The Diwan of Abul-Ala | Page 2

world of Thought and the new of Action. In this
endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but followers of the
highest example in the land. They are confident that a deeper
knowledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought
may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither
despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour. Finally, in
thanking press and public for the very cordial reception given to the
"Wisdom of the East" Series, they wish to state that no pains have been
spared to secure the best specialists for the treatment of the various

subjects at hand.
L. CRANMER-BYNG. S. A. KAPADIA.
NORTHBROOK SOCIETY, 158, PICCADILLY, W.

INTRODUCTION TO THE DIWAN
God help him who has no nails wherewith to scratch himself. Arabian
proverb.
An effort has been made to render in this book some of the poems of
Abu'l-Ala the Syrian, who was born 973 years after Jesus Christ and
some forty-four before Omar Khayyam. But the life of such a man--his
triumph over circumstance, the wisdom he achieved, his
unconventionality, his opposition to revealed religion, the sincerity of
his religion, his interesting friends at Baghdad and Ma'arri, the
multitude of his disciples, his kindliness and cynic pessimism and the
reverence which he enjoyed, the glory of his meditations, the renown of
his prodigious memory, the fair renown of bending to the toil of public
life, not to the laureateship they pressed upon him, but the post of being
spokesman at Aleppo for the troubles of his native villagers,--the life of
such a one could not be told within the space at our command; it will,
with other of his poems, form the subject of a separate volume. What
appears advisable is that we should devote this introduction to a
commentary on the poems here translated; which we call a "diwan," by
the way, because they are selected out of all his works. A commentary
on the writings of a modern poet is supposed to be superfluous, but in
the days of Abu'l-Ala of Ma'arri you were held to pay the highest
compliment if, and you were yourself a poet, you composed a
commentary on some other poet's work. Likewise you were held to be a
thoughtful person if you gave the world a commentary on your own
productions; and Abu'l-Ala did not neglect to write upon his _Sikt
al-Zand_ ("The Falling Spark of Tinder") and his Lozum ma la Yalzam
("The Necessity of what is Unnecessary"), out of which our diwan has
been chiefly made. But his elucidations have been lost. And we--this
nobody will contradict--have lost the old facility. For instance, Hasan
ibn Malik ibn Abi Obaidah was one day attending on Mansur the
Chamberlain, and he displayed a collection of proverbs which Ibn Sirri
had made for the Caliph's delectation. "It is very fine," quoth Mansur,
"but it wants a commentary." And Hasan in a week returned with a

commentary, very well written, of three hundred couplets. One other
observation: we shall not be able to present upon these pages a
connected narrative, a dark companion of the poem, which is to the
poem as a shadow to the bird. A mediæval Arab would have no desire
to see this theory of connection put in practice--no, not even with a
poem; for the lines, to win his admiration, would be as a company of
stars much more than as a flying bird. Suppose that he produced a
poem of a hundred lines, he would perchance make fifty leaps across
the universe. But if we frown on such discursiveness, he proudly shows
us that the hundred lines are all in rhyme. This Arab and ourselves--we
differ so profoundly. "Yet," says he, "if there existed no diversity of
sight then would inferior merchandise be left unsold." And when we
put his poem into English, we are careless of the hundred rhymes; we
paraphrase--"Behold the townsmen," so cried one of the Bedawi, "they
have for the desert but a single word, we have a dozen!"--and we reject,
as I have done, the quantitative metre, thinking it far preferable if the
metre sings itself into an English ear, as much as possible with that
effect the poet wants to give; and we oppose ourselves, however
unsuccessfully, to his discursiveness by making alterations in the order
of the poem. But in this commentary we shall be obliged to leap, like
Arabs, from one subject to another. And so let us begin.
With regard to prayer (quatrain 1), the Moslem is indifferent as to
whether he perform this function in his chamber or the street,
considering that every spot is equally pure for the service of God. And
yet the Prophet thought that public worship was to be encouraged; it