{"id":11769,"date":"2014-03-17T09:30:18","date_gmt":"2014-03-17T13:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=11769"},"modified":"2014-03-17T09:30:18","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T13:30:18","slug":"gregor-schoeler-on-dante-arab-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/gregor-schoeler-on-dante-arab-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"Gregor Schoeler on Dante & Arab Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to the always incredibly useful Arab Literature (in English)<\/strong><\/em> here is an extract of an interview with translator Gregor Schoeler<\/strong> on Arab literary influences on Dante<\/strong> & the Divine Comedy<\/em>:<\/p>\n

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Who\u2019s the Heretic\u00a0Here?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

BY\u00a0MLYNXQUALEY<\/a>\u00a0on<\/em>\u00a00<\/a>\u00a0)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Translator Gregor Schoeler<\/i>\u00a0notes that Abul \u02bfAla al-Ma\u02bfarri\u2019s\u00a0<\/i>The\u00a0Epistle of Forgiveness\u00a0has been linked to Dante\u2019s\u00a0<\/i>Divine Comedy.\u00a0Yet<\/i>\u00a0al-Ma\u02bfarri\u2019s description of the hereafter, unlike Dante\u2019s, seems to be shot through with a strong sense of irony.\u00a0<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n

\"SchoelerGregor Schoeler<\/div>\n

What does al-Ma\u2019arri mean by it? When is \u2014 and isn\u2019t \u2014 he being ironic? In an interview originally published in full on the\u00a0Library of Arabic Literature blog<\/a>, Schoeler talks about the parallels between the\u00a0<\/i>Epistle\u00a0and the\u00a0<\/em>Divine Comedy,\u00a0and why irony complicates the translation process.<\/em><\/p>\n

ArabLit: In a 2010 lecture, you called the\u00a0<\/b>Epistle<\/em>\u00a0\u201dThe Arabic\u00a0Divine Comedy<\/em>.\u201d As you and your co-translator Dr. Jan van Gelder note in the introduction to Volume One, some scholars once believed that the\u00a0Epistle\u00a0influenced Dante\u2019s work. But even though this idea has been abandoned, there are still clear parallels between the works. How would you characterize their similarities? In what ways can they be read against one another?<\/b><\/p>\n

Gregor Schoeler:\u00a0<\/strong>Yes, the notion that Dante was influenced by al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b had to be abandoned.\u00a0The Epistle of Forgiveness<\/i>\u00a0was completely unknown in Europe in Dante\u2019s time.<\/p>\n

But al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b\u2019s\u00a0Epistle<\/i>\u00a0and Dante\u2019s\u00a0Commedia<\/i>\u00a0might have had a common Arabic source: The anonymous\u00a0Kit\u0101b al-Mi\u02bfraj<\/i>, the book of Muhammad\u2019s ascension to heaven, widely known in Islam, was available in Dante\u2019s time in several European languages (Old Spanish, Latin and Old French) and was probably known to him. It relates a nightly vision of Muhammad: the archangel Gabriel leads the prophet through the seven heavens and shows him Hell as well.<\/p>\n

It would need a separate study to work out the parallels and, especially, the differences between al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b\u2019s and Dante\u2019s works. So, let me just make some general remarks. What the\u00a0Epistle of Forgiveness<\/i>\u00a0and the\u00a0Commedia<\/i>\u00a0have in common, is, of course, the eschatological tourism. Or, to put it more seriously, the journey through\u2014or the vision of\u2014Heaven and Hell and the encounter of the protagonists with the souls of mostly illustrious people.<\/p>\n

A main difference is: While Dante\u2019s descriptions of the Hereafter breathe a deeply religious spirit, al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b\u2019s Paradise depicts a kind of Cockaigne\u2014at least in Western perception. It seems to be described very ironically. The Russian scholar Ignatij Kra\u010dkovskij even suggested that al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b intended to parody the notion of the Islamic paradise with its streams of wine and black-eyed damsels. Many Muslims, however, reject this reading. The editor of the Arabic text, Bint al-Sh\u0101\u1e6di\u02be, insists that it contains no attacks against the Muslim religion.<\/p>\n

One important parallel between the works is that the souls of the dead are rewarded or punished in the Hereafter according to their deeds in this world. This corresponds to the doctrines of the two monotheistic religions. But even here we find a crucial difference: Dante, in his\u00a0Commedia<\/i>, expresses a fundamental belief in divine justice, while al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b, on the contrary, expresses his doubts in a, for me, distressing way. He has one of the condemned souls say: \u201cSome worse people than I have entered Paradise! But it is not everybody\u2019s fortune to be granted forgiveness, it is like wealth in the fleeting world.\u201d<\/p>\n

