The Hunt in Arabic Poetry

Jaroslav Stetkevych

Description

Among the world’s major literary traditions, Arabic poetry is perhaps unique in that the theme of the hunt runs in a continuous, if uneven, current from the pre-Islamic, oral tradition, dating as far back as the fifth century CE, through the coming of Islam in the seventh century and the Umayyad and 'Abbasid caliphates, ultimately serving as a classical substrate for the radical Modernism of the twentieth century. This striking continuity of theme and motif of the pursuer—the hunter, companions, his steed, hounds, or falcon—and the pursued, whether the prey be oryx, onager, gazelle, hare, quail, or fox, is subject to dramatic transformations of poetic genre, structure, and sensibility throughout the arc of Arab cultural history. Through elegant translations and compelling interpretations, Jaroslav Stetkevych brings this dynamic Arabic tradition fully into the purview of contemporary cultural and humanistic studies.

In the chapters of Part I of The Hunt in Arabic Poetry, Stetkevych explores the divergent themes of the heroic and the anti-heroic hunter within the grand genre of archaic Arabic odes and its transformation with the transition to Islam to a poetics of sacrifice and redemption. Part II traces the emergent aesthetics of the free-standing hunt lyric within the courtly culture of the Umayyad and ‘Abbasid caliphates and the transition from description to imagism, concluding with the appearance of the long narrative hunt poem. Part III moves to the high Modernism of twentieth-century Arab free-verse poets and with it the reemergence of the classical theme of the hunt, now as a metaphor for the Modernist poet’s metapoetic pursuit of the poem itself.

Sujets

• Arabic
• Middle Est
• Middle Eastern
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• General officer
• Middle East
• Arabic language
• Poetry
• General
• Islam

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 20 décembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268092924
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

