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Towards A Structural Analysis of Pre-Islamic Poetry*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Kamal Abu-Deeb
Kamal Abu-Deeb
Affiliation:
St John' College, Oxford, and Near East Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
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Extract

Modern views on pre-Islamic poetry have not markedly advanced our understanding of the structure of the poem beyond the views of the critics of the first three centuries of Hijra. In fact, if anything, modern views are more rigidly formulated, show a greater tendency towards generalizations, and are far less perceptive, as well as being based on a degree of knowledge and familiarity with the poetry inferior to that of the early critics. Ibn Qutayba's famous passage which attempts a description of the process through which the poet developed his poem remains one of the most perceptive statements on the subject. He, at least, had the objectivity and modesty to attribute the view expressed in his passage to ba'd ahl al-adab (a person, or people, of knowledge in the field of language and poetry). Ibn Qutayba does not claim that the statement he quotes was based on an analysis of the properties of the corpus of the poetry. However, the most interesting aspect of this statement is that it interprets the structural properties of the poem in psychological terms. It does not label the process a conventional device imposed by the tradition and by the poets' lack of desire to break away from that tradition. The interpretation the statement offers is also functional, in that it asserts that the process of growth in the poem is not arbitrary and illogical but purposeful, conscious, and pertaining to the total structure of the poem. In this sense Ibn Qutayba's remark is also structural, because it considers the structure of the poem in relation to the structure of other poems in the tradition.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , April 1975 , pp. 148 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

page 148 note 1 See al-Shi'r wa al-Shu‘arâ’, ed. by Shâkir, Ahmad M., Dâr al-Ma'ârif (Cairo, 1966), pp. 74–7.Google Scholar

page 148 note 2 Cf. 'Abbâs's, Ihsân perceptive comments on Ibn Qutayba's passage in Târîkh al-Naqd al-Adabî 'Ind al-'Arab, Dâr al-Amâna-Mu'assasat al-Risâla (Beirut, 1971), pp. 111–14.Google Scholar

page 148 note 3 A detailed discussion of this point is to be found in my ‘Al-Jurjânî's Theory of Poetic Imagery and its Background’, unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1970, vol. II, pp. 584–602, where one of the few promising attempts, that of M. M. Badawî, is discussed. Badaw's views on the unity in Labîd's mu'allaqa and other preIslamic poems, are, however, negative.Google Scholar

page 149 note 1 See, for instance, Husayn's, Tâha work on the mu'allaqa of Labîd in Hadîth al-Arbi‘â', Collected Works, Dâr al-Kitâb al-Lubnâni, vol. II (Beirut, 1973), pp. 22–43.Google Scholar Two recent works on the subject are those by Zakî, Ahmad Kamâl, Shi'r al-Hudhaliyyîn fî al-'Asrayn al-Jâhilî wa al-Islâmî, Dâr al-Kâtib al-’Arabî (Cairo, 1969), esp. pp. 243–72, 350–60;Google Scholar and al-Jubûrî, Yahyâ, Labîd Ibn Rabî'a al-'Amirî, Maktabat al-Andalus (Baghdad, 1970). The concept of organic unity has been misunderstood and superficially applied, especially by Arabists. One wonders, for instance, how R. A. Nicholson understood this concept when he made the following sweeping generalization: ‘The qasîda is no organic whole: rather its unity resembles that of a series of pictures by the same hand or, to employ an Eastern trope, of pearls various in size and quality threaded on a necklace’,Google ScholarA Literary History of the Arabs (Cambridge University Press, 1956), p. 76.Google Scholar

page 149 note 2 See, especially, chapter xi, ‘The Structural Study of Myth’, in Structural Anthropology, English translation by Jacobson, Claire and Schoepf, Brooke Grudfest (Garden City—New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1967), henceforth SA;Google Scholar and The Row and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology, vol. I, English translation by John, and Weightman, Doreen (New York: Harper Torchbooks, Harper and Row, 1970), henceforth RC.Google Scholar