AL: As you note, it\u2019s certain that the work as a whole is brimming with irony. Yet it\u2019s sometimes unclear, on a passage-by-passage level, when al-Ma\u02bfarri is being ironic. Some parts feel clearly ironic or mocking (\u201cmay God cheer this region with his [the Sheikh\u2019s] vicinity!\u201d and the frequent \u201cas the Sheikh knows\u201d), while in other sections, I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019m overlaying my 21st century readerly personae. Do we have any sense of how this was read in al-Ma\u02bfarri\u2019s time or by those who came soon after?<\/b><\/p>\n

GS:\u00a0<\/strong>The\u00a0Epistle<\/i>\u00a0attracted little attention among al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b\u2019s contemporaries and later pre-modern Arabic authors. The hadith scholar al-Dhahab\u012b (d. 1348) is an exception. He says: \u201cThe work contains Mazdakism and irreverence, but there is much erudition in it.\u201d Al-Dhahab\u012b\u2019s attention focused on al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b\u2019s doubtful orthodoxy, but also on his learning and the literary quality of his work. Perhaps this was the reaction as far as the work was received at all.<\/p>\n

\"lal_vangelder_epistleofforgiveness_vol1<\/a><\/i>AL: Why do you think there has been a marked difference in how Muslim and non-Muslim scholars have read this work?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

GS:\u00a0<\/strong>As we can see with al-Dhahab\u012b, the few Muslims who knew al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b\u2019s work in pre-modern times considered him a heretic because he evidently doubted established religious beliefs or treated them with irony or even with ridicule. Obviously, modern extreme Islamists share this conviction: Remember that al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b\u2019s statue in his birth place Ma\u02bfarrat al-Nu\u02bfm\u0101n was beheaded in the civil war not long ago.<\/p>\n

European scholars, with their different cultural background,\u00a0have perceived him differently\u2014first among them Reynold A. Nicholson, who brought the\u00a0Epistle<\/i>\u00a0to the attention of an international public. Nicholson got to the heart of the matter when saying that what we nowadays consider \u201chonest doubt\u201d was categorized as \u201ctotal unbelief\u201d by the Islamic rule of orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

Bint al-Sh\u0101\u1e6di\u02be was a religious Muslim, but she was influenced by Western culture and had adopted the scholarly methods of the West. She devoted a large part of her life to the study of al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b and not only appreciated him as a poet and man of letters, but also held him in high regard\u00a0as a human. I suppose that she wanted to keep the pure image she had of his personality flawless. As a religious Muslim, she could not admit that the works of her favorite poet contain assaults on Islam.<\/p>\n

AL: This work was created as a response to a letter from a little-known grammarian and man of letters in Aleppo. Do you have a sense of how al-Ma\u02bfarri would have imagined the wider audience for his work as he was writing it? Who might have read it in his time?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

GS:\u00a0<\/strong>The first addressee was, of course, \u201cthe Sheikh,\u201d Ibn al-Qarih, a little-known and mediocre man of letters. But Arab authors and poets wrote for a wider audience and in view of later perception. This is the case with al-Mutanabb\u012b\u2019s praise poems. For instance, his qasidas enjoyed enormous wider and later reception. And so did al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b\u2019s philosophical poems.<\/p>\n

But his\u00a0Epistle of Forgiveness<\/i>\u00a0reached only a small audience, as can be deduced from the scarce transmission in manuscripts as well as from the few echoes to be heard in biographies and other works dealing with our author.<\/p>\n

AL: Can its scarce transmission be taken as evidence that it didn\u2019t resonate with readers during its time? Or simply that it wasn\u2019t widely shared?<\/b><\/p>\n

GS:\u00a0<\/strong>Yes, I believe that the scarce transmission is an indication of the\u00a0<\/i>Epistle<\/i>\u2019s marginal resonance. Moreover, there is a catalogue of al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b\u2019s works in the biographical literature; in this catalogue the\u00a0Epistle<\/i>\u00a0is an also-ran. In addition to that, the\u00a0Epistle<\/i>\u00a0was never cited nor discussed in classical Arabic literature, neither in adab (belles-lettres) nor in biographical literature\u2013quite to the contrary of other great works of prose such as Ibn al-Muqaffa\u02bf\u2019s\u00a0Kalila wa-Dimna<\/i>\u00a0and some writings by al-J\u0101\u1e25i\u1e93.<\/p>\n

AL: Dr. van Gelder said that you both initially balked at the idea of translating the full text. What changed your mind about it?<\/b><\/p>\n

GS:\u00a0<\/strong>In our first draft, we did indeed cut out most of the passages containing highly specialized grammatical and etymological discussions. They seemed to us to be of little interest for a majority of readers. But then the editors convinced us to translate the complete text. And now we willingly acknowledge that they were right, and we are proud of having produced the first full translation into any language ever and worldwide.<\/p>\n

