Betsy Shidfar. The System of Images in Classical Arabic Literature of the VI-XII Centuries

 Betsy Shidfar. The System of Images in Classical Arabic Literature of the VI-XII Centuries.

Arabic classical literature is one of the richest in the world, it counts a multitude of most interesting poetic and prosaic works. The development of literature was paralleled by the development of literary criticism. This dual phenomenon provides an opportunity to analyze Arabic medieval literature in two aspects: to trace its grain features from the point of view of modern literary criticism, and to compare the conclusions thus obtained with statements of various medieval Arab critics. Such a comparison would entail a correlation of the inner view of the literature of the time with the outer one. Such is the task of the present study.
In order to understand the literature of "the later Arabic classical period (the ninth — twelfth centuries)", it is necessary to go back to Jahiliyya literature (the sixth — eighth centuries). The latter is treated in Chapter I. The written works attributed to the period, consist of poetic genres of the established syncretic epic type. Chapter I is also an attempt to define the cycled organisation of Arabic heroic epics. The main heroes of the latter are the poets of the ten famous odes (mu 'allaqat). The author investigates a curious phenomenon of the Jahiliyya epics: many a poetical fragment, attributed to this or that ancient poet, is not comprehensible without the preceding prosaic one. This peculiarity enables the reader to reconstruct the primary form of the epic consisting of an alternation of fragments in prose and poetry. This analysis concludes with the assertion that the prosaic fragment is the plot-transmitter, while the poetic one is the emotion-transmitter. This form is characteristic not only of the Arabic heroic epos but also of the romantic one: the famous stories of Jamil and Buthayna, and of Majnun and Layla (the latter, in particular). These legends did not come down to us in their original form. That is why a reconstruction is attempted in the same chapter with reference to the most ancient Arabic anthologies. The legends confirm the above statement: prose being "pure plot", poetry being "pure emotion". This conclusion is also valid for a similar correlation in the later period.
Other aspects of Jahiliyya poetics are discussed in Chapter, I; they, too, prove to be important for later periods. One of them, the stratification of poetical means, i. e. combination of archaic metaphors and comparisons which reflected a certain primitiveness of the Weltanschauung of the ancient poet, his anthropomorphic attitude to nature, combined with aesthetically selected poetic device. No less important for Arabic classical poetry is the principle of "repeatedness", "commonness" of contents of definite and already known plots and images, which were later canonized by medieval literary critics. The same may be said of the principle of variation of form, i. e. common plots and images were to be treated and grouped differently each time.
Chapter II is dedicated to the Qur'an, treated here primarily as a work of literature, which has played an extremely influential role in the development of both prose and poetry. The Qur'ari is taken here as the work of a single author, which is distinguished by its unity of style, a style however that has progressively evolved. Keeping in mind the difference between genres, one can detect the same principle of Jahiliyya literature: the combination of repeated plots and images with variation of lexical expression, stratification of poetics, contrasts, etc.

The author illuminates the link of Qur'anic poetics with pagan incantations connected to Jahiliyya poetry (some of these are recorded in the Qur'an unchanged).
Modifications of legends from the Old Testament incorporated in the Qur'an are discussed in the same chapter; they were usually altered according to the style and rhyme of the Sura. The influence of the Qur 'an on Arabic poetics is similar to that of the Old and New Testaments on European literature in the Middle Ages and Renaissance period. Separate lines from the Qur'an were frequently cited by Arab critics as model types of rhetoric figures. Medieval Arab critics attempted to establish the importance of the balagha and its figures on the basis that the latter were borrowed from the Qur'an, thus reconfirming a tradition going back to the sacred book of Muslims. The chapter ends with a quotation evaluating the poetics of the Qur'an taken from Ibn al-Mu'tazz, both medieval major poet and critic.
Chapter III treats the basis for the poetics of the ninth-twelfth century classical literature. In the view of the writer, literature of the age is a qualitively new phenomenon, based on the syncretic Arab-Muslim culture, and represented only one element of a new culture. The latter was greatly influenced by Hellenistic culture in philosophy and literature via Egypt, Syria, and Iran where Hellenistic tradition, in its turn, was widely fused with the purely Iranian culture.
The poetics of classical Arabic literature is a combination of Arabic and Graeco-Iranian traditions. If emotion was the base of Jahiliyya poetry, ratio was the main aesthetic criterion of the poetry of the classical period. Medieval critics judged harmony as the highest quality of poetry. This harmony manifested itself in "harmonizing" principles: the principle of the "framed composition" in prose and of gradation in poetry.
The writer deduces the hierarchy of Arabic poetics from the principle of harmony. Each style is characteristic of a definite genre.

Classification, another specific principle of the Middle Ages, penetrates into poetics. The main classificational works in poetics are discussed in the same chapter: "Kitab al-sina'atain" by Abu Hilal al-Askari, "Kutab al-badi"'by Ibn al-Mu'tazz, "Naqdal-shi'r"by Qudama ibnja'far.
The numerous translations illustrating each of the writer's conclusions are done by the writer herself. The Bibliography (pp. 225-240) tends to be comprehensive, although not necessarily totally exhausted in the book.

 Betsy Shidfar. The System of Images in Classical Arabic Literature of the VI-XII Centuries.Moscow: the Mardjani Publishing House, 2011, ISBN 978-5-903715-46-6