Elias Papadimitrakopoulos, one of the most admired Greek prose writers, was born in 1930 in Pyrgos (Eleia), Greece. Toothpaste with Chlorophyll and Maritime Hot Baths are his first two collections of short stories and have been reprinted several times in Greece. Papadimitrakopoulos combines his remarkably subtle gift for precision of language with the profound sensitivity and compassion for his subjects that has made his reputation as a master painter of the triste and ephemeral. He received the Petros Haris Foundation Prize from the Academy of Athens in 2010 and the National Literary Award in 2015. His collected short stories are now gathered in a six-volume set published by Gavriilidis. He lives in Athens and, during the summer, on the island of Paros.

Rumi’s Mathnavi was first sponsored by the Center for Global Peace and the Department of Performing Arts at American University in a reader’s theatre version in 1999 and 2000. Versions of it have been produced at the La MaMa ETC main stage in New York and elsewhere. In 2006, the piece toured the East coast cities as a theatre-for-peace project—with discussions hosted by Quakers, conflict resolution specialists, Imams, Rabbis, a Sufi Sheikh, and well-known peace activists including Iraqi-American Andy Shallal. Performed in the traditional Sufi circle with live musicians and Persian dance, it became a ritual realization of Rumi’s book. UNESCO in conjunction with the Turkish Embassy — representing the country where the Persian poet lived most of his life—has issued a medallion for the year of Rumi, recognizing his present importance for the world. The events scheduled for this year that also honor Rumi and his incomparable poetic work include a documentary film on current-day students of Rumi and a CD of his poetry set to music. A feature film on the life of Rumi is currently in the works.

“There are incompletable tasks. Tasks which are either impossible to accomplish or impossible to comprehend. Such tasks allow one neither the illusion nor the distraction nor the escape of what is styled “success.” On the contrary, the unperceived glory of perpetual failure is their sole promise. Far from whetting the appetite for worldly enterprise, tasks of this sort exercise a stunning and bewildering effect on the will, plunging it into a perplexity which borders on vertigo. Did it puff and pant before in frenzied pursuit of some hallucinated prize? Now look as, crawling to a halt, it sinks, as if seized with paralysis, into that luminous quiescence which hitherto eluded it! . . .  When the will is quelled, the muscles go slack, and when the muscles go slack, the mind kicks into gear; then, on the ruins of volition, perspicacity erects itself. So the servitude to action ends, and the heroism of introspection begins.”

Christopher Spranger is the author of The Comedy of Agony: A Book of Poisonous Contemplations (Leaping Dog Press, 2006) and The Effort to Fall (Green Integer, 1998).