The Diwan Of Abu'l-Ala Part 1

The Diwan of Abu'l-Ala.

by Henry Baerlein.

DEDICATION

TO DR. E. J. DILLON

Now the book is finished, so far as I shall finish it. There is, my friend, but this one page to write. And, more than probably, this is the page of all the book that I shall never wish to blot.

Increasing wisdom or, at any rate, experience will make me frown, I promise you, some time or other at a large proportion of the pages of this volume. But when I look upon your name I hear a troop of memories, and in their singing is my happiness.

When you receive this book, presuming that the Russian Censor does not shield you from it, I have some idea what you will do.

The string, of course, must not be cut, and you will seriously set about the disentangling of it. One hand a.s.sists by holding up, now near the nose now farther off, your gla.s.ses; the other hand pecks at the string. After, say, twenty minutes there will enter the admirable Miss Fox--oh! the tea she used to make for us when we were freezing on the mountains of Bulgaria, what time our Chicagoan millionaire was ruffled and Milyukov, the adventurous professor, standing now not far from Russia's helm, would always drive ahead of us and say, with princely gesture, that if we suffered from the dust it was advisable that he should be the one to meet the fury of the local lions. But do not let us lose the scent: Miss Fox, that woman of resource, will cut the string. And later on, while to her you are dictating things political and while your other secretary is discoursing music, mournful Russian music, then with many wrinkles on your brow you will hold the book at arm's length.

"The Serbonian Bog," says Miss Fox, repeating the last lines of the dictation.

Your face is held sideways with what is called, I believe, a quizzical expression.

"Morocco," says she, "viewed from the banks of the Seine, is becoming more and more like the Serbonian Bog." Then she waits, discreet as always, while you think. Miss Fox, his thoughts are on the Adriatic!

There his boat, eleven years ago, was sailing underneath a net of stars and he was talking to a fellow-traveller. They had been joined at first by common suffering,--and how shall mortals find a stronger link? On board that boat there was an elderly American, the widow of a senator's brother-in-law, whose mission was, she took it, to convert those two. What specially attracted her to them was not, perhaps, that they excelled the other pa.s.sengers in luridness, but that they had the privilege of understanding, more or less, her language.

"Feci quod potui," said Dr. Dillon, "faciant meliora potentes."

She said, and let us hope with truth, that recently a Chinaman, another object of her ministrations, had addressed her as "Your honour, the foreign devil." And this caused her to discuss the details of our final journey--in the meantime we have taken many others of a more delightful sort--and she a.s.sured us that we should be joined by Chinamen and all those Easterners. She had extremely little hope for any of them, and Abu'l-Ala, the Syrian poet, whom Dr. Dillon had been putting into English prose,-- Abu'l-Ala she steadily refused to read. Nor did the prospect of beholding him in English verse evoke a sign of joy upon her countenance. "Oh," she exclaimed, "what good is it?" And there is naught for me to say but "Feci quod potui, faciant meliora potentes."

H. B.

INTRODUCTION TO THE DIWAN

G.o.d help him who has no nails wherewith to scratch himself.

_Arabian proverb_.

An effort has been made to render in this book some of the poems of Abu'l-Ala the Syrian, who was born 973 years after Jesus Christ and some forty-four before Omar Khayyam. But the life of such a man--his triumph over circ.u.mstance, the wisdom he achieved, his unconventionality, his opposition to revealed religion, the sincerity of his religion, his interesting friends at Baghdad and Ma'arri, the mult.i.tude of his disciples, his kindliness and cynic pessimism and the reverence which he enjoyed, the glory of his meditations, the renown of his prodigious memory, the fair renown of bending to the toil of public life, not to the laureateship they pressed upon him, but the post of being spokesman at Aleppo for the troubles of his native villagers,--the life of such a one could not be told within the s.p.a.ce at our command; it will, with other of his poems, form the subject of a separate volume. What appears advisable is that we should devote this introduction to a commentary on the poems here translated; which we call a "diwan,"

by the way, because they are selected out of all his works. A commentary on the writings of a modern poet is supposed to be superfluous, but in the days of Abu'l-Ala of Ma'arri you were held to pay the highest compliment if, and you were yourself a poet, you composed a commentary on some other poet's work.

