posted at 11/05/09 - 10:15 PM
I've just finished reading IT'S REALLY ALL ABOUT GOD, and wonder why Samir Selmanovic frequently relies on the notoriously spurious "translations" (of Hafiz, Aquinas, and others) created by the poet David Ladinsky. (Mr. Ladinsky has a well-documented habit of applying the term "translations" to his own original poetry which has little or -- in many cases -- nothing to do with the work he claims he "translates").
Rev. Selmanovic's reliance on such a very questionable secondary source for quotations lends an unintended, and distasteful, irony to his book's repeated paeans to the power and importance of truthfulness. I wept to see that truth -- as Selmanovic sees it and praises it -- does not involve such little matters as getting the facts right.