Rumi: A Spiritual Biography

by Leslie Wines

Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian lawyer-divine and SUfi, widely considered literature's greatest mystical poet... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0824523520
• ISBN13: 9780824523527
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Crossroad Publishing
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A Masterpiece by Ms. Wines

Ms.Wines writes this book in such a way that makes it so enjoyable. She seems to be a writer that any group can grasp her point. What a splendid book.

Illuminating and entertaining

Rumi: A Spiritual Biography is that rare thing, a thoughtful, richly textured short biography that can appeal to a very broad audience. A delightful look at one of the world's greatest poets and humanists--Wines provides us with an insightful and precise portrait of a riveting historical figure. Her writing is intelligent, readable, and thought-provoking. I can't think of a more stimulating book about Rumi; the book is both informative and a wonderful read that not only sheds light on the nature of Rumi's spirituality and mystical endeavors and creativity, as well as his dramatic literary achievments but also elucidates the modern reader's strong appeal to and identification with Rumi.

Rumi comes to life

As the critic Edwin Muir noted in 1926 of Lytton Strachey, Strachey (whose works became the touchstones for modern biography) did 2 things for biography: he humanized it by irony, he gave it form. He went out in search not of great figures and noble character, but of human nature, and he always found. So too does author Leslie Wines in Rumi: A Spiritual Biography.Wines's biography of Rumi is rich with good storytelling and marvelous irony and, like Strachey, with just a little touch of sardonic wit. How else to approach the incredible legends and hagiographers of Rumi? But her approach is never disrespectful or irreverent. While critical of the hagiographic trend of Rumi's contemporaries, as well as most future historians, Wines does not simply and tediously recount these legends but, while wading through such ushers in a fresh and bold imagining of this great poet with a critical contemporary eye. Ultimately Rumi comes to life on the pages of this short literary biography like he never has before. Wines humanizes Rumi. In short, Wines shows how Rumi's work responds to an increasing need many of us have for an instinctive and mystical response to life, and for a more joyful daily exiistence. She shows us how Rumi's very broad appeal--even to those who are not particularly interested in spiritual writings or even poetry--derives from his very genuine cosmopolitan nature and character. Like Rumi's own work there is little sentimentality for its own sake in the author's examination of her subject, which very convincinly sheds light on Rumi's contemporary relevance and dazzling creative appeal and our mystic identification with this great humanist. And she shows us how Rumi's meditations on love and the chaotic nature of poetry and life, along with the extraordinary social, cutural and politically tumultuous times (not unlike our own)of his life resonate with the modern reader and transcend medieval times to our own present day.

Mad for Rumi

One of the author's chapter's titles is "Mad for Music", another "The Most Digressive Story Ever Told" (this second one is a concentration on his literary work)and is reflective of the author's touch of "sly whimsy" as one other reviewer said. The writing is very good and I like what amounts to the combination of a somewhat of a journalistic style with great storytelling. The author was obviously enchanted with her subject,b ut unlike many other writers on Rumi, does not take herself or Rumi for that matter TOO seriously. What do I mean by that? It would seem to me that she approaches Rumi in just the way he himself would want to be appraoched, in fact asked to be, and would have approached his own self. Leslie Wines captures Rumi with a vibrancy and immediacey I've yet to see. I am a great admirer of the Penguin Lives series. A large part of the tremendous success of Penguin Lives is its nack for hitching up just the right author and subject; absolute compatibility, simpatico between subject and writer. So too with this series with Leslie Wines and Rumi.

Enjoy a great read and get to know Rumi

I have to wonder whether I read the same book as this first reviewer. While I am not a book-making expert I found this a beautifully designed book and as an English composition instructor of CUNY I found the book very well written and an immensely enjoyable read. I've been reading Rumi's poetry for years and looking at many different translations but I've never run across a biography of Rumi and was thrilled to see this one.Rumi: a Spiritual Biography places Rumi within the social, political and cultural context of his time. Ms. Wins is not an Islamist or for that matter a Rumi scholar and this is perhaps her most enduring value to the general reader. Her approach to Rumi is vigorous, occasionally with a sly sense of whimsey, always intelligent and makes both Rumi's life and his work very accessible to the general reader.From this short and energetic literary biography, I have for the first time a good vision of Rumi as a universal human being. His appeal and relevance to the modern reader becomes abunduntly clear--as a poet as well as an ecstatic spiritual being. Ms. WIns clearly demonstrates how Rumi calls to us from beyond the concerns of conventional religiosity and limiting beliefs. Her probing curiosity and very lively interest rather than another hagiographic interpretation or pious reverence is highly refreshing. Of particular value is her discussions and examination how in Rumi the divine and human realms intermingle and how our spiritual dimension and human nature find fullfilment in being united.