UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) [Review of: Th. Bauer (1998) Liebe und Liebesdichtung in der arabischen Welt des 9. und 10. Jahrhunderts. (Diskurse der Arabistik, Band 2)] Schippers, A. Publication date 1999 Document Version Final published version Published in BiOr Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Schippers, A. (1999). [Review of: Th. Bauer (1998) Liebe und Liebesdichtung in der arabischen Welt des 9. und 10. Jahrhunderts. (Diskurse der Arabistik, Band 2)]. BiOr, 56(5/6), 801-805. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:02 Oct 2021 801 BOEKBESPREKINGEN — ARABICA - ISLAM 802 Arabic poetry moreS^essible. On the^Arabic title-page the strangely enough, has not much to say about it. The long-fos­ book is entitled Riyy a^iadi' ("Quaking One's Thirst of tered error that lack of theory also means lack of conscious­ BadV" of "BadV in AbmHqnce^, let me suggest another ness of the poets may now be considered as cleared up. title: Ta'tir safahdt al-ash'drj^f^qtir nafahdt al-azhdr, Per­ Thus, similar attitudes can be observed regarding the dis­ fuming the Pages ofPoetiySy DhtiHing the "Wafts of Flow­ tinction between nasib and ghazal. Arabic literary theoreti­ ers" , to end with a suitably flowery>Cigure of speech. cians did not have much interest in conventions of genres and structures of poems (which would be relevant in the case of Oxford, July 1999 GeerNl^ VAN GELDER nasib and ghazal), and therefore did not care much about the corresponding terminological distinctions. * * Nevertheless, both poets and their public were acquainted * with such conventions, and their knowledge of them was an important condition for the functioning of literary communi­ cation. Nothing proved this more clearly than poems in which BAUER, Thomas — Liebe und Liebesdichtung in der arabi- such conventions are obviously played with, or the fact that schen Welt des 9. und 10. Jahrhunderts. (Diskurse der modem Arabists, speaking about ghazal and nasib respec­ Arabistik, Band 2). Verlag Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, tively, irrespective of which definition their works are based 1998 (24 cm, VI, 549). ISBN 3-447-04104-8. ISSN on, in the end always refer to the same phenomenon. 0949-6807. DM 110,-. The contents of a ghazal are thus different from those of This book deals with ghazal poetry in the 9th and 10th cen­ the nasib. In later centruries, the introduction of a polythe­ tury C.E. The definition of ghazal used by the author is the matic poem could be a wine passage, but also a ghazal pas­ one shaped by Arabists, who differentiate between the terms sage (and even in Hebrew Spanish Literature, a passage about nasih and ghazal, which in the minds of medieval Arabs the complaint about Sion instead of the complaint about the meant, equally and indiscriminately, love poetry. However, atldl, next to real nasib, wine introductions and ghazal intro­ there is a big difference between the traditional love prologue ductions A.S.). of the Qasida and the Love Poem as it stands on its own. Bauer says (my translation): Such Arabists as Renate Jacobi not only defined the nasib "According to the present-day current definition, a Qasida and its difference from ghazal poetry in terms of its function is defined as a polythematic poem, which at least consists of (introduction to the polythematic ode or qasida), but also an introductory nasib and a conclusive part (in this case also described the contents. She says: "the generic features which a madlh). The nasib can also be replaced by an introductory determine its identity as a literary form ... are to be defined part with another theme. The most known example is the sub­ as follows: stitution of nasib by a wine scene, which occurs for instance a. an elegiac concept of love, in al-Buhturi's Dlwdn. b. the evocation of memories, and Since the conception of nasib cannot be deprived too much c. a Bedouin setting alluded to by generic signals, i.e. from its original on the basis of contents defined meaning and place names of the Hidjaz, traditional names of the beloved, reduced to but a structure unit, one ought not to say the nasib terms and formulas from pre-Islamic love poetry". has become a wine passage, rather one has to say: the nasib has been substituted by a wine passage. In the case of a poem On page 196, Thomas Bauer produces a synoptic table by al-Buhturi the nasib is even substituted by a ghazal." which contraposes ghazal with nasib on the basis of its respective contents: so ghazal can be directed to male as well The book begins with an Introductory chapter (Chapter 1) as female beloved, whereas nasib has only female beloved in which the author talks about questions such as love persons as its subject. In ghazal the love relationship is actu­ poetry in connection with the history of Arabic mentality ally existent, or not yet existent, whereas the nasib refers to and literary history. In this chapter, Thomas Bauer also tells love relationship in the past. In a ghazal the beloved can be us about his method: trying to reconstruct the literary com­ reached, in a nasib the beloved cannot be reached. Ghazal munication process of the 9th and 10th centuries, without plays a role in the present time — it is possible to identify interfering with our own twentieth-century preconceptions oneself with the lover — whereas a nasib is a predominantly of a priori convictions about poetry. "A poem from the 10th literary composition with references to Bedouin places with century has only sense within the context of a literary com­ atldl (ruins of the camp site) etc. However, according to munication process. The question what the poets want to Bauer, his synoptic table cannot give definite criteria as to say to us, can a priori only be answered with 'nothing at whether some poetry is nasib of ghazal, because this depends air." As an observer, the researcher has the task of recon­ ultimately upon the line of intertextuality in which the poet structing the literary communication system of a past period places his poem (p. 197). in order to reconstruct the "meaning", "sense" and "qual­ According to Bauer, the above-mentioned problem of def­ ity" of a text. inition has its origin in the fact that the Arab poets used tech­ "Because the participants in the literary communication niques and followed conventions of genres for which theo­ system of the author's period of research cannot be inter­ reticians had only marginal or no interest, whereas the literary viewed directly, research will be possible only by analysing theoreticians invented impressing systems of figures of transmitted texts. From different kinds of text one can get speech and style, which were only of little relevance to poets. information about producers (poets) and receivers (their pub­ In this manner, the scholars of Arabic literature of the last lic), and transmitters (such as scribes, booksellers, singers), decade noticed a series of techniques and proved that the total and the literary theoreticians of the time. But it is an illusion structure of a poem had always been conceived systemati­ to believe that one can reconstruct literary life without tak­ cally and consciously, whereas Arabic literary theory, ing refuge in the texts themselves." 803 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LVI N° 5/6, September-December 1999 804 To get a complete, representative idea of what a ghazal is, to a period, when not initiated as an instrument of a conscious the author has the intention of presenting as much of the total change. spectre of themes of the Arabic ghazal of the selected period The in the course of the 9th century bom possibility of as possible (from Chapter 7 on). "manneristic mimesis", which is always one of the possibil­ Chapter 2 deals the history of love poetry before the ities of the poet, can be considered a reaction to a change of Abbasid ghazal. It treats the old-Arabic nasib and the mentality. This change of mentality was a coexistence of Omayyad ghazal. beliefs and ideological and religious convictions which was Chapter 3 deals with ideologies of love, such as can be dis­ unthinkable in Europe at the time. In the East in the 9th cen­ tilled from 'Abbas ibn al-Ahnaf's poetry (p. 56) and devel­ tury, it was not uncommon for one person to hold different oped by the "Elegants" [zurafd'] in relation to so-called world views. The individualism and subjectivism and the plu­ courtly love, and what the effect of the ideologies of love are rality of society which resulted have been able to guarantee on Arabic literary history, ending with a part called "Triumph for a long period a balance between conceptualism and of Realism" about the domination of "realistic" love poetry, rigourism.