Yes, men are like
shooting
stars:
a trailing light
collapsed to ashes
after the briefest blaze.
a trailing light
collapsed to ashes
after the briefest blaze.
Translated Poetry
Abū Nuwās: Wine, Boys and Song (From Arabic)
Wine, Boys and Song
By Abū Nuwās
Translated by A. Z. Foreman
Sing me a song, sweet Sulayman,
and quench me with sweet wine.
When the bottle comes around, pass it
with your hands into mine.
Look! Morning's in the sky, already
its flaxen loincloth shines.
With cups of comfort wash the call
to prayer from my mind.
Give me some wine to drink public,
then fuck me from behind.
The Original:
قال ابو نواس
ياسُلَيْمانُ غَنّني ، ومِنَ الرّاحِ فاسْـقِـني
فإذا دَارَتِ الزّجـا جَـة ُ خُـذْها ، وعاطِني
ما تَرَى الصّبْحَ قَدْ بَدا في إزارٍ متَبَّنِ
عاطِـني كأسَ سَـلْوَة ٍ عَنْ أذانِ المؤذِّنِ
اسْقِـني الخمْرَ جهْرَةً وألْـِطني ، وأزْنني
Romanization:
Yā sulaymānu ɣanninī, wa mina l-rāħi fa-sqinī
Fa-iðā dārati l-zujājatu xuðhā, wa-ˁāṭinī
Mā tarā l-ṣubħa qad badā fī izārin mutabbani
Aˁṭinī ka'sa salwatin ˁan aðāni l-mu'aððini
Isqinī l-xamra jahratan wa-aliṭnī wa-'azninī
Al-Muhalhil: Vengeance at Dawn (From Arabic)
This post's guest of honor is ˁAdī bin Rabīˁa of Taghlib, commonly known as Al-Muhalhil "The (Verse-)Weaver. " Born presumably at the very end of the 5th century, he is among the earliest Pre-Islamic Arabian poets to whom any surviving verse of substantive length is attributed. He is chiefly known for poems dealing with the Basūs War, in which a 40-year feud between the tribes of Taghlib and Bakr was supposedly ignited when his brother Kulayb was killed for slaughtering another tribe's stray camel. See my deflationary note after the poem for more.
Following my now-standard practice in translating classical poetry from Arabic and related literatures, I have substituted assonance for monorhyme. I render each line of the Arabic with a five-beat roughly iambic distich in English. I did not repeat the irregular quatraining I used in my translation of Labīd's lament. Julie Scott Meisami, in discussing Suzanne Stetkevych's translations, pointed out that such verse-chopping "destroys the sonority of the poetic line and obscures its internal, and external, connections. " To me, at least, such internal connections and line cohesion seem far more important in this intense, impassioned and vengeful dirge than they were in Labīd's more contemplative poem.
Vengeance at Dawn
By Al-Muhalhil of Taghlib
Translated by A. Z. Foreman
Long was my night of wake at Anˁamayn
While sleepless at the ceaseless stars I gazed
How can I age in life while a slain man
Of Taghlib still calls for a man to slay
Now chide the eyes for tears shed over ruins
In the breast a wound is torn over Kulayb
In the breast there is a need unsatisfied
So long as a dove among the branches wails
How can he ever weep over ruined things
Who is pledged to war with men across the ages
How can I forget you Kulayb when I've not quelled
The sorrow whelming me The bloodparched rage
My heart today make good your bloodwit vow
When they ride out at dawn — retaliate
They fetch their bows and we flash lightning bolts
As stallions threatening their stallion prey
We steel ourselves beneath their flashing steel
Till they fall pounded by our long hard blades
And can keep up no more We keep attacking
For the man who keeps the field is war's true mate
Audio of me reading this poem in Arabic
0:00
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Deflationary note:
While pre-Islamic tribal poetry has a number of facets to it and might be summarized very crudely as a literature of love, loss, pride and war, the social order it appears to suggest is dominated by feuding, ancient grudges and warfare in defense of honor, a world in which existence itself was a dangerous game, where stoicism and hardiness were the only bulwarks against callous fate and inevitable heartbreak. I might leave it at that, as many do, if I wanted to avoid angry emails. But since I have yet to set forth my most recent views on this matter, and since the social world of pre-Islamic corpus is often wrongly taken at face value by scholars who rightly take the poetry as basically genuine material, my concern for reality compels me to say a bit more.
Even apart from the fact that there are some poets who at least some of the time hint at a more sedate reality, there is another seldom examined resource which can provide a contextual background for the social order suggested by the pre-Islamic poems. There are other tribal nomad-pastoralist desert societies whose climactic, structural and economic conditions have much in common with pre-Islamic bedu, and who maintained their way of being well into the 20th century, long enough that anthropologists and ethnographers were able to give accounts of them, or interview individuals old enough to remember pre-sedentary life. Examples include the Rwala of the northern Najd, the Tuareg of the central western Sahara, and the Ogadēn nomads of the southern Somali highlands. Jonathan A. C. Brown's comparative work on the Muˁallaqāt, informed by accounts of some of these more recent societies (though he does not consider the Tuareg) offers a welcome splash of reality, one which becomes all the more instructive in light of what is known of relations between settled Arab kingdoms (largely client-states of Persia and Byzantium) and nomadic Arabs in the 6th century.
It would appear that, though such societies often perceive and portray themselves as a "people of war and honor" characterized by perpetual conflict, this is often more self-image than reality. Accounts of legendary bloodbaths in the past serve to rationalize current disputes and divisions among related lineage groups, but pragmatic reality often means that cooperation - even at the expense of honor - is far more essential and therefore the norm, and feuding is avoided when possible. Combat when it occurs can be far more ritualized, and less lethal, than that of empires that maintain a standing army. Excessive and protracted large-scale bloodshed which endangers delicate social institutions and threatens access to shared resources is rare. If anything, the worst and bloodiest episodes appear to be conflicts with encroaching sedentary peoples, and centralized polities (such as the Ghassanid and Lakhmid dynasties of old or, more recently, the Saudi State) attempting to subdue them.
In the case of pre-Islamic Arabia, the exaggerated self-perception evident in the poems drawn from oral lore, likely for the edification of the Umayyad ruling class at first, ended up being coopted (and almost certainly at least somewhat sanitized) in the Islamic period by Muslim scholars all too willing to see pre-Islamic nomadic Arabians as a society of brave and and honorable, but impetuous and ignorant, pagans, as Noble Savages (to twist a phrase) who needed the true faith to civilize and unite them, a people you'd be proud not to be, yet also proud to be descended from.
The Original:
باتَ لَيلي بالأَنْعَمَين طَويلا أَرْقُبُ النَجْمَ ساهِراً لَنْ يَزولا
كَيف أٌمدي ولَا يزالُ قتيلٌ مِن بَني وائلٍ يُنادي قتيلا
أُزْجُرِ الْعَينَ أَنْ تُبَكِّي الطُلولا إِنَّ في الصَدْرِ مِنْ كُلَيبٍ فَليلا
إِنَّ في الصَدْرِ حاجةً لَنْ تُقَضَّى ما دَعا في الغُصونِ داعٍ هَديلا
كَيفَ يَبْكي الطُلولَ مَن هو رَهْنٌ بِطِعانِ الأنامِ جيلا فَجِيلا
كَيف أَنساكَ يا كلَيبُ ولمّا أقضِ حُزناً ينوبُني وغَليلا
أيُّها القَلبُ أَنْجِزِ اليومَ نَحْباً مِن بني الحِصْنِ إذ غَدوا وذُحولا
انتَضَوا مَعْجِسَ القِسي وأَبْرَقْـنا كَما تُوعِد الفُحولُ الفُحولا
وصَبَرْنا تَحتَ البوارِقِ حتَّى دَكْدَكَتْ فيهِمِ السُيوفُ طَويلا
لم يُطيقوا أنْ يَنْزِلوا ونَزَلْنا وَأَخو الحَربِ مَن أَطاقَ النُزولا
Romanization:
Bāta laylī bi-l-'Anˁamayni ṭawīlā arqubu l-najma sāhiran lan yazūlā
Kayfa umdī wa-lā yazālu qatīlun min Banī Wā'ilin yunādī qatīlā
Uzjuri l-ˁayna an tubakkī l-ṭulūlā inna fī l-ṣadri min Kulaybin falīlā
Inna fī l-ṣadri ḥājatan lan tuqaḍḍā mā daˁā fī l-ġuṣūni dāˁin hadīlā
Kayfa yabkī l-ṭulūla man huwa rahnun bi-ṭiˁāni l-'anāmi jīlan fa-jīlā
Kayfa ansāka yā Kulaybu wa-lammā aqḍi ḥuznan yanūbunī wa-ġalīlā
Ayyuhā l-qalbu anjizi l-yawma naḥban min Banī l-Ḥiṣni iḏ ġadaw wa-ḏuḥūlā
Intaḍaw maˁjisa l-qisiyyi wa-'abraqnā kamā tūˁidu l-fuḥūlu l-fuḥūlā
Wa-ṣabarnā taḥta l-bawāriqi ḥattā dakdakat fīhimi l-suyūfu ṭawīlā
Lam yuṭīqū an yanzilū wa-nazalnā wa-'aḫū l-ḥarbi man aṭāqa l-nuzūlā
Labid: Lament for Arbad (From Arabic)
This poem is an elegiac lament for Arbad, the poet's deceased adoptive brother. It is also one of my favorite texts in all Arabic literature. It was probably composed at some point in the middle of the 7th century. The legends of Labid, the (presumptive) author, are many.
The poem is monorhymed throughout with the first two half-lines also rhyming with each other. The meter (quantitave, with long and short syllables more or less like latin or greek) of the original is u-x | u-x- | u-x | u-u- || u-x | u-x- | u-x | u-u- where u= short, - = long and x= either short or long.
Naturally, there is no point in trying to duplicate this form in English. So I concocted a form specifically for the purpose of translating this type of classical Arabic verse- involving assonance, stress-meter, parallelism and alliteration.
I spaced my translation the way I did, in 4-line stanzas of irregular length, (ironically) as a way of trying to do justice to the fact that this poem is the product of oral composition and was produced in what was, as far as is known, a basically (though by this time not totally) illiterate, tribal tradition. The spacing is meant to highlight thematic and syntactic patterns rather than aural, and to make the salience of aural features more a function of oral recitation than of ocular ratiocination.
In my translation each quatrain corresponds to one verse of Arabic.
The first half of each stanza has to be linked to the second by at least one alliteration on stressed syllables.
Finally, whereas the Arabic maintains the same rhyme at the end of each verse throughout the poem, I have attempted to mirror this not with full rhyme in English but rather assonance or, less technically, vowel-rhyme - meaning that the last stressed syllable of each English verse contains the same nuclear vowel.
To my knowledge, line-terminal assonance as a true formal device (as opposed to a mere stylistic option) in Western European verse traditions is found chiefly in medieval French, medieval Irish, and modern Dutch, as well as Iberian Romance of all periods from the earliest recorded Mozarabic ballad-fragments right through Neruda and Lorca. Yet it has not much been used as a formal feature in literary English verse (though translators of assonant verse from Romance languages have reproduced it occasionally, as Dorothy L. Sayers did in her translation of the Chanson de Roland, and J. F. Nims in one of his translations from Lorca. ) English poets, when they make use of end-line sound correspondences that fall short of full rhyme, seem to prefer consonance instead of assonance, repeating syllables with the same consonant in the coda (as in spooked/licked) rather than the same vowel in the nucleus (as in sex/best). Which is odd in a way, since vowels are higher on the sonorance hierarchy and are acoustically more discernible than consonants. Perhaps a motivating factor was that, in English, consonant correspondences are usually fairly consistent across dialects, whereas vowel correspondences are very often not. Regardless, I suspect that poets like Heaney or Pinsky, in preferring consonance as a formal feature, are composing less for the ear than for the eye. For assonance is indeed a common fixture of English lyric forms that, unlike the sonnet, still depend primarily on oral performance and aural consumption. Any English-speaker who has, by virtue of not living under an Everest-sized rock, been exposed to contemporary popular music has heard it. And if English assonance is good enough for Eminem or the Beatles, then it's good enough for ancient bedouins.
