The Literature of Ecstasy Part 15

Arabic poetry then is probably richer in love ecstasy than that of any nation. This is due to the fact that they are both a sensuous and at the same time deeply religious people. They were strongly emotional, extremely vindictive and extremely hospitable. They recorded their emotions unabashed. They had the navete of the child and cried out their slightest pain; they weep and bemoan constantly. Antar, one of the poets of the _Muallaqat_ and the hero of the romance bearing his name, is more of a child than Achilles. He is always sobbing and weeping copiously; he is the prototype of the medieval knight who wept and declaimed because of absence of his mistress, a feature of romance which Cervantes ably ridiculed in _Don Quixote_.

Thomas Warton, the historian of English poetry, was one of the first to point out the Arabic influence on chivalry and romanticism. The battle as to the extent of Arabic influence has been waged ever since, with, I believe, the victory to the Arabs. FitzMaurice Kelly, the historian of Spanish Literature, emphasizing the Hebrew influence, has resented the statement of the great Arabic influence, but Robert Briffault in _The Making of Humanity_ has proved that this influence has been underestimated rather than exaggerated.

The fact that there existed in Pre-islamic times equal morality for both s.e.xes--women also were freer than in Post-islamic times--gave rise to romantic love.

Arabic literature made the love or erotic note in its tender or chivalrous phase, fashionable. True, this note existed very sparingly among the Greeks and Romans in Sappho and Catullus, but the romantic note was singularly absent from European literature in the early medieval ages. Men loved then as they did before and after, but the personal romantic love note was not considered a proper theme for poetry. The religious and martial emotions held sway. Critics now admit that intense love poetry of the Troubadours appearing like an oasis in the barren literature of the medieval ages was influenced by the Arabs, the rhymes as well as the themes being taken from the east. The troubadours influence the German Minnesingers, and these two groups remain among the best composers of love poetry Europe has had.

The troubadours also entered England, influencing its poetry for nearly two centuries.[214:A]

The love element in the books of chivalry is due to Arabic influence.

Cervantes attributed his _Don Quixote_ to a Moorish author because the Moors wrote so many romances. Early Italian poetry owed much to the love poetry of Sicily which was impregnated with the Arabic spirit. Wyatt and Surrey, who traveled in Italy, greatly influenced English literature. Thus Arabic poetry somewhat influenced English poetry.

Similarly the Spanish _Cid_ shows traces in marked degree of the Arabic invasion of Spain. No one has more enthusiastically and effectively pointed out the Arabic influences in European poetry than Sismondi in his history of the literature of the South of Europe. He begins the work with, after the introduction, a chapter on Arabic literature, and he especially recognizes that the tenderness of the love sentiment and the chivalric att.i.tude towards women came from the Arabs. The most sympathetic and exhaustive account of the great influence of Mohammedan influence upon Europe is in Samuel P. Scott's _History of the Moorish Empire in Spain_.

It is said that even the French poem, the _Chanson de Roland_, shows Arabic traces since the Arab invasion had reached into France.

We recognize that there is an invisible thread that binds together love poems so remotely separated by time and place as those of the medieval Persians, Arabs and Troubadours, and the modern English poets.

The Arabic note of ecstasy is found even in the poems of Goethe, especially in a few in his _West Eastern Divan_, influenced by his studies of Oriental literature during the Napoleonic wars. He used his own experiences with eastern names, but he never failed to produce literature of ecstasy. The Oriental romance also exerted an influence on Beckford, Landor, Southey, Byron and Moore. Even Tennyson got the idea of _Locksley Hall_ from reading Sir William Jones's prose translation of the _Muallaqat_; Browning adopted an Arabian metre in his _Abt Vogler_; George Meredith's _The Shaving of s.h.a.gpat_ was written to emulate the _Arabian Nights_.

The Arabs excelled also in the elegy. Among the most famous elegies in Arabic poetry are those of Khansa, a Pre-islamic poetess, on the murder of her two brothers. There is an account of her by Thomas C. Chenery, in the notes to his translation of Hariri's _a.s.semblies_ V. 1, pp. 387-391.

