{"id":13415,"date":"2015-07-13T09:09:44","date_gmt":"2015-07-13T13:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=13415"},"modified":"2015-07-13T09:09:44","modified_gmt":"2015-07-13T13:09:44","slug":"arabic-literature-is-from-mars-english-literature-from-venus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/arabic-literature-is-from-mars-english-literature-from-venus\/","title":{"rendered":"Arabic Literature Is from Mars, English Literature from\u00a0Venus:"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Comparative Balancing Act<\/h3>\n

BY MLYNXQUALEY<\/a><\/span><\/span> on<\/em> 0<\/a> )<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The third session of \u201cA Corpus Not a Canon: A Workshop on the Library of Arabic Literature,\u201d a panel series hosted by Dame Marina Warner and\u00a0LAL General Editor\u00a0Philip Kennedy at All Souls College, Oxford in April, focused on \u201cLAL\u2019s importance to comparative literature and ways of reading\u201d:<\/em><\/p>\n

Marina Warner led a discussion that included comparativists Dominique Jullien, Ros Ballaster, LAL International Advisory Board member Wen-chin Ouyang, and Matthew Reynolds. The books in focus were <\/em>The Epistle of Forgiveness, by Ab\u016b l-\u02bfAl\u0101\u02be al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b, edited and translated by Geert Jan Van Gelder and Gregor Schoeler; and <\/em>The Principles of Sufism, by \u02bf\u0100\u02beishah al-B\u0101\u02bf\u016bn\u012byah, edited and translated by Th. Emil Homerin.<\/em><\/p>\n

These session overviews will run every Monday from now through July 20, insha\u2019allah:<\/em><\/p>\n

\"896236738148\"
\n<\/a>Ab\u016b l-\u02bfAl\u0101\u02be al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b.<\/h6>\n

As we started the third session of the Library of Arabic Literature\u2019s April workshop, Marina Warner reminded participants of the difficulty of the task at hand.<\/p>\n

In the workshop\u2019s second session, speakers explored the wide range of literary modes and genres that are brought together inside the LAL\u2019s blue jacket. Although these genres overlap with those from other traditions, Warner noted there is still \u201cno easy way\u201d of comparing the distinct literary genres and values of \u201cone cultural language with another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, the texts in focus during the third session aren\u2019t the simplest ones to approach as a contemporary Anglophone reader. The writing explored in the second session would have made an easier entry point, as Two Travel Books<\/em> reads enough like contemporary Anglophone travel writing, and Ibn al-Sa\u2019\u012b\u2019s Consorts of the Caliphs<\/em> may not be thirteenth-century gossip writing, but it can be read that way.<\/em><\/p>\n

By contrast, Ab\u016b l-\u02bfAl\u0101\u02be al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b\u2019s The Epistle of Forgiveness<\/em> and \u02bf\u0100\u02beishah al-B\u0101\u02bf\u016bn\u012byah\u2019s The Principles of Sufism<\/em> require placing oneself in a different framework of literary expectations.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, both Matthew Reynolds (who focused on The Epistle<\/em>) and Ros Ballaster (who focused on The Principles<\/em>) found interesting points of overlap and tension between their chosen volumes and Western texts. But UCLA comparativist Dominique Jullien, who discussed how the texts would float in the classroom, was less enthusiastic.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeen from the point of view of not just the California student, this is literature from Mars,\u201d Jullien said. \u201cIt is absolutely and radically alien.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Epistle <\/em>and the Commedia<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

While acknowledging that previous scholars had been wrong in tracing a direct line of descent between al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b\u2019s Epistle <\/em>and Dante\u2019s Divina Commedia, <\/em>Reynolds and Jullien nonetheless found that links between the two works were fruitful.<\/p>\n

For Jullien, situating The Epistle <\/em>vis-a-vis the Commedia <\/em>was essential, and \u201cdespite the inaccuracies,\u201d she felt it was important to talk about al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b as \u201cthe Arab Dante.\u201d Or, if one wanted to make the link less normalizing of a European center and Arab periphery, one might call him Dante\u2019s older step-brother.<\/p>\n

