From an Apulian pelike in the style of the Underworld Painter
(ca. 330-310 BCE), Metropolitan Museum of Art (06.1021.228).
tr. by David Larsen at 7:37 PM
Labels: Arabic prose
Al-Ḍabu‘ is the female; the male is called al-ḍib‘ān and al-dhaykh. Among its other names are:
Haḍājir "Whose Gut Is Huge"
Jay’al "The Female Hulk"
Ja‘āri "Craps-a-Lot"
Qasāmi "Divider-up [of Carcasses]"
Naqāthi "Bone-Sucker," from its [habit of] extracting marrow from
bones, as in the anonymous rajaz verse:
Jā’at Naqāthi taḥmilu 'l-birdhawnā
"Along came Bone-sucker, carrying [part of?] an old horse..."
al-‘Arfā’, for the length of its ‘urf [which is its mane]
al-‘Athwā’ "The Bearded Lady," for the denseness of its hair
al-‘Arjā’ "Whose Gait is Limping"
al-Khāmi‘a "Whose Gait is Loping"
Umm Hinbir "Mother of the Flesh-Tearer"
Umm Khannūr "Mother of the Anus," also Umm Khunnūr
The hyena pup is called fur‘ul. The hyena's den is a wijār.
The offspring of hyena and the wolf is called al-Sim‘ "The Sharp-Eared" (?) and Abū Sabara "Father to the Wound-Prober." Dissenting opinion holds that the sim‘ is a cross between wolf and dog, and that the offspring of wolf and hyena is called al-‘Usbūr.
From The Rudiments of Lexicography by al-Khaṭīb al-Iskāfī
tr. by David Larsen at 7:19 PM
Labels: Arabic lexicography
tr. by David Larsen at 10:32 PM
Labels: Greek poetry , Lost works
The poet Abu 'l-Bakhtarī said: The tales I used to hear of Abū Fahma, a madman of Baghdad with a gift for poetic improvisation, led me to seek him out. Our meeting came about in a lane of the city, where I said to him, "How are you today, Abū Fahma?" He replied in verse:
I have reached the edge of my precipice. Through you
the way lies open to the wellsprings of my ruin.
I see you turning, but not toward me.
Whose heart is least corrupt you least attend.
O you whose estrangement prolongs my pining:
may you be struck with pining worse than mine!
Abu 'l-Bakhtarī said: At this, I withdrew a bouquet of narcissus from my sleeve, and pressed it on him with my wishes that God prolong his life. He stood smelling them for a time, then delivered these verses:
On my wedding day, there came from the South hard-spattering,
black and brilliant [clouds] wreathed with rain.
Then kicked in the East Wind with its fecundating showers,
and the curtailment of our nuptials was hard to bear.
Our babe was born still. Labor pains came on,
and there was parturition, and that was the issue.
Springtime wove a shroud, and as one hand
the dew and breeze gave color to its fabric.
It was this flower's composite yellow, white petals
cupping ornaments of unsmithed gold
on emerald columns raised aloft with the morning,
like unto the sun in eye-like splendor.
Al-Hasan ibn Hāni' [better known as Abū Nuwās] said: I paid a call on Mānī al-Muwaswas, who delivered these verses:
A live man's poem is uttered to you by a dead man.
Stuck between death and life, he stands [right here].
Vicissitudes have whittled his frame, and at his end
he stays in hiding from the rest of creation.
To look me over, inspecting my persona,
is to find not one iota of my former charm.
I then went on [continued Abū Nuwās] until I met Ju'ayfirān al-Muwaswas, an elder of the Banū Hāshim with a speech impediment. Around his neck he wore a golden collar with a silver chain. He asked me, "Where did you crawl out of, Hasan?" "Mānī's house," I answered. "Here's one for Mānī's mother," he said and, calling for pen and paper, told me to write this down:
Under cover of the night, the rooster makes no sound
- except on nights I strive along the pathway to your door.
Not every eyeful leads the peeper to delight!
At night, the joys of bed-rest are what's best,
- except on nights I mount the dark,
desiring you. Braving a pair of linked shackles,
I am playing with my life when I come to you. 'Sweet Hope!'
I am calling out, amid the night's black suit,
to the stoker of the flames licking [this] wretch's heart,
taking no care for his welfare nor his reputation.
For treachery and fickleness your nature is unsurpassed
by all the djinn and mortal men living put together now.
With that [continued Abū Nuwās], he told me to tear up what I had from Mānī, which I did.
