Making it New: Medieval Muslim and Jewish Literature between Translation and Poetry
Hosted By: The National Library of Israel (NLI)
From Spain in the west to Iran in the east, medieval Muslim and Jewish writers were citizens of a shared republic of letters. Towering figures like the eleventh century Sufi mystic and scholar, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, or his near contemporary, the poet and philosopher Yehuda Halevi, reshaped a common received tradition in surprising and innovative ways, through prose and verse. However, works by these and others innovative thinkers have been largely inaccessible to those who cannot read the original Arabic, Persian, or Hebrew.
In their celebrated translations, Peter Cole and Eric Ormsby have set out to fill this gap; as poets themselves, their own works are illuminated by the language and style of their medieval forebears. The National Library of Israel is honored to host them in conversation with its Islam and Middle East Collection Curator, Samuel Thrope, about the pleasures and challenges of translating Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew literature from the Islamic world; how their work as translators and scholars intersects with their poetry; and what lessons these Muslim and Jewish thinkers can teach us today.
This event will be held at 8 PM Israel time and 1 PM EST.
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