August 22, 2020

Origins of the fold-in

On the poet Abu 'l-‘Ibar al-Hashimi (d. 866 CE), by Sinan Antoon,
The Poetics of the Obscene in Premodern Arabic Poetry: Ibn al-Hajjaj
and
Sukhf (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 40:

The image is of printed text that reads: There are two other points of commonality that Ibn al-Hajjaj and Abu 'l-‘Ibar share, and these are the studied and deliberate inclusion of vulgar and colloquial registers into poetry and the desire to effect confusion into accepted norms. When asked about the sources of his <i>muhal</i> (absurdities) Abu 'l-‘Ibar said: 'I wake up early and sit on the bridge with paper and pen and write all that I hear from the speech of those who come and go, the boatmen and the watercarriers, until I fill both sides of the paper. Then I cut it in half and paste it the other way and get speech that is unparalleled in its folly.' 189  From the Book of Songs

August 16, 2020

From the Epistle of the Two Luminaries

In his Epistle of the Two Luminaries, which is [subtitled] "From a dejected lover, to one whose love is reciprocated by another," and begins with the words: "The earth lies before the merciful king, the sultan of beauty, the lion of combat...." ‘Ala’ al-Din [Taqi al-Din] ibn al-Maghribi said (meter: majzū’ al-ramal):

   The Nile comes and goes.
       My love goes on and on.
   Nothing I say tomorrow will be enough.
       Sometimes love is too much.
   Every heart but mine
       gets the love it wants.
   I am the lone unfortunate
       going steady with rejection.

Then ‘Ala’ al-Din [Taqi al-Din] said: I am the lone unfortunate who pissed on a plate of fried doughnuts, dribbling out a vinegar stream. I crucified Iblis with his own hammer, and left him sagging and singing "Tra-la-la-la!" as he flapped his wings like a chicken (meter: majzū’ al-ramal):

   Tra-la-la-la, tra-la-la!
       You, with the eyes of a little gazelle!
   God have mercy on my slayer.
       Me it is no boast to kill.

From The Register of Ardent Love by Ibn Abi Hajala