In fact the elegy is more common among early Pre-islamic poetry than the love poem. The Orientals, particularly the medieval Hebrews, were always distinguished in this kind of poetry. One of the best, certainly the best in Turkish poetry, is the elegy by Baqui on the great Sultan Suleiman I, translated by E. J. W. Gibb in _Ottoman Poetry_.

The Arabian love poems and elegies are proofs that poetry was originally, as to-day, a personal cry, an outburst of emotion due to repression. The cry of grief for the dead in battle; that is the note in all early literature, Occidental and Oriental.

The poem among the Arabs and Hebrews had also a definite utilitarian purpose. In early times satire was one of the chief forms under which lyric poetry appeared. The poet was employed to combat the enemy and his curses against them were supposed to be effective. He was a soothsayer, a prophet, a magician. He voiced not only the communistic feeling of the tribes, but his personal emotions. Even down to our day the public demands that the poet write poems against the enemy in time of war.

Goethe was criticized for refusing to write against the French, for example, but he explained later to Eckermann that he had no hatred towards the French. In all wars there have been poets who have written against the enemy, but usually this kind of poetry has been of an inferior order. It finds its own tomb in a poem like the famous _Hymn of Hate_ by Lissauer in the late world war.

Nothing in literature ill.u.s.trates more the belief in the magical power of poetry than the chapters in the _Book of Numbers_ dealing with the effort of the Moabite King Balak to get Balaam to curse the children of Israel. Balak believed that these curses would help him defeat the Hebrews. But instead Balaam blessed them, unwillingly, saying that he could but utter the words G.o.d put in his mouth, for the inspiration of the poet came to him always from hidden forces. He reached to ecstasy every time he spoke.

Arabic poetry then deals in intricate forms conveying ecstasy, with all the stock themes of poetry, but especially with love.

The similarities between Biblical Hebrew poetry and Pre-islamic Arabic poetry have been touched upon by Dr. George A. Smith in his _The Early Poetry of Israel_ and by Thomas Chenery in his excellent introduction to his translation of Hariri's _a.s.semblies_. Partic.i.p.ators in various military events themselves composed the poems in which they told of their exploits, as you may note by comparing the _Muallaqat_ with the songs of Miriam and Deborah. There was the same interest in nature as you may see by comparing descriptions from the _Psalms_ and _Job_ to that of the thunderstorm by Imru'ul Qays in the _Muallaqat_. The poetry of both nations was often nomadic, the product of the influences of the desert. Both nations recorded personal emotions, springing from tribal events.

There was also the same tendency in both nations to utter ecstatically sententious and moral sayings. Though only one poem in the _Muallaqat_, that by Zuhayr, really moralizes, the later Arabic poets always loved to give vent to reflections, proverbs, words of wisdom. Two of the best Arabic poems of the kind are the improvisations of the vagabond Abu Zayd in the 11th and 50th a.s.sembly of Hariri's _a.s.semblies_. Two finer poems which moralize without losing their poetic quality can scarcely be found in Arabic literature. Most of the reflective poetry of those two pessimistic, skeptic poets Abu l'Atahiya and Abu 'l Ala al Maarri are of this kind. The ecstatic potentiality in reflection is seen in _Job_, _Proverbs_ and _Ecclesiastes_.

The chief phase of Pre-islamic poetry that will not appeal to us is in the great body of martial verse where love of robbery and bloodshed, cruelty, revenge and hatred are fostered. The Bedouins gave us a transcript of their life. They dwelt in their vices with frankness, but they tried to make virtues out of them. We cannot blame them for not having our ideals of peace and it is also doubtful if cruelties in their warfare were greater than those in our own day.

The poets before Islam sang about revenge and fighting in a way that even nauseates us. The martial spirit in the _Romance of Antar_ has made it less popular with us than _The Arabian Nights_, for the former work is an account of the fighting Arabs of the desert, and the latter deals largely with the merchant Arabs of the city. Even the great and beautiful _Song of Vengeance_ by the Arab Robin Hood, Ta abbata Sharran, of which we have a second hand translation by Goethe, and fine verse versions by R. A. Nicholson, _Literary History of the Arabs_ (pp.