My quatraining of the distichs was inspired by the translation practice of my former teacher, Michael Sells, who is in my unapologetically biased view the only decent literary translator into English that pre-Islamic poetry has had in perhaps half a century. Needless to say, while I respect Sells immensely, I cannot agree with his contention that rhyme and meter in English necessarily entail an "artificiality which has been the largest impediment to making the Arabic ode accessible to non-Arabic speaking audiences. " There is no intrinsic reason why a "a natural flow of language and diction" cannot coexist with a formalized prosody. If "a natural English diction no longer allows the kind of rhyme and meter necessary" to make that work, my response is that it's time to find a different kind of natural English. English, like any other language, is in fact capable of more than its speakers typically imagine, and if the translation is giving English-speakers something they're not quite used to, that is not necessarily a bad thing.
Lament for Arbad
By Labīd bin Rabīˁa (born c. 560)
Translated by A. Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Arabic
We perish and rot
but the rising stars do not.
When we are gone,
mountain and stronghold stay.
Once I was under
a coveted neighbor's wing.
And with Arbad, that protector
has passed away.
I'll stand ungrieved,
though Fortune force us asunder
For every man
is felled by Fortune one day.
I am no more enthralled
by newfound riches
than grieved by aught
that Fortune wreaks or takes.
For men are like desert camps:
one day, full of folk
but, come the morn,
a bare unpeopled waste.
They pass away in flocks,
and the land stays on:
a trailing herdsman
rounding up the strays.
Yes, men are like shooting stars:
a trailing light
collapsed to ashes
after the briefest blaze.
Men's wealth and kinfolk
are but a loan of Fortune.
All that is loaned
must be at last repaid.
Men are at work.
One worker razes his building
to the ground, and another
raises something great.
Among them are the happy
who seize their lot,
and unlucky others:
beggars till the grave.
If my Doom be slow in coming,
I can look forward
to ailing fingers
clenched about a cane,
While telling tales
of youth and yesteryear,
on slow legs, trying to stand
yet bent with pain.
I am become a sword
whose sheath is worn
apart by the years since smithing,
though sharp the blade.
Do not be gone! 1
A due date for death is meted
to all. It is yet to come. . .
then comes today!
Reproachful woman! 2
When fine lads journey forth,
can you reckon who of them
shall return from the fray?
Will you grieve
at what fell Fortune wreaks on men?
What noble man
will disaster not waylay?
No, by your lifeblood:
neither the pebble-reader
nor the auguress3 knows
what fey things God4 ordains.
If any of you would doubt me,
simply ask them
when a lad shall taste of Doom,
or the land taste rains.
Footnotes:
1- "Do not be gone" lā tabˁadan is a formulaic phrase (westerners would call it a "cliché" I guess) used to refer to the recently dead (likewise lā yabˁadan "let him not be gone. ") Its ritual function may have been to express psychological shock (i. e. "how can he have left us? ") as well as the belief that the person so commanded will survive as long as their memory and, by definition, the verse-lament in their name. The verb is baˁida/yabˁadu meaning "to perish, to depart. " This verb and the related, more common baˁuda/yabˁudu "to be distant, far" seem to have semantically bled into one another in Early Arabic. E. g. Qur'an 11:95 a-lā buˁdan (=baˁuda) li-Madyana ka-mā baˁidat (=baˁida) Thāmūdu "Yea let Midian perish even as Thamud perished. " Among Orientalists, the meaning is best brought out by S. Stetkevych:
. . . lā tabˁadan is equivocally "do not depart" and "do not perish. " It is precisely this polysemous condensation into two words that evoke all the shared emotions of loss and departure. . . that this phrase was selected as part of the elegiac formulary. Further, it serves as a condensed expression of the purpose of [lamentation]: for the Arab poet or poetess to "recall" the dead is to "call back" the dead to life.
Al-Baghdādī in Khizānatu l-Adab states:
. . . they [the ancient Arabs] meant in invoking the deceased [via the formula la yabˁadanna] to have his memory survive and not disappear: for after a man's death, the survival of his remembrance takes the place of his life.
2- The ˁāðil or "reproacher/rebuker" is a stock figure from early poetry, -usually a woman but sometimes a man- a paragonal "straw (wo)man" to whom the speaker can impute attitudes which he would like to argue against. Like many other stock addressees of early poetry (such as Yā ṣāḥi "O Companion" or Yā rākibu "O Rider/Messenger"), this persona may have developed from some sort of ritual or practical function now lost to us.
3-The ḍawāribu bi-l-ḥaṣā (literally "pebble-casters", here rendered as "pebble-readers") were women who tried to divine the future by casting pebbles on the ground in some fashion. The zājirātu ṭ-ṭayri "women who chase birds away" (here rendered as "auguresses") were women who tried to divine the future in some manner that involved scaring birds.
4- The original has "Allah" where I have "God. " What one makes of the reference to Allāh here depends on whether one assumes that Labīd composed this poem (if he is indeed its composer, and if one may speak of original composers at all when it comes to poems that are orally transmitted for a century or two before being written down) after or before he became a Muslim, and also what one's view is about the "paganism" that predated Islam. My current view is that Arabia generally was by this point far more monotheistic and far more Abrahamic than the Islamic tradition would have us believe, and that Allah could easily refer to the Abrahamic God even if Labīd was not yet a Muslim. Even the Qur'an acknowledges that the so-called "pagans" worshipped the supreme God of Abraham and that their error was rather in worshipping subsidiary beings alongside Him (much as many Christians today also venerate, and pray to, saints and angels, I hasten to add. )
The Original:
قالَ لَبيد بنُ الربيعة العامِريُّ
بلينا وما تبلى النجومُ الطَّوالِعُ وتَبْقَى الجِبالُ بَعْدَنَا والمَصانِعُ
وقد كنتُ في أكنافِ جارِ مَضَنَّةٍ ففارقَني جارٌ بأرْبَدَ نافِعُ
فَلا جَزِعٌ إنْ فَرَّقَ الدَّهْرُ بَيْنَنا وكُلُّ فَتى ً يَوْمَاً بهِ الدَّهْرُ فاجِعُ
فَلا أنَا يأتيني طَريفٌ بِفَرْحَةٍ وَلا أنا مِمّا أحدَثَ الدَّهرُ جازِعُ
ومَا النّاسُ إلاّ كالدِّيارِ وأهْلها بِها يَوْمَ حَلُّوها وغَدْواً بَلاقِعُ
وَيَمْضُون أرْسَالاً ونَخْلُفُ بَعدهم كما ضَمَّ أُخرَى التّالياتِ المُشايِعُ
ومَا المَرْءُ إلاَّ كالشِّهابِ وضَوْئِهِ يحورُ رَماداً بَعْدَ إذْ هُوَ ساطِعُ
ومَا المالُ والأهْلُونَ إلاَّ وَديعَة ٌ وَلابُدَّ يَوْماً أنْ تُرَدَّ الوَدائِعُ
ومَا الناسُ إلاَّ عاملانِ: فَعامِلٌ يتبِّرُ ما يبني، وآخرُ رافِعُ
فَمِنْهُمْ سَعيدٌ آخِذٌ لنَصِيبِهِ وَمِنْهُمْ شَقيٌّ بالمَعيشَة ِ قانِعُ
أَليْسَ ورائي، إنْ تراخَتْ مَنيّتي، لُزُومُ العَصَا تُحْنَى علَيها الأصابعُ
أخبّرُ أخبارَ القرونِ التي مضتْ أدبٌ كأنّي كُلّما قمتُ راكعُ
فأصبحتُ مثلَ السيفِ غَيَّرَ جفنهُ تَقَادُمُ عَهْدِ القَينِ والنَّصْلُ قاطعُ
فَلا تَبْعَدَنْ إنَّ المَنيِّة َ مَوعِدٌ عَلَيْنا فَدَانٍ للطُّلُوعِ وطالِعُ
أعاذلُ ما يُدريكَ، إلاَّ تظنيّاً، إذا ارتحَلَ الفِتيانُ منْ هوَ راجعُ
تُبَكِّي على إثرِ الشّبابِ الذي مَضَى ألا إنَّ أخدانَ الشّبابِ الرّعارِعُ
أتجزَعُ مِمّا أحدَثَ الدّهرُ بالفَتى وأيُّ كَريمٍ لمْ تُصِبْهُ القَوَارِعُ
لَعَمْرُكَ ما تَدري الضَّوَارِبُ بالحصَى وَلا زاجِراتُ الطّيرِ ما اللّهُ صانِعُ
سَلُوهُنَّ إنْ كَذَّبتموني متى الفتى يذوقُ المنايا أوْ متى الغيثُ واقِعُ
Umar Ibn Al-Farid: "Was that Layla's flame. . . " (From Arabic)
This poem epitomizes what makes so much overtly mystical Islamic poetry an almost unreasonable burden on the translator. I was going to write a commentary like I did for Du Fu's "Spring Scene During Civil War" explaining how this poem functions as Arabic poetry rather than as mystical theosophy, but I fear I might then be in danger of becoming what I behold, here. One could spend paragraphs trying to describe how the Arabic text's evocative proper names, grammatical oddities and allusions to the Qur'an and the classical tradition create in the reader's mind a single impression of countless blended subtleties. The many place-names in the poem are all situated around Mecca and Medina have sundry evocative resonances within the tradition. Most Arab commentators give this poem the sort of banal, inexcusable explication that reduces this poem and others like it by Umar Ibn al-Fāriḍ to a mere mystical code that needs decipherment. I don't want to reduce the poem to code, mystical or otherwise. So no commentary at all for this poem. I'll just let the translation try and show you some of how it goes. At some point, a poem's got to stand on its own (pun intended) feet. I have not duplicated the original's monorhyme in full, but have rather substituted assonance (ending every couplet with the same vowel in the final stressed syllable, though the consonants after it may be different. )
The only thing I will mention is that "Layla" is a woman's name, not a toponym.
"Was that Layla's flame"
By Umar ibn Al-Farid
Translated by A. Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Arabic
Was that Layla's flame that shone through the veils of night on Dhū-Salam,
or lightning's flash round ˁAlam and Zawrā' throughout the vales?
Have you but a sigh of dawn for me, O winds about Naˁmān?
Have you but a sip to offer me, O waters of Wajra's ways?
O driver of laden camels rolling up the wayless sands
like a scroll of mighty writ beside Ịdam's Sagebrush today
Turn aside at the guarded safeground -God be your shepherd! - and seek the path
To yonder Lotus thicket, to the myrtle and laurel bay.
Then halt at Mount Salˁ and ask at the curling vale of Raqmatayn:
Have the tamarisks grown and touched at last in the livening weep of the rain?
If you've crossed the waters of ˁAqīq in the mornlight, I implore you
By God, be unabashed and offer them my heartfelt Hail!
Tell everybody this: I have left behind a heartfelled man
Alive as a deadman, adding plague to plague through your domains.
From my heart like a burning bush there spreads a fire of more than flame.
From my eyes the pouring tears are like a ceaseless season of rains.
For such is the lovers' law: not one limb of the mortal body
When bound in love with a gazelle can ever be freed of pain.
You ignoramus! You who defame and shame me for my love!