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THE HUNT IN ARABIC POETRYStetkevych-00FM_Layout 1 11/10/15 10:11 AM Page iiStetkevych-00FM_Layout 1 11/10/15 10:11 AM Page iii
THE
HUNT
IN
ARABIC
POETRY
From Heroic to Lyric to Metapoetic
:
Jaroslav Stetkev ych
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, IndianaStetkevych-00FM_Layout 1 11/10/15 10:11 AM Page iv
Copyright © 2016 by the University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stetkevych, Jaroslav.
The hunt in Arabic poetry : from heroic to lyric to metapoetic / Jaroslav Stetkevych.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-268-04151-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)—ISBN 0-268-04151-2 (pbk. : alk.
paper) — ISBN 978-0-268-09292-4 (web pdf)
1. Hunting in literature. 2. Arabic poetry—History and criticism. I. Title.
PJ7542.H78S74 2015
892.7'10093579—dc23
2015034486
∞ The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence
and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines
for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.Stetkevych-00FM_Layout 1 11/10/15 10:11 AM Page v
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Note on Transliteration xi
Introduction 1
  The Heroic and the Anti-Heroic in
the Early Arabic Ode: The Qaṣīdah
        The Hunt in the Pre-Islamic Ode 13
  The Hunt in the Ode at the Close
of the Archaic Period 35
  Sacrifice and Redemption: The Transformation
of an Archaic Theme in al-Ḥuṭay<ah 57
  The Hunt Poem as Lyric Genre in Classical
Arabic Poetry: The Ṭardiyyah
  The Discreet Pleasures of the Courtly Hunt:
Abū Nuwās and the >Abbāsid Ṭardiyyah 91
  From Description to Imagism: >Alī Ibn al-Jahm’s
“We Walked over Saffron Meadows” 130Stetkevych-00FM_Layout 1 11/10/15 10:11 AM Page vi
vi Contents
  Breakthrough into Lyricism:
The Ṭardiyyahs of Ibn al-Mu>tazz 139
  From Lyric to Narrative:
The Ṭardiyyah of Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī 184
  Modernism and Metapoesis:
The Pursuit of the Poem
  The Modernist Hunt Poem in >Abd al-Wahhāb
al-Bayātī and Aḥmad >Abd al-Mu>ṭīḤijāzī 225
  The Metapoetic Hunt of Muḥammad >Afīfī Maṭar 243
Notes 280
Bibliography 330
Index 343Stetkevych-00FM_Layout 1 11/10/15 10:11 AM Page vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is my pleasure to acknowledge the unflagging help and
support that led to the composition and completion of
the present book. I single out in particular my friends
and colleagues Muhsin Jasim al-Musawi of Columbia
University, for his numerous critical insights and highly
knowledgeable bibliographical suggestions, and Hassan
Elbanna Ezz al-Din of Zaqaziq University and >Ar>ar
University, for recognizing and furthering the
culturalhistorical and literary significance of my critical
enterprise. For many decades of intellectual camaraderie, from
our student days through our golden years, I would like
to express my appreciation and affection for James T.
Monroe of the University of California at Berkeley. With
an ageing scholar’s humility, as I witness the rewarding
generational changing of the guard, I owe to my
admirable wife and colleague, Suzanne Pinckney Stet ke -
vych of Georgetown University, much, if not all, that it
took to bring this book to publication.
I also owe a debt of friendship and gratitude to the
wonderful scholars and critics whom I, unfairly,
outlived but have been given the privilege of remembrance.
I begin with my dear friend, the indomitable, brilliant,
and highly cultivated Egyptian critic Louis Awad, who
was formative in the education of an entire generation
of Egyptian poets. In my work, I continue to return to
him with love and reverence. I owe special love and
remembrance to the great Egyptian historian of strong
viiStetkevych-00FM_Layout 1 11/10/15 10:11 AM Page viii
viii Acknowledgments
literary proclivity, Husayn Mu<nis, who set me on my own right track
and, in the process, put me under the tutelage of Sir Hamilton Gibb.
It was Gibb who gave me the most generous gift of his intellectual
guidance and friendship and with whom my affection and devotion still
abide. I should acknowledge as well my debt of friendship and gratitude
to the towering Egyptian critic and litterateur Ezz al-Din Ismail. For his
intellectual openness and kindness to me, to the eminent Oxford
historian Albert Hourani, I here express my enduring respect and affection.
Finally, I would like to pronounce here my admiration for and devotion
to my friend and fellow Ukrainian Omeljan Pritsak, formerly of
Harvard University, for his eminent and far-ranging historical scholarship
and his loyalty to our shared motherland.
Others were also instrumental in bringing this book to fruition.
I would like to express my gratitude to Chandra Nanette Mevis of
Indiana University for her conscientious work on preparing the manuscript
for submission. The receptive and cordial acquisitions editor of
University of Notre Dame Press, Stephen Little, has my fullest gratitude, as
does the admirably competent and meticulous copy editor of the Press,
Rebecca DeBoer. For his generous help in preparing the Arabic text,
I thank my young colleague in Arabic literature, Hussain Abulfaraj of
King Abdul Aziz University.
I am also most appreciative of the willingness of my publishers to
grant permission for republication in the present study of revised
versions of a number of earlier articles. I thank the Taylor & Francis Group
for permission to republish, as chapter 1, an expanded version of my
“The Hunt in the Arabic Qaṣīdah: The Antecedents of the Ṭardiyyah,”
in Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Language and Literature, edited by
J. R. Smart (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1996), 102–1 8. My gratitude goes to
E. J. Brill Publishers for permission to republish, now in revised form, a
series of articles on the hunt in Arabic poetry that appeared in the
Journal of Arabic Literature over the past fifteen years. “The Hunt in
Classical Arabic Poetry: From Mukhaḍram Qaṣīdah to Umayyad Ṭardiyyah,”
Journal of Arabic Literature 30, no. 2 (1999): 107–2 7, appears revised
as chapter 2; “Sacrifice and Redemption in Early Islamic Poetry:
AlḤuṭay<ah’s ‘Wretched Hunter,’” Journal of Arabic Literature 31, no. 2
(2000): 89–1 20, as chapter 3; “The Discreet Pleasures of the CourtlyStetkevych-00FM_Layout 1 11/10/15 10:11 AM Page ix
Acknowledgments ix
Hunt: Abū Nuwās and the >Abbāsid Tardiyyah,” Journal of Arabic
Literature 39, no. 2 (2008): 141– 83, as chapter 4; “The Ṭardiyyahs of Ibn
alMu>tazz: Breakthrough into Lyricism,” Journal of Arabic Literature 41,
no. 3 (2010): 201–4 4, as chapter 6; and “Modernity and Metapoetry in
Muḥammad >Afīfī Maṭar’s Hunt Poem: Ṭardiyyah,” Journal of Arabic
Literature 43, no. 2/3 (2012): 137–7 1, as chapter 9. Finally, I thank the
editors at the Japan Association for Middle East Studies for permission
to reprint, as chapter 8, an article that appeared in a special issue devoted
to Arabic poetry, guest edited by Akiko Motoyoshi Sumi of Kyoto Notre
Dame University: “Two Modernist Arabic Hunt Poems: The Ṭardiyyahs
of >Abd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī and Aḥmad >Abd al-Mu>ṭīḤijāzī,” Annals of
the Japan Association for Middle East Studies 29 (2013): 145–6 9.Stetkevych-00FM_Layout 1 11/10/15 10:11 AM Page xStetkevych-00FM_Layout 1 11/10/15 10:11 AM Page xi
NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
For bibliographical references and entries, I have used
the International Journal of Middle East Studies
transliteration system. For the transliteration of Arabic poetry
and prose quotations, I have made adjustments, using
elisions and sun-letters, to more closely approximate
pronunciation.
xiStetkevych-00FM_Layout 1 11/10/15 10:11 AM Page xiiStetkevych-00intro_Layout 1 11/10/15 10:10 AM Page 1
Introduction
In his Meditations on Hunting, the Spanish philosopher
and litterateur José Ortega y