98-100), and by Charles J. Lyall on pages 48-49 of _Arabic Poetry_, is very cruel.

Pre-islamic poetry reeks too much with the ecstasy of delight to shed blood, in which tendency it of course differs little from the early poetry of other nations. However, the remarkable thing is that the hearts of these warriors possessed so many fine feelings. One of the n.o.blest descriptions of woman is by a companion of the brigand Sharran, from the _Mufaddaliyyat_, a translation of which appears on pages 81-82 of Lyall's volume.

The Arabian poetry which has been most frequently translated and written about in English is Pre-islamic poetry. In especial, the _Muallaqat_, or the seven so-called suspended poems, has been translated several times.

Sir William Jones made the first translation in prose in the eighteenth century. In modern times we have had several translations, one by Wilfrid Blunt and his wife. There has been considerable support for the critical view that these poems represent the highest achievement of Arabic poetry, both among Arabs themselves and Aryan critics. Imru'ul Qays, who flourished in the sixth century A.D., is the most famous of the poets in the collection, and is regarded by many as the greatest Arabian poet. R. A. Nicholson and Clement Huart have given accounts of the _Muallaqat_ in their histories of Arabic Literature. Professor Mackail has published in his Oxford Lectures an essay on these odes and D. Noldeke has given us a full study of them in the _Encyclopedia Britannica_. I shall not therefore dwell on them except to say that they were collected in the eighth century by Hammad, and that most of these poems deal with warriors rather than lovers, though they contain love laments.

Nicholson and others regard the Abbasid period as the great era of Arabic poets. This period extended from the accession of Saffah in 749 to the destruction of Bagdad by the Mongols in 1258. Abu Nuwas, Abu 'l Atahiya, Mutanabbi and Abu 'l Ala al Maarri are recognized by Nicholson as the G.o.ds of Arabian poetry, and we in our smug inordinate satisfaction with Aryan poetry, have not even translated or paid attention to them. Abu Nuwas, who flourished in the early part of the ninth century, sang of love and wine and led a riotous and immoral life, and is familiar to the reader of the _Arabian Nights_ as the jester of Harun al Rashid. His _Divan_ is to be found in German but not in English. Many consider him the greatest of the Arabian poets. Abu 'l Atahiya is a pessimist and philosophical poet thinker. He was imprisoned by Harun for having ceased writing love poetry because he was hopelessly in love with a slave girl. He described common emotions and used simple language instead of far-fetched conceits. Mutanabbi in the tenth century was the most famous of all the Arabian poets, but he is criticized by many for his rhetoric and ornament. He is the master of the grand style.

Then we have in the next century the great Abu 'l Ala al Maarri, who has been called the predecessor of Omar Khayyam. Bauerlein and Rihani have translated some of his verses into English, and Bauerlein has also devoted a little volume to him in _The Wisdom of the East_ series. Abu 'l Ala is the most modern of the Arabian poets. He was a freethinker and a pessimist and his _Luzumiyyat_ reads like a work of one of our rational poets. It attacks all religion including Islam. His letters have been translated into English by Professor Margoliouth.[218:A]

I have already several times mentioned the most famous Arabic work next to the Koran, the _Maqamat_ or _a.s.semblies_, by Hariri (1054-1122). The tales have been called immoral, but Abu Zayd interests us as Gil Blas does. The work written in rhymed prose is most fascinating reading.

There is a complete translation of this by T. Chenery and F. Steinga.s.s, 1867-1898.

The _Arabian Nights_ is the best known Arabic production to English speaking people and is full of poetry, not only in the interspersed verses, but in the stories themselves.

The _Romance of Antar_, from which I quoted a poem, is said to have been written by a poet and philologist in the reign of Harun al Rashid. The work is long and a few abridged volumes were translated into English by Terrick Hamilton in 1819 and 1820.

