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The Masnavi

A reed flute, a grocer's parrot and a grammarian who cannot swim: Rumi's six books of stories about the soul's way home.

by Rumi3,258 passages held

  • Persian, the original language
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Original title
مثنوی معنوی
First published
(aged 53)
Original language
Persian

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Overview

Around 1260, Husam al-Din Chalabi, Rumi's closest disciple in Konya, saw that the circle was studying the long mystical poems of Sana'i and Attar, and asked his teacher for a poem of its own. What Rumi gave him was mostly spoken: in their sessions Rumi composed aloud, and Husam took the verses down and read them back to him. The poem argues that every human soul has been cut off from the source it came from and lives in longing to return, and that this longing is the surest guide the soul has. It opens on a reed flute mourning the reed bed it was cut from, and it goes on in stories — a grocer's parrot, a merchant's caged parrot and the free parrots of India — that break off into other stories and into teaching, then resume. Its target is knowledge that never changes the person who holds it. A grammarian mocks a boatman for knowing no grammar, then finds, when a storm catches the boat, that he cannot swim; the arguer who trusts only proof walks, in one of the poem's images, on wooden legs. When Husam's wife died after the first book, the dictation stopped for two years. It resumed in 1263–64 and ran to six books and some 25,000 couplets. The sixth breaks off unfinished; Rumi died in December 1273. After his death his son Sultan Walad founded the Mevlevi order, and readers came to call the poem the Qur'an in Persian.

Key concepts

What does the reed flute at the opening of the Masnavi stand for?

It stands for the human soul. The reed was cut from its reed bed and now mourns it in music, as the soul, separated from the source it came from, lives in longing to return. Much of the poem retells that lament, and it treats the ache of separation not as a malfunction to be fixed but as the clearest sign of where the soul belongs.

Why do the Masnavi's stories keep breaking off into other stories?

Because the story is a vehicle for the teaching, not the teaching itself. A tale begins, breaks off into another tale or into direct instruction, then resumes, so the reader is never allowed to rest in the plot. The form enacts the book's claim that appearances point past themselves: what happens to a grocer's parrot matters for what it shows about the soul.

What does it mean that the reasoner walks on wooden legs?

It is the Masnavi's image for the arguer who trusts only proof. Such reasoning can move, but stiffly and without feeling the ground, because it knows the world at second hand. Rumi does not reject reason; he denies it the last word, ranking it below a knowing that changes the knower. The grammarian who cannot swim is the same figure told as a story.

What is the lower self the Masnavi keeps warning against?

It is the nafs, the grasping, self-flattering part of a person that takes its own wishes for the truth. The Masnavi treats it as a master of disguise that can dress appetite as principle and pride as piety, which is why so many of its stories turn on deception. It is overcome less by force than by sight: it loses its hold once it is seen for what it is.

What is spiritual perception in the Masnavi?

It is a second way of seeing, beside the eyes, that grasps what things mean and not only how they look. The Masnavi sets it against a perception that stops at appearances, which is why one event can be a punishment to one person and a gift to another. It cannot be forced; it opens through humility, love and grace, and the stories exist to train it.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Longing as the Way Home

What if the ache of being cut off from one's source is not a wound to cure but the soul's surest guide? The poem opens on a reed flute and stakes everything on that.

The Masnavi begins with a reed flute mourning the reed bed it was cut from, and much of what follows is that lament told in other voices. Rumi holds that every human soul has been separated from the source it came from and lives in longing to return. The right longing is then not an obstacle to the devout life but its compass, and prayer, devotion and even suffering become forms of one pull. What follows is that the pain of separation is evidence: it proves there is a home to miss.

  • desire
  • love
  • divine love
  • suffering
  • mysticism
  • spirituality
  • devotion
  • prayer
  • spiritual transformation
  • transformation

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Knowledge That Changes the One Who Holds It

What is learning worth if it leaves the learner exactly as they were? The poem's target is the scholar whose knowledge never reaches his life.

A grammarian mocks a boatman for knowing no grammar, then finds, when a storm catches the boat, that he cannot swim. The story carries the Masnavi's quarrel with a knowledge that describes the world without changing the person who holds it; the arguer who trusts only proof walks, in one of its images, on wooden legs. Rumi does not throw reason away. He ranks it below a knowing that alters how a person sees, and makes humility its precondition, since whoever is sure of his learning is the one it has not yet reached.

  • knowledge
  • reason
  • spiritual knowledge
  • self-knowledge
  • humility
  • perception
  • spiritual perception

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Seeing Through the Self's Disguises

How does a person tell what is real from what only looks real, when the one best at deceiving them is themselves? The stories answer with a guide, and with grace.

Composed aloud for a circle of disciples, the poem keeps returning to one danger: the self mistaking its own wishes for what is so, and appearances for what stands behind them. Cleverness cannot cure this, because cleverness serves the self that is deceived. Rumi sets two correctives against it, a guide who has already made the journey and grace, which no effort earns. Repentance, in this light, is less a penalty than a change of sight, the moment a person sees what they had been taking for real.

  • appearance and reality
  • deception
  • discernment
  • spiritual guidance
  • divine grace
  • divine providence
  • divine mercy
  • repentance
  • faith
  • trust
  • moral responsibility
  • justice
  • prophecy

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Within this work

passages held
3,258
distinct concepts
1,653
by passages held, corpus-wide
#8

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “appearance and reality” and “deception”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 28 pairings. 90 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
appearance and realitydeception20
appearance and realityperception19
knowledgeperception16
deceptiondesire14
humilityspiritual guidance13
appearance and realityknowledge12
desirespiritual guidance12
appearance and realitydesire11
desireperception10
desiresuffering9
deceptionspiritual guidance7
humilityknowledge7
deceptionperception6
appearance and realityhumility5
desireknowledge5
humilitysuffering5
perceptionspiritual guidance5
desirehumility4
knowledgespiritual guidance4
appearance and realitysuffering3
deceptionknowledge3
humilityperception3
perceptionsuffering3
appearance and realityspiritual guidance2
deceptionhumility2
knowledgesuffering2
spiritual guidancesuffering2
deceptionsuffering1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1244 Selection from Seven Sermons of Rumi (مجالس سبعه)

    Seven addresses from the pulpit: Rumi's public preaching, each built from praise of God and a text of scripture, in contrast to the informal talks of Fihi Ma Fihi.

     FA
  2. 1260 The Masnavi (مثنوی معنوی) you are here FA
  3. 1273 Discourses of Rumi (فیه ما فیه)

    Where the Masnavi teaches in verse, these talks teach in conversation: the poem's ideas as Rumi put them in prose in Konya, to a mixed audience of disciples and officials.

     FA
  4. 1273 Divani Shamsi Tabriz (دیوان شمس)

    The lyric half of Rumi's work, set against the teaching verse of the Masnavi: the poems that came out of his friendship with Shams of Tabriz.

     FA
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