Poetry: An Alternative Discourse
The vast majority of Arabic autobiographies contain at least some examples of the author's poetry. The inclusion of representative or remarkable samples of someone's poetry is standard practice in Arabic biography, the purpose of which is usually to demonstrate the subject's literary achievement and cultivation. Autobiographers followed suit by including selections from their poetry in their texts, but in many cases this poetry marks a significant and highly emotional event in the author's life. Thus, while modern editors and scholars of medieval and premodern autobiographies for a variety of reasons have often deleted or ignored these verse passages, in fact poetry should be understood as a central—not merely “decorative”—element in the Arabic autobiographical tradition.
The practice of poetry in Arab culture differs significantly from its practice in western societies. First, poetry emerged as the earliest and most highly prized literary form in the pre-Islamic era, particularly the formal “ode” (qaṣīda), and, in general terms, has retained that position until the present time.[43] Second, up until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, poetry and prose interacted in a close and interesting manner in Arabic literature. Although poetry was often collected and published in works containing virtually no prose, there were few genres of prose that did not contain occasional and sometimes quite substantial amounts of verse.
In the oral culture of the pre-Islamic Arabian peninsula, poetry was the mode of authoritative discourse whereas prose was often denigrated as unfixed in form and therefore unreliable. Poetry, because of its formal structure in meter and rhyme, is more impervious to change in oral transmission; prose, because of its lack of structure, is more susceptible to alteration. The earliest Arabic prose narratives from oral tradition to find their way into writing were accompanied by poems. The Battle Days of the Arabs (Ayyām al-‘arab) took a bipartite discursive form: each historical narrative was validated and confirmed by its accompanying poem(s), while the context for the composition and original performance of the poem(s) was spelled out in the prose narrative.[44] Many of the early genres of Arabic literature (seventh–tenth centuries) directly reflected oral origins in their formal features, and the vast majority of medieval Arabic literary genres assimilated prose and poetry into a single style that moved back and forth between the two with great ease (see, e.g., the selections from ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī's al-Barq al-shāmī [The Syrian Thunderbolt] translated in this volume).
Poetry communicated ideas in a “marked” discourse separate from prose. As mentioned above, it could be used to delineate a formal or authoritative speech act, but it could also be used to express deeply felt emotions: love, grief, loneliness, anger, yearning. All these were themes more often expressed in poetry than in prose. Because of its durability, its perceived beauty, and the amount of control it demonstrated on the part of the author, poetry functioned as an acceptable code for expressing things that, if expressed in plain language or in actions, might be culturally unacceptable.[45] Though it might be unseemly to lose control of one's emotions, to express those same raging feelings in verse offered a socially satisfactory alternative. In contrast, poetry could also degenerate into a language of clichés and mannerisms, with the same motifs and images recurring over and over. What functioned very well as emotional release for a yearning lover or a bereaved parent might later simply not be deemed a “good poem” from the viewpoint of the literary historian.
An excellent example of the significant role of poetry in public life is found in the career of ‘Umāra al-Yamanī, the only one of our medieval autobiographers to have earned fame primarily as a poet. Born in Yemen, ‘Umāra had a tumultuous career as a scholar and a merchant, then as a diplomat (he was sent to Cairo as ambassador to the Fatimid dynasty), and finally as a court poet.[46] He fell in and out of favor with the Fatimid authorities, even to the point of being kept under house arrest in the southern Egyptian city of Qūṣ for several months. His autobiography recounts that during his stay among the Fatimids he was often pressured, unsuccessfully, to profess the Shi‘ite creed of that dynasty. Despite the vicissitudes of his career under the Fatimids and his refusal to accept their religious doctrine, he is portrayed by later sources as having maintained a noteworthy fidelity to that house even after its fall. After Saladin's ascension to the throne, which officially reestablished Sunnī Islam in Egypt, ‘Umāra was viewed as a Fatimid sympathizer and suspected of being a Shi‘ite himself. He composed a number of formal odes of praise to Saladin and other Ayyūbid princes, but none of these seem to have earned him favor in Saladin's eyes. Finally, he addressed an ode of “complaint” (shakwā) to Saladin that quickly achieved renown. It opened with the lines:
O Ear of the Days, if I speak, pray listen to
the choking of this consumptive, the moaning of this miserable man!And retain every sound whose call you hear,
for there is no use in asking you to lend an ear if what it hears is not retained.
