Creating stories of love, together
Storytelling is universal. It can bridge the space between individuals and cultures. It can bridge centuries. Even ancient stories have resonance today. Stories of love, war — and plague. The circumstances might not be exactly the same, but the parallels of experience and the universality of our emotions echo. When the world seems out of our control there’s comfort in that.
Often compared to Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” the story of “Layli and Majnun,” was written in 1188 and is one of five long romances from the poet Nizami’s “Khamseh” (Quintet). It tells of two young lovers who are prevented from being together by their families and community.
This illustration comes from a “Khamseh” manuscript dated 1527; it depicts the moment when, after many years of separation and emotional hardship that has left them physically weakened, Layli and Majnun are finally brought into each other’s company by a gobetween.
They keep their distance, however, out of fear that the intensity of embracing each other would kill them. Instead, Majnun, a poet, sings a beautiful composition he has written to Layli in an expression of the intensity of his love.
As we are able, once again, to physically meet with friends and family after months of being apart, we can understand the emotion the two lovers feel. Whether we can understand the script or not, the illustrations encourage us to use our imaginations and create a story of our own using cues from the past.
And that’s poetry for you: even when we can’t understand the script, we can interpret the images. When we can’t understand the language, we can understand the emotion. Poetry’s images collide and refract, illuminating new ideas and connections. The breadth of human experience resonates and hums in the spaces between words, something we can experience together.
The Aga Khan museum’s can be access online, even when we can’t access them physically, at agakhanmuseum.org.