1 Distribution Agreement In presenting this thesis or dissertation as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree from Emory University, I hereby grant to Emory University and its agents the non-exclusive license to archive, make accessible, and display my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known, including display on the world wide web. I understand that I may select some access restrictions as part of the online submission of this thesis or dissertation. I retain all ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. Signature: __________________________ _______________ Christine N. Kalleeny Date 2 FIGURING THE ICONOCLAST: THE EROS OF WINE IN TWO POEMS BY ABŪ NUWĀS AND THE SYMPOSIUM OF PLATO By Christine N. Kalleeny Doctor of Philosophy Comparative Literature Claire Nouvet, Ph.D., Advisor Kevin Corrigan, Ph.D., Committee Member Phillip F. Kennedy, Ph.D., Committee Member Deborah A. White, Ph.D., Committee Member Accepted: Lisa A. Tedesco, Ph.D. Dean of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies Date FIGURING THE ICONOCLAST: THE EROS OF WINE IN TWO POEMS BY ABŪ NUWĀS AND THE SYMPOSIUM OF PLATO 3 By Christine N. Kalleeny Ph.D., Emory University, 2010 Advisor: Claire Nouvet, Ph.D. An abstract of A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In Comparative Literature 2010 4 Abstract FIGURING THE ICONOCLAST: THE EROS OF WINE IN TWO POEMS BY ABŪ NUWĀS AND THE SYMPOSIUM OF PLATO By Christine N. Kalleeny My dissertation is a new comparative study that examines the vital relationships among erotic desire, wine, intoxication, poetry and philosophy in the wine song of the medieval Arab poet Abū Nuwās and the Symposium of Plato. Through a close textual analysis of the figure of wine (khamr) in two of Abū Nuwās’s major wine poems, I show that the wine song of Abū Nūwās can be read both as a reflection on and performance of the erotic, seductive and intoxicating experience of poetic language. More precisely, I show how wine is an ‘excessive’ and therefore iconoclastic ‘figure’ in that it violates the ideative and semantic strictures imposed by language and in so doing, eludes ‘meaning.’ Ultimately, I argue that Abū Nuwās’s poetry indicates that intoxication is a commensurate topic of poetry since poetic language, unlike the positivistic language of philosophy, does not presume to ‘satisfy’ humanity’s desire to know, envision, or comprehend ‘truth’ in its totality.’ Rather, poetry celebrates the unknowable. I then introduce the Symposium as a ‘philosophical’ lens for considering the ‘anti- philosophical’ strains of Abū Nuwās’s wine song. Reading Plato alongside Abū Nuwās is insightful insofar as the traditions of Greek and Islamic epistemology renounce poetry and drunkenness as marginal modes of experience. Through an examination of key episodes of the dialogue, I show that the Symposium is an erotic dialogue whose language is like wine in that it exceeds the ‘confines’ of a positively philosophical vision. More precisely, I read the Symposium as a literary and erotic dialogue that subversively consorts with the very forms of desire—intoxication and poetry—that pose as a menace to its famous ‘philosophical’ paradigm. Ultimately, in staging a ‘dialectic’ between the apogee of a ‘modern’ medieval school of poetry and the fifth-century patriarch of Western metaphysics, my dissertation challenges the premise of the age-old ‘quarrel’ between the tradition of metaphysics, common to both Greek and Islamic epistemology, and the poetic tradition. 5 FIGURING THE ICONOCLAST: THE EROS OF WINE IN TWO POEMS BY ABŪ NUWĀS AND THE SYMPOSIUM OF PLATO By Christine N. Kalleeny Ph.D., Emory University, 2010 Advisor: Claire Nouvet, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature 2010 Acknowledgements My thanks to the members of the committee, who have advised and supported me in more ways than I can imagine. I am grateful for the generous guidance of my advisor Dr. Claire Nouvet and the warm mentorship of Dr. Kevin Corrigan, who, over the years, have shown unwavering commitment to helping me grow as a student and scholar. I would also like to thank Dr. Deborah A White for guiding and supporting me during the last and most difficult phase of writing. My thanks also to Dr. Joseph E. Lowry who was kind enough read and comment on my chapters. I am immensely grateful to my adoring parents, who love and support me unconditionally. I am also grateful to my dear and beloved friends Emily Awad-Lawandy and Jan Amos who have both opened their homes and their hearts to me. I would also like to thank my dear friend Arif M. Rana, who has always had faith in me even when I did not. Finally, my thanks to Jennifer Hill-Boutz for reading my chapters and giving me so much encouragement. