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Inquiries Into Proto-World Literatures: the Challenging “Literary Fate” Of FOCUS 38 Modern studies in Persian prosody fre- quently debate the origin of the quatrain Inquiries into Proto-World (Per. robā‛ī - Ar. rubā‛ī)1 as a metrical form Literatures: The Challenging which clearly arose in an indigenous lyrical tradition. This identifies quatrains as the “Literary Fate” of the Quatrain entry point to claim Persian prosodic pat- terns as having an independent origin across the Persian and from the Arabic ones. However, late 20th century scholarship relies on a response- Arabic Literary Tradition approach to the matter, and is essentially grounded in dismantling Arabo-centric prosodic categorization - i.e. founded on the Khalīlian prosodic model2 - which gathers both traditions since the 9th cen- tury, rather than on overcoming the Khalīlian framework as a self-evident late feature within the earlier Persian lyrical tra- dition. Chiara Fontana Recent studies of comparative prosody among Arabic-Persian-Urdu and Turkish Western studies on Persian metrical sys- poetry. This study closely investigates the works (e.g. Ashwini and Kiparsky 147-173) tem debate the linguistic origins of qua- spread of robāʽī/rubāʽī from Persian to broaden Prince and Paoli’s approach to trains, (Per. robāʽiyyāt - Ar. rubāʽiyyāt) in Arabic literature employing a holistic cul- generative prosody across Middle Eastern Arabic, and regard prosodic Persian turally embedded methodology to re- languages, yet the analysis of the quatrain schemes independently of Arabic coun- read their linkages in global terms, as an is still essentially founded on metrical terparts, despite reciprocally influenced example of an inherited “Proto-World observations. This partial perspective may metrical patterns. Attempts to dismantle Literature”. be insufficient to describe a stratified liter- Arabo-centric critical inferences about ary phenomenon whose in-depth explora- Persian metres are largely prosodic obser- Keywords: Persian and Arabic Literatures, tion - especially if in a comparative cross- vations of the robāʽi/rubāʽī, thus neglect- Rhetorical and Metrical Studies, temporal perspective – is instead ing their ontological evolution from a Comparative Philology, Quatrains, concerned with a broader grasp of meth- metrical scheme into an aesthetically Rubā‛iyyāt, World literature. odological literary tools, such as those of experimental frame in Persian and Arabic poetics, rhetoric, formal and thematic con- Middle East – Topics & Arguments # 13 –2019 FOCUS 39 ceptualization, and etymological and phil- upon numerous scholarly approaches ing - hence a “Proto-World-Literature” - ological inquiries. besides the metrical one (e.g. etymologi- independently from sectarian Persian or Moreover, as claimed by Ďurišin the mod- cal, philological, formal, thematic, socio- Arabic inquiries. ern notion of “World Literature” is often – literary), to focus on three critical unex- erroneously - conceived inseparably from plored areas within the copious literature Rubāʽi and Dūbayt within Arabic Literary comparative literatures (20-22; Tötösy de on the Persian or Arabic quatrain: Corpora: a Terminological and Semantic Zepetnek and Mukherjee 12). However, Obscurity more important in his vision is that com- a) the terminological and semantic obscu- The quatrain is a well-defined lyrical model parative literatures and world literature rity of the terms rubāʽi and dūbayt within of Persian origin, which was originally sometimes show an inherent axiomatic Arabic literary corpora; b) the ontological accompanied by music and tied to a spe- perception of cultural boundaries, often shift that led to a different literary concep- cific group of lyrical compositions struc- understood as tied to modern national tualization of robāʽī/rubāʽī’ within Persian tured in four lines, hence similar but differ- distinctions or influenced by Eurocentric and Arabic literary traditions; c) the com- ent from the dūbaytī lyrical form (Persian perspectives. According to Franco plex modern conceptualization of the compound noun: dū ῾two’; bayt ῾verse’). Moretti’s implementations to Ďurišin’s Persian and Arabic rubāʽiyyāt as a literary As well recalled by Elwell-Sutton (“The intellectual agenda, this is a paradoxical trend or a non-technical genre. Rūbā‛ī in Early Persian Literature” 634- approach, considering that world litera- Overcoming the impasse of an alleged 635), since Khalīlian prosodic analysis is ture actually aimed to overstep these as integral systemic approach to world litera- concerned with the hemistich (Per. meṣrā‛ limitations (54). The evaluation of interlit- ture which, nonetheless, sometimes - Ar. shaṭr) as a unit and not the verse, the erary processes rather than mere differ- appears woven into a modern discourse respective Persian and Arabic