The Conference of the Birds

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"Conference of the Birds" redirects here. For other uses, see Conference of the Birds (disambiguation).
The Concourse of the Birds painted by Habib Allah. The hoopoe, center right, instructs the other birds on the Sufi path.

The Speech of the Birds (Persian: منطق الطیر‎, Mantiqu 't-Tayr, 1177, other titles in English: "The Conference of the Birds") is an epic of approximately 4500 lines written in Persian by the poet Farid ud-Din Attar.

In the poem, the birds of the world gather to decide who is to be their king, as they have none. The hoopoe, the wisest of them all, suggests that they should find the legendary Simorgh, a mythical Persian bird roughly equivalent to the western phoenix. The hoopoe leads the birds, each of whom represent a human fault which prevents man from attaining enlightenment. When the group of thirty birds finally reach the dwelling place of the Simorgh, all they find is a lake in which they see their own reflection.

Besides being one of the most celebrated examples of Persian poetry, this book relies on a clever word play between the words Simorgh – a mysterious bird in Iranian mythology which is a symbol often found in sufi literature, and similar to the phoenix bird – and "si morgh" – meaning "thirty birds" in Persian.

It was in China, late one moonless night,
The Simorgh first appeared to mortal sight –
He let a feather float down through the air,
And rumours of its fame spread everywhere; [1]

Its most famous section is:

Come you lost Atoms to your Centre draw,
And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw:
Rays that have wander'd into Darkness wide
Return and back into your Sun subside

The story recounts the longing of a group of birds who desire to know the great Simorgh, and who, under the guidance of a leader bird, start their journey toward the land of Simorgh. One by one, they drop out of the journey, each offering an excuse and unable to endure the journey. Each bird has a special significance, and a corresponding didactic fault. The guiding bird is the hoopoe, while the nightingale symbolizes the lover. The parrot is seeking the fountain of immortality, not God, and the peacock symbolizes the "fallen soul" who is in alliance with Satan.

The birds must cross seven valleys in order to find the Simorgh: Talab (Yearning), Eshq (Love), Marifat (Gnosis), Istighnah (Detachment), Tawheed (Unity of God), Hayrat (Bewilderment) and, finally, Fuqur and Fana (Selflessness and Oblivion in God). These represent the stations that a Sufi or any individual must pass through to realize the true nature of God.

Within the larger context of the story of the journey of the birds, Attar masterfully tells the reader many didactic short, sweet stories in captivating poetic style. Eventually only thirty birds remain as they finally arrive in the land of Simorgh – all they see there are each other and the reflection of the thirty birds in a lake – not the mythical Simorgh. It is the Sufi doctrine that God is not external or separate from the universe, rather is the totality of existence. The thirty birds seeking the Simorgh realise that Simorgh is nothing more than their transcendent totality. The idea of God within is an idea intrinsic to most interpretations of Sufism. As the birds realize the truth, they now reach the station of Baqa (Subsistence) which sits atop the Mountain Qaf.

Contents

La Conférence des oiseaux [edit]

Peter Brook and Jean-Claude Carrière adapted the poem into a play titled La Conférence des oiseaux (The Conference of the Birds), which they published in 1979. Brook toured the play around rural Africa before presenting two extremely successful productions to Western audiences—one in New York City at La MaMa, E.T.C. and one in Paris.[2]

In 1991, Hafiz Karmali (assistant to Peter Brook's protégé Andrei Serban) directed this version at the Ismaili Centre in London, UK with an ensemble of actors trained at the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard. In 2012 in Vancouver Canada Hafiz Karmali directed a similar version with a cast of Ismaili Muslim actors, this version included verses of Ismaili hymns (Ginans & Manqabat) as well as some improvised script in Kutchi language and Gujarati. The 2012 Vancouver cast consisted of the following actors.

Ouriel Zohar later translated the play from French to Hebrew.

See also [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ quoted from The Conference of the Birds by Farid al-Din Attar, edited and translated by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis, Penguin Classics, 1984, ISBN 978-0-14-044434-6
  2. ^ John Heilpern gives an account of the events surrounding these performances in his 1977 book Conference of the Birds: The Story of Peter Brook in Africa.

External links [edit]

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