Khayal in Rumi: Imagining Otherwise

Authors

  • Iftikhar Shafi

Abstract

The paper discusses the concept of khayâl as it appears in Rūmī’s works. But as the title suggests, this discussion involves here a comparison between the Western critical notion of the Imagination and Rūmī’s category of khayâl. One can critically imagine khayâl perhaps only thus. The history of the concept of the imagination in the West suggests that the concept has always stood in a relation of an oppositional otherness to the concept of reason. The phenomenon of Rūmī’s extraordinary poetic output, perhaps peerless in many ways, seems to offer a mediatory response to long standing quarrel between reason and imagination, between poetry and philosophy in the West. The paper argues that the imagination can only apprehend khayâl by opening itself to its own otherness. Rūmī’s relatively recent ‘euphoric’ reception in the West is only one among those various considerations out of which the need for such a comparison arises. The discussion of the comparison between khayâl and the Western notion of the imagination leads to the question of the way one should approach Rūmī. At a time when Rūmī is increasingly becoming a part of comparative literature syllabi all around the world, it is important to investigate the theory of imagination that regulates his poetic practice and to talk about a critical approach that emerges from within Rūmī’s own work.

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Published

2020-02-18