1.14.1
Ahahahah! Ahahahah! Thank God! Thank God I’m done with the composition of that maqāmah, and with its number too,228 for it was weighing on my mind. Now all that remains for me to do is to urge the reader to read it. Though more coarsely woven than the finely knit rhymed prose of al-Ḥarīrī and despite its prosodic irregularities, it may, for all that, be worn, and commended for its beneficial verities. I believe the second will be better than it was, the third better than the second, the fourth better than the third, and the fiftieth better than the forty-ninth. (Don’t panic! Don’t panic at these attempts to shock and scare! There are in fact, as promised, only four.)
1.14.2
Now I have to squeeze my sconce to extract some more nice thoughts, figures, and choice words, at the same time avoiding chatter, a process that scholars refer to, I believe, as “voiding verbiage.” But hang on a moment, and I’ll ask them! What do you call words that are so bursting with meaning that they drench the reader, so that I can fetch them for you? If you don’t tell me their name right away, don’t blame me if I use their opposite. I exist, and it is my custom to look for what exists, not for what doesn’t. Given that the term “voiding verbiage” exists and its opposite doesn’t, it is perfectly appropriate for me to turn to it in preference to some other term. You may if you wish put your heads together and come up with a word — but instead of flying at each other’s throats and fighting, pecking out each other’s eyes and biting, or striking with swords and swiping with words, or grabbing each other by your pockets and skirts, do so sedately and soberly, serenely and rationally, for when someone sedate bestows a name on something, it comes out as sedate as he is and cannot thereafter be converted into something different. In fact, the thing named may even acquire dignity from the name given it, even when it is innately insignificant and frivolous. Have you not noticed how the words of a slim poet come out slim, and those of a big poet come out big? As the saying goes, “The words of kings are the kings of words.” By the same token, poetry written by a woman is as bewitching to the mind and teasing to the heart as a woman.
1.14.3
An exception to this principle is the donation of the child by the father, meaning the donation by the father of the material used to form the child. By making an exception of this I don’t mean to say that the father becomes pregnant and gives birth but that the father may be ugly and the child turn out good-looking. The reason is that, because conception requires the collaboration of two persons, i.e., a man and a woman, it is unclear which contribution is determinative. The father does not have absolute sway to shape the child as he wishes. He may have in mind at that instant a certain form that he finds attractive, while the mother, God protect her, may have another, depending on her preferences and whatever is then uppermost in her mind; as a result the child may come out a bit of this and bit of that. By the way, it cannot be said that the man is incapable of summoning up a familiar form at that moment just because he’s all in a tizzy over the business of that formative material. That’s not credible in the case of one who’s become used to what is always the same old thing where he’s concerned, for long acquaintance modifies a person’s attitude to a thing, and, as a result, he deals with it with good sense and deliberation. Take for example the well-fed cook, who prepares all the various dishes with perfect skill and mastery, unlike the hungry cook, who hurries his work and botches it.
1.14.4
Know then (after this polished excursion and prolonged and stimulating insertion) that the Fāriyāq went one day to a priest to make confession to him of all he had done, said, and thought that he didn’t ought. The priest asked, among other questions, “I hear you’re fond of poetry and tunes, which are among the worst causes of evil and passion. Has the Recoiler ever put it into your mind to court in verse a woman firm of breast, rosy of cheek, the kohl on her eyes clear to see, her buttocks wobbling free, slender of waist, her teeth widely spaced, her legs with thickness and splendor graced, her forearms muscled and without slack, her hair and nipples black, her eyes startling in the contrast of black and white, her hands with henna bright, her lips fine, her eyebrows a thin, arched line, her belly-button round, her belly folds unbound, her smile sweet, her figure svelte, with saliva like honey, sweet enough to turn iron into candy?” Said the Fāriyāq, “I have indeed done so, but I see that you are my fellow in this craft, for I note how well you can describe a beautiful woman.”
1.14.5
Said the other, “It isn’t my job to produce such verbal fabrication, just something I’ve learned by analogy and spontaneous inspiration, for all who listen to verse find their brains filled with such descriptions perverse. But, be that as it may, you must burn your love poems, each one, singly and in sum, for they incite the heedless to err and you’ll be punished for them on that day when men are ‘seized by their forelocks,’229 and you hold extrication dear.” “How,” said the Fāriyāq, “can you expect me to burn in a single moment things I stayed up working on for many a night, during which I knew no slumber and on which I worked as hard as a horse in a race, or cameleers who, from dusk to dawn, maintain their pace? When I finished a line of the poem, it would seem to me as though I’d covered a stage on the road to her whom I was wooing, and, when the poem was done, I’d imagine I’d reached her and all that stood between us was for me to open the door, which made the conclusion in my case an inauguration, in contrast with all other poets. That is why I didn’t attempt long poems — lest the time it took to write them should be as long as the time it took me to cover the distance to my beloved. Does it make sense that all that effort of mine should be thwarted for the sake of the heedless? Not to mention that I don’t want them to read what I write anyway, because if they don’t understand it, they’ll ask the scholars, who will proceed to hold it up to scorn, accusing me of mistakes and pointing out shortcomings. They never see merit in the writings of the young and humble, and even if they do, my only reward will be, ‘God shame him! God destroy him! May his mother be bereaved of him! May he have no father and no mother!’” Said the priest, “If on stubbornness you insist, and in divergence from the road of right guidance you persist, I’ll withhold absolution and expose your dirty laundry in open church for ablution.”
1.14.6
“Don’t be so hasty,” said the Fāriyāq, “for ‘haste is of the Devil’! Do you suppose, if I praised you in a long ode, you could take that as expiation for my sin? And if you’d like me to laud therein each monk and nun, each contemplative (male and female), each ascetic (male and female), each recluse (male and female), each person who stands long in prayer (male and female), each hermit (male and female), each ecstastic reciter (male and female), each preacher (male and female), each caller on God’s name (male and female), each God-fearer (male and female), each celibate (male and female), each one who arises from sleep to pray (male and female), each one who prostrates him- (or her-)self in prayer, each one who humbles him- (or her-)self before God, and each teller (male or female) of the rosary, I could do so.” The priest thought for a moment and apparently discovered that love poetry wasn’t such a great sin, for if it described a woman as having huge buttocks, fat arms, and round breasts, and she really did, then it would be just like someone saying “the moon has risen” when it really had, or “the clouds are parting” when they really were. It would be a lie and a sin only if the woman so characterized was in fact flat-chested and flat-buttocked or used stuffing to make people think she had a large backside, and the one who saw her took what she’d done for real and said what he did without exercising due caution.