page 150 note 1 On pre-Islamic poetry in general, the works of Muhammad al-Nuwayhî and Adonîs (Alî Ahmad Sa'îd) are of particular interest. See al-Nuwayhî's, al-Shi's al-Jâhilî: Manhaj fî Dirâsatih wa Taqwîmih, al-Dâr al-Qaumiyya (Cairo, N.D.). Adonîs's work is a unique re-evaluation of pre-Islamic poetry.Google Scholar See Dîwân al-Shi'r al-'Arabî, Book I, al-Maktaba al-'Ariyya (Beirut, 1964), Introduction;Google Scholar and his Muqaddima li-al-Shi'r al-'Arabî, Dâr al-'Auda (Beirut, 1971).Google Scholar

page 150 note 2 See Lévi-Strauss, RC, Overture, pp. 1–32.Google Scholar

page 150 note 3 Ibid. p. 5.

page 151 note 1 It is impossible to give details on these poems here or even to name them; this will be done in the work in preparation referred to earlier (see p. 149, §I.I, above).Google Scholar

page 151 note 2 It will be more significant to take an example from Labîd's poetry itself to illustrate the point made here. See poem No. 30 in the Dîwân.Google Scholar See also poem No. 2 in Dîwân 'Adî Ibn Zayd al-'Ibâdî, ed. by al-Mu'aybid, Muhammad, Ministry of Culture (Baghdâd, 1965), pp. 35–6.Google Scholar

page 151 note 3 See the poem in al-Mufaddaliyyât of al-Mufaddal al-Dabbî, ed. by Shâkir, Ahmad M. and Hârûn, 'Abd al-Salâm, 3rd ed., Dâr al-Ma'ârif (Cairo, 1964), No. 126, pp. 419–29.Google Scholar

page 152 note 1 By formative unit is meant here the semantic field of a given entity, e.g. the properties attributed to al-atlâl, or everything said about the camel.Google Scholar

page 152 note 2 The term bundles of relations is used by Lévi-Strauss to designate a specific aspect of the structural analysis of myth; see SA, pp. 206–12.Google Scholar

page 152 note 3 See, for instance, al-Tabrîzî's, al-Khatîb commentary on the mu'allaqa of Labîd in Sharh al-Qasâ'id al-'Shr, ed. by al-Dîn Qabâwa, Fakhr, al-Maktaba al-'Arabiyya (Aleppo, 1969), pp. 195–256; and Ihsân 'Abbâs's comments, which are based on the traditional commentaries, on the same poem in his edition of the Dîwân, Sharh Dîwân Labîd Ibn Rabî'a al-'Âmirî, The Arab Heritage Series, published by the Ministry of Culture and Information in Kuwait (Kuwait, 1962), pp. 279–321.Google Scholar

page 153 note 1 In SA, p. 206; also in RC, pp. 16–18.Google Scholar

page 153 note 2 The edition used in this study is that of the Dîwân, ed. by 'Abbâs;, Ihsân see p. 152, n. 3 above.Google Scholar The translation presented here is based on Captain Johnson's, F. E. translation in The Seven Poems Suspended in the Temple at Mecca (Bombay: Educational Society Steam Press, 1893), pp. 90–127. My modifications of this translation, which include few expressions from Arberry's translation, do not aim at producing an aesthetically satisfying translation, but one which is best suited to illustrate the analysis of the semantic value and the structural properties of the poem. The awkwardness of the translation is evident in more than one place.Google Scholar

page 159 note 1 Carlyle, J. C., for instance, described the poem as an ‘elegy…Its subject is one that must be ever interesting to a feeling mind — the return of a person, after a long absence, to the place where he had spent his early years. It is in fact an Arabian Deserted Village.’Google Scholar Quoted by Arberry, A. J., The Seven Odes: The First Chapter in Arabic Literature (London, New York: Allen and Unwin, The Macmillan Company, 1957), p. 134.Google Scholar