As Jullien saw it, bits and pieces of The Epistle <\/em>could be wedged within a comparative course that focused mostly on classical European works. She suggested a course on eschatological tourism, which \u201cin addition to the usual suspects\u2014The Odyssey,<\/em> The Aeneid<\/em>, and The Commedia<\/em>\u2014would have some excerpts by al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reynolds, by contrast, was far more excited about The Epistle <\/em>on its own terms. He first confessed that he had no knowledge of Arabic literature, even in translation, but said of The Epistle: <\/em>\u201cThe good news is, I loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was something new for me, aesthetically,\u201d Reynolds said, noting how different reading this was from reading a text in the European tradition. \u201cYou get these conversations that you would expect to be dry, but in fact have tremendous energy behind them. It\u2019s satirical, but it\u2019s also a warm presentation of this character. This is a guy who loves poetry. He loves poetry so much that he\u2019s almost unbearably boring about it. But being boring about it is also kind of admirable, and kind of enjoyable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reynolds went on to give a lively reading from the text, and his manner of reading\u2014the emphases laid [I\u2019m not sure what this means\u2014he was emphasizing certain words but not others? To be honest, I don\u2019t remember him having a particularly unusual manner of reading. Maybe this should be something like \u201c\u2014with emphases laid on particular phrases\/words\u2014\u201c)\u2014was a sort of comparativism in itself.<\/p>\n

When Reynolds moved on to what a comparativist could do with the text, he also tracked back to Dante\u2019s Commedia<\/em>. Reynolds was most interested in how The Epistle <\/em>treated textual transmission and error, and in the differing ways poets are imagined in The Commedia<\/em> and The Epistle<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Dante\u2019s imagining of how poetry would figure in the afterlife, you have this conjuring of an idea of utterance, of a body of work, and a turning of that work into a figure who can speak with authority in the afterlife,\u201d Reynolds said. \u201cBut there\u2019s nothing really about misunderstanding and error and textual transmission\u2014and the works having varied as they\u2019ve been recited in different ways. Whereas in this text [The Epistle<\/em>], that\u2019s where the interest is. Their relationship to their writing is quite different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, it\u2019s tempting to see Dante as having a pre-modern or modern view of textual authority, while al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b\u2019s is decidedly post-modern.<\/p>\n

But Reynolds was quick to question the connections he\u2019d made. \u201cOn the one hand, the text is appealing to me, and I\u2019m finding something in it that speaks me to. But on the other hand, because I don\u2019t have the right scholarly knowledge, I\u2019m a bit uneasy with this recognition that I have,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy imaginative involvement with the text has a value, but it needs to be rebutted as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Principles of Sufism <\/em>and Christian female mystics<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oxford scholar of English literature Ros Ballaster also engaged imaginatively with \u02bf\u0100\u02beishah al-B\u0101\u02bf\u016bn\u012byah\u2019s The Principles of Sufism, <\/em>noting that she \u201cthought immediately of the kind of mysticism in the prophetic writings and speech of Christian women\u2026the medieval mystics in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ballaster found a particular resonance between sixteenth-century al-B\u0101\u02bf\u016bn\u012byah and the work of seventeenth-century English author Anna Trapnell, seeing in both \u201can identity that has been set alight through an encounter with the divine,\u201d and in both an attempt \u201cto ignite that audience as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Ballaster\u2019s view, al-B\u0101\u02bf\u016bn\u012byah was less focused on her personal journey than the Christian women mystics. There is almost no mention of al-B\u0101\u02bf\u016bn\u012byah\u2019s femaleness in the text, and \u201cthere\u2019s no biographical information, no self-reference. In this respect, it reads more like what I would recognize as a conduct book or an instructional work than a spiritual biography of a mystic experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

While searching for a section \u201cthat gave me \u02bf\u0100\u02beishah\u2019s voice, or her poetry,\u201d Ballaster found such a thing wasn\u2019t easy to find. The mode of writing as re-representation, Ballaster said, felt very different from a contemporary Anglo-European understanding of creativity. This, she noted, could help us shift our ideas of what \u201ccreativity\u201d meant in writing.<\/p>\n

