hidden numbers

That beauty who gladdens my heart with her laugh,

Drives me to anguish with her flying hair.

She made me write the words that set her free,

And wrote those words herself that enslaved me.

#1562: From Rumi's Kolliyaat-e Shams-e Tabrizi

Search words: number, math, add, subtract, multiply, divide

I woke with mathematics on my mind but no obvious words turned up a first line except that add came up inside gladdens, so I've gone with that.

This is one of the quatrains that Houshmand has translated twice. Here is her original translation:

That Turk, who gladdens my heart with her laugh,
Drives me to anguish with her flying hair.
She made me write the words that set her free,
And wrote those words herself that enslaved me.

As far as I can see, the only difference is in the "Turk" in the first version and the "beauty" in the final one. Fairly trivial, but still worthy of note.

I have an ambition to get hold of books by Annemarie Schimmel and see how she translates Rumi. Her translations might open some other doors. I'd also like to get hold of her compilation on number mysticism, The Mystery of Numbers.

If "she", this Turkish beauty, is Rumi's anima or internal feminine ideal, how does he separate out what he wrote and what "she" wrote? If his words set her free, how do her words enslave him? It makes a kind of supra-logical sense. Everything that Rumi writes is inspired by this muse. He is motivated to write through her urging and he is fascinated by what emerges. It feels a little like he wrote it but also like a strange "other" wrote it. She brings him great joy when she is present but great anguish when she flees, her hair flying behind her.

I have no idea at all how I could connect all this to numbers.