Slovo o Polku Igoreve (The Lay of
Prince Igor)
The Lay of Prince Igor is an anonymous work written about A.D. 1185,
at about the time of the events which it describes. Sadly, the only
known original copy of this epic was destroyed in a fire in the early 1800s,
but that was after it had been reprinted. The text is imperfect,
and there are occasionally breaks, but one get get the vast majority of
the tale of Prince Igor's campaign against the Turkic Polovtsy of the steppes.
It is a fairly short poem, roughly 400 lines, but had a tremendous impact
on Russian literature. Elements of the poem appear in various works,
including operas, ballets, and symphonies, from its creation to the end
of the 19th century.
You won't find it in a volume by itself. I have a prose version of it in:
The Penguin Book of Russian Verse
Dimitri Obolensky (Editor)
but this was published in 1962 and I'm not sure it's still in print.
However, Amazon has a book by the same author entitled The Heritage of
Russian Verse which *may* contain this work. [AY]
The Ilahi-nama: or Book
of God of Farid al-Din 'Attar
John Andrew Boyle (Translator)
Manchester University Press, 1976
The Ilahi-nama is a collection of poems by 'Attar (a VERY prolific
Sufi poet/perfumist/doctor from the 12th Century who wrote while tending
as many as 500 patients in his shop) organized under the frame of a king
trying to advise his six sons. The king asks each of his sons what
they wish, each son answers with a seemingly worthy answer (the daughter
of the king of fairies, Jamshid's cup, etc.) and the king tells them a
story to try and raise their desires to the even higher desire of remembrance
of God. This translation is directly off the Persian and is heavily
rhymed poems. A storyteller could easily tell the individual stories
in prose however with or without the frame. I personally found the
rhymed poems to be less emotionally powerful than the less-faithful free-verse
translation Coleman Barks did. However, this is the only English
translation I've found of the complete Ilahi-nama. [TbIaI]
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