Likewise you were held to be a thoughtful person if you gave the world a commentary on your own productions; and Abu'l-Ala did not neglect to write upon his _Sikt al-Zand_ ("The Falling Spark of Tinder") and his _Lozum ma la Yalzam_ ("The Necessity of what is Unnecessary"), out of which our diwan has been chiefly made. But his elucidations have been lost. And we--this n.o.body will contradict--have lost the old facility. For instance, Hasan ibn Malik ibn Abi Obaidah was one day attending on Mansur the Chamberlain, and he displayed a collection of proverbs which Ibn Sirri had made for the Caliph's delectation. "It is very fine,"

quoth Mansur, "but it wants a commentary." And Hasan in a week returned with a commentary, very well written, of three hundred couplets. One other observation: we shall not be able to present upon these pages a connected narrative, a dark companion of the poem, which is to the poem as a shadow to the bird. A mediaeval Arab would have no desire to see this theory of connection put in practice--no, not even with a poem; for the lines, to win his admiration, would be as a company of stars much more than as a flying bird. Suppose that he produced a poem of a hundred lines, he would perchance make fifty leaps across the universe. But if we frown on such discursiveness, he proudly shows us that the hundred lines are all in rhyme. This Arab and ourselves--we differ so profoundly. "Yet," says he, "if there existed no diversity of sight then would inferior merchandise be left unsold." And when we put his poem into English, we are careless of the hundred rhymes; we paraphrase--"Behold the townsmen," so cried one of the Bedawi, "they have for the desert but a single word, we have a dozen!"--and we reject, as I have done, the quant.i.tative metre, thinking it far preferable if the metre sings itself into an English ear, as much as possible with that effect the poet wants to give; and we oppose ourselves, however unsuccessfully, to his discursiveness by making alterations in the order of the poem. But in this commentary we shall be obliged to leap, like Arabs, from one subject to another. And so let us begin.

With regard to prayer (_quatrain_ 1), the Moslem is indifferent as to whether he perform this function in his chamber or the street, considering that every spot is equally pure for the service of G.o.d. And yet the Prophet thought that public worship was to be encouraged; it was not a vague opinion, because he knew it was exactly five-and-twenty times more valuable than private prayer. It is related of al-Muzani that when he missed being present in the mosque he repeated his prayers twenty-five times.

"He was a diver for subtle ideas," said the biographer Ibn Khallikan. And although our poet, quoting the Carmathians, here deprecates the common worship, he remarks in one of his letters that he would have gone to mosque on Fridays if he had not fallen victim to an unmentionable complaint. . . . The pre-Islamic Arabs were accustomed to sacrifice sheep (_quatrain_ 1) and other animals in Mecca and elsewhere, at various stones which were regarded as idols or as altars of the G.o.ds.[1] Sometimes they killed a human being, such as the four hundred captive nuns of whom we read that they were sacrificed by al-Mundhir to the G.o.ddess Aphrodite. Sheep are offered up to-day in Palestine: for instance, if the first wife of a man is barren and the second wife has children, then the former vows that in return for a son she will give a lamb. Apparently when it was thought desirable to be particularly solemn a horse was sacrificed, and this we hear of with the Persians, Indians, and more western people. White was held to be the favourable colour, so we read in Herodotus (i.

189) that the Persians sacrificed white horses. In Sweden it was thought that a black lamb must be dedicated to the water sprite before he would teach any one to play the harp. As for the subsequent fate of the victim, Burton tells us that the Moslems do not look with favour on its being eaten. Unlike them, Siberian Buriats will sacrifice a sheep and boil the mutton and hoist it on a scaffold for the G.o.ds, and chant a song and then consume the meat. So, too, the zealous devil-worshippers of Travancore, whose diet is the putrid flesh of cattle and tigers, together with arrak and toddy and rice, which they have previously offered to their deities.