Desist and learn. You would not blame me, had your love been the same.
My oath by the sacred union, by the age-old love and by
That covenant's communion and all the things of bygone ages:
No consolation, no replacement turned me away from loving
For it is not who I am to move with the whims of solace and change.
Return the slumber to my eyes, and then perhaps I will see you
Visit my bed in the recklessness of dream as a revenant shade.
Alas for our days at Khayf! Had they but lasted each tenfold!
Alas for me, alas, how the last day couldn't last or stay.
If only my grief could cure me, oh if only the "oh" of my woe
And my remorse could ever recover aught that is passed away,
Gazelles of the winding dell! Be kind and turn away from me
For I, to look on no one but my love, have bound my gaze
In deference to a Judge who has decreed a wondrous fatwa
That my blood be shed in every month, the sacred and profane.
Deaf, he did not hear my plea. Dumb, he could not reply.
He is stricken blind to the plight of one whom love has struck insane.
The Original:
هَلْ نارُ لَيلَى بَدَتْ لَيلاً بِذي سَلَمِ أمْ بارِقٌ لاحَ في ٱلزَّوراءِ فٱلعَلَمِ
أَرْواحَ نَعْمانَ, هَلَّا نَسْمَةٌ سَحَراً وَماءَ وَجْرةَ, هَلَّا نَهْلَة ٌ بِفَمِ
يا سائِقَ ٱلظَّعْنِ يَطْوي البِيدَ مُعْتَسِفاً طيَّ ٱلسِّجِلِّ، بِذاتِ ٱلشِّيحِ مِن إضَمِ
عُجْ بٱلحِمَى يا رَعاكَ اللَّهُ، مُعتَمِداً خَمِيلَةَ ٱلضَّالِ ذاتَ ٱلرَّنْدِ وٱلخُزُمِ
وَقِفْ بِسَلْعٍ وَسَلْ بٱلجِزْعِ هَلْ مُطِرَتْ بٱلرَّقْمَتَينِ أُثَيلَاتٌ بِمُنْسَجِمِ
نَاشَدْتُكَ اللَّهَ إنْ جُزْتَ ٱلعَقِيقَ ضُحًى فاقْرَ ٱلسَّلامَ عَلَيهِمْ، غَيرَ مُحْتَشِمِ
وقُلْ تَرَكْتُ صَرِيعاً، في دِيارِكُمُ، حَيّاً كَمَيِّتٍ يُعِيرُ ٱلسُّقْمَ للسَّقَمِ
فَمِنْ فُؤادي لَهيبٌ نابَ عنْ قَبَسٍ، وَمنْ جُفوني دَمْعٌ فاضَ كٱلدِّيَمِ
وهذهِ سنَّةُ ٱلعشَّاقِ ما عَلِقوا بِشادِنٍ، فَخَلا عُضْوٌ منَ ٱلألَمِ
يالائماً لامَني في حبِّهِمْ سَفَهاً كُفَّ ٱلمَلامَ، فلو أحبَبْتَ لمْ تَلُمِ
وحُرْمَةِ ٱلوَصْلِ، وٱلوِدِّ ٱلعتيقِ، وبٱلْـعَهْدِ ٱلوَثيقِ وما قدْ كانَ في ٱلقِدَمِ
ما حُلتُ عَنْهُمْ بِسُلْوانٍ ولابَدَلٍ ليسَ ٱلتَّبدُّلُ وٱلسُّلوانُ منْ شِيَمي
رُدُّوا ٱلرُّقادَ لِجَفْني عَلَّ طَيفَكُمُ بِمَضْجَعي زائرٌ في غَفْلَةِ ٱلحُلُمِ
آهاً لأيّامِنا بٱلخَيْفِ، لَو بَقِيَتْ عَشراً وواهاً عَلَيها كَيفَ لمْ تَدمِ
هَيهاتَ وا أسَفي لو كانَ يَنْفَعُني أوْ كانَ يُجْدِي على ما فاتَ وانَدَمي
عَنِّي إلَيكُمْ ظِباءَ ٱلمُنْحَنَى كَرَماً عَهِدْتُ طَرْفيَ لم يَنْظُرْ لِغَيرِهِمِ
طَوعاً لِقاضٍ أتى في حُكمِهِ عَجَباً، أفتى بِسَفْكِ دمي في ٱلحِلِّ وٱلحَرَمِ
أصَمُّ لَمْ يُصْغِ للشّكوَى ، وأَبْكَمُ لَم يُحِرْجواباً وَعَنْ حالِ ٱلمَشوقِ عَمِي
Ibn Khafaja: The Mountain Poem (From Medieval Arabic)
The Mountain Poem: Words Spoken in Contemplation
By Ibrahīm Ibn Khafāja
Translated by A. Z. Foreman
Click here to hear me recite the Arabic
What throttled at my saddle? Was I riding
a camel's body or a blast of wind?
No sooner had I set out from the early east
than I had westered out past twilight's end,
Alone, as dunes delivering me to dunes
moved me from rainless waste to rainless waste.
And I saw through the dark like a fell veil
falling across the faces of the Fates.
My home was nowhere other than the saddle,
my refuge was none other than the sword,
My friendship came from faces of desires
laughing with wishes for lips, without a word.
Under a night that, when I thought it over,
proved false my hope of dawn, I quickened my pace
Trailing a black cloak of the dark behind me
reaching for hope's white bosom to embrace.
I ripped the night's shirt open and beheld
a dawn-grey wolf there, sneering through the air.
Dark shards of sunrise glinted in its mouth.
A peering star blazed in its piercing stare.
I saw a mountain too, its haughty peak
and bunched spine vying with the worlds on high,
Deflecting every salvo of the wind,
and shouldering the starlight from the sky,
Brooding above the dunes like some great thinker
considering days to come as nights go by
With black clouds wrapped about it for a turban
and bangs of redhead lightning in its face.
And through the night, that tongueless mountain uttered
marvelous things:
How much more time in space?
How long have I been the assassin's safehouse
And sheltered hermits from the human race?
How many rovers have but passed me by,
or bid their camels slumber in my shade?
How many times have whirlwinds smacked my body
while I stood ground against the sea's green blade?
Doom reached and took them all. Its ruinous wind
ripped each of them from time. As times go by
My throbbing thickets are a gasping chest,
and my doves' cooing is a mourner's cry.
No solace of forgetting stopped my tears.
I've wept them out on a life bereaved of friends.
How long shall I remain while riders go,
bidding farewell as one more friendship ends?
How long shall I be shepherd to the stars
with lidless eyes that cannot help but see
Them rise and set and rise as nights burst past
right to the last night of eternity?
So, Lord, have mercy on Thy desperate servant.
Lifting a hand of stone, Thy mountain kneels.
And I heard every lesson in its sermon
translated by the tongue of its ordeals.
That grueling night made it the greatest friend
Whose grief consoled, whose solace grieved till dawn.
And so I said, as I turned toward journey's end,
"Farewell, for some must stay and some go on.
Yes, men are like shooting stars:
a trailing light
collapsed to ashes
after the briefest blaze.
Men's wealth and kinfolk
are but a loan of Fortune.
All that is loaned
must be at last repaid.
Men are at work.
One worker razes his building
to the ground, and another
raises something great.
Among them are the happy
who seize their lot,
and unlucky others:
beggars till the grave.
If my Doom be slow in coming,
I can look forward
to ailing fingers
clenched about a cane,
While telling tales
of youth and yesteryear,
on slow legs, trying to stand
yet bent with pain.
I am become a sword
whose sheath is worn
apart by the years since smithing,
though sharp the blade.
Do not be gone! 1
A due date for death is meted
to all. It is yet to come. . .
then comes today!
Reproachful woman! 2
When fine lads journey forth,
can you reckon who of them
shall return from the fray?
Will you grieve
at what fell Fortune wreaks on men?
What noble man
will disaster not waylay?
No, by your lifeblood:
neither the pebble-reader
nor the auguress3 knows
what fey things God4 ordains.
If any of you would doubt me,
simply ask them
when a lad shall taste of Doom,
or the land taste rains.
Footnotes:
1- "Do not be gone" lā tabˁadan is a formulaic phrase (westerners would call it a "cliché" I guess) used to refer to the recently dead (likewise lā yabˁadan "let him not be gone. ") Its ritual function may have been to express psychological shock (i. e. "how can he have left us? ") as well as the belief that the person so commanded will survive as long as their memory and, by definition, the verse-lament in their name. The verb is baˁida/yabˁadu meaning "to perish, to depart. " This verb and the related, more common baˁuda/yabˁudu "to be distant, far" seem to have semantically bled into one another in Early Arabic. E. g. Qur'an 11:95 a-lā buˁdan (=baˁuda) li-Madyana ka-mā baˁidat (=baˁida) Thāmūdu "Yea let Midian perish even as Thamud perished. " Among Orientalists, the meaning is best brought out by S. Stetkevych:
. . . lā tabˁadan is equivocally "do not depart" and "do not perish. " It is precisely this polysemous condensation into two words that evoke all the shared emotions of loss and departure. . . that this phrase was selected as part of the elegiac formulary. Further, it serves as a condensed expression of the purpose of [lamentation]: for the Arab poet or poetess to "recall" the dead is to "call back" the dead to life.
Al-Baghdādī in Khizānatu l-Adab states:
. . . they [the ancient Arabs] meant in invoking the deceased [via the formula la yabˁadanna] to have his memory survive and not disappear: for after a man's death, the survival of his remembrance takes the place of his life.
2- The ˁāðil or "reproacher/rebuker" is a stock figure from early poetry, -usually a woman but sometimes a man- a paragonal "straw (wo)man" to whom the speaker can impute attitudes which he would like to argue against. Like many other stock addressees of early poetry (such as Yā ṣāḥi "O Companion" or Yā rākibu "O Rider/Messenger"), this persona may have developed from some sort of ritual or practical function now lost to us.
3-The ḍawāribu bi-l-ḥaṣā (literally "pebble-casters", here rendered as "pebble-readers") were women who tried to divine the future by casting pebbles on the ground in some fashion. The zājirātu ṭ-ṭayri "women who chase birds away" (here rendered as "auguresses") were women who tried to divine the future in some manner that involved scaring birds.