The fact that al-B\u0101\u02bf\u016bn\u012byah didn\u2019t lay emphasis on her gender also had another interest for Ballaster, who noted that the author doesn\u2019t \u201cshow any particular sense that the male experts she cites have any more authority than she does. She evidences none of that kind of uncomfortable struggle that I see in Christian women\u2019s mystic writing with male priests and authority figures.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s much to celebrate in reading a woman\u2019s unproblematic demonstration of her learning,\u201d Ballaster said. \u201cWhich is not something I encounter often in the European texts I read.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ballaster had some anxiety about reading the text in translation, as it meant she wasn\u2019t able to see \u201cpatterns of language that might be visual or sonic.\u201d To her, the poetry read \u201cstartlingly like free verse,\u201d although Ballaster knew from the accompanying materials that this reflected the translator\u2019s decisions rather than a lack of strict poetic conventions in the Arabic.<\/p>\n

Ballaster added that she connected to some of the text\u2019s more physical metaphors, such as \u201crepentance is a fire in the heart and a rift that never mends\u201d while expressing anxiety that these metaphors might be considered tired or overused in the Arabic tradition.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Arab St. Theresa of Avila, for example\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Each of the panel members had different approaches to what \u201ccomparativism\u201d meant when reading these texts, which raised the question: How should (and shouldn\u2019t) non-Arabists approach LAL texts? What sort of local, temporal, or global contexts make for vivid, productive, and enjoyable reading? How should the feeling of a connection\u2014or the lack of a connection\u2014be interrogated?<\/p>\n

Jullien felt that making strong links to the European tradition was \u201can indispensable way in to these texts\u2026if the non-specialist Western reader is to connect in any deep way with these books.\u201d While calling al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b \u201cthe Arab Dante,\u201d she referred to al-B\u0101\u02bf\u016bn\u012byah as \u201cthe Arab St. Theresa of Avila, for example,\u201d and insisted \u201cdespite the inaccuracies, that we actually take this sort of thing seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jullien felt we must \u201ctriangulate Dante and al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b \u2026to inject some relatability into the foreign, into the impenetrability. It really helps.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later discussion among workshop participants focused on whether Dante really created an access point for contemporary students, with Sajjad Rizvi suggesting that students were more likely to relate to more contemporary books or films. Al-B\u0101\u02bf\u016bn\u012byah\u2019s work could potentially rub up against other spiritual guides, including self-help books, and al-Ma\u02bfarr\u012b, as Reynolds noted, with post-modern questionings of textual transmission. Or, to create a different sort of context, Al-B\u0101\u02bf\u016bn\u012byah\u2019s spiritual guidebook could be read in the context of her own collection of poetry, Emanations of Grace.<\/em><\/p>\n

Reynolds\u2019 and Ballaster\u2019s anxieties also point to how it might be productive for comparativist readers to de-center themselves and their own literary traditions.<\/p>\n

Wen-chin Ouyang, who was the only speaker on the panel who was also an Arabist, talked about living both inside and outside the Arabic tradition. She echoed what Reynolds found interesting in The Epistle,<\/em> noting that \u201cthere is already,\u201d in the Arabic tradition, \u201ctheorizing about reading and modes of writing. And that is a very productive site of thinking more about how to read classical Arabic literature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ouyang also didn\u2019t want us to forget that we were supposed to be enjoying these texts, and this sometimes means letting ourselves flow along with the writer: \u201cThere is pleasure of the text, and that pleasure derives\u2026from drifting and not sticking to the point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Previous sessions:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Re-membering: How to Assemble a Corpus of Classical Arabic Literature<\/a><\/p>\n

Genre, Anxiety, and the Plurivocality of the Arabic Tradition<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Comparative Balancing Act BY MLYNXQUALEY on JUNE 29, 2015 \u2022 ( 0 ) The third session of \u201cA Corpus Not a Canon: A Workshop on the Library of Arabic Literature,\u201d a panel series...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arab-culture","category-arabic","category-translation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13415"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13417,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13415\/revisions\/13417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}