“YOU AND I”: THE IDEA OF ONENESS WITH LOVE IN THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH POETRY AND THIRTEENTH-CENTURY ANATOLIAN SUFI POETRY
Abstract
Early seventeenth-century English verse and thirteenth-century Anatolian Sufi poetry, though from different cultures and eras, converge in their exploration of going beyond material existence through love. In the verses of Edmund Spenser, John Donne, George Herbert, Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi, Yunus Emre and Haji Bektash Veli, love emerges as a medium for spiritual awakening that liberates individuals from mundane life and socio-political conflicts and leads to an elevated consciousness merged with the divine. Thus, this article will analyse Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” Rumi’s “You and I,” Spenser’s “An Hymne in Honour of Heavenly Love,” Emre’s “Lovers Die Not,” Herbert’s “Love III,” and Veli’s “The Transcendence of Saints” in light of Plato's idea of Oneness and the Sufi doctrine of wahdat-i wujud and suggest that these poems reveal love as a transformative power enabling individuals to transcend their worldly existence and become One with the beloved, namely the divine.