A posting to newsgroups soc.culture.arabic from: Michael Sells on Fri, 28 May 93 13:12:36 GMT. (See complete header at the end of this file.) An now for something a little different . . . I present a translation of the great poem of Mukhabbal from the collection of ancient Arabian poetry known as the Mufaddaliyat. This is a short ode or Qasida, with--in my view--an astonishingly powerful three movments of remembrance of the beloved, journey, and boast (fakhr). I translate each Arabic line (bayt) into an English stanza. The intricate Arabic meter and rhyme cannot be duplicated in English without a sense of artificiality. The cadence of the Arabic is due to the play of meter against the syntax. I have tried to recreate a parallel cadence through a play of syntax against line breaks. This translation is from the new book: Mustansir Mir, editor, The Literary Heritage of Classical Islam (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1992). In that volume, there is also an analysis of the symbolism and poetics of Mukhabbal's poem. But for the Net, I just wanted to offer a taste of what has been rightfully called "the cascading magnificence" of early Arabic poetry. It is my view that one of the reasons Middle Eastern Islamic Cultures are so poorly understood in the West is that the intricate and sophisticate poetic traditions, that are so important to Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu cultures, are very poorly known in Western Society. The nuance, beauty, suppleness, dissent, surprise, and multi-dimensionality of the culture is grounded in the poetry, and when the poetry is lost, the picture of the culture is flattened and turns toward stereotype. !He Remembered Rab!b! or "The Shades of Death Would Track Me Down" By Al-Mukh!bbal of the Sa`d ibn Zayd-Manat of Tamim (6-7th century C.E. Translated by Michael A. Sells [A Qasida in pre-Islamic style consisting of three sections: (1) the remembrance of the lost beloved, Rabab, appearance of her phantom (khayal), and the evocation of the traces of her abandoned campsite (atlal); (2) the journey, with the naqa (camel mare) tableau; and (3) the boast (fakhr), with the criticisms of the blamer (`adhila) and the poet!s response.] [The remembrance of the beloved and a depiction of the lost beloved that shades, symolically, into an evocation of the lost garden] He remembered Rab!b. Memory of her was sickness. He was young again. He didn!t know. When her phantom came round my eye stung along the tear lines and began to water, Pearls slipping from a necklace poorly strung. I make out a dwelling there, hers, amid the pools of Sidan, traces unfaded, Ashes, cold, banked and sheltered from the winds by blackened hearthstones, Ruins of a flood-break, stone walls broken in and broken down, As if what the side winds and rains had left there on the empty yards were a tattoo, Where doe-oryx pasture, following along toward water, white-backs on brown-backs mingled, With oryx fawns and gazelle fawns, around her tracings, like kids and lambs. Rab!b might have alighted, with an advance guard, well-armed, to ward off enemies, There where the torrent beds are unfaded, at Lost Place, Bend of the Trail, and Zukhm. Graceful as a rush of papyrus, beauty comes to her before others, and she grows into it early. She reveals to you a delicate face paper smooth, glowing Like the pearl of pearls distant Persians use to light up the throne-hall of a sultan, Purchased at great price, retrieved by a diver, bone-thin, like an arrow. His chest smeared with oil, he brings it out from the billow-waved deep of the swordfish. Or an egg of the dunes, set into the earth, smooth to the touch, and perfectly curved, The first-lain of the nest, warmed by a clump-wing feathers matted like a heap of rags. He draws it in beneath his wings, black outer feathers encompassing it. Maids lose their combs in the thickness of her curls, thick as the curls of the grape along the trellis. Why not find consolation for yearning, for a bond of union, broken? * * * * * * * * [The journey or quest--rahil--the poet's journey alone, across the desert, by camel-mare (naqa) which symbolizes both the self of the poet and the community]. How many a worn track, a rough ride, rutted, like the net of a weaver, through a terrain of rounded hills, With hollows of the water-bound sand grouse along the side of the trail appearing like a mottled cloak, Have I driven across in the darkening dusk on an obedient night-rider fresh as a stallion from the stable. She scatters the rocks, shattered, as she gales forth, the hill rises running together along the edge of mirage, Barreling down the track and shaking like a squeaking water wheel around a pivot post, Backquarters built up and interlocked along the vertebrae, withers huge, Forelegs slanted like the columns of a temple, the muscle packed on above the knees. When you brandish the whip above her, a sharp pulsing beneath her ribs drives her on. She blocks the gap between her hind legs with a bristling tail that barrenness has made luxuriant, Hooves like the hammers of a smith, not fleshy, or padded with tufts of hair. At rest at midday she stands in the tent's shade like a white antelope at dusk in a glen of wild lote trees, Like a stone washed up and stranded at the edge of the flood, boulders thrown down beneath it. I wore her down to the marrow of the bones, the flesh along the joints shrunken back. * * * * * * * [The boast or self-justification of the poet in the face of blame and mortality] My blamer said-- and what does she know of tomorrow and what will come after? "Immortality resides in possessions. Lack them and your day will grieve." By your father!s father!s life! I find no life eternal, not in a hundred camels, thick-furred, dark-hued, Even if you built me the palace of Mush!qqar on a stony hill dwarfing a herd of white-foot ibex, The shades of death would track me downe-- there's no decree like that of God. -- Michael Sells, Department of Religion, Haverford College Haverford, Pa 19041-1392 ---- Usenet header: From: Michael Sells Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic Subject: A great poem by Mukhabbal ("the crack-brained") as-Sa`di Date: 28 May 1993 18:29:44 GMT Organization: Haverford College Lines: 266 Distribution: world Message-ID: <1u5lmo$7lb@venus.haverford.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: 130.58.172.17 X-UserAgent: Nuntius v1.1.1d20 X-XXDate: Fri, 28 May 93 13:12:36 GMT