page 160 note 2 In the manner of the traditional commentators, both Arabs and Arabists. Faced with a complex image like this, the commentators clearly disregarded its complexity and ‘interpreted’ it in a rational manner, forcing it to ‘mean’ something it does not say. Some of the interpretations offered impress one by their ‘cleverness’ (rather than their truthfulness) as does, for instance, al-Khatîb al-Tabrîzî's, who comes out with the idea that the atlâl look worn out like the writing on stones when one looks at it from a distanceGoogle Scholar (op. cit. pp. 196–7). Arberry translates the line as follows: ‘and the torrent beds of Er-Raiyân naked shows their trace, rubbed smooth, like letterings long since scored on a stony slab’Google Scholar (op. cit. p. 142). A. and W. Blunts fail to understand the image — or ignore it — rendering the line as follows: ‘Scored in lines like writings left by the flood water’Google Scholar (quoted in Ibid p. 141). Only two or three of the translators quoted by Arberry render the image accurately without modifying it (see W. Wright's and Lyall's translations inGoogle ScholarIbid pp. 137–9). The commentators' method thus negates language itself and its role in poetic creation, to concentrate on the extractable abstracted ‘idea’ or ‘concept’, which they believe the image expresses or ought to express. This example can perhaps illustrate the mechanism through which we have come to have the present image of pre-Islamic poetry.

page 160 note 1 The language of paradox in poetry has been brilliantly analyzed by Brooks, Cleanth. See The Well Wrought Urn (New York: Harvest Books, Harcourt, Brace and World, 1947), pp. 3–21.Google ScholarFor other studies in the language of poetry, see, especially, The Language of Poetry, ed. by Tate, Allen (New York: Russell and Russel, 1960).Google Scholar

page 161 note 1 See, for example, James Monroe's study of formulaic expressions in Labîd's poetry in Monroe's application of the Parry—Lord theory of the formula to pre-Islamic poetry, ‘Oral Composition in Pre-Islamic Poetry: The Problem of Authenticity’, Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. 3 (Leiden, 1973), pp. 1–53, esp. p. 47, where Monroe lists all the oppositions and dualities of the atlâl section in Labîd's poem as formulaic expressions.Google Scholar

page 164 note 1 This is an important point which is frequently overlooked. Lord, Albert B. raises a similar point in his discussion of oral composition and the role of the individual poet; see The Singer of Tales (New York: Atheneum, 1965), p. 88.Google Scholar

page 164 note 2 Cf. the extreme view expressed by Bateson, Mary Catherine in Structural Continuity in Poetry (Paris, The Hague: Mouton, 1970), p. 27. Bateson argues that the poet ‘includes’ the first two sections (nasîb — of which she wrongly considers the atlâl to be a part — and rihla) ‘as a necessary formality, like the correct form of greeting’. Views like this can only do harm to the study of such aspects of pre-Islamic poetry, as they conceal the role of the individual imagination and discourage attempts to consider the poetry in a fresh manner.Google Scholar

page 165 note 1 The language of a poem can be analyzed on more than one level, including the purely phonetic one. Bateson's work itself offers some interesting examples for the analysis of pre-Islamic poetry. But one of the best examples for the multiplicity of the levels of analysis is Lévi-Strauss's and Roman Jacobson's structural analysis of Baudelaire's ‘Les Chats’;Google Scholar see Introduction to Structuralism, ed. by Lane, Michael (New York: Basic Books, Harper Torchbooks, 1970), pp. 202–12.Google Scholar

page 165 note 2 See p. 153, §3.2, above.Google Scholar

page 167 note 1 The term gross constituent unit is borrowed from Lévi-Strauss;Google Scholar see SA, p. 20.Google Scholar

page 167 note 2 The elementary units are the simplest relations within each formative unit. The term is coined for the purposes of the present study.Google Scholar

