADI’S 13TH CENTURY ROSE GARDEN IN TODAY’S WORLD
Saadi of Shiraz, a contemporary of Rumi, is one of the masters of classical
Persian literature. His masterpiece, the Gulistan (Rose Garden), is revered
worldwide both for the literary pleasure it provides and for the wisdom it
contains. In the 1600s, Andre du Ryer’s translation of the Gulistan into
French gave the West one of its first sympathetic windows into the world of
Islam. Subsequent translations into Dutch, Latin, German, Russian and
English spread Saadi’s name and the humanistic values that are so central to
his work throughout the literary and cultural landscapes of the 18th and
19th centuries, influencing writers like Goethe, Byron, Emerson and Thoreau.
Emerson thought so highly of the Gulistan that he called it “a secular
bible.” In the 20th century, a passage from the Gulistan was inscribed in
the lobby of the United Nations. Now, in the 21st century, with Iran
occupying an ever more significant place on the world stage, it is important
that we revisit that country’s history and culture, reminding ourselves of
the treasures it has given the world and looking to see what we can learn
from those treasures not only about Iran and its people, but also about
ourselves.
Richard Jeffrey Newman is an essayist, poet and translator who has been
publishing his work since 1988, when the essay “His Sexuality; Her
Reproductive Rights” appeared in Changing Men magazine. Since then, his
essays and poems have appeared in Salon.com, The American Voice, The
Pedestal, Circumference, Prairie Schooner, ACM, Birmingham Poetry Reviewand
other literary journals. He has given talks and led workshops on writing
autobiographically about gender, sex and sexuality. Selections from Saadi’s
Gulistan, his first book, was published in 2004 by Global Scholarly
Publications (GSP). He will be translating four more books for GSP: Saadi’s
other masterpiece, the Bustan, Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, Nezami’s Haft Peykar
and Attar’s Elahi Nameh. His own book of poems, The Silence Of Men, is
forthcoming from CavanKerry Press. You can learn more about his work at
www.richardjnewman.com. He is an Associate Professor in the English
Department at Nassau Community College.
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