“Your missus has left you and you don’t know where to turn, do you go down the pub with your mates or do you read 13th-century Persian poetry?” was the Mirror’s unexpectedly literary rhetorical question this week.
Why, Persian poetry of course, if you’re Chris Martin. Newly separated from Gwyneth Paltrow, as the paper reported, he cited Rumi’s poem The Guesthouse as the antidote to being “down and confused”.
“This being human is a guest house,” it opens, striking a surprisingly suburban note for the work of an ancient Sufi mystic. “Every morning a new arrival./ A joy, a depression, a meanness,/ some momentary awareness comes/ as an unexpected visitor.”
The Coldplay frontman also professes to have taken comfort from Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, which outlined the Austrian psychiatrist’s theory of logotherapy, or “healing by meaning”, developed in Auschwitz and Kaufering concentration camps after he lost his whole family to the Holocaust.
Over on the Tips, Links and Suggestions forum, coincidentally, this week’s discussion has also turned to comfort reading. With suggestions ranging from Harry Potter to Madame Bovary, Steinbeck to Graham Greene and Mary Stewart, it’s clear that consolation is particular to the consoled. One contributor even cited the work of Beckett and Sylvia Plath as their comfort blankets of choice.
What literature do you turn to in times of trouble? Do you find solace in poetry or prose? Let us know in the comments below or join us on Tips, Links and Suggestions.