page 168 note 1 Some of these are the ones marked with *.Google Scholar

page 172 note 1 See line 29.Google Scholar

page 173 note 1 See SA, pp. 202–8.Google Scholar

page 182 note 2 Cf., on this point, Gibb's view on the poet's treatment of the nasîb section (Arabic Literature: An Introduction, revised edition [Oxford Clarendon Press, 1963], pp. 21–2) with Monroe's view which is based on the study of oral compositionGoogle Scholar (op. cit. pp. 42–3).Google Scholar

page 177 note 1 Or, as more intensely expressed by another pre-Islamic poet, Tamîm b. Muqbil, ‘If only man were a stone’; quoted by Adonîs; Dîwân a1-Shi'r al-'Arabî, introduction, p. 15.Google Scholar

page 177 note 2 Cf., for instance, Mutammim b. Nuwayra's elegy of his brother Mâlik, esp. lines 21, 22, in al-Majânî a1-Hadîtha (based on Majânî al-Adab by L. Shaykho), 2nd ed., al-Maktaba al-Kâthûlîkiyya (Beirut, 1962), pp. 63–6.Google Scholar

page 177 note 3 Tarafa expresses the idea more hauntingly in the central image of his mu'allaqa, when he portrays man as being ever present in the domain of death which holds man by a loosened rein whose ends are tightly clinched by death, then he goes on to say: ‘So that, at any moment death wishes, he leads man by his reins; and he who is in the rope of death will so be led.’Google Scholar

page 179 note 1 Loc. cit.Google Scholar

page 179 note 2 Monroe, op. cit. p. 42.Google Scholar

page 180 note 2 Op. cit. pp. 76–7.Google Scholar

page 180 note 2 These are, ‘Dhikr al-diyâr (mentioning or recalling the effaced encampment), al-Nasîb (love section), al-Rahîl (journey), and al-Madîh (praise)’.Google Scholar

page 180 note 3 Ibid

page 181 note 1 RC, pp. 340–1.Google Scholar

page 181 note 2 SA, p. 226.Google Scholar

page 182 note 3 As in lines 24, 25, 36, 39, 47, 51, 53; see also lines 20, 29, 81 for other statements with a similar structural function.Google Scholar

page 182 note 4 As in lines 1, 7, 8, 9, 15 and 16, 37, 46, 51, 65.Google Scholar

page 182 note 5 SA, pp. 205.Google Scholar

page 183 note 1 Cf. von Grunebaum's, G. superficial generalization that ‘The qasîda receives its unity primarily through the personality of the poet on whose loyalty, discretion, bravery, etc., every major section is designed to reflect directly or indirectly.’ ‘Arabic Poetics’, Indiana Conference on Oriental—Western Literary Relations, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, 1955), p. 32.Google Scholar

page 183 note 2 Cf. Lévi-Strauss's remarks on the purpose of myth, SA, p. 226.Google Scholar

page 183 note 3 Demonstrating that the atlâl unit is an imaginative experience, with a symbolic function, opens up new possibilities for research: Is the same true of such units as the wild cow and the wild bull? Do these units represent an act of the creative imagination rather than a reflection of the fondness of the poet for the description of desert scenery and animal life? And if this is true, can it be suggested that the wild cow or wild bull have not only symbolic functions but also possibly mythological connotations? It is probable that the poet used such entities as mythical powers or ‘figures’, evoking the vital forces of life, in a manner not unlike our modern usage of such myths as the unicorn and the Phoenix. It is of special interest to note that pre-Islamic poetry itself contains many references to the sun as a horned animal (goat). Furthermore, the camel unit itself may have a symbolic function; detailed portrayal of the camel in so many poems can thus be seen as a formative unit with an essential role in the formation of the gross constituent units in the poem. The camel may well have a double-nature: the animal used in every day life, and the ‘mythical’ figure which appears in poetry as an archetype. Thus Tarafa's exhaustive description of the camel can be explored as a subconscious imposition of a solid, powerful, and above all ‘fixed’, permanent being on the fleeting reality and fragile passing life moving in the context of the omnipresent death of which Tarafa was so tragically aware. This line of study will be pursued in a future work.Google Scholar