A Sufi parableСуфийская притча
1 passageотрывков: 1
Each date opens its day beside the list, with these passages marked.Каждая дата открывает свой день рядом со списком, где отрывки этого автора отмечены.
3. Услышали раз рыбы в реке, что люди говорят, что рыбы могут жить только в воде. И, услыхав это, рыбы очень удивились и стали спрашивать друг у друга, не знает ли кто, что такое вода. Тогда одна умная рыба сказала: «Говорят, в море живет старая мудрая и ученая рыба, она всё знает, поплывем к ней и спросим у нее, что такое вода». И вот поплыли рыбы в море к тому месту, где жила мудрая рыба, и спросили ее, что такое вода и как узнать ее. И старая мудрая рыба сказала: «Вода — это то, чем мы живем, в чем живем. Вы оттого и не знаете воды, что живете в ней и живете ею».
Так и люди не знают бога, тогда как — живут им и живут в нем.
3. Once the fish in a river heard people saying that fish can live only in water. And when they heard this, the fish were greatly astonished and began asking one another whether anyone knew what water was. Then one clever fish said, “They say that in the sea there lives an old fish, wise and learned, that knows everything; let us swim to it and ask it what water is.” And so the fish swam to the sea, to the place where the wise fish lived, and asked it what water was and how to come to know it. And the old wise fish said, “Water is that by which we live, in which we live. You do not know water precisely because you live in it and live by it.”
So too people do not know God, and yet — they live by him and live in him.
Sufi.
From 'The Parable of the Fishes', in E. H. Palmer, Oriental Mysticism: a treatise on the Sufi… · reworded by Tolstoy (more).
What changedThe sage’s verse becomes a prose answer, and the moral a sentence of its own.
What Tolstoy read · Moncure D. Conway, The Sacred AnthologyOnce upon a time the fishes of a certain river took counsel together, and said, …
… there dwelleth in the sea a very wise and learned fish who knoweth all things ; let us journey to him, and ask him to show us water, or explain unto us what it is.
Ye live in God, yet know him not.
Source text: archive.orgSufi’s own wordsOnce upon a time the fishes of a certain river took counsel together, and said, …
They tell us that our life and being is from the water, but we have never seen water, and know not what it is …
… heard that there dwelleth in the sea a very wise and learned fish who knoweth all things ; let us journey to him, and ask him to shew us water, or explain unto us what it is.
Ye live in God, yet know him not.
Source text: archive.orgDetails
The words shown were found, word for word, in the saved source text. 'The Parable of the Fishes', in E. H. Palmer, Oriental Mysticism: a treatise on the Sufiistic and Unitarian theosophy of the Persians (Cambridge, 1867), ch. I; reprinted by Conway, The Sacred Anthology, no. CIX, Palmer pp. 48-49; Conway (1874) no. CIX 'The Unrecognised' (index: Persian).
The story follows Palmer/Conway closely up to the wise fish's answer. There the sage replies in verse ('O ye who seek to solve the knot! Ye live in God, yet know him not. Ye sit upon the river's brink, Yet crave in vain a drop to drink ...'); Tolstoy replaces the verse with a prose answer ('water is that by which and in which we live; you do not know it because you live in it') and adds the moral as a separate paragraph ('so people do not know God, though they live by him and in him'). Palmer's ironic close (the fishes go home satisfied, 'since thou hast shown us what water is not') is dropped.