But even this formal sixty-four-verse ode did not bring him Saladin's favor or attention. At approximately the same time, ‘Umāra composed an elegaic ode for the fallen Fatimid dynasty that achieved even more fame. One critic wrote of it: “Never has a better poem been written in honor of a dynasty which has perished.”[47]
As if in a premonition of his own end, the poet concluded:
O Fate, you have stricken the hand of glory with paralysis,
and its neck, once so beautifully adorned, you have stripped bare.
Biographical sources recount two differing, though possibly related, reasons for his dramatic death. In one version, ‘Umāra is accused of being part of a political conspiracy aimed at reinstating the Fatimid regime and is sentenced to death along with the other plotters. In the more widely circulated version, and that subscribed to by his contemporary and fellow autobiographer ‘Imād al-Dīn, he provoked the anger of Saladin by composing an ode said to contain a heretical verse:
Wretched ‘Umāra spoke this ode,
fearful of murder, not fearful of error!
‘Imād al-Dīn notes that the verse is probably spurious and was most likely falsely attributed to ‘Umāra.[48] Even so, Saladin had ‘Umāra executed in 1175, either by hanging or crucifixion. Poetry was, at times, a very serious business. Whether or not the story is true, the fact that ‘Umāra's crucifixion over a verse of poetry gained enough credence to be accepted conveys some of the importance assigned to poetry in Arabic literary practices.
The origins of this religion spring from a man
who strove so much that they addressed him as `Lord of Nations'!
Though ‘Umāra was the most renowned poet-autobiographer in the Arabic tradition until Aḥmad Shawqī in the late nineteenth century, poetry played a role in the lives of nearly all of these writers, and even in the texts of many of their autobiographies. In premodern Arab societies nearly all educated literary, political, and religious figures composed poetry at least occasionally. Some composed enough poetry that their verses survived independently in collected or anthologized works, but for most, the poems live on embedded in their other writings, including their biographies or autobiographies. Almost all of the autobiographers represented in this corpus are known to have composed poetry. Some, such as Lisān al-Dīn Ibn al-Khaṭīb and ‘Umāra al-Yamanī, included many pages of their poetry in their autobiographies; others made only passing reference to theirs. Even autobiographers who did not include a selection of their poetry as a separate section of their texts occasionally resorted to poetry to mark an emotional event or moment in their narratives.
When the ninety-year-old Usāma ibn Munqidh (twelfth century) muses lyrically on old age, he closes his thought with a poem followed by an apology to the reader for his digression.
Little did I realize at that time that the disease of senility is universal, infecting everyone whom death has neglected. But now I have climbed to the summit of my ninetieth year, worn out by the succession of days and years, I have become myself like Jawād the fodder dealer, and not like the generous man [Ar. jawād] who can dissipate his money. Feebleness has bent me over to the ground, and old age has made one part of my body enter through another, so much so now that I can now hardly recognize myself. Here is what I have said in describing my own condition:
― 97 ―
When I attained in life a high stage,
for which I had always yearned, I wished for death.Longevity has left me no energy
by which I could meet the vicissitudes of time when hostile to me.My strength has been rendered weakness, and my two confidants,
my sight and my hearing, have betrayed me since I attained this height.When I rise, I feel as if laden with a mountain;
and when I walk, as though I were bound with chains.I creep with a cane in my hand which was wont
to carry in warfare a lance and a sword.My nights I spend in my soft bed, unable to sleep,
wide awake as though I lay on solid rock.Man is reversed in life: the moment he attains perfection and
completion, he reverts to the condition from which he started.[49]
When ‘Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī (thirteenth century) waits at the deathbed of his lifelong companion and intellectual alter ego, Shaykh Abū al-Qāsim al-Shāri‘ī, their final exchange (as reported in the autobiography) occurs in verse.
I stayed with Abū al-Qāsim—we were inseparable morning and night—until he passed away. When his illness grew worse, and his head cold turned to pneumonia, I advised him to take medication, but he recited the following verse:
Then I asked him about his pain and he said:
I do not chase away the birds from trees
whose fruit I know from experience is bitter.
More pain cannot be caused
than that of a dying man's wound.
When al-‘Alī al-‘Āmilī (seventeenth century) is distraught over the loss of his son, Ḥusayn, who died at the age of twenty-two, he begins to express his grief in prose but then shifts to poetry.