The words of Abu'l-Ala concerning day and night (_quatrain_ 2) may be compared with what he says elsewhere:

These two, young for ever, Speed into the West-- Our life in their clutches-- And give us no rest.

"Generation goeth and generation cometh," says Ecclesiastes, "while for ever the earth abideth. The sun riseth also and the sun goeth down and cometh panting back to his place where he riseth." . . . The early dawn, the time of scarlet eyes, was also when the caravan would be attacked. However, to this day the rising sun is worshipped by the Bedawi, despite the prohibition of Mahomet and despite the Moslem dictum that the sun rises between the devil's horns. Now the divinity of the stars (_quatrain_ 4) had been affirmed by Plato and Aristotle; it was said that in the heavenly bodies dwelt a ruling intelligence superior to man's, and more lasting.[2] And in Islam, whose holy house, the Kaaba, had traditionally been a temple of Saturn, we notice that the rationalists invariably connect their faith with the worship of Venus and other heavenly bodies. We are told by ash-Shahrastani, in his _Book of Religious and Philosophical Sects_, that the Indians hold Saturn for the greatest luck, on account of his height and the size of his body. But such was not Abu'l-Ala's opinion. "As numb as Saturn," he writes in one of his letters,[3] "and as dumb as a crab has every one been struck by you." Elsewhere he says in verse:

If dark the night, old Saturn is a flash Of eyes which threaten from a face of ash.

And the worship of Saturn, with other deities, is about a hundred years later resented by Clotilda, says Gregory of Tours, when she is moving Chlodovich her husband to have their son baptized. When the little boy dies soon after baptism, the husband does not fail to draw a moral. But misfortunes, in the language of an Arab poet, cling about the wretched even as a coat of mail (_quatrain_ 6) is on the warrior. This image was a favourite among the Arabs, and when Ibn Khallikan wants to praise the verses of one As Suli, he informs us that they have the reputation of delivering from sudden evil any person who recites them frequently. When this evil is complete, with rings strongly riven, it pa.s.ses away while he thinks that nothing can dispel it. . . . We have mention in this quatrain of a winding-sheet, and that could be of linen or of damask. The Caliph Solaiman was so fond of damask that every one, even the cook, was forced to wear it in his presence, and it clothed him in the grave. Yet he, like other Moslems (_quatrain_ 10), would believe that he must undergo the fate recorded in a book. The expression that a man's destiny is written on his forehead, had its origin without a doubt, says Goldziher, in India. We have remarked upon the Indian ideas which had been gathered by Abu'l-Ala at Baghdad. There it was that he enjoyed the opportunity of seeing ships (_quatrain_ 11). He spent a portion of his youth beside the sea, at Tripoli. But in the capital were many boats whose fascination he would not resist,-- the Chinese junks laboriously dragged up from Ba.s.sora, and dainty gondolas of basket-work covered with asphalt.[4] However, though in this place and in others, very frequently, in fact, Abu'l-Ala makes mention of the sea, his fondness of it was, one thinks, for literary purposes. He writes a letter to explain how grieved he is to hear about a friend who purposes to risk himself upon the sea, and he recalls a certain verse: "Surely it is better to drink among the sand-heaps foul water mixed with pure than to venture on the sea." From Baghdad also he would carry home the Zoroastrian view (_quatrain_ 14) that night was primordial and the light created. As a contrast with these foreign importations, we have reference (_quatrain_ 15) to the lute, which was the finest of Arabian instruments. They said themselves that it was invented by a man who flourished in the year 500 B.C. and added an eighth string to the lyre. Certainly the Arab lute was popular among the Greeks: [Greek: arabion ar' ego kekineka aulon], says Menander. It was carried to the rest of Europe by crusaders at the beginning of the twelfth century, about which time it first appears in paintings, and its form persisted till about a hundred years ago.[5] But with regard to travels (_quatrain_ 18), in the twenty-seventh letter of Abu'l-Ala, "I observe," says he, "that you find fault with travelling. Why so? Ought not a man to be satisfied with following the precedent set by Moses, who, when he turned towards Midyan, said, Maybe the Lord will guide me?"