4- The original has "Allah" where I have "God. " What one makes of the reference to Allāh here depends on whether one assumes that Labīd composed this poem (if he is indeed its composer, and if one may speak of original composers at all when it comes to poems that are orally transmitted for a century or two before being written down) after or before he became a Muslim, and also what one's view is about the "paganism" that predated Islam. My current view is that Arabia generally was by this point far more monotheistic and far more Abrahamic than the Islamic tradition would have us believe, and that Allah could easily refer to the Abrahamic God even if Labīd was not yet a Muslim. Even the Qur'an acknowledges that the so-called "pagans" worshipped the supreme God of Abraham and that their error was rather in worshipping subsidiary beings alongside Him (much as many Christians today also venerate, and pray to, saints and angels, I hasten to add. )
The Original:
قالَ لَبيد بنُ الربيعة العامِريُّ
بلينا وما تبلى النجومُ الطَّوالِعُ وتَبْقَى الجِبالُ بَعْدَنَا والمَصانِعُ
وقد كنتُ في أكنافِ جارِ مَضَنَّةٍ ففارقَني جارٌ بأرْبَدَ نافِعُ
فَلا جَزِعٌ إنْ فَرَّقَ الدَّهْرُ بَيْنَنا وكُلُّ فَتى ً يَوْمَاً بهِ الدَّهْرُ فاجِعُ
فَلا أنَا يأتيني طَريفٌ بِفَرْحَةٍ وَلا أنا مِمّا أحدَثَ الدَّهرُ جازِعُ
ومَا النّاسُ إلاّ كالدِّيارِ وأهْلها بِها يَوْمَ حَلُّوها وغَدْواً بَلاقِعُ
وَيَمْضُون أرْسَالاً ونَخْلُفُ بَعدهم كما ضَمَّ أُخرَى التّالياتِ المُشايِعُ
ومَا المَرْءُ إلاَّ كالشِّهابِ وضَوْئِهِ يحورُ رَماداً بَعْدَ إذْ هُوَ ساطِعُ
ومَا المالُ والأهْلُونَ إلاَّ وَديعَة ٌ وَلابُدَّ يَوْماً أنْ تُرَدَّ الوَدائِعُ
ومَا الناسُ إلاَّ عاملانِ: فَعامِلٌ يتبِّرُ ما يبني، وآخرُ رافِعُ
فَمِنْهُمْ سَعيدٌ آخِذٌ لنَصِيبِهِ وَمِنْهُمْ شَقيٌّ بالمَعيشَة ِ قانِعُ
أَليْسَ ورائي، إنْ تراخَتْ مَنيّتي، لُزُومُ العَصَا تُحْنَى علَيها الأصابعُ
أخبّرُ أخبارَ القرونِ التي مضتْ أدبٌ كأنّي كُلّما قمتُ راكعُ
فأصبحتُ مثلَ السيفِ غَيَّرَ جفنهُ تَقَادُمُ عَهْدِ القَينِ والنَّصْلُ قاطعُ
فَلا تَبْعَدَنْ إنَّ المَنيِّة َ مَوعِدٌ عَلَيْنا فَدَانٍ للطُّلُوعِ وطالِعُ
أعاذلُ ما يُدريكَ، إلاَّ تظنيّاً، إذا ارتحَلَ الفِتيانُ منْ هوَ راجعُ
تُبَكِّي على إثرِ الشّبابِ الذي مَضَى ألا إنَّ أخدانَ الشّبابِ الرّعارِعُ
أتجزَعُ مِمّا أحدَثَ الدّهرُ بالفَتى وأيُّ كَريمٍ لمْ تُصِبْهُ القَوَارِعُ
لَعَمْرُكَ ما تَدري الضَّوَارِبُ بالحصَى وَلا زاجِراتُ الطّيرِ ما اللّهُ صانِعُ
سَلُوهُنَّ إنْ كَذَّبتموني متى الفتى يذوقُ المنايا أوْ متى الغيثُ واقِعُ
Umar Ibn Al-Farid: "Was that Layla's flame. . . " (From Arabic)
This poem epitomizes what makes so much overtly mystical Islamic poetry an almost unreasonable burden on the translator. I was going to write a commentary like I did for Du Fu's "Spring Scene During Civil War" explaining how this poem functions as Arabic poetry rather than as mystical theosophy, but I fear I might then be in danger of becoming what I behold, here. One could spend paragraphs trying to describe how the Arabic text's evocative proper names, grammatical oddities and allusions to the Qur'an and the classical tradition create in the reader's mind a single impression of countless blended subtleties. The many place-names in the poem are all situated around Mecca and Medina have sundry evocative resonances within the tradition. Most Arab commentators give this poem the sort of banal, inexcusable explication that reduces this poem and others like it by Umar Ibn al-Fāriḍ to a mere mystical code that needs decipherment. I don't want to reduce the poem to code, mystical or otherwise. So no commentary at all for this poem. I'll just let the translation try and show you some of how it goes. At some point, a poem's got to stand on its own (pun intended) feet. I have not duplicated the original's monorhyme in full, but have rather substituted assonance (ending every couplet with the same vowel in the final stressed syllable, though the consonants after it may be different. )
The only thing I will mention is that "Layla" is a woman's name, not a toponym.
"Was that Layla's flame"
By Umar ibn Al-Farid
Translated by A. Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Arabic
Was that Layla's flame that shone through the veils of night on Dhū-Salam,
or lightning's flash round ˁAlam and Zawrā' throughout the vales?
Have you but a sigh of dawn for me, O winds about Naˁmān?
Have you but a sip to offer me, O waters of Wajra's ways?
O driver of laden camels rolling up the wayless sands
like a scroll of mighty writ beside Ịdam's Sagebrush today
Turn aside at the guarded safeground -God be your shepherd! - and seek the path
To yonder Lotus thicket, to the myrtle and laurel bay.
Then halt at Mount Salˁ and ask at the curling vale of Raqmatayn:
Have the tamarisks grown and touched at last in the livening weep of the rain?
If you've crossed the waters of ˁAqīq in the mornlight, I implore you
By God, be unabashed and offer them my heartfelt Hail!
Tell everybody this: I have left behind a heartfelled man
Alive as a deadman, adding plague to plague through your domains.
From my heart like a burning bush there spreads a fire of more than flame.
From my eyes the pouring tears are like a ceaseless season of rains.
For such is the lovers' law: not one limb of the mortal body
When bound in love with a gazelle can ever be freed of pain.
You ignoramus! You who defame and shame me for my love!
Desist and learn. You would not blame me, had your love been the same.
My oath by the sacred union, by the age-old love and by
That covenant's communion and all the things of bygone ages:
No consolation, no replacement turned me away from loving
For it is not who I am to move with the whims of solace and change.
Return the slumber to my eyes, and then perhaps I will see you
Visit my bed in the recklessness of dream as a revenant shade.
Alas for our days at Khayf! Had they but lasted each tenfold!
Alas for me, alas, how the last day couldn't last or stay.
If only my grief could cure me, oh if only the "oh" of my woe
And my remorse could ever recover aught that is passed away,
Gazelles of the winding dell! Be kind and turn away from me
For I, to look on no one but my love, have bound my gaze
In deference to a Judge who has decreed a wondrous fatwa
That my blood be shed in every month, the sacred and profane.
Deaf, he did not hear my plea. Dumb, he could not reply.
He is stricken blind to the plight of one whom love has struck insane.
The Original:
هَلْ نارُ لَيلَى بَدَتْ لَيلاً بِذي سَلَمِ أمْ بارِقٌ لاحَ في ٱلزَّوراءِ فٱلعَلَمِ
أَرْواحَ نَعْمانَ, هَلَّا نَسْمَةٌ سَحَراً وَماءَ وَجْرةَ, هَلَّا نَهْلَة ٌ بِفَمِ
يا سائِقَ ٱلظَّعْنِ يَطْوي البِيدَ مُعْتَسِفاً طيَّ ٱلسِّجِلِّ، بِذاتِ ٱلشِّيحِ مِن إضَمِ
عُجْ بٱلحِمَى يا رَعاكَ اللَّهُ، مُعتَمِداً خَمِيلَةَ ٱلضَّالِ ذاتَ ٱلرَّنْدِ وٱلخُزُمِ
وَقِفْ بِسَلْعٍ وَسَلْ بٱلجِزْعِ هَلْ مُطِرَتْ بٱلرَّقْمَتَينِ أُثَيلَاتٌ بِمُنْسَجِمِ
نَاشَدْتُكَ اللَّهَ إنْ جُزْتَ ٱلعَقِيقَ ضُحًى فاقْرَ ٱلسَّلامَ عَلَيهِمْ، غَيرَ مُحْتَشِمِ
وقُلْ تَرَكْتُ صَرِيعاً، في دِيارِكُمُ، حَيّاً كَمَيِّتٍ يُعِيرُ ٱلسُّقْمَ للسَّقَمِ
فَمِنْ فُؤادي لَهيبٌ نابَ عنْ قَبَسٍ، وَمنْ جُفوني دَمْعٌ فاضَ كٱلدِّيَمِ
وهذهِ سنَّةُ ٱلعشَّاقِ ما عَلِقوا بِشادِنٍ، فَخَلا عُضْوٌ منَ ٱلألَمِ
يالائماً لامَني في حبِّهِمْ سَفَهاً كُفَّ ٱلمَلامَ، فلو أحبَبْتَ لمْ تَلُمِ
وحُرْمَةِ ٱلوَصْلِ، وٱلوِدِّ ٱلعتيقِ، وبٱلْـعَهْدِ ٱلوَثيقِ وما قدْ كانَ في ٱلقِدَمِ
ما حُلتُ عَنْهُمْ بِسُلْوانٍ ولابَدَلٍ ليسَ ٱلتَّبدُّلُ وٱلسُّلوانُ منْ شِيَمي
رُدُّوا ٱلرُّقادَ لِجَفْني عَلَّ طَيفَكُمُ بِمَضْجَعي زائرٌ في غَفْلَةِ ٱلحُلُمِ
آهاً لأيّامِنا بٱلخَيْفِ، لَو بَقِيَتْ عَشراً وواهاً عَلَيها كَيفَ لمْ تَدمِ
هَيهاتَ وا أسَفي لو كانَ يَنْفَعُني أوْ كانَ يُجْدِي على ما فاتَ وانَدَمي
عَنِّي إلَيكُمْ ظِباءَ ٱلمُنْحَنَى كَرَماً عَهِدْتُ طَرْفيَ لم يَنْظُرْ لِغَيرِهِمِ
طَوعاً لِقاضٍ أتى في حُكمِهِ عَجَباً، أفتى بِسَفْكِ دمي في ٱلحِلِّ وٱلحَرَمِ
أصَمُّ لَمْ يُصْغِ للشّكوَى ، وأَبْكَمُ لَم يُحِرْجواباً وَعَنْ حالِ ٱلمَشوقِ عَمِي
Ibn Khafaja: The Mountain Poem (From Medieval Arabic)
The Mountain Poem: Words Spoken in Contemplation
By Ibrahīm Ibn Khafāja
Translated by A. Z. Foreman
Click here to hear me recite the Arabic
What throttled at my saddle? Was I riding
a camel's body or a blast of wind?
No sooner had I set out from the early east
than I had westered out past twilight's end,
Alone, as dunes delivering me to dunes
moved me from rainless waste to rainless waste.
And I saw through the dark like a fell veil
falling across the faces of the Fates.
My home was nowhere other than the saddle,
my refuge was none other than the sword,
My friendship came from faces of desires
laughing with wishes for lips, without a word.
Under a night that, when I thought it over,
proved false my hope of dawn, I quickened my pace
Trailing a black cloak of the dark behind me
reaching for hope's white bosom to embrace.
I ripped the night's shirt open and beheld
a dawn-grey wolf there, sneering through the air.
Dark shards of sunrise glinted in its mouth.
A peering star blazed in its piercing stare.
I saw a mountain too, its haughty peak
and bunched spine vying with the worlds on high,
Deflecting every salvo of the wind,
and shouldering the starlight from the sky,
Brooding above the dunes like some great thinker
considering days to come as nights go by
With black clouds wrapped about it for a turban
and bangs of redhead lightning in its face.
And through the night, that tongueless mountain uttered
marvelous things:
How much more time in space?
How long have I been the assassin's safehouse
And sheltered hermits from the human race?
How many rovers have but passed me by,
or bid their camels slumber in my shade?
How many times have whirlwinds smacked my body
while I stood ground against the sea's green blade?
Doom reached and took them all. Its ruinous wind
ripped each of them from time. As times go by
My throbbing thickets are a gasping chest,
and my doves' cooing is a mourner's cry.
No solace of forgetting stopped my tears.
I've wept them out on a life bereaved of friends.
How long shall I remain while riders go,
bidding farewell as one more friendship ends?
How long shall I be shepherd to the stars
with lidless eyes that cannot help but see
Them rise and set and rise as nights burst past
right to the last night of eternity?
So, Lord, have mercy on Thy desperate servant.
Lifting a hand of stone, Thy mountain kneels.
And I heard every lesson in its sermon
translated by the tongue of its ordeals.
