@Vaishali Prazmari's February masterclass is about is 'Sadness and Madness'. And the face of this class is Majnun from the story of Layla & Majnun. Vaishali and I were talking about Majnun since I am from Turkey, this is a familiar concept for me. It has been ages since I read this story but I shared some brief information with Vaishali. She asked me to share them in the forum which I am more than happy to do so.
Layla and Majnun is an Arabic origin love story, which is very suitable for February's class:)
Majnun's spelling is 'Mecnun' in Turkish. The word comes from Arabic and means;
crazy, mad
a person that lost his mind out of love sickness (like Majnun a.k.a Kays in the story)
'Becoming a mecnun or being like Mecnun' are also common sayings in Turkish, especially in song lyrics and poems.
I also find an etymology information of this word which is:
'Derived from the passive participle of passive verb جُنَّ (junna, “to be mad, insane, possessed”), based on the root ج ن ن (j-n-n) of جِنّ (jinn, “jinn, demon”)
An old Arabic love story which got very popular among the Islamic world. Famous poets like Nizami or Fuzuli wrote this story in epic/lyric poem forms. And loved by everyone in many lands. The story includes love, madness, social oppressions, tragedy, devotion, power of love, (in some versions) sufic themes and idealization of love; finding the ideal love; the divine one via the mortal love.
I hope you find the subject interesting and I am sure that it will be addressed in a more detailed and elaborated way in the class. Enjoy!!
This is so wonderful, Merve -- I love that Majnun is synonymous with crazy with love! A fine madness.
This is brilliant Merve! It's such a famous tale that you can almost get away without reading it and just glean what it's about from secondary sources... but since it's relatively short it's still worth reading! I've got the version translated by Gelpke. Thank you for the info!
Thanks so much, Merve!!!