By God, the sun has neither risen nor set,
but that you have been my heart and my concern,Never have I sat addressing a group,
but that you were my speech to my companions,Nor have I sighed, happy or sad,
but that your remembrance was linked with my breaths,Nor have I been about to drink water out of thirst,
but that I saw your image in the glass.O star whose life was so short!
thus it is with shooting stars;Eclipse came to him in haste, before his time,
overwhelming him before it reached the haunt of moons.The crescent of days past did not fill out,
and did not tarry till the new moon.I mourn for him, then say, hoping to console,
“You are fortunate; you have left behind the world and its pain.”I remain among enemies and he is with his Lord:
how different are our neighbors!As if no living creature had died but he,
and no mourner wailed for anyone but him.
Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq (nineteenth century) likewise finds it appropriate to express his grief at the death of his young son in verse; after describing the boy's illness and death, he concludes with a seventy-two-verse elegy composed in his memory that opens with the lines:
My tears after your passing, at every remembrance of you flow;
my memories of you are a hidden pyre.O departed one, you have abandoned a soul
which burns with grief in the fiercest fire.[50]
‘Alī Mubārak (nineteenth century) recounts that when he was a teenager, as he lay on what he thought was his deathbed, locked in a school infirmary in Cairo, he heard that his father was conspiring to sneak him out by bribing the guards. Despite his joy at the possibility of freedom, he felt he must refuse because the government punished severely not only those students who ran away from the schools but also their entire families. At this moment he cites a single verse of poetry to signal his emotion:
Similarly, when Mubārak is forced out of his powerful political posts by an envious rival during the reign of the khedive Sa‘īd, he bitterly cites an aphoristic line of verse to sum up the situation:
Could perhaps the sorrows which now beset me
conceal behind them approaching release?
Like the secondary wives of a beautiful first wife, they say of her face,
out of envy and spite, that it is unlovely.
But perhaps the role of poetry as a discourse of emotion is most poignantly captured in a simple phrase by ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī (twelfth century) in his autobiography: “I missed my family dreadfully and expressed my feelings in verse at every stop on the road.”[51]
In the Arabic literary tradition poetry has also been used for other purposes—as artistic embellishment, as formal speech, as authoritative speech, as a means of persuasion—but its role as a rhetoric of emotion is most significant here. It acts both as an alternative discourse that expresses personal feelings and as a means of lending emotional weight to the recounting of an event in a biographical or autobiographical narrative.
In addition, the capacity to be moved to compose poetry by beauty, grief, joy, pride, or spiritual experience was taken as a measure of a person's inner feelings and sensitivity. Rather than see the raw expression of one's emotional reactions as a significant act that revealed the heart or soul, it was the reflection of these feelings in “art,” in the composition of poetry, that was deemed meaningful. In this sense the Arabic aesthetic of poetry might far more fruitfully be compared to that found in tenth-century Heian Japan than to that of modern western societies.[52]
Poetry is found both alongside autobiographical texts (that is, appended in a separate chapter or section) and embedded in autobiographical accounts. These passages or sections would often have been understood by premodern readers to reflect the author's emotional, inner life. Poetic passages might include courtly praise poems or occasional poems that reveal little of the author's personality; others, however, reflect poignant moments of love, loss, or great joy. Medieval and modern readers had, and continue to have, the choice of evaluating such passages for their artistic merit or for their impact in the context of the author's life; that is, in terms of their formal features or as a moment in which to identify directly with the author's feelings. If such moments at are times clichéd, the power to impress with poetic excellence may be impaired, but not necessarily the potential to move the reader emotionally.
The study of premodern Arabic autobiographical texts is hampered by a historical shift in Arabic literary discourse. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Arab cultures began to adapt a view parallel to that prevalent in the West—that poetry and prose are separate discourses that should not intermingle.[53] Before that, a very large percentage of Arabic literature of all kinds, including autobiographies and biographies, were part poetry and part prose. The interaction between the two was a significant feature of the text. In the late nineteenth century, some of the first Arab attempts at writing novels maintained this dual dimension and the prose narrative was often interrupted by lengthy sections of verse.[54] By the turn of the twentieth century, however, poetry and prose had separated irrevocably and prosimetric forms all but disappeared from high literature, although they continue to exist in folk genres.[55] As a result, modern editions of premodern Arabic autobiographies at times do not include the poetry that was part of the original text. We have already noted that the autobiographies of Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Buluggīn, for example, now circulate in editions without the poetry that accompanied them in medieval times. This is a development that deprives the modern scholar of an important insight into the personal, emotional side of premodern authors.