That grueling night made it the greatest friend
Whose grief consoled, whose solace grieved till dawn.
And so I said, as I turned toward journey's end,
"Farewell, for some must stay and some go on.
Wine, Boys and Song
By Abū Nuwās
Translated by A. Z. Foreman
Sing me a song, sweet Sulayman,
and quench me with sweet wine.
When the bottle comes around, pass it
with your hands into mine.
Look! Morning's in the sky, already
its flaxen loincloth shines.
With cups of comfort wash the call
to prayer from my mind.
Give me some wine to drink public,
then fuck me from behind.
The Original:
قال ابو نواس
ياسُلَيْمانُ غَنّني ، ومِنَ الرّاحِ فاسْـقِـني
فإذا دَارَتِ الزّجـا جَـة ُ خُـذْها ، وعاطِني
ما تَرَى الصّبْحَ قَدْ بَدا في إزارٍ متَبَّنِ
عاطِـني كأسَ سَـلْوَة ٍ عَنْ أذانِ المؤذِّنِ
اسْقِـني الخمْرَ جهْرَةً وألْـِطني ، وأزْنني
Romanization:
Yā sulaymānu ɣanninī, wa mina l-rāħi fa-sqinī
Fa-iðā dārati l-zujājatu xuðhā, wa-ˁāṭinī
Mā tarā l-ṣubħa qad badā fī izārin mutabbani
Aˁṭinī ka'sa salwatin ˁan aðāni l-mu'aððini
Isqinī l-xamra jahratan wa-aliṭnī wa-'azninī
Al-Muhalhil: Vengeance at Dawn (From Arabic)
This post's guest of honor is ˁAdī bin Rabīˁa of Taghlib, commonly known as Al-Muhalhil "The (Verse-)Weaver. " Born presumably at the very end of the 5th century, he is among the earliest Pre-Islamic Arabian poets to whom any surviving verse of substantive length is attributed. He is chiefly known for poems dealing with the Basūs War, in which a 40-year feud between the tribes of Taghlib and Bakr was supposedly ignited when his brother Kulayb was killed for slaughtering another tribe's stray camel. See my deflationary note after the poem for more.
Following my now-standard practice in translating classical poetry from Arabic and related literatures, I have substituted assonance for monorhyme. I render each line of the Arabic with a five-beat roughly iambic distich in English. I did not repeat the irregular quatraining I used in my translation of Labīd's lament. Julie Scott Meisami, in discussing Suzanne Stetkevych's translations, pointed out that such verse-chopping "destroys the sonority of the poetic line and obscures its internal, and external, connections. " To me, at least, such internal connections and line cohesion seem far more important in this intense, impassioned and vengeful dirge than they were in Labīd's more contemplative poem.
Vengeance at Dawn
By Al-Muhalhil of Taghlib
Translated by A. Z. Foreman
Long was my night of wake at Anˁamayn
While sleepless at the ceaseless stars I gazed
How can I age in life while a slain man
Of Taghlib still calls for a man to slay
Now chide the eyes for tears shed over ruins
In the breast a wound is torn over Kulayb
In the breast there is a need unsatisfied
So long as a dove among the branches wails
How can he ever weep over ruined things
Who is pledged to war with men across the ages
How can I forget you Kulayb when I've not quelled
The sorrow whelming me The bloodparched rage
My heart today make good your bloodwit vow
When they ride out at dawn — retaliate
They fetch their bows and we flash lightning bolts
As stallions threatening their stallion prey
We steel ourselves beneath their flashing steel
Till they fall pounded by our long hard blades
And can keep up no more We keep attacking
For the man who keeps the field is war's true mate
Audio of me reading this poem in Arabic
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Deflationary note:
While pre-Islamic tribal poetry has a number of facets to it and might be summarized very crudely as a literature of love, loss, pride and war, the social order it appears to suggest is dominated by feuding, ancient grudges and warfare in defense of honor, a world in which existence itself was a dangerous game, where stoicism and hardiness were the only bulwarks against callous fate and inevitable heartbreak. I might leave it at that, as many do, if I wanted to avoid angry emails. But since I have yet to set forth my most recent views on this matter, and since the social world of pre-Islamic corpus is often wrongly taken at face value by scholars who rightly take the poetry as basically genuine material, my concern for reality compels me to say a bit more.
Even apart from the fact that there are some poets who at least some of the time hint at a more sedate reality, there is another seldom examined resource which can provide a contextual background for the social order suggested by the pre-Islamic poems. There are other tribal nomad-pastoralist desert societies whose climactic, structural and economic conditions have much in common with pre-Islamic bedu, and who maintained their way of being well into the 20th century, long enough that anthropologists and ethnographers were able to give accounts of them, or interview individuals old enough to remember pre-sedentary life. Examples include the Rwala of the northern Najd, the Tuareg of the central western Sahara, and the Ogadēn nomads of the southern Somali highlands. Jonathan A. C. Brown's comparative work on the Muˁallaqāt, informed by accounts of some of these more recent societies (though he does not consider the Tuareg) offers a welcome splash of reality, one which becomes all the more instructive in light of what is known of relations between settled Arab kingdoms (largely client-states of Persia and Byzantium) and nomadic Arabs in the 6th century.
It would appear that, though such societies often perceive and portray themselves as a "people of war and honor" characterized by perpetual conflict, this is often more self-image than reality. Accounts of legendary bloodbaths in the past serve to rationalize current disputes and divisions among related lineage groups, but pragmatic reality often means that cooperation - even at the expense of honor - is far more essential and therefore the norm, and feuding is avoided when possible. Combat when it occurs can be far more ritualized, and less lethal, than that of empires that maintain a standing army. Excessive and protracted large-scale bloodshed which endangers delicate social institutions and threatens access to shared resources is rare. If anything, the worst and bloodiest episodes appear to be conflicts with encroaching sedentary peoples, and centralized polities (such as the Ghassanid and Lakhmid dynasties of old or, more recently, the Saudi State) attempting to subdue them.
In the case of pre-Islamic Arabia, the exaggerated self-perception evident in the poems drawn from oral lore, likely for the edification of the Umayyad ruling class at first, ended up being coopted (and almost certainly at least somewhat sanitized) in the Islamic period by Muslim scholars all too willing to see pre-Islamic nomadic Arabians as a society of brave and and honorable, but impetuous and ignorant, pagans, as Noble Savages (to twist a phrase) who needed the true faith to civilize and unite them, a people you'd be proud not to be, yet also proud to be descended from.
The Original:
باتَ لَيلي بالأَنْعَمَين طَويلا أَرْقُبُ النَجْمَ ساهِراً لَنْ يَزولا
كَيف أٌمدي ولَا يزالُ قتيلٌ مِن بَني وائلٍ يُنادي قتيلا
أُزْجُرِ الْعَينَ أَنْ تُبَكِّي الطُلولا إِنَّ في الصَدْرِ مِنْ كُلَيبٍ فَليلا
إِنَّ في الصَدْرِ حاجةً لَنْ تُقَضَّى ما دَعا في الغُصونِ داعٍ هَديلا
كَيفَ يَبْكي الطُلولَ مَن هو رَهْنٌ بِطِعانِ الأنامِ جيلا فَجِيلا
كَيف أَنساكَ يا كلَيبُ ولمّا أقضِ حُزناً ينوبُني وغَليلا
أيُّها القَلبُ أَنْجِزِ اليومَ نَحْباً مِن بني الحِصْنِ إذ غَدوا وذُحولا
انتَضَوا مَعْجِسَ القِسي وأَبْرَقْـنا كَما تُوعِد الفُحولُ الفُحولا
وصَبَرْنا تَحتَ البوارِقِ حتَّى دَكْدَكَتْ فيهِمِ السُيوفُ طَويلا
لم يُطيقوا أنْ يَنْزِلوا ونَزَلْنا وَأَخو الحَربِ مَن أَطاقَ النُزولا
Romanization:
Bāta laylī bi-l-'Anˁamayni ṭawīlā arqubu l-najma sāhiran lan yazūlā
Kayfa umdī wa-lā yazālu qatīlun min Banī Wā'ilin yunādī qatīlā
Uzjuri l-ˁayna an tubakkī l-ṭulūlā inna fī l-ṣadri min Kulaybin falīlā
Inna fī l-ṣadri ḥājatan lan tuqaḍḍā mā daˁā fī l-ġuṣūni dāˁin hadīlā
Kayfa yabkī l-ṭulūla man huwa rahnun bi-ṭiˁāni l-'anāmi jīlan fa-jīlā
Kayfa ansāka yā Kulaybu wa-lammā aqḍi ḥuznan yanūbunī wa-ġalīlā
Ayyuhā l-qalbu anjizi l-yawma naḥban min Banī l-Ḥiṣni iḏ ġadaw wa-ḏuḥūlā
Intaḍaw maˁjisa l-qisiyyi wa-'abraqnā kamā tūˁidu l-fuḥūlu l-fuḥūlā
Wa-ṣabarnā taḥta l-bawāriqi ḥattā dakdakat fīhimi l-suyūfu ṭawīlā
Lam yuṭīqū an yanzilū wa-nazalnā wa-'aḫū l-ḥarbi man aṭāqa l-nuzūlā
Labid: Lament for Arbad (From Arabic)
This poem is an elegiac lament for Arbad, the poet's deceased adoptive brother. It is also one of my favorite texts in all Arabic literature. It was probably composed at some point in the middle of the 7th century. The legends of Labid, the (presumptive) author, are many.
The poem is monorhymed throughout with the first two half-lines also rhyming with each other. The meter (quantitave, with long and short syllables more or less like latin or greek) of the original is u-x | u-x- | u-x | u-u- || u-x | u-x- | u-x | u-u- where u= short, - = long and x= either short or long.
Naturally, there is no point in trying to duplicate this form in English. So I concocted a form specifically for the purpose of translating this type of classical Arabic verse- involving assonance, stress-meter, parallelism and alliteration.
I spaced my translation the way I did, in 4-line stanzas of irregular length, (ironically) as a way of trying to do justice to the fact that this poem is the product of oral composition and was produced in what was, as far as is known, a basically (though by this time not totally) illiterate, tribal tradition. The spacing is meant to highlight thematic and syntactic patterns rather than aural, and to make the salience of aural features more a function of oral recitation than of ocular ratiocination.
In my translation each quatrain corresponds to one verse of Arabic.
The first half of each stanza has to be linked to the second by at least one alliteration on stressed syllables.
Finally, whereas the Arabic maintains the same rhyme at the end of each verse throughout the poem, I have attempted to mirror this not with full rhyme in English but rather assonance or, less technically, vowel-rhyme - meaning that the last stressed syllable of each English verse contains the same nuclear vowel.
To my knowledge, line-terminal assonance as a true formal device (as opposed to a mere stylistic option) in Western European verse traditions is found chiefly in medieval French, medieval Irish, and modern Dutch, as well as Iberian Romance of all periods from the earliest recorded Mozarabic ballad-fragments right through Neruda and Lorca. Yet it has not much been used as a formal feature in literary English verse (though translators of assonant verse from Romance languages have reproduced it occasionally, as Dorothy L. Sayers did in her translation of the Chanson de Roland, and J. F. Nims in one of his translations from Lorca. ) English poets, when they make use of end-line sound correspondences that fall short of full rhyme, seem to prefer consonance instead of assonance, repeating syllables with the same consonant in the coda (as in spooked/licked) rather than the same vowel in the nucleus (as in sex/best). Which is odd in a way, since vowels are higher on the sonorance hierarchy and are acoustically more discernible than consonants. Perhaps a motivating factor was that, in English, consonant correspondences are usually fairly consistent across dialects, whereas vowel correspondences are very often not. Regardless, I suspect that poets like Heaney or Pinsky, in preferring consonance as a formal feature, are composing less for the ear than for the eye. For assonance is indeed a common fixture of English lyric forms that, unlike the sonnet, still depend primarily on oral performance and aural consumption. Any English-speaker who has, by virtue of not living under an Everest-sized rock, been exposed to contemporary popular music has heard it. And if English assonance is good enough for Eminem or the Beatles, then it's good enough for ancient bedouins.
