As part of my art residency at the Arts Council of Princeton I am organizing this lecture by Michael Barry of Princeton University on one of the greatest masterpieces of the Islamic world The Canticle of the Birds written by Fariddudin Attâr aka The Conference of the Birds. Please join me on May 21st, 7 pm at the ACP.
Lecture: The Canticle of the Birds
by Dr. Michael Barry
Thursday, May 21, 7:00 pm
Paul Robeson Center for the Arts – Arts Council of Princeton
Scheduled speaker: Michael Barry, Lecturer in Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University
The work composed at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the ‘Canticle of the Birds’ or Manteq-ot-Teyr is universally regarded not only as the most perfect crystallization of Sufi thought in Persian verse – indeed Rûmî acknowledged its poet `Attâr (ca. 1145-1221) as his own spiritual master – but as one of the greatest masterpieces of all mystical literature. Through exquisite manuscript illuminations of the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries analyzed here in depth, this lecture presents the poem’s allegory of all the world’s souls, configured as so many birds in flight towards the Sunbird or Sîmorgh rising in the East as a glorious symbol of the Divine – discussing such brilliant visual significance in light of archetypal religious imagery: notably the visionary experience of `Attâr’s immediate contemporary, and true spiritual counterpart, Saint Francis of Assisi.
`Attâr’s poem has been newly made available for international audiences by the Éditions Diane de Selliers (Paris) in both French and English versions – respectively translated by Leili Anvar and Dick Davis – in a sumptuous edition with 210 manuscript illuminations commented by Michael Barry. This exceptional publication has been awarded both France’s Montherlant Prize for writing on art by the Académie des Beaux-Arts (part of the Académie Française) in 2013, and Iran’s Prize for Book of the Year on Persian Civilization in 2014.
Speaker’s Bio:
Dr. Michael Barry has lectured in Princeton’s Near Eastern Studies Department since 2004 on the medieval and modern Islamic cultures of Iran, India, Pakistan, and most especially Afghanistan—where his work over more than four decades has ranged from anthropological research to defense of human rights and coordinating humanitarian assistance for the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights, for Médecins du Monde, and for the United Nations. He has published extensively in both his writing languages, English and French; his academic works have been translated into Persian and a half-dozen European versions; and he holds seven literary prizes from France and Iran.
While fluent in the Persian language (including the Afghan or “Dari” variant thereof) and deeply committed to reviving the study of its literature in Princeton, he is also keenly interested in the civilization of Islamic or Arabized Spain, and lectures on “Spanish Islam” every other year in Princeton’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese, stressing the transmission of traditional Islamic cultural traits to the civilization of Western Europe through the medieval Iberian peninsula.
Faraz Khan
2015 Anne Reeves Artist-in-Residence, Arts Council of Princeton
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