Then there is the great poet of Cordova, Ibn Zaydun of the eleventh century, whose love for the princess Wallada has made him celebrated.

Here is a beautiful love poem translated by Nicholson, _Literary History of the Arabs_, pp. 425-426:

To-day my longing thoughts recall thee here; The landscape glitters, and the sky is clear.

So feebly breathes the gentle zephyr's gale, In pity of my grief it seems to fail.

The silvery fountains laugh, as from a girl's Fair throat a broken necklace sheds its pearls.

Oh, 'tis a day like those of our sweet prime, When, stealing pleasure from indulgent Time, We played midst flowers of eye-bewitching hue, That bent their heads beneath the drops of dew.

Alas, they see me now bereaved of sleep; They share my pa.s.sion and with me they weep.

Here in her sunny haunt the rose blooms bright, Adding new l.u.s.tre to Aurora's light; And waked by morning beams, yet languid still, The rival lotus doth his perfume spill.

All stirs in me the memory of that fire Which in my tortured breast will ne'er expire.

Had death come ere we parted, it had been The best of all days in the world, I ween; And this poor heart, where thou art every thing, Would not be fluttering now on pa.s.sion's wing.

Ah, might the zephyr waft me tenderly, Worn out with anguish as I am, to thee!

O treasure mine, if lover e'er possessed A treasure! O thou dearest, queenliest!

Once, once, we paid the debt of love complete And ran an equal race with eager feet.

How true, how blameless was the love I bore, Thou hast forgotten; but I still adore!

Nor have I sounded the depth of Arabian poetry. Their greatest mystic poet was Umar Ibn ul Farid, who flourished between 1181 and 1235, and whose work is full of fervid and inspired poetry.

There is also Baha ad Din Zuhayr (d. 1258 A.D.), the love poet of Egypt, whose complete poems have been translated into English by Edward H.

Palmer.

One of the great products of Arabic culture was its work in literary criticism. While it is the fashion to-day to lay much stress on the Italian and English studies of Aristotle's _Poetics_ in the Renaissance and Elizabethan periods respectively, the Arabs were writing learnedly on poetry centuries before they read the _Poetics_. They made a specialty of the literature called the Adab, or belles lettres made up of criticism, quotation and rhetoric.

The criticism of poetry flourished among the Arabs in the ninth and tenth centuries A.D. as a higher art than it did in the sixteenth century among the Italians and English. Unfortunately none of these works have been translated; there is not even a reference to their influence in Saintsbury's _History of Criticism in Europe_. The Arabs had so many poets even in Pre-islamic times in the sixth century that interest in preserving this poetry gave rise later to anthologists who made collections. These anthologists commented on the poetical work and compared it with that of later periods, and with that of their contemporaries.

Ibn Yunus in the early part of the tenth century translated Aristotle's _Poetics_ into Arabic and the Europeans learned of Aristotle's work from the Arabs several centuries later. But the best Arabic works on the art of poetry had, however, already been produced, presenting original ideas gleaned from the study of the great Arabian poets, and ill.u.s.trated by examples from them. The Arabic critics did not go to the Greek and Roman poems (which they considered cold besides their own) as did the Italians and English to study the nature of poetry. The Arabs studied Greek science, medicine, and philosophy, but not Greek poetry. Books on prosody and poetry appeared after the founding of the system of Arabic meters by Khalil b. Ahmad in the eighth century. There were also the two celebrated schools of grammarians at Basra and Kufa, soon to merge in the school of Bagdad. Never before had the art of poetry and criticism flourished so thrivingly and displayed a so generally high order as among the Arabs in the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries. A faint idea of the great number of Arabian grammarians, critics and poets may be gleaned by perusing the biographical dictionary of Ibn Khallikan, who flourished in the thirteenth century. This work, which contains only a partial list, has been compared to the _Life of Johnson_, by Boswell (Lucas called him a Bagdad Boswell), and to _Plutarch's Lives_.

While Europe was plunged in ignorance and barbarism, the great Arab poets and critics were achieving work that belongs to the best; but alas, the very names which rank so high among them are unknown to most people. We let them slumber in the difficult Arabic. We translate the Chinese and j.a.panese poems probably more out of faddish reasons than of a true love of their poetry, but we ignore the Arabians.

