Laili and Majnun

The story of the loves of Laili 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 Nazami 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 its 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 faithful love. The reader will, I think, be pleased with the manner in which the Persian poet has depicted the character of a frantic lover, and also the tender affections of his Laili. The sentiments will be found to differ very little from those of the Western world.

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 Laili and 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!