Ahmad al-Shidyaq - Leg over Leg - Volumes One and Two

2.11.2

So the Fāriyāq agreed to his request, and they set off to see the man together, the Fāriyāq strutting along in his new clothes; he had also got himself a large turban that made him think of his turban in Lebanon and his ill-fated fall. 499When they’d settled down in the aforementioned salon and been greeted and received with warmth and welcoming faces, and once “We’ve been looking forward to meeting you” had been followed up with “You bring us good cheer,” and “You bring us good cheer” had fallen fast on the heels of “We’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” and after the salutations of kindly men had followed hard on the kindliest of salutations, as is the custom among both elite and commoners, the Khawājā said to the Fāriyāq, “I am delighted with your arrival in these lands and that God, Glorious and Almighty, has granted me His blessing in allowing me to make you my partner here, for as the poet has said,

Sexual congress, they claimed, is the most desirable thing

But that, I replied, is clearly misguided.

A favor done to one in need

Is more gratifying, of more lasting effect, and easily provided

“—which doesn’t mean I’m saying that you’re in need of me, though I did infer from your complaint that you require a doughty friend to keep you in good cheer, or shore up your spirits, or share your sorrows; and the duty of keeping your spirits up so long as you are preoccupied, whether by providing consolation or offering advice, has fallen to me, especially as it’s clear to me that you are new to the pursuit of knowledge and interested in rhyming. Notwithstanding this, there are things in your writing that I might criticize you for, though this is not the time for criticism or the listing of faults. I would like to ask you, however, what books of literature you have read.”

2.11.3

Here his friend took the lead in anwering in his stead and said, “He’s read the Baḥth al-maṭālib ( The Discussion of Issues ).” 500“You were too quick with your answer!” the Khawājā replied. “That’s a book on grammar, not literature, though you students from the Mountain reckon that any who’s read it has effectively imbibed all that the Arabic language has to offer and feel no need to complement it with any of the books on the lexicon or literature, or the commentaries. When one of you students wants to pen a book or a speech in high-flown style, he uses a few hackneyed rhyme words with no vowel on the rhyme consonant, for fear of getting confused between — u and — a . 501They strain to produce a few mediocre metaphors and rigid similes that they’ve stuffed with feeble phrases and faltering figures without any knowledge of which verbs, triliteral or qadriliteral, should be used, or which should be used with a preposition to make them transitive.” When the man said this, the Fāriyāq remembered how the metropolitan had written to Qayʿar Qayʿār “ wa-awlajtu fī-hā ” 502and he mentioned this to the aforementioned Khawājā, who laughed so hard he scuffed the ground with his foot.

2.11.4

“Indeed,” he said, “all church books are full of horrible mistakes of that sort. I once read in one, of a certain monk, that he was ‘endowed with great humility, to the extent that, whenever the head of his monastery passed him, he stood up to him ( ʿalayh )’ (meaning for him ( lahu )), and of another that ‘he was told, of a nun, that she was a wonder-worker and a seer of visions, and he constantly wanked to see her’ (for he wanted to see her), and, of another, that he left his monastery and was absent for a long period; then he returned and found that its former abbot had died and one of his friends had taken over his position, and, after they’d consulted and congratulated one another, the abbot appointed him ‘to smut up the monks at night,’ meaning ‘to wake them up’ (from habba meaning ‘to rise’), 503and, of a certain metropolitan, that ‘when he preached a homily in the church, everyone who heard him stood erected,’ meaning ‘stood corrected,’ and so on and so forth, with too many examples to count. Indeed, even in the New Testament and the words of the apostles there is language whose meaning has been corrupted, the source of such corruption lying, I believe, in the ignorance of those who translated them into Arabic. For example, in the gospel according to St. Matthew, there is an oration handed down from Christ, peace be upon him, in which he says, ‘Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; so do not believe them,’ but what is meant is that ‘many shall adopt my name, and each shall claim that he is the Messiah’—and what a difference there is between the two versions! 504And in St. Paul’s epistle to Timothy it is written, ‘Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife,’ 505when what is meant is that the deacons should jointly pay one dowry. God forbid that these words of mine should be taken as showing contempt for religion; I cite them only as testimony to the ignorance of those of our community who worked as translators into Arabic and composers of prose. True, some metropolitans have composed useful works excellently expressed and with well turned figures, but the mass of the clergy are stupid ignoramuses who like only poor, lame language.

2.11.5

“This aside has diverted us from our goal. Let us return to what we were about, which was how to help you, my dear friend, relieve yourself of the burden of the bag. Would you be interested in being a scribe in the establishment of a certain rich prince who wishes to set up a Panegyricon 506in which to record in writing, in different languages, his mighty deeds and noble virtues? Your work there would be to compose each day two or more lines of verse, as needed.”

2.11.6

The Fāriyāq went on, “I told him, ‘I am not, Sir, a scholar senior enough to qualify for such a rank. Here we are in the land of scholarship and literature, and I fear some group may obstruct my path, claiming that what I say is spurious and erroneous, after which I’ll be too ashamed to look any man in the face, for I’m a man who prefers obscurity, and what I have to offer in this respect is but meager.’ ‘Don’t worry about that,’ he told me. ‘The people of Egypt, though they may have reached the limits of learning and surpass all others in merit and culture, would not pick a quarrel with a writer, be it of poetry or prose, who made a hash of a word unintentionally or trashed a trope inadvertently . They are a tolerant and easy-going people. At the same time, though, if one who wants to make a name for himself in poetry finds no one on one occasion to critique his work and on another to find fault with it, he will never reach the rank of the truly celebrated poets, and, if he keeps composing verses and trusting to his ear alone, he will never learn to distinguish the incorrect from the correct. Almost no one succeeds without first making mistakes.

2.11.7

“‘Also, it has become the custom for some poets to condemn the rhetorical figures and words that others commend, so that the poet or prose writer is always caught between two — between a critic and a commender, a fault-finder and an excuser, an accuser and a defender, an opponent and an ally, a render and a mender, a ripper and a darner, a perforator and a patcher, a forbidder and a permitter, a narrower and a widener, one who asks, “Why?” and one who answers, “Because!”—until, in the end, his good qualities come to outweigh his bad, and everyone circulates his verses. How often people have tried to attain fame through compositions that deserve to be rejected and not accepted . Some wrote verses using only unpointed letters, meaning those that are devoid of dots, and these were neglected ; 507some in their verses cleaved to “binding,” by which they make the first letter of each line of the poem one of the letters of the name of the person being eulogized, and these were disregarded and disrespected ; and some took paronomasia and far-fetched punning as their path, and these were refused and condemned as too affected . All that such poets sought from such things was celebrity among their fellows, and they cared nothing for blame or rebuttal, and I pray God that you are not to be counted among their number, for I saw in your composition hints of refined ideas that point to an excellent intuition , and a lively inborn disposition . But, to get back to our original discussion, who has never done wrong?’”