We have mudh to say to the East this night
Yasemin Bin Al-Hajjar puts stars to flight
We Declare her skills earn augmentation
She raises the East with her hand and light
We directly seek to raise her station
For calligraphy and illumination
Her raiment, as well, elegant and sleek
The Order of the Maunche meets this vocation
Counsels, Tindel and Alberic bespeak
Of this fine alchemist with paint and ink
Granted at Ethereal Court with delight
With copious speech that is not oblique
Went out at The Third Ethereal Court of the Eastern Consules, Tindal & Alberic
At the 7:57 mark through 10:22
BLOG POST! WOO! OOO! Fiona presented me with doing a Maunche scroll and I jumped at the opportunity. I have known the recipient, Yasemin Bin Al-Hajjar for many years and we both live in the Shire of Midland Vale. In this time of COVID, it was specifically requested that we not give a particular time or place in the scroll and as such I left it as merely an Ephemeral Court. Fiona showed me the inspiration piece, "Bahman-Ardeshir swallowed by a dragon," 1580-85, and I quickly set to some internet searching to learn more about the rhymes and metres of Middle Eastern poetry. I found "A Thousand Years of the Persian Book Classical Persian Poetry" and particularly the authorJalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī - better known simply as Rumi - who was definitely within the recipient’s time period. So I looked into what forms the poet would have used and discovered the Ruba’i, which included one of the first western translations of this poetic form by Edward Fitzgerald in the mid 19th century. I decided to follow Fitzgerald's translation of “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam." While this is a later piece, it follows the same poetic form as Rumi, and seemed to be the best compromise between Yasemin’s time period and the time period of her scroll. Fitzgerald uses a particular verse structure known as the Rubáiyát Quatrain - the same form Robert Frost used in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." I broke down the verses of the scroll into the cyclical structure, linking the unrhymed line of the final stanza back to the first stanza.
This was an exciting project and I enjoyed working with a new poetic form. The illumination and the calligraphy were incredibly gorgeous and all together we made an incredible piece that, I hope, reflects the incredibly talented recipient and her wonderful achievements in the East Kingdom.