AL: What makes this work so particularly challenging? \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

GS:\u00a0<\/strong>Many things. For example: The fact that the work, with its fiction of a vision in Part I, was the answer to an epistle that is perhaps not much more than a begging letter; or that it consists of two entirely different parts connected, as to content, only by virtue of their both being an answer to that mediocre\u00a0letter (the all-pervasive irony being another connecting element); or that it allows for an abundance of interpretations that are all\u00a0\u2013or may all be\u2013 \u201ccorrect,\u201d as do many of the great works of world literature like Cervantes\u2019\u00a0Don Quijote<\/i>\u00a0and Goethe\u2019s\u00a0Faust<\/i>; or that it is a work full of fiction and fantasy, of irony and humor, but also of skepticism and pessimism; or that, in his\u00a0Epistle<\/i>, the author expressed remarkable ideas in vivid and colorful episodes\u2014ideas that came up in the West only after the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, or even later.<\/p>\n

AL: Dr. Geert Jan van Gelder had written that the interpretation is \u201champered by al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b\u2019s pervasive use of irony.\u201d Also, you particularly noted, in the introduction to Volume Two, that it\u2019s \u201cimpossible to decide to what extent, if at all, the lengthy section on heresy and heretics is to be read as irony.\u201d Do you lean in one direction or another?\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

GS:\u00a0<\/strong>Let me give an example. In Part I, al-Ma\u02bfarri has the famous early Abbasid poet Bashsh\u0101r ibn Burd suffer terrible pains in hell. He has Ibn al-Q\u0101ri\u1e25 address him thus: \u201cYou were excellent as a poet, but bad in your belief.\u201d Without a later remark by al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b, we would probably have misinterpreted this sentence. In Part II, he says in the chapter on the heretics: \u201cI shall not say categorically that he is one of the people of hell-fire\u2026 God is forbearing and munificent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"lal_vangelder_epistleofforgiveness_vol2\"<\/a><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b himself does not consider Bashsh\u0101r a dweller in hell. If he seems to in the first part, it\u2019s because there he appears to take Ibn al-Q\u0101ri\u1e25\u2019s point of view. The difficult question is: Are there occurrences of such irony also in the second part, where al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b speaks in his own name? Is our author really convinced of the everlasting damnation of alleged heretics such as \u1e62\u0101li\u1e25 ibn \u02bfAbd al-Qudd\u016bs?<\/p>\n

I believe al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b was a skeptic. He was swaying between the dogmas prescribed by religion and his own free-thinking rationalist ideas. You can see this from his philosophical poems, the\u00a0Luz\u016bmiyy\u0101t<\/i>, where physical resurrection sometimes provokes his irony and sometimes lets him look for reasons to believe in it.<\/p>\n

AL: Can reading the Epistle change how we see\u00a0al-Ma\u02bfarri\u2019s poetry and other works, for instance the\u00a0<\/b>Luzumiyyat?<\/b><\/p>\n

GS:\u00a0<\/strong>It might not change it, but it will certainly round off the picture and add to the understanding. The worldview expressed in the\u00a0Epistle<\/i>\u00a0\u2013rationalism, skepticism, pessimism\u2013 corresponds to that of the\u00a0Luz\u016bmiyy\u0101t<\/i>; this is also the case with al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b\u2019s ethics, especially his sense of justice and compassion with the suffering creature. But while his poems are kept grey and drab, the\u00a0Epistle<\/i>\u00a0is colorful;\u00a0in the\u00a0Epistle<\/i>,\u00a0the\u00a0thoughts that are expressed in the\u00a0Luz\u016bmiyy\u0101t<\/i>\u00a0in an abstract way are conveyed in lively scenes and colorful episodes. Just think of the poor women and animals in the\u00a0Epistle<\/i>, who had a miserable life on earth, but are compensated for their sufferings with a place in paradise.<\/p>\n

AL: This must have been a tremendous challenge, both to interpret and to translate. Were there moments that were unexpectedly enjoyable?\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

GS:\u00a0<\/strong>There were many enjoyable moments, whether expected or not. One was when I realized that in Geert Jan I had met the ideal collaborator. As for another, let me perhaps relate a very touching moment nearly 50 years ago. I was a young student and had just heard about al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b\u2019s\u00a0Epistle<\/i>\u00a0in a seminar. I then translated an episode without any help from my professor and without knowing that partial English and French translations existed. It was the episode of the tree of damsels, to me still the most witty and intriguing passage of the two parts. When I actually succeeded in this translation, this was a noteworthy moment. I then wished that I eventually would get the chance to translate the complete work. This wish has now been fulfilled, which fills me with great joy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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