terms ences/similarities becomes more compel- on modernity and unidirectional hege- robā‛ī/rubā‛ī - which mean “composed by ling in the case of cross temporal inquiry monic influences (Moretti 56), this critical four elements” - stress attention on the on Persian and Arabic quatrains. Their lit- analysis instead aims to uncover the spe- specific rhyming and prosodic rules erary fate cut across a historical and cul- cific ontologies to which the quatrain alter- related to the four hemistiches within the tural context where clear boundaries have natively refers within the “grey-zone” of a couple of verses. not already been traced, e.g. the Islamic pre-modern translocal literary continuum. To begin with, it is worth noting the decep- culture between the 9th and 14th centu- All this, highlighting how the more in- tive homonymy between dūbayt and ries (Utas, “The Literary Expression”), and depth exploration of Persian and Arabic rubā‛ī within the Arabic literary tradition proceeds, even according to significant studies in this case, might help shed light once these forms were introduced from transformations, across the new national on the “constellation of poetries and poet- Persian models, between approximately contexts of 19th and 20th centuries. ics and a consortium of ideas” (al-Musawi 9th and 10th centuries. In fact, according This inquiry assumes these considerations 36) which grew up within a secular hybrid to Persianists such as Thiesen, the dūbaytī3 as a methodological premise, and draws space of linguistic and cultural encounter- generically indicates a “two-couplet Middle East – Topics & Arguments # 13 –2019 FOCUS 40 poem” composed in different meters, states, was already known among Arabs Ḥijāz peninsula had been conceivably which “can be considered as the two initial tribes under the name muthannāt (allo- established already during the pre-Islamic lines of any lyric composition (ghazal or graphic of muthannā, ῾doubled’), a typol- period, as attested by the introduction of qaṣīda)”4 and follows a number of rhyming ogy of composition considered to be a Persian musical instruments and forms of patterns (172).5 Hence within Persian tradi- form of popular – and hence oral – poetry. chanted poetry thanks to the sought-after tion, the term dūbaytī refers to the specific Drawing upon the modern work of Shawqī Persian and Byzantine brides brought lyrical composition that is clearly indepen- Ḍayf, it is actually possible to propose a from Lakhmid and Ghassanid kingdoms dent from the robā‛ī verse. more plausible reconstruction of relations (194-196). For his part, the Persianist Elwell- In comparison, early references to the between dūbaytī and muthannāt than that Sutton, observed that the Persian dūbaytī introduction of Persian dūbaytī in written provided by al-Jawharī. The muthannāt is prior to the 9th-10th centuries “has argu- form within Arabic literary tradition quoted as a composition related to the ably been employed mostly as a form of conventionally date back to al-Bākharzī (d. pre-Islamic Arabic genre of hazaj (192), oral folk-poetry” (“The Rūbā'ī in Early 1075 – Talib, "Dūbayt in Arabic", which is also a prosodic metre in both Persian Literature” 635). Given this, the Encyclopaedia of Islam online), whilst also Persian and Arabic classic traditions, and lack of direct sources about the pre-Islamic previous references are quoted by - with specific variations - also the typical Persian dūbaytī and Arabic muthannāt al-Anbārī, al Iṣfahānī and at-Tanūkhī (fl. 9th- metre of the quatrain. In the same pas- leads only to the supposition of a nexus of 10th century) as recalled in al-Jawharī (d. sage, quoting the ancient poet al-Mufaḍḍal multiple connections between these folk 1003). It was al-Jawharī, in fact, who noted aḍ-Ḍabbī (d. 780), Ḍayf reports that the poetry forms. “the dūbayt also called rubā‛ī” was intro- pre-Islamic Arabic genre of hazaj was Within the link traced by ancient Arab duced into the Arabic literary tradition among the three categories of lyrics most scholars between the hazaj and folk poetry during this time period (422). Other early employed in amusement poetry and also accompanied by music, the term dūbayt reference includes an acknowledgement the one more suitable to the adaptation of seems to emerge more consistently with in an anecdote of at-Tanūkhī who refers lyrical forms borrowed from Persian tradi- respect to early sources, during the 14th that Abū Aḥmad ‛Abd Allah Ibn ‛Umar tion. The other two are called an-naṣb and and 15th century and within the works of al-Ḥārithū encountered an anonymous as-sinād. While the first typology con- al-Ḥillī (d. 1339), Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406) and Persian mystic who “started to sing some- cerned religious and elegiac forms of al-Ibshīhī (d. 1448). According to thing similar
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