My quatraining of the distichs was inspired by the translation practice of my former teacher, Michael Sells, who is in my unapologetically biased view the only decent literary translator into English that pre-Islamic poetry has had in perhaps half a century. Needless to say, while I respect Sells immensely, I cannot agree with his contention that rhyme and meter in English necessarily entail an "artificiality which has been the largest impediment to making the Arabic ode accessible to non-Arabic speaking audiences. " There is no intrinsic reason why a "a natural flow of language and diction" cannot coexist with a formalized prosody. If "a natural English diction no longer allows the kind of rhyme and meter necessary" to make that work, my response is that it's time to find a different kind of natural English. English, like any other language, is in fact capable of more than its speakers typically imagine, and if the translation is giving English-speakers something they're not quite used to, that is not necessarily a bad thing.
Lament for Arbad
By Labīd bin Rabīˁa (born c. 560)
Translated by A. Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Arabic
We perish and rot
but the rising stars do not.
When we are gone,
mountain and stronghold stay.
Once I was under
a coveted neighbor's wing.
And with Arbad, that protector
has passed away.
I'll stand ungrieved,
though Fortune force us asunder
For every man
is felled by Fortune one day.
I am no more enthralled
by newfound riches
than grieved by aught
that Fortune wreaks or takes.
For men are like desert camps:
one day, full of folk
but, come the morn,
a bare unpeopled waste.
They pass away in flocks,
and the land stays on:
a trailing herdsman
rounding up the strays.
Yes, men are like shooting stars:
a trailing light
collapsed to ashes
after the briefest blaze.
Men's wealth and kinfolk
are but a loan of Fortune.
All that is loaned
must be at last repaid.
Men are at work.
One worker razes his building
to the ground, and another
raises something great.
Among them are the happy
who seize their lot,
and unlucky others:
beggars till the grave.
If my Doom be slow in coming,
I can look forward
to ailing fingers
clenched about a cane,
While telling tales
of youth and yesteryear,
on slow legs, trying to stand
yet bent with pain.
I am become a sword
whose sheath is worn
apart by the years since smithing,
though sharp the blade.
Do not be gone! 1
A due date for death is meted
to all. It is yet to come. . .
then comes today!
Reproachful woman! 2
When fine lads journey forth,
can you reckon who of them
shall return from the fray?
Will you grieve
at what fell Fortune wreaks on men?
What noble man
will disaster not waylay?
No, by your lifeblood:
neither the pebble-reader
nor the auguress3 knows
what fey things God4 ordains.
If any of you would doubt me,
simply ask them
when a lad shall taste of Doom,
or the land taste rains.
Footnotes:
1- "Do not be gone" lā tabˁadan is a formulaic phrase (westerners would call it a "cliché" I guess) used to refer to the recently dead (likewise lā yabˁadan "let him not be gone. ") Its ritual function may have been to express psychological shock (i. e. "how can he have left us? ") as well as the belief that the person so commanded will survive as long as their memory and, by definition, the verse-lament in their name. The verb is baˁida/yabˁadu meaning "to perish, to depart. " This verb and the related, more common baˁuda/yabˁudu "to be distant, far" seem to have semantically bled into one another in Early Arabic. E. g. Qur'an 11:95 a-lā buˁdan (=baˁuda) li-Madyana ka-mā baˁidat (=baˁida) Thāmūdu "Yea let Midian perish even as Thamud perished. " Among Orientalists, the meaning is best brought out by S. Stetkevych:
. . . lā tabˁadan is equivocally "do not depart" and "do not perish. " It is precisely this polysemous condensation into two words that evoke all the shared emotions of loss and departure. . . that this phrase was selected as part of the elegiac formulary. Further, it serves as a condensed expression of the purpose of [lamentation]: for the Arab poet or poetess to "recall" the dead is to "call back" the dead to life.
Al-Baghdādī in Khizānatu l-Adab states:
. . . they [the ancient Arabs] meant in invoking the deceased [via the formula la yabˁadanna] to have his memory survive and not disappear: for after a man's death, the survival of his remembrance takes the place of his life.
2- The ˁāðil or "reproacher/rebuker" is a stock figure from early poetry, -usually a woman but sometimes a man- a paragonal "straw (wo)man" to whom the speaker can impute attitudes which he would like to argue against. Like many other stock addressees of early poetry (such as Yā ṣāḥi "O Companion" or Yā rākibu "O Rider/Messenger"), this persona may have developed from some sort of ritual or practical function now lost to us.
3-The ḍawāribu bi-l-ḥaṣā (literally "pebble-casters", here rendered as "pebble-readers") were women who tried to divine the future by casting pebbles on the ground in some fashion. The zājirātu ṭ-ṭayri "women who chase birds away" (here rendered as "auguresses") were women who tried to divine the future in some manner that involved scaring birds.
4- The original has "Allah" where I have "God. " What one makes of the reference to Allāh here depends on whether one assumes that Labīd composed this poem (if he is indeed its composer, and if one may speak of original composers at all when it comes to poems that are orally transmitted for a century or two before being written down) after or before he became a Muslim, and also what one's view is about the "paganism" that predated Islam. My current view is that Arabia generally was by this point far more monotheistic and far more Abrahamic than the Islamic tradition would have us believe, and that Allah could easily refer to the Abrahamic God even if Labīd was not yet a Muslim. Even the Qur'an acknowledges that the so-called "pagans" worshipped the supreme God of Abraham and that their error was rather in worshipping subsidiary beings alongside Him (much as many Christians today also venerate, and pray to, saints and angels, I hasten to add. )
The Original:
قالَ لَبيد بنُ الربيعة العامِريُّ
بلينا وما تبلى النجومُ الطَّوالِعُ وتَبْقَى الجِبالُ بَعْدَنَا والمَصانِعُ
وقد كنتُ في أكنافِ جارِ مَضَنَّةٍ ففارقَني جارٌ بأرْبَدَ نافِعُ
فَلا جَزِعٌ إنْ فَرَّقَ الدَّهْرُ بَيْنَنا وكُلُّ فَتى ً يَوْمَاً بهِ الدَّهْرُ فاجِعُ
فَلا أنَا يأتيني طَريفٌ بِفَرْحَةٍ وَلا أنا مِمّا أحدَثَ الدَّهرُ جازِعُ
ومَا النّاسُ إلاّ كالدِّيارِ وأهْلها بِها يَوْمَ حَلُّوها وغَدْواً بَلاقِعُ
وَيَمْضُون أرْسَالاً ونَخْلُفُ بَعدهم كما ضَمَّ أُخرَى التّالياتِ المُشايِعُ
ومَا المَرْءُ إلاَّ كالشِّهابِ وضَوْئِهِ يحورُ رَماداً بَعْدَ إذْ هُوَ ساطِعُ
ومَا المالُ والأهْلُونَ إلاَّ وَديعَة ٌ وَلابُدَّ يَوْماً أنْ تُرَدَّ الوَدائِعُ
ومَا الناسُ إلاَّ عاملانِ: فَعامِلٌ يتبِّرُ ما يبني، وآخرُ رافِعُ
فَمِنْهُمْ سَعيدٌ آخِذٌ لنَصِيبِهِ وَمِنْهُمْ شَقيٌّ بالمَعيشَة ِ قانِعُ
أَليْسَ ورائي، إنْ تراخَتْ مَنيّتي، لُزُومُ العَصَا تُحْنَى علَيها الأصابعُ
أخبّرُ أخبارَ القرونِ التي مضتْ أدبٌ كأنّي كُلّما قمتُ راكعُ
فأصبحتُ مثلَ السيفِ غَيَّرَ جفنهُ تَقَادُمُ عَهْدِ القَينِ والنَّصْلُ قاطعُ
فَلا تَبْعَدَنْ إنَّ المَنيِّة َ مَوعِدٌ عَلَيْنا فَدَانٍ للطُّلُوعِ وطالِعُ
أعاذلُ ما يُدريكَ، إلاَّ تظنيّاً، إذا ارتحَلَ الفِتيانُ منْ هوَ راجعُ
تُبَكِّي على إثرِ الشّبابِ الذي مَضَى ألا إنَّ أخدانَ الشّبابِ الرّعارِعُ
أتجزَعُ مِمّا أحدَثَ الدّهرُ بالفَتى وأيُّ كَريمٍ لمْ تُصِبْهُ القَوَارِعُ
لَعَمْرُكَ ما تَدري الضَّوَارِبُ بالحصَى وَلا زاجِراتُ الطّيرِ ما اللّهُ صانِعُ
سَلُوهُنَّ إنْ كَذَّبتموني متى الفتى يذوقُ المنايا أوْ متى الغيثُ واقِعُ
Umar Ibn Al-Farid: "Was that Layla's flame. . . " (From Arabic)
This poem epitomizes what makes so much overtly mystical Islamic poetry an almost unreasonable burden on the translator. I was going to write a commentary like I did for Du Fu's "Spring Scene During Civil War" explaining how this poem functions as Arabic poetry rather than as mystical theosophy, but I fear I might then be in danger of becoming what I behold, here. One could spend paragraphs trying to describe how the Arabic text's evocative proper names, grammatical oddities and allusions to the Qur'an and the classical tradition create in the reader's mind a single impression of countless blended subtleties. The many place-names in the poem are all situated around Mecca and Medina have sundry evocative resonances within the tradition. Most Arab commentators give this poem the sort of banal, inexcusable explication that reduces this poem and others like it by Umar Ibn al-Fāriḍ to a mere mystical code that needs decipherment. I don't want to reduce the poem to code, mystical or otherwise. So no commentary at all for this poem. I'll just let the translation try and show you some of how it goes. At some point, a poem's got to stand on its own (pun intended) feet. I have not duplicated the original's monorhyme in full, but have rather substituted assonance (ending every couplet with the same vowel in the final stressed syllable, though the consonants after it may be different. )
The only thing I will mention is that "Layla" is a woman's name, not a toponym.
"Was that Layla's flame"
By Umar ibn Al-Farid
Translated by A. Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Arabic
Was that Layla's flame that shone through the veils of night on Dhū-Salam,
or lightning's flash round ˁAlam and Zawrā' throughout the vales?
Have you but a sigh of dawn for me, O winds about Naˁmān?
Have you but a sip to offer me, O waters of Wajra's ways?
O driver of laden camels rolling up the wayless sands
like a scroll of mighty writ beside Ịdam's Sagebrush today
Turn aside at the guarded safeground -God be your shepherd! - and seek the path
To yonder Lotus thicket, to the myrtle and laurel bay.
Then halt at Mount Salˁ and ask at the curling vale of Raqmatayn:
Have the tamarisks grown and touched at last in the livening weep of the rain?
If you've crossed the waters of ˁAqīq in the mornlight, I implore you
By God, be unabashed and offer them my heartfelt Hail!
Tell everybody this: I have left behind a heartfelled man
Alive as a deadman, adding plague to plague through your domains.
From my heart like a burning bush there spreads a fire of more than flame.
From my eyes the pouring tears are like a ceaseless season of rains.
For such is the lovers' law: not one limb of the mortal body
When bound in love with a gazelle can ever be freed of pain.
You ignoramus! You who defame and shame me for my love!
Desist and learn. You would not blame me, had your love been the same.
