Khayal in Rumi: Imagining Otherwise

The paper discusses the concept of khayal as it appears in Rumi s works. But as the title suggests, this discussion involves here a comparison between the Western critical notion of the Imagination and Rumi s category of khayal. One can critically imagine khayal perhaps only thus. The history of the concept of the imagination in the West suggests that the concept has always stood in a relation of an oppositional otherness to the concept of reason. The phenomenon of Rumi s extraordinary poetic output, perhaps peerless in many ways, seems to offer a mediatory response to long standing quarrel between reason and imagination, . between poetry and philosophy in the West. The paper argues that the imagination can only apprehend khayal by opening itself to its own otherness. Rumi s relatively recent euphoric reception in the West is only one among those various considerations out of which the need for such a comparison arises. The discussion of the comparison between khaydl and the Western notion of the imagination leads to the question of the way one should approach Rumi. At a time when Rumi is increasingly becoming a part of comparative literature syllabi all around the world, it is important to investigate the theory of imagination that regulates his poetic practice and to talk about a critical approach that emerges from within Rumi s own work.