An Ode: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

An Ode, credited to Táhirih (Fátimih Baraghání), is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox volunteers bring you 13 recordings of An Ode by Táhirih (Fátimih Baraghání). Translated by Edward Granville Browne(1862 – 1926). Fátimih Baraghání (1814/1817 – 1852), also known by the titles of Táhirih (Arabic for “The Pure One”) and Qurratu’l-‘Ayn (Arabic for “Consolation of the Eyes”) was an influential Iranian poet and Bábí heroine from the town of Qazvín. Her legacy is important to Bahá’ís, as well as supporters of women’s rights in Iran. In 1844, she became the seventeenth disciple or “Letter of the Living” of the Báb (1819-1850). As the only woman in this initial group of disciples, she is often compared to Mary Magdalene. From June-July 1848, she attended the Conference of Badasht where she appeared without a veil in public (a shocking statement of women’s rights) and declared that a new religious dispensation had been inaugurated. Coincidentally, shortly after this, the Seneca Falls Convention (an important women’s rights convention) was held in New York on the 19th-20th of July, 1848. She was executed in Tehran in 1852. Before her death, she said that although she would be killed, they could not stop the emancipation of women. Edward Granville Browne described her thus: “The appearance of such a woman as Qurratu’l-‘Ayn is in any country and any age a rare phenomenon, but in such a country as Persia it is a prodigy—nay, almost a miracle. Alike in virtue of her marvellous beauty, her rare intellectual gifts, her fervid eloquence her fearless devotion, and her glorious martyrdom, she stands forth incomparable and immortal amidst her countrywomen.” This poem is a ghazal composed in the Kámil metre. A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain. Browne notes that this poem appears to be addressed to the Báb. Browne made a versified translation of the poem, which first appeared in the J.R.A.S. in 1899. This was the Weekly Poetry project for February 7, 2010. (Summary by Nicholas James Bridgewater)

Recording facts

• Recording title: An Ode
• Author credits: Táhirih (Fátimih Baraghání)
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 13
• Listed recording duration: 28:12

Catalogue topics

• poetry
• romance
• religion

Track guide

1. An Ode - Read by AM — 1:54
2. An Ode - read by Craig Allen — 1:56
3. An Ode - Read by CS — 2:07
4. An Ode - Read by DGD — 1:55
5. An Ode - Read by DL — 1:56
6. An Ode - Read by JOC — 2:14
7. An Ode - Read by LLL — 1:59
8. An Ode - Read by MR — 2:05
9. An Ode - Read by NJB — 2:24
10. An Ode - Read by PB — 3:00
11. An Ode - Read by RG — 2:17
12. An Ode - Read by RMT — 2:07
13. An Ode - Read by RN — 2:22

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.