My oath by the sacred union, by the age-old love and by
That covenant's communion and all the things of bygone ages:
No consolation, no replacement turned me away from loving
For it is not who I am to move with the whims of solace and change.
Return the slumber to my eyes, and then perhaps I will see you
Visit my bed in the recklessness of dream as a revenant shade.
Alas for our days at Khayf! Had they but lasted each tenfold!
Alas for me, alas, how the last day couldn't last or stay.
If only my grief could cure me, oh if only the "oh" of my woe
And my remorse could ever recover aught that is passed away,
Gazelles of the winding dell! Be kind and turn away from me
For I, to look on no one but my love, have bound my gaze
In deference to a Judge who has decreed a wondrous fatwa
That my blood be shed in every month, the sacred and profane.
Deaf, he did not hear my plea. Dumb, he could not reply.
He is stricken blind to the plight of one whom love has struck insane.
The Original:
هَلْ نارُ لَيلَى بَدَتْ لَيلاً بِذي سَلَمِ أمْ بارِقٌ لاحَ في ٱلزَّوراءِ فٱلعَلَمِ
أَرْواحَ نَعْمانَ, هَلَّا نَسْمَةٌ سَحَراً وَماءَ وَجْرةَ, هَلَّا نَهْلَة ٌ بِفَمِ
يا سائِقَ ٱلظَّعْنِ يَطْوي البِيدَ مُعْتَسِفاً طيَّ ٱلسِّجِلِّ، بِذاتِ ٱلشِّيحِ مِن إضَمِ
عُجْ بٱلحِمَى يا رَعاكَ اللَّهُ، مُعتَمِداً خَمِيلَةَ ٱلضَّالِ ذاتَ ٱلرَّنْدِ وٱلخُزُمِ
وَقِفْ بِسَلْعٍ وَسَلْ بٱلجِزْعِ هَلْ مُطِرَتْ بٱلرَّقْمَتَينِ أُثَيلَاتٌ بِمُنْسَجِمِ
نَاشَدْتُكَ اللَّهَ إنْ جُزْتَ ٱلعَقِيقَ ضُحًى فاقْرَ ٱلسَّلامَ عَلَيهِمْ، غَيرَ مُحْتَشِمِ
وقُلْ تَرَكْتُ صَرِيعاً، في دِيارِكُمُ، حَيّاً كَمَيِّتٍ يُعِيرُ ٱلسُّقْمَ للسَّقَمِ
فَمِنْ فُؤادي لَهيبٌ نابَ عنْ قَبَسٍ، وَمنْ جُفوني دَمْعٌ فاضَ كٱلدِّيَمِ
وهذهِ سنَّةُ ٱلعشَّاقِ ما عَلِقوا بِشادِنٍ، فَخَلا عُضْوٌ منَ ٱلألَمِ
يالائماً لامَني في حبِّهِمْ سَفَهاً كُفَّ ٱلمَلامَ، فلو أحبَبْتَ لمْ تَلُمِ
وحُرْمَةِ ٱلوَصْلِ، وٱلوِدِّ ٱلعتيقِ، وبٱلْـعَهْدِ ٱلوَثيقِ وما قدْ كانَ في ٱلقِدَمِ
ما حُلتُ عَنْهُمْ بِسُلْوانٍ ولابَدَلٍ ليسَ ٱلتَّبدُّلُ وٱلسُّلوانُ منْ شِيَمي
رُدُّوا ٱلرُّقادَ لِجَفْني عَلَّ طَيفَكُمُ بِمَضْجَعي زائرٌ في غَفْلَةِ ٱلحُلُمِ
آهاً لأيّامِنا بٱلخَيْفِ، لَو بَقِيَتْ عَشراً وواهاً عَلَيها كَيفَ لمْ تَدمِ
هَيهاتَ وا أسَفي لو كانَ يَنْفَعُني أوْ كانَ يُجْدِي على ما فاتَ وانَدَمي
عَنِّي إلَيكُمْ ظِباءَ ٱلمُنْحَنَى كَرَماً عَهِدْتُ طَرْفيَ لم يَنْظُرْ لِغَيرِهِمِ
طَوعاً لِقاضٍ أتى في حُكمِهِ عَجَباً، أفتى بِسَفْكِ دمي في ٱلحِلِّ وٱلحَرَمِ
أصَمُّ لَمْ يُصْغِ للشّكوَى ، وأَبْكَمُ لَم يُحِرْجواباً وَعَنْ حالِ ٱلمَشوقِ عَمِي
Ibn Khafaja: The Mountain Poem (From Medieval Arabic)
The Mountain Poem: Words Spoken in Contemplation
By Ibrahīm Ibn Khafāja
Translated by A. Z. Foreman
Click here to hear me recite the Arabic
What throttled at my saddle? Was I riding
a camel's body or a blast of wind?
No sooner had I set out from the early east
than I had westered out past twilight's end,
Alone, as dunes delivering me to dunes
moved me from rainless waste to rainless waste.
And I saw through the dark like a fell veil
falling across the faces of the Fates.
My home was nowhere other than the saddle,
my refuge was none other than the sword,
My friendship came from faces of desires
laughing with wishes for lips, without a word.
Under a night that, when I thought it over,
proved false my hope of dawn, I quickened my pace
Trailing a black cloak of the dark behind me
reaching for hope's white bosom to embrace.
I ripped the night's shirt open and beheld
a dawn-grey wolf there, sneering through the air.
Dark shards of sunrise glinted in its mouth.
A peering star blazed in its piercing stare.
I saw a mountain too, its haughty peak
and bunched spine vying with the worlds on high,
Deflecting every salvo of the wind,
and shouldering the starlight from the sky,
Brooding above the dunes like some great thinker
considering days to come as nights go by
With black clouds wrapped about it for a turban
and bangs of redhead lightning in its face.
And through the night, that tongueless mountain uttered
marvelous things:
How much more time in space?
How long have I been the assassin's safehouse
And sheltered hermits from the human race?
How many rovers have but passed me by,
or bid their camels slumber in my shade?
How many times have whirlwinds smacked my body
while I stood ground against the sea's green blade?
Doom reached and took them all. Its ruinous wind
ripped each of them from time. As times go by
My throbbing thickets are a gasping chest,
and my doves' cooing is a mourner's cry.
No solace of forgetting stopped my tears.
I've wept them out on a life bereaved of friends.
How long shall I remain while riders go,
bidding farewell as one more friendship ends?
How long shall I be shepherd to the stars
with lidless eyes that cannot help but see
Them rise and set and rise as nights burst past
right to the last night of eternity?
So, Lord, have mercy on Thy desperate servant.
Lifting a hand of stone, Thy mountain kneels.
And I heard every lesson in its sermon
translated by the tongue of its ordeals.
That grueling night made it the greatest friend
Whose grief consoled, whose solace grieved till dawn.
And so I said, as I turned toward journey's end,
"Farewell, for some must stay and some go on.
Yes, men are like shooting stars:
a trailing light
collapsed to ashes
after the briefest blaze.
Men's wealth and kinfolk
are but a loan of Fortune.
All that is loaned
must be at last repaid.
Men are at work.
One worker razes his building
to the ground, and another
raises something great.
Among them are the happy
who seize their lot,
and unlucky others:
beggars till the grave.
If my Doom be slow in coming,
I can look forward
to ailing fingers
clenched about a cane,
While telling tales
of youth and yesteryear,
on slow legs, trying to stand
yet bent with pain.
I am become a sword
whose sheath is worn
apart by the years since smithing,
though sharp the blade.
Do not be gone! 1
A due date for death is meted
to all. It is yet to come. . .
then comes today!
Reproachful woman! 2
When fine lads journey forth,
can you reckon who of them
shall return from the fray?
Will you grieve
at what fell Fortune wreaks on men?
What noble man
will disaster not waylay?
No, by your lifeblood:
neither the pebble-reader
nor the auguress3 knows
what fey things God4 ordains.
If any of you would doubt me,
simply ask them
when a lad shall taste of Doom,
or the land taste rains.
Footnotes:
1- "Do not be gone" lā tabˁadan is a formulaic phrase (westerners would call it a "cliché" I guess) used to refer to the recently dead (likewise lā yabˁadan "let him not be gone. ") Its ritual function may have been to express psychological shock (i. e. "how can he have left us? ") as well as the belief that the person so commanded will survive as long as their memory and, by definition, the verse-lament in their name. The verb is baˁida/yabˁadu meaning "to perish, to depart. " This verb and the related, more common baˁuda/yabˁudu "to be distant, far" seem to have semantically bled into one another in Early Arabic. E. g. Qur'an 11:95 a-lā buˁdan (=baˁuda) li-Madyana ka-mā baˁidat (=baˁida) Thāmūdu "Yea let Midian perish even as Thamud perished. " Among Orientalists, the meaning is best brought out by S. Stetkevych:
. . . lā tabˁadan is equivocally "do not depart" and "do not perish. " It is precisely this polysemous condensation into two words that evoke all the shared emotions of loss and departure. . . that this phrase was selected as part of the elegiac formulary. Further, it serves as a condensed expression of the purpose of [lamentation]: for the Arab poet or poetess to "recall" the dead is to "call back" the dead to life.
Al-Baghdādī in Khizānatu l-Adab states:
. . . they [the ancient Arabs] meant in invoking the deceased [via the formula la yabˁadanna] to have his memory survive and not disappear: for after a man's death, the survival of his remembrance takes the place of his life.
2- The ˁāðil or "reproacher/rebuker" is a stock figure from early poetry, -usually a woman but sometimes a man- a paragonal "straw (wo)man" to whom the speaker can impute attitudes which he would like to argue against. Like many other stock addressees of early poetry (such as Yā ṣāḥi "O Companion" or Yā rākibu "O Rider/Messenger"), this persona may have developed from some sort of ritual or practical function now lost to us.
3-The ḍawāribu bi-l-ḥaṣā (literally "pebble-casters", here rendered as "pebble-readers") were women who tried to divine the future by casting pebbles on the ground in some fashion. The zājirātu ṭ-ṭayri "women who chase birds away" (here rendered as "auguresses") were women who tried to divine the future in some manner that involved scaring birds.
