Rumi, Dickinson, and Whitman: A Dialogue of Possibility and Self
Emily Dickinson once wrote: “I dwell in Possibility — / A fairer House than Prose.” Her metaphor of the self as a dwelling with infinite windows and doors has its counterpart in Rumi’s Masnavi, where the soul is described as a house for passing states.
Persian (Masnavi V, 155):
هست مهمانخانه این تن ای جوان
هر صباحی ضیف نو آید دوان
This body is a guest house, O young one.
Each morning, a new guest comes rushing in.
Rumi’s guest house is Dickinson’s house of possibility. Both imagine the self not as a fixed structure but as a dwelling open to arrivals from beyond. For Dickinson, these arrivals are “possibility” itself, enlarging the chambers of being. For Rumi, they are the visitors of joy, sorrow, fear, or wonder — each to be welcomed, each to be let go. Both affirm that life’s fullness is not in closure but in receptivity.
Another Masnavi passage expands this sense of openness into a vision of perpetual becoming.
Persian (Masnavi IV, 135):
آمده اول به اقلیم جماد
وز جمادی در نباتی اوفتاد
At first he came to the realm of mineral;
from mineral he passed into plant.
Rumi traces existence as a journey through forms — from mineral, to plant, to animal, to human, and onward. Dickinson’s “chambers as the cedars” resonate here: each stage is another room, more spacious than the last. Life, for both poets, is not confinement but expansion — an invitation into ever-wider possibility.
If Dickinson finds kinship in Rumi’s house of possibility, Walt Whitman finds his mirror in Rumi’s cosmic self. Whitman’s “Song of Myself” exults: “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” In the Masnavi, Rumi sings the same truth:
Persian (Masnavi IV, 117):
ما ز بالاییم و بالا میرویم
ما ز دریاییم و دریا میرویم
We are of the Above, and to the Above we rise.
We are of the sea, and to the sea we return.
Here the self is not bounded; it belongs to sky and sea alike. Whitman’s multitudinous “I” and Rumi’s wave-soul both dissolve into the Whole, affirming that individuality and universality are one.
And just as Whitman delights in the newness of each perception, so too Rumi celebrates renewal:
Persian (Masnavi IV, 124):
هر زمان نو صورتی و نو جمال
تا ز نو دیدن فرو میرد ملال
At every moment, a new form, a new beauty;
in seeing anew, weariness fades.
This is Whitman’s sacred present tense, where each blade of grass or pulse of the body is fresh. Rumi affirms the same: creation is not finished but endlessly unfolding, and the soul that can see with new eyes never tires of life.
Conclusion
Placed alongside Dickinson and Whitman, Rumi’s Masnavi becomes a voice in a centuries-long conversation. Dickinson dwells in possibility; Rumi opens the door of the guest house to welcome new possibilities. Whitman sings the self as cosmos; Rumi declares that we are of the Above, of the the Unbounded Ocean of Being. Each affirms that human life is not a cage but a dwelling, a journey, a song — and when we are open to what comes, we are renewed by what is and what may come.
1 comment:
Most of the poems attributed to Mawlana Jalaluddin Balkhi in English are actually inauthentic — they don’t exist in the original Persian manuscripts. Many Western translators rewrote or even invented verses, which is shameful. On top of that, you call him Rumi instead of using his real name, Mawlana, the great Iranian poet and mystic.
The way Western culture treats Eastern mystical and artistic works is often disrespectful: you are not loyal to the original text, and you publish fake poetry under Mawlana’s name. I have read many of these so-called “Rumi” translations in English. They are not deep at all — they read more like a simple self-help booklet: “be kind,” “be good,” and so on. But the real Persian verses are something completely different: profound, complex, and rooted in centuries of Persian Sufi tradition.
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