Wisdom Like a Flower Bed: Sa’di’s ‘Gulistan’

Common sense is probably the last thing we want or expect from poets. Give us confessions, prophecies, manifestos, but spare us the advice — especially advice in verse. The poet should be a firebrand, not some mumbling old uncle. And yet, it wasn’t always thus. In older cultures, not only in Greece and Rome but in India, Persia, and China, the poet was often seen less as a visionary than as a dispenser of wisdom. This wasn’t usually lofty wisdom; it was homespun, practical, and shrewd. It taught its readers how to live. And because it was cast in verse, its rhythms reinforced its hold; it stuck in the mind like a tune. It was common sense made musical.