Layli and Majnun

Hosted by Chris Piuma and Suzanne Conklin Akbari

Her voice was sweet and liquid, like a stream
That lulls all other streams to sleep and dream;
Her eyes like doe’s eyes, whose dark gaze would make
A lion lie down dazed, and half awake.
She seemed an alphabet of loveliness,
Curved letters were the curling of each tress,
Straight letters were her stature, and her lips
Were like a letter formed as an ellipse,
And all the letters made her like that bowl
That shows the world as an enchanted whole.

The story of Layli and Majnun — sometimes written as Layla and Majnun — was most famously recorded in a book-length poem by the twelfth-century Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi. Chris and Suzanne consider what the poem has to say about love, mental illness, and fan culture.

70. Layli and Majnun.

The Spouter-Inn Nezami Ganjavi's 12th century poem, Layli and Majnun (also known as Layla and Majnun). More episodes

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Show Notes.

Nezami Ganjavi: Layla and Majnun, trans. Dick Davis. [Bookshop.]

Our episode on Conference of the Birds.

Maria Rosa Menocal: Shards of Love: Exile and the Origin of the Lyric.

Our episode on Enkidu from The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Raymond Roussel: Locus Solus.

Manuscript images of Layli and Majnun at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

And images of Majnun at the Ka’aba with a door knocker: 1, 2.

Our episode on Blind Owl.

The Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892–1910.

J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit.

Next: Geoffrey Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde. (Bookshop. Also a helpful online modernized and annotated version.)

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