I went on until I encountered ‘Adrad the Afflicted. Ringed by a crowd of boys, he was slapping his face and weeping as he wailed aloud, "O people! Bitter is the taste of separation!" So I asked him, "Abū Muhammad [which was ‘Adrad's byname], where are you coming from?" "Seeing off the pilgrims bound for Mecca," he said. "What makes it so hard to bear?" I asked. "Some of my kinsmen travel with them," he said. "Did you deliver a poem on the occasion?" I asked. He responded that he had done so, and recited:
They departed Thursday morning, and I bid them farewell
when, taking up their burdens, they took their leave.
As they turned to go, my soul turned with them.
'Come back!' I said. 'Come back to where?' said she.
To a rattling skeleton empty of blood,
and bare of flesh but for a pair of eyes
washed by grief, and the shell of an ear
defiant in its deafness to all blame."
Continued from The Necklace Without Peer of Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih
For the conclusion to Madmen Who Were Poets, see the (St. Mark's) Poetry Project Newsletter no. 250 (Feb/March 2017), 8-12, where the whole of Ibn Abd Rabbihi's chapter appears with an introduction by the translator. Many thanks to Betsy Fagin
tr. by David Larsen at 1:29 AM
Labels: Arabic poetry
tr. by David Larsen at 2:34 AM
Labels: Greek prose
Abu 'l-‘Abbās [al-Mubarrad] attributes these verses to al-Mānī al-Muwaswas:
The cheeks on him are white and red:
red in their middles and white at the rim.
Thin but dewy, like a cup's glass walls
streaked by swirling wine within.
Al-Mubarrad also said: Once, I got caught in a rainstorm, which quickly abated, and along came Mānī al-Muwaswas, saying:
Don't mistake for real rain
the rain that fell just now.
A single tear from my eye
flows more copiously, when
assailed by the gloom
of my worried thoughts.
This is what it's like to watch
the change of heart inside a friend's bosom.
Mānī al-Muwaswas went up to Abū Dulaf [al-'Ijlī] and said:
The look in your eye 'mid the enemy host
saves you the trouble of taking out swords.
"By God!" said Abū Dulaf, "no poet has ever praised me so well," and ordered ten thousand dirhams be given to him. But Mānī declined to take them. "It's all the same to me as half a dirham's worth of harisa," he said.
Also by Mānī al-Muwaswas:
Grazing on hearts, some gazelles are intent
on necklaces. But in my heart there is just grass.
My life is forfeit to gazelles. Instead of antlers
they are rubied and empearled with bangles of gold.
O beauty who stole mine eye unwittingly,
seldom though the stolen glance unwitting be!
The beauty of her eyes elicited my heart from me,
and I gave it over, little heeding its worth.
If they do not look my way, the attraction's finished.
What good are eyes to me if she declines?
A thief and his hand are soon separated,
but hearts are for stealing at no such penalty.
‘Alī ibn al-Jahm rode up on a man in the grip of a brain-fever who was encircled by a hostile crowd. On spotting him, the man took hold of his horse's bridle and said:
Do not join the company of
wastrels before me. I swear by the prerogative
of the One Who aggrieves my life with them,
and the One Whose forgiveness I beg for them:
compared to the fallen of their own number,
these are fallen further still.
His rolling gaze then fixed on a shapely boy with a handsome face, and he rent his tunic, saying:
"And this one, their most nobly favored,
now treats me with surpassing baseness!
From The Necklace Without Peer of Ibn 'Abd Rabbih (continued)
tr. by David Larsen at 1:44 PM
Labels: Arabic poetry
Whatever myth of origins you believe, the world's first man was surely naked and unclothed when his Potter threw him, before his untimely and unlicensed grab at [the fruit of the Tree of] Knowledge. But enough of esoteric lore. Let's have one of yours instead - the Egyptian tale set down by Alexander for his mother to read about the age of Osiris, back when Ammon, rich in sheep, came out of Libya. It was in their company, the Egyptians declare, that Mercury chanced to brush his hand over a ram, and was so pleased by its softness that he separated a sheep from its fleece. The material's pliancy moved him to keep working it, and at his continued pinching a thread streamed forth. This he wove using a technique he had practiced on strips of linden-bark. Meanwhile, you give credit to Minerva for all wool-craft and construction of looms, even though the work at Arachne's shop was better done.
Tertullian, On the philosopher's cloak III.4-5
tr. by David Larsen at 11:00 PM
Labels: Fiber arts , Latin prose