The Arab example contradicts the famous plat.i.tude that great epochs of creative literary work are not ages of literary criticism. It is just the reverse. Good criticism is never so conspicuous as in ages of poetry, for there is such interest in poetry as to provoke literary discussion, then more so than ever. The best criticism of poetry appeared in England in the great age of Wordsworth and Byron. The Arabic grammarians and anthologists began their work about the middle of the eighth century. Incredible stories are told of their feats of memory for verse, in the art of improvisation, in skill in manipulating the language. They regarded the letters of their alphabet as human beings, just as the Hebrew Cabbalists treated their alphabetical letters as angels.

To name even the most important of grammarians, anthologists, philologists, critics of Arabia, is to call a long list. Even historians, philosophers, scientists and theologians entered the field of poetic criticism. Every one quoted the poets, consequently poetry was bound up not only with criticism but with Arabic thought. One of the most quoted Arabic critics is Ibn Rashiq, of the eleventh century, whose _Umda_ or _Pillar of the Art of Poetry_ is mentioned often by Ibn Khaldun, the historian. The latter also names four great Arabic writers of Adab, Ibn Qutayba's _Accomplishments of the Secretary_ (Ibn Qutayba's _Book of Poetry and Poets_ is more often cited by other writers than the _Accomplishments of the Secretary_), Jahiz's _Book of Eloquence and Exposition_, al Mubarrad's _Perfect_, all of the ninth century, and in Spain Abu Ali al Qali's _Curious Notions_, of the tenth century, whose _Book of Dictations_, however, is better known.

Among the writers on poetry in the manner of the Arabs was the Hebrew poet and critic, Moses Ibn Ezra, author of the _Conversations and Recollections_, which was the first study of the kind in Hebrew and the first criticism of the poetry of the Bible from an aesthetic point of view. Among Arab critics to whom he is indebted, besides the aforementioned Ibn Qutayba and Ibn Rashiq, are the first book in Arabian _Poetics_ proper, by the Caliph, Ibn ul Mutazz, of the latter part of the ninth century, a work by Qudama, and _Ornaments of Conversation_, by Al Hatimi, both of the tenth century.

There are many other works that were well known and often cited in Arabic literary circles. I shall name only Tha'alibi (died 1037), whose _Solitaire of Time_ had many continuations by later critics, and the famous _Fihrist_ or _Index_ by the Bookseller, Ibn Ishaq (tenth century), one of the sections of which deal with poetry.

Ibn Khaldun, the historian, and a contemporary of Chaucer in the thirteenth century, devoted a number of chapters to poetry in the introduction to his famous history.

As a specimen of poetic criticism among the Arabs and as a corrective to the general impression that ornament and not ecstasy counted in Arabic poetry, I give the following English rendering from De Slane's French translation of Khaldun's _Prolegomena_:

One of the conditions imposed in the use of this art (of ornament) is that the embellishments appear in the piece quite naturally, without the author's labor in searching for them and without his being anxious about the effect that they should produce. If they present themselves naturally, there is nothing to object to them, for not being purposely introduced, they save the subject the fault of lapsing into barbarism; but when one imposes upon himself the task of painfully seeking these embellishments, he is led to neglect the principles which rule the combination of words, which are the foundation of the discourse; this injures the principles of clearness of expression and causes the distinctness and precision which ought to characterize the discourse, to disappear; nothing then remains but the embellishments. . . . Another condition which should be observed in regard to the science of ornaments is to make a rare use of it; that the poet apply it to two or three verses of a poem; that will suffice to give elegance and l.u.s.ter to the entire piece. The too frequent use of embellishments is a fault, as Ibn Rashiq and others have said. . . . All that we pointed out shows that the artificial discourse (or style), when one writes it laboriously and as a task, is inferior in merit to the natural discourse, for one neglects thereby too many fundamental principles of the art of speaking well. I leave it to good taste to judge thereof.