Sharing the Wealth

Indeed, what kind of scrooge would I be if I did not share with you tidbits of what I am learning? :) I am in a Classical Arabic Literature class, which is really more of a survey into the different time periods of Arabic literature rather than an in-depth study of any given poet. When speaking of literature in this context, I am speaking primarily of poetry, as prose was a secondary form at the time.

As a non-native Arabic speaker, I realize it is quite useless for me to even begin to understand the complexity of the genre. Take for example, the qasida form of poetry: its long structure involves a beginning that bemoans the loss of the poet's beloved, often amid the smoldering embers of a fire; then moves to a travel section which usually includes the description of the camel that the poet is riding, perhaps through the desert on a dark night; and finally, the end contains a message or a eulogy of the poet's tribe or person. The qasida is a poetry form developed in pre-Islamic times and continued for centuries after the arrival of Islam. Throughout these centuries, instead of innovating changes in the structure of the poem, the poets concentrated on the nuances of language, refining it and designing new comparisons.

The Arabic poetic tradition is very proud of its rich language. And due to its long-lasting heritage there is an intense depth to the poems, as a poet may with the choice of one given word make an allusion to another writer's description or idea that has been written centuries before him. I, as the outsider, am quite lost when a narration suddenly begins to describe the beloved's fresh breath, comparing it to an herb garden, and mentioning a fly that rubs its legs together, like the friction of two sticks to ignite a spark of fire (or was it somehow a one-legged fly...). It is random, I assure you. But I am a fan of the random in life.

I have only mentioned qasida poetry; there is much more under the topic of Classical Arabic Literature that I have yet to be introduced to. But I am hoping to write a paper on the poetry of Al-Andalus, or Muslim Spain (I will attempt to write it in Spanish!). I would like to leave you with a humorous poem written by Al-Sumaisir (11th century), from an anthology of Moorish poetry. It brought to mind the little buggers that show up in the first half of the Finnish summer:

Mosquitos

Mosquitoes are sucking

My blood like sweet wine,

And hey noddy-noddy

They merrily sing.

How nimbly they're plucking,

These minstrels divine!

Their lute is my body,

Each vein is a string.