Dr. Samuel Thrope, Curator of the Islam and Middle East Collection, in conversation with:

Professor Eric Ormsby, scholar, poet, and translator, Freie Universität, Berlin

Peter Cole, poet and translator, Yale University

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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 through prose and verse that remain surprising and new. 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 NLI is honored to host them in conversation with 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.

‍

Dr. Samuel Thrope, Curator of the Islam and Middle East Collection, in conversation with:

Professor Eric Ormsby, scholar, poet, and translator, Freie Universität, Berlin

Peter Cole, poet and translator, Yale University

‍

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 through prose and verse that remain surprising and new. 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 NLI is honored to host them in conversation with 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.