(Koran 28, 21). Should a man be satisfied with what he hears from the philosopher al-Kindi? "In any single existing thing, if it is thoroughly known, we possess," he said, "a mirror in which we may behold the entire scheme of things" (_quatrain_ 20). The same philosopher has laid it down that, "Verily there is nothing constant in this world of coming and going (_quatrain_ 24), in which we may be deprived at any moment of what we love. Only in the world of reason is stability to be found. If then we desire to see our wishes fulfilled and would not be robbed of what is dear to us, we must turn to the eternal blessings of reason, to the fear of G.o.d, to science and to good works. But if we follow merely after material possessions in the belief that we can retain them, we are pursuing an object which does not really exist." . . . And this idea of transitoriness prevails so generally among the Arabs that the salad-seller recommends his transitory wares to pious folk by calling, "G.o.d is that which does not pa.s.s away!" So, too, the Arab pictures as a bird, a thing of transience, the human soul. In Syria the dove is often carved upon their ancient tombstones. And the Longobards among their graves erected poles in memory of kinsfolk who had died abroad or had been slain in battle; on the summit of the pole was a wooden image of a dove, whose head was pointed in the direction where the loved one lay buried. With us, as with Abu'l-Ala (_quatrain_ 26), the soul may metaphorically be imagined as a bird, but for the European's ancestor it was a thing of sober earnest, as it is to-day to many peoples. Thus the soul of Aristeas was seen to issue from his mouth in the shape of a raven.[6] In Southern Celebes they think that a bridegroom's soul is apt to fly away at marriage, wherefore coloured rice is scattered over him to induce it to remain. And, as a rule, at festivals in South Celebes rice is strewed on the head of the person in whose honour the festival is held, with the object of detaining his soul, which at such times is in especial danger of being lured away by envious demons.[7] . . . This metaphor was used by Abu'l-Ala in the letter which he wrote on the death of his mother: "I say to my soul, 'This is not your nest, fly away.'" And elsewhere (_quatrain_ 34) Death is represented as a reaper. Says Francis Thompson:

The goodly grain and the sun-flushed sleeper The reaper reaps, and Time the reaper.

It is interesting to find Death also called a sower, who disseminates weeds among men: "Do der Tot sinen Samen under si geste."

It was an ancient custom of the Arabs when they took an oath of special significance to plunge their hands into a bowl of perfume and distribute it among those who took part in the ceremony. Of the perfumes, musk (_quatrain_ 38) was one which they affected most. Brought commonly from Turkistan, it was, with certain quant.i.ties of sandalwood and ambra, made into a perfume. And "the wounds of him who falls in battle and of the martyrs," said Mahomet, "shall on the Day of Judgment be resplendent with vermilion and odorous as musk." This was repeated by Ibnol Faradhi, who in the Kaaba entreated G.o.d for martyrdom and, when this prayer was heard, repented having asked. . . . This quatrain goes on to allude to things which can improve by being struck.

There is in the third book of a work on cookery (so rare a thing, they tell us, that no MS. of it exists in England or in any other country that can be heard of) an observation by the eighteenth- century editor to the effect that it is a vulgar error to suppose that walnut-trees, like Russian wives, are all the better for a beating; the long poles and stones which are used by boys and others to get the fruit down, for the trees are very high, are used rather out of kindness to themselves than with any regard to the tree that bears it. This valued treatise, we may mention, is ascribed to Clius Apicius; its science, learning, and discipline were extremely condemned, and even abhorred by Seneca and the Stoics. . . . Aloes-wood does not emit a perfume until it is burned:

Lo! of hundreds who aspire Eighties perish--nineties tire!