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction........................................................................................................................1 Part I: The Eros of Khamr: Poetic Seduction ...............................................................24 Introduction to Part I......................................................................................................24 Chapter 1: The Game that Never Ends......................................................................29 Chapter 2: Tempting the Theologian: the ‘Cure’ of Wine’s Seduction ...................78 Part II: Erotic Knowledge: Wine, Philosophy and Poetry in the Symposium.........114 Introduction to Part II...................................................................................................114 Chapter 3: Metaphysical Eros.................................................................................120 Chapter 4: Bacchanalian Eros.................................................................................167 Conclusion to Part II....................................................................................................235 Conclusion......................................................................................................................241 Bibliography....................................................................................................................254 Introduction 7 That which I took from, took from me— By God, what wines can do! —al-Mutanabbī1 The infamous libertine poet Abū Nuwās (d.c.814) is invariably counted, by his contemporaries and modern scholars alike, as a genius of the medieval Arab poetic tradition. His mordant wit and effervescent bravado as well as his unabashed love for wine, pederasty and all things forbidden have not only lent to his notoriety as a court poet but have made him a legendary figure in the Arab imagination. Although the vast range of his poetic repertoire reflects a verve, versatility and deftness virtually unmatched by his predecessors, Abū Nuwās is especially celebrated for his mastery of the wine poem. Trained in the Iraqi cities of Basra and Kūfa, where licentious poetry enjoyed the greatest popularity, Abū Nuwās saw the height of his career in the ‘Abbāsid capital of Baghdad where he composed some of his most exquisite masterpieces of wine praise. Most scholars agree that the praise of wine,2 which by the eighth century develops into an independent genre, reaches the height of its literary sophistication between the late eighth century and early ninth century with the emergence of the wine poem or khamrīya of Abū Nuwās. Considered by medieval and modern scholars to be an apogee of the ‘modern’ (muhdath) or urbane aesthetic which privileged the highly sophisticated use of rhetorical figures known as badī‘ (‘innovative’) and which dismissed the topoi of the classical ode as archaic, Abū Nuwās’s unique contribution to the wine poem consists primarily in his highly astute crafting of a rhetorical game whereby the values of religious and poetic 1 Th. Emil Homerin, “‘Tangled Words’: Toward a Stylistics of Arabic Mystical Verse” in Reorientations: Arabic and Persian Poetry, ed., Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana U. Press, 1994), 195. 2 The praise of wine comprised the ‘boast’ section of the pre-Islamic or ‘classical’ polythematic ode (qasīda) and also existed as independent fragments. 8 systems of thought are antagonized, violated and subverted in such a way as to sublimate and sanctify forbidden desire, often using the very religious discourse which would prohibit it. Literary Review My dissertation focuses on Abū Nuwās’s unique poetic contribution to the wine song. More precisely, I show that Abū Nuwās’s wine song can be read as a reflection on poetry itself. My dissertation opens with the following questions: Is the wine of Abū Nuwās a symbol or figure? Is it also a figure for poetry itself and, more specifically, for the intoxicating experience of poetry? These are the overarching questions that guide my close reading of the following two poems by Abū Nuwās: Censure Me Not (Da‘ ‘anka Lawmī) and You with the Magic Gaze (Yā Sāhir al-Tarf ).3 The following studies are invaluable to an appreciation for Abū Nuwās’s illustrious relationship to the ancient and sophisticated poetic