The Diwan of Abul-Ala | Page 8

tried to stamp this out, like other joys of life.
The players had ten arrows, which they shot into the air; seven of them
bestowed a right to the portion of a camel, the other three did not.
Abu'l-Ala was fond of using arrows metaphorically. "And if one child,"
he writes to a distinguished sheikh, "were to ask another in the dead of
night in a discussion: 'Who is rewarded for staying at home many times
what he would be rewarded for going on either pilgrimage?' and the
second lad answered: 'Mahomet, son of Sa'id,' his arrow would have
fallen near the mark; for your protection of your subjects (quatrain 86)
is a greater duty than either pilgrimage." And our poet calls to mind
some benefits attached to slavery (quatrain 88): for an offence against
morals a slave could receive fifty blows, whereas the punishment of a

freeman was double. A married person who did not discharge his vows
was liable to be stoned to death, whereas a slave in similar
circumstances was merely struck a certain number of blows. It was and
still is customary, says von Kremer, if anything is broken by a slave,
forthwith to curse Satan, who is supposed to concern himself in very
trifling matters. The sympathy Abu'l-Ala displays for men of small
possessions may be put beside the modicum (quatrain 92) he wanted
for himself. And these necessaries of Abu'l-Ala, the ascetic, must
appeal to us as more sincerely felt than those of Ibn at-Ta'awizi, who
was of opinion that when seven things are collected together in the
drinking-room it is not reasonable to stay away. The list is as follows: a
melon, honey, roast meat, a young girl, wax lights, a singer, and wine.
But Ibn at-Ta'awizi was a literary person, and in Arabic the names of
all these objects begin with the same letter. Abu'l-Ala was more
inclined to celebrate the wilderness. He has portrayed (quatrain 93) a
journey in the desert where a caravan, in order to secure itself against
surprises, is accustomed to send on a spy, who scours the country from
the summit of a hill or rock. Should he perceive a sign of danger, he
will wave his hand in warning. From Lebid's picture of another
journey--which the pre-Islamic poet undertook to the coast lands of
Hajar on the Persian Gulf--we learn that when they entered a village he
and his party were greeted by the crowing of cocks and the shaking of
wooden rattles (quatrain 95), which in the Eastern Christian Churches
are substituted for bells. . . . And the mediæval leper, in his grey gown,
was obliged to hold a similar object, waving it about and crying as he
went: "Unclean! unclean!"
An ambitious man desired, regardless of expense, to hand down his
name to posterity (quatrain 99). "Write your name in a prayer," said
Epictetus, "and it will remain after you." "But I would have a crown of
gold," was the reply. "If you have quite made up your mind to have a
crown," said Epictetus, "take a crown of roses, for it is more beautiful."
In the words of Heredia:
Déjà le Temps brandit l'arme fatale. As-tu L'espoir d'éterniser le
bruit de ta vertu? Un vil lierre suffit à disjoindre un trophée;
Et seul, aux blocs épars des marbres triomphaux Où ta gloire en
ruine est par l'herbe étouffée, Quelque faucheur Samnite
ébréchera sa faulx.

Would we write our names so that they endure for ever? There was in
certain Arab circles a heresy which held that the letters of the alphabet
(quatrain 101) are metamorphoses of men. And Magaira, who founded
a sect, maintained that the letters of the alphabet are like limbs of God.
According to him, when God wished to create the world, He wrote with
His own hands the deeds of men, both the good and the bad; but, at
sight of the sins which men were going to commit, He entered into such
a fury that He sweated, and from His sweat two seas were formed, the
one of salt water and the other of sweet water. From the first one the
infidels were formed, and from the second the Shi'ites. But to this view
of the everlasting question you may possibly prefer what is advanced
(quatrains 103-7) and paraphrased as an episode: Whatever be the
wisdom of the worms, we bow before the silence of the rose. As for
Abu'l-Ala, we leave him now prostrated (quatrain 108) before the
silence of the rolling world. It is a splendour that was seen by Alfred de
Vigny:
Je roule avec dédain, sans voir et sans entendre, A côté des
fourmis les populations; Je ne distingue pas leur terrier de leur cendre.
J'ignore en les portant les noms