They who bear up, in spite of wrecks and wracks, Were season'd by celestial hail of thwacks.

Fortune in this mortal race Builds on thwackings for its base; Thus the All-Wise doth make a flail a staff, And separates his heavenly corn from chaff.[8]

Reward may follow on such absolute obedience (_quatrain_ 40). We remember what is said by Fra Giovanni in the prison of Viterbo[9]: "Endurez, souffrez, acceptez, veuillez ce que Dieu veut, et votre volonte sera faite sur la terre comme au ciel."

And perhaps the dawn for you may be your camel's dawn (_quatrain_ 41); it was usual for Arabs on the point of death to say to their sons: "Bury my steed with me, so that when I rise from the grave I will not have to go on foot." The camel was tied with its head towards its hind legs, a saddle-cloth was wrapped about its neck, and it was left beside the grave until it died. Meanwhile, if the master is a true believer, says Mahomet, his soul has been divided from the body by Azrael, the angel of death. Afterwards the body is commanded to sit upright in the grave, there to be examined by the two black angels, Monkar and Nakyr (_quatrain_ 42), with regard to his faith, the unity of G.o.d and the mission of Mahomet. If the answers be correct, the body stays in peace and is refreshed by the air of paradise; if incorrect, these angels beat the corpse upon his temples with iron maces, until he roars out for anguish so loudly that he is heard by all from east to west, except by men and jinn. Abu'l-Ala had little confidence in these two angels; he reminds one of St. Catherine of Sienna, a visionary with uncommon sense, who at the age of eight ran off one afternoon to be a hermit. She was careful to provide herself with bread and water, fearing that the angels would forget to bring her food, and at nightfall she ran home again because she was afraid her parents would be anxious. With regard to the angel of death, Avicenna has related that the soul, like a bird, escapes with much trouble from the snares of earth (_quatrain_ 43), until this angel delivers it from the last of its fetters.

We think of the G.o.ddess Ran with her net. Death is imagined (_quatrain_ 44) as a fowler or fisher of men, thus: "Do kam der Tot als ein diep, und stal dem reinen wibe daz leben uz ir libe."[10]

On account of its brilliance a weapon's edge (_quatrain_ 46) has been compared in Arab poetry with sunlit gla.s.s, with the torch of a monk, with the stars and with the flame in a dark night. Nor would an Arab turn to picturesque comparisons in poetry alone.

Speaking of a certain letter, Abu'l-Ala a.s.sures the man who wrote it that "it proceeds from the residence of the great doctor who holds the reins of prose and verse" (_quatrain_ 50). Now with regard to gla.s.s, it was a very ancient industry among the Arabs.

In the second century of the Hegira it was so far advanced that they could make enamelled gla.s.s and unite in one gla.s.s different colours. A certain skilled chemist of the period was not only expert in these processes (_quatrain_ 52), but even tried to make of gla.s.s false pearls, whereon he published a pamphlet.

Death, from being a silent messenger who punctually fulfilled his duty, became a grasping, greedy foe (_quatrain_ 56). In the Psalms (xci. 3-6) he comes as a hunter with snares and arrows.

Also "der Tot wil mit mir ringen."[11] In ancient times Death was not a being that slew, but simply one that fetched away to the underworld, a messenger. So was the soul of the beggar fetched away by angels and carried into Abraham's bosom. An older view was the death-G.o.ddess, who receives the dead men in her house and does not fetch them. They are left alone to begin the long and gloomy journey, provided with various things.[12] "Chacun remonte a son tour le calvaire des siecles. Chacun retrouve les peines, chacun retrouve l'espoir desespere et la folie des siecles.