4- The original has "Allah" where I have "God. " What one makes of the reference to Allāh here depends on whether one assumes that Labīd composed this poem (if he is indeed its composer, and if one may speak of original composers at all when it comes to poems that are orally transmitted for a century or two before being written down) after or before he became a Muslim, and also what one's view is about the "paganism" that predated Islam. My current view is that Arabia generally was by this point far more monotheistic and far more Abrahamic than the Islamic tradition would have us believe, and that Allah could easily refer to the Abrahamic God even if Labīd was not yet a Muslim. Even the Qur'an acknowledges that the so-called "pagans" worshipped the supreme God of Abraham and that their error was rather in worshipping subsidiary beings alongside Him (much as many Christians today also venerate, and pray to, saints and angels, I hasten to add. )
The Original:
قالَ لَبيد بنُ الربيعة العامِريُّ
بلينا وما تبلى النجومُ الطَّوالِعُ وتَبْقَى الجِبالُ بَعْدَنَا والمَصانِعُ
وقد كنتُ في أكنافِ جارِ مَضَنَّةٍ ففارقَني جارٌ بأرْبَدَ نافِعُ
فَلا جَزِعٌ إنْ فَرَّقَ الدَّهْرُ بَيْنَنا وكُلُّ فَتى ً يَوْمَاً بهِ الدَّهْرُ فاجِعُ
فَلا أنَا يأتيني طَريفٌ بِفَرْحَةٍ وَلا أنا مِمّا أحدَثَ الدَّهرُ جازِعُ
ومَا النّاسُ إلاّ كالدِّيارِ وأهْلها بِها يَوْمَ حَلُّوها وغَدْواً بَلاقِعُ
وَيَمْضُون أرْسَالاً ونَخْلُفُ بَعدهم كما ضَمَّ أُخرَى التّالياتِ المُشايِعُ
ومَا المَرْءُ إلاَّ كالشِّهابِ وضَوْئِهِ يحورُ رَماداً بَعْدَ إذْ هُوَ ساطِعُ
ومَا المالُ والأهْلُونَ إلاَّ وَديعَة ٌ وَلابُدَّ يَوْماً أنْ تُرَدَّ الوَدائِعُ
ومَا الناسُ إلاَّ عاملانِ: فَعامِلٌ يتبِّرُ ما يبني، وآخرُ رافِعُ
فَمِنْهُمْ سَعيدٌ آخِذٌ لنَصِيبِهِ وَمِنْهُمْ شَقيٌّ بالمَعيشَة ِ قانِعُ
أَليْسَ ورائي، إنْ تراخَتْ مَنيّتي، لُزُومُ العَصَا تُحْنَى علَيها الأصابعُ
أخبّرُ أخبارَ القرونِ التي مضتْ أدبٌ كأنّي كُلّما قمتُ راكعُ
فأصبحتُ مثلَ السيفِ غَيَّرَ جفنهُ تَقَادُمُ عَهْدِ القَينِ والنَّصْلُ قاطعُ
فَلا تَبْعَدَنْ إنَّ المَنيِّة َ مَوعِدٌ عَلَيْنا فَدَانٍ للطُّلُوعِ وطالِعُ
أعاذلُ ما يُدريكَ، إلاَّ تظنيّاً، إذا ارتحَلَ الفِتيانُ منْ هوَ راجعُ
تُبَكِّي على إثرِ الشّبابِ الذي مَضَى ألا إنَّ أخدانَ الشّبابِ الرّعارِعُ
أتجزَعُ مِمّا أحدَثَ الدّهرُ بالفَتى وأيُّ كَريمٍ لمْ تُصِبْهُ القَوَارِعُ
لَعَمْرُكَ ما تَدري الضَّوَارِبُ بالحصَى وَلا زاجِراتُ الطّيرِ ما اللّهُ صانِعُ
سَلُوهُنَّ إنْ كَذَّبتموني متى الفتى يذوقُ المنايا أوْ متى الغيثُ واقِعُ
Umar Ibn Al-Farid: "Was that Layla's flame. . . " (From Arabic)
This poem epitomizes what makes so much overtly mystical Islamic poetry an almost unreasonable burden on the translator. I was going to write a commentary like I did for Du Fu's "Spring Scene During Civil War" explaining how this poem functions as Arabic poetry rather than as mystical theosophy, but I fear I might then be in danger of becoming what I behold, here. One could spend paragraphs trying to describe how the Arabic text's evocative proper names, grammatical oddities and allusions to the Qur'an and the classical tradition create in the reader's mind a single impression of countless blended subtleties. The many place-names in the poem are all situated around Mecca and Medina have sundry evocative resonances within the tradition. Most Arab commentators give this poem the sort of banal, inexcusable explication that reduces this poem and others like it by Umar Ibn al-Fāriḍ to a mere mystical code that needs decipherment. I don't want to reduce the poem to code, mystical or otherwise. So no commentary at all for this poem. I'll just let the translation try and show you some of how it goes. At some point, a poem's got to stand on its own (pun intended) feet. I have not duplicated the original's monorhyme in full, but have rather substituted assonance (ending every couplet with the same vowel in the final stressed syllable, though the consonants after it may be different. )
The only thing I will mention is that "Layla" is a woman's name, not a toponym.
"Was that Layla's flame"
By Umar ibn Al-Farid
Translated by A. Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Arabic
Was that Layla's flame that shone through the veils of night on Dhū-Salam,
or lightning's flash round ˁAlam and Zawrā' throughout the vales?
Have you but a sigh of dawn for me, O winds about Naˁmān?
Have you but a sip to offer me, O waters of Wajra's ways?
O driver of laden camels rolling up the wayless sands
like a scroll of mighty writ beside Ịdam's Sagebrush today
Turn aside at the guarded safeground -God be your shepherd! - and seek the path
To yonder Lotus thicket, to the myrtle and laurel bay.
Then halt at Mount Salˁ and ask at the curling vale of Raqmatayn:
Have the tamarisks grown and touched at last in the livening weep of the rain?
If you've crossed the waters of ˁAqīq in the mornlight, I implore you
By God, be unabashed and offer them my heartfelt Hail!
Tell everybody this: I have left behind a heartfelled man
Alive as a deadman, adding plague to plague through your domains.
From my heart like a burning bush there spreads a fire of more than flame.
From my eyes the pouring tears are like a ceaseless season of rains.
For such is the lovers' law: not one limb of the mortal body
When bound in love with a gazelle can ever be freed of pain.
You ignoramus! You who defame and shame me for my love!
Desist and learn. You would not blame me, had your love been the same.
My oath by the sacred union, by the age-old love and by
That covenant's communion and all the things of bygone ages:
No consolation, no replacement turned me away from loving
For it is not who I am to move with the whims of solace and change.
Return the slumber to my eyes, and then perhaps I will see you
Visit my bed in the recklessness of dream as a revenant shade.
Alas for our days at Khayf! Had they but lasted each tenfold!
Alas for me, alas, how the last day couldn't last or stay.
If only my grief could cure me, oh if only the "oh" of my woe
And my remorse could ever recover aught that is passed away,
Gazelles of the winding dell! Be kind and turn away from me
For I, to look on no one but my love, have bound my gaze
In deference to a Judge who has decreed a wondrous fatwa
That my blood be shed in every month, the sacred and profane.
Deaf, he did not hear my plea. Dumb, he could not reply.
He is stricken blind to the plight of one whom love has struck insane.
The Original:
هَلْ نارُ لَيلَى بَدَتْ لَيلاً بِذي سَلَمِ أمْ بارِقٌ لاحَ في ٱلزَّوراءِ فٱلعَلَمِ
أَرْواحَ نَعْمانَ, هَلَّا نَسْمَةٌ سَحَراً وَماءَ وَجْرةَ, هَلَّا نَهْلَة ٌ بِفَمِ
يا سائِقَ ٱلظَّعْنِ يَطْوي البِيدَ مُعْتَسِفاً طيَّ ٱلسِّجِلِّ، بِذاتِ ٱلشِّيحِ مِن إضَمِ
عُجْ بٱلحِمَى يا رَعاكَ اللَّهُ، مُعتَمِداً خَمِيلَةَ ٱلضَّالِ ذاتَ ٱلرَّنْدِ وٱلخُزُمِ
وَقِفْ بِسَلْعٍ وَسَلْ بٱلجِزْعِ هَلْ مُطِرَتْ بٱلرَّقْمَتَينِ أُثَيلَاتٌ بِمُنْسَجِمِ
نَاشَدْتُكَ اللَّهَ إنْ جُزْتَ ٱلعَقِيقَ ضُحًى فاقْرَ ٱلسَّلامَ عَلَيهِمْ، غَيرَ مُحْتَشِمِ
وقُلْ تَرَكْتُ صَرِيعاً، في دِيارِكُمُ، حَيّاً كَمَيِّتٍ يُعِيرُ ٱلسُّقْمَ للسَّقَمِ
فَمِنْ فُؤادي لَهيبٌ نابَ عنْ قَبَسٍ، وَمنْ جُفوني دَمْعٌ فاضَ كٱلدِّيَمِ
وهذهِ سنَّةُ ٱلعشَّاقِ ما عَلِقوا بِشادِنٍ، فَخَلا عُضْوٌ منَ ٱلألَمِ
يالائماً لامَني في حبِّهِمْ سَفَهاً كُفَّ ٱلمَلامَ، فلو أحبَبْتَ لمْ تَلُمِ
وحُرْمَةِ ٱلوَصْلِ، وٱلوِدِّ ٱلعتيقِ، وبٱلْـعَهْدِ ٱلوَثيقِ وما قدْ كانَ في ٱلقِدَمِ
ما حُلتُ عَنْهُمْ بِسُلْوانٍ ولابَدَلٍ ليسَ ٱلتَّبدُّلُ وٱلسُّلوانُ منْ شِيَمي
رُدُّوا ٱلرُّقادَ لِجَفْني عَلَّ طَيفَكُمُ بِمَضْجَعي زائرٌ في غَفْلَةِ ٱلحُلُمِ
آهاً لأيّامِنا بٱلخَيْفِ، لَو بَقِيَتْ عَشراً وواهاً عَلَيها كَيفَ لمْ تَدمِ
هَيهاتَ وا أسَفي لو كانَ يَنْفَعُني أوْ كانَ يُجْدِي على ما فاتَ وانَدَمي
عَنِّي إلَيكُمْ ظِباءَ ٱلمُنْحَنَى كَرَماً عَهِدْتُ طَرْفيَ لم يَنْظُرْ لِغَيرِهِمِ
طَوعاً لِقاضٍ أتى في حُكمِهِ عَجَباً، أفتى بِسَفْكِ دمي في ٱلحِلِّ وٱلحَرَمِ
أصَمُّ لَمْ يُصْغِ للشّكوَى ، وأَبْكَمُ لَم يُحِرْجواباً وَعَنْ حالِ ٱلمَشوقِ عَمِي
Ibn Khafaja: The Mountain Poem (From Medieval Arabic)
The Mountain Poem: Words Spoken in Contemplation
By Ibrahīm Ibn Khafāja
Translated by A. Z. Foreman
Click here to hear me recite the Arabic
What throttled at my saddle? Was I riding
a camel's body or a blast of wind?
No sooner had I set out from the early east
than I had westered out past twilight's end,
Alone, as dunes delivering me to dunes
moved me from rainless waste to rainless waste.
And I saw through the dark like a fell veil
falling across the faces of the Fates.
My home was nowhere other than the saddle,
my refuge was none other than the sword,
My friendship came from faces of desires
laughing with wishes for lips, without a word.
Under a night that, when I thought it over,
proved false my hope of dawn, I quickened my pace
Trailing a black cloak of the dark behind me
reaching for hope's white bosom to embrace.
I ripped the night's shirt open and beheld
a dawn-grey wolf there, sneering through the air.
Dark shards of sunrise glinted in its mouth.
A peering star blazed in its piercing stare.
I saw a mountain too, its haughty peak
and bunched spine vying with the worlds on high,
Deflecting every salvo of the wind,
and shouldering the starlight from the sky,
Brooding above the dunes like some great thinker
considering days to come as nights go by
With black clouds wrapped about it for a turban
and bangs of redhead lightning in its face.
And through the night, that tongueless mountain uttered
marvelous things:
How much more time in space?
How long have I been the assassin's safehouse
And sheltered hermits from the human race?
How many rovers have but passed me by,
or bid their camels slumber in my shade?
How many times have whirlwinds smacked my body
while I stood ground against the sea's green blade?
Doom reached and took them all. Its ruinous wind
ripped each of them from time. As times go by
My throbbing thickets are a gasping chest,
and my doves' cooing is a mourner's cry.
No solace of forgetting stopped my tears.
I've wept them out on a life bereaved of friends.
How long shall I remain while riders go,
bidding farewell as one more friendship ends?
How long shall I be shepherd to the stars
with lidless eyes that cannot help but see
Them rise and set and rise as nights burst past
right to the last night of eternity?
So, Lord, have mercy on Thy desperate servant.
Lifting a hand of stone, Thy mountain kneels.
And I heard every lesson in its sermon
translated by the tongue of its ordeals.
That grueling night made it the greatest friend
Whose grief consoled, whose solace grieved till dawn.
And so I said, as I turned toward journey's end,
"Farewell, for some must stay and some go on.
