Description
The story of the loves of laila and majnun is one of the most popular in the East. There are several poems on the same subject by different authors, but that by Nazémi is considered the best; and I believe this is the first time it has appeared in the European language. Every nation has its favorite tales of love as well as chivalry. France and Italy have their Abelard and Eloisa, their Petrarch and Laura; and Arabia has its Laili and Majnun, the beautiful record of whose sorrows is constantly referred to, throughout the East, as an immortal example of the most fruitful love. Besides layla and majnun, he wrote the story of Khosrfi and Shirin, the Treasury of Secrets, and some other Works. His last and most considerable poem was the Sekandar-Namea, an epic, celebrating the career of Alexander the Great. At the period it was finished, he is reported to have been more than sixty years of age. Nazami was eminently distinguished through life for his rigid sanctity, which formed indeed the peculiarity of his character, cherishing, as he did at the same time, the amatory or metaphysical sentiments which pervade his romantic poem of layla majnun. But he may have been a Sufi, and aimed at describing the passions of the soul in its progress to eternity. The Odes of Hafiz have been supposed to have a similar spiritual object