Chacun remet ses pas dans les pas de ceux qui furent, de ceux qui lutterent avant lui contre la mort, nierant la mort,--sont morts"[13] (_quatrain_ 57). It is the same for men and trees (_quatrain_ 59). This vision of Abu'l-Ala's is to be compared with Milton's "men as trees walking," a kind of second sight, a blind man's pageant. In reference to haughty folk, an Arab proverb says that "There is not a poplar which has reached its Lord." But on the other hand, "There are some virtues which dig their own graves,"[14] and with regard to excessive polishing of swords (_quatrain_ 60) we have the story of the poet Abu Tammam, related by Ibn Khallikan. He tells us how the poet once recited verses in the presence of some people, and how one of them was a philosopher who said, "This man will not live long, for I have seen in him a sharpness of wit and penetration and intelligence.

From this I know that the mind will consume the body, even as a sword of Indian steel eats through its scabbard." Still, in Arabia, where swords were so generally used that a priest would strap one to his belt before he went into the pulpit, there was no unanimous opinion as to the polishing,--which, by the way, was done with wood. A poet boasted that his sword was often or was rarely polished, according as he wished to emphasise the large amount of work accomplished or the excellence of the polishing.

Imru'al-Kais says that his sword does not recall the day when it was polished. Another poet says his sword is polished every day and "with a fresh tooth bites off the people's heads."[15] This vigour of expression was not only used for concrete subjects.

There exists a poem, dating from a little time before Mahomet, which says that cares (_quatrain_ 62) are like the camels, roaming in the daytime on the distant pastures and at night returning to the camp. They would collect as warriors round the flag. It was the custom for each family to have a flag (_quatrain_ 65), a cloth fastened to a lance, round which it gathered. Mahomet's big standard was called the Eagle,--and, by the bye, his seven swords had names, such as "possessor of the spine."

With _quatrain_ 68 we may compare the verses of a Christian poet, quoted by Tabari:

And where is now the lord of Hadr, he that built it and laid taxes on the land of Tigris?

A house of marble he established, whereof the covering was made of plaster; in the galbes were nests of birds.

He feared no sorry fate. See, the dominion of him has departed.

Loneliness is on his threshold.

"Consider how you treat the poor," said Dshafer ben Mahomet, who pilgrimaged from Mecca to Baghdad between fifty and sixty times; "they are the treasures of this world, the keys of the other."

Take care lest it befall you as the prince (_quatrain_ 69) within whose palace now the wind is reigning. "If a prince would be successful," says Machiavelli, "it is requisite that he should have a spirit capable of turns and variations, in accordance with the variations of the wind." Says an Arab mystic, "The sighing of a poor man for that which he can never reach has more of value than the praying of a rich man through a thousand years." And in connection with this quatrain we may quote Blunt's rendering of Zohair:

I have learned that he who giveth nothing, deaf to his friends' begging, loosed shall be to the world's tooth-strokes: fools'

feet shall tread on him.

As for the power of the weak, we have some instances from Abbaside history. One of the caliphs wanted to do deeds of violence in Baghdad. Scornfully he asked of his opponents if they could prevent him. "Yes," they answered, "we will fight you with the arrows of the night." And he desisted from his plans.

Prayers, complaints, and execrations which the guiltless, fighting his oppressor, sends up to heaven are called the arrows of the night and are, the Arabs tell us, invariably successful.

This belief may solace you for the foundation of suffering (_quatrain_ 71), which, by the way, is also in the philosophic system of Zeno the Stoic. Taking the four elements of Empedocles, he says that three of them are pa.s.sive, or suffering, elements while only fire is active, and that not wholly. It was Zeno's opinion that everything must be active or must suffer. . . . An explanation for our suffering is given by Soame Jenyns, who flourished in the days when, as his editor could write, referring to his father Sir Roger Jenyns, "the order of knighthood was received by gentlemen with the profoundest grat.i.tude." Soame's thesis is his "Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil,"

that human sufferings are compensated by the enjoyment possibly experienced by some higher order of beings which inflict them, is ridiculed by Samuel Johnson. We have Jenyns's a.s.surance that