Читать книгу Legends & Romances of Spain - Lewis Spence - Страница 19

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The desert life of the Arabs while they were yet an uncultured people, although it did not permit of the development of a high standard of literary achievement, fostered the growth of a spirit of observation so keen as to result in the creation of a wealth of synonyms, by means of which the language became greatly enriched. Synonymous meaning and the discovery of beautiful and striking comparisons are the very pillars of poetry, and within a century of the era of Moslem ascendancy in the East we find the brilliant dynasty of the Abbassides (c. A.D. 750) the generous patrons of a poetic literature which the language was so well prepared to express. Story-telling had been a favourite amusement among the Arabs of the desert, and they now found the time-honoured, spontaneous exercise of the imaginative faculty stand them in good stead. The rapidity of the progress of Arabic literature at this period is, indeed, difficult of realization. Poetry, which we are now assured has ‘no market value,’ was to the truly enlightened upper classes of this people an art of the first importance, more precious than those bales of the silks of Damascus, those gems of Samarkand, or those perfumes of Syria the frequent allusion to which in their legends encrusts them, like the walls of the cavern of Ala-ed-din, with fairy jewels. But words were jewels to the Arab. When Al-Mamoun, the son of Haroun-al-Raschid, dictated terms of peace to the Greek emperor Michael the Stammerer, the tribute which he demanded from his conquered enemy was a collection of manuscripts of the most famous Greek authors. A fitting indemnity to be demanded by the prince of a nation of poets!

But conquered Spain was more especially the seat and centre of Arabian literature and learning. Cordova, Granada, Seville—indeed, all the cities of the Peninsula occupied by the Saracens—rivalled one another in the celebrity of their schools and colleges, their libraries, and other places of resort for the scholar and man of letters. The seventy libraries of Moorish Spain which flourished in the twelfth century put to shame the dark ignorance of Europe, which in time rather from the Arab than from fallen Rome won back its enlightenment. Arabic became not only the literary but the colloquial tongue of thousands of Spaniards who dwelt in the south under Moorish rule. Even the canons of the Church were translated into Arabic, about the middle of the eighth century, for the use of those numerous Christians who knew no other language. The colleges and universities founded by Abderahman and his successors were frequented by crowds of European scholars. Thus the learning and the philosophy if not the poetry of the Saracens were enabled to lay their imprint deeply upon plastic Europe. If, however, we inquire more closely into the local origins of this surprising enlightenment, we shall find it owing even more to the native Jews of Spain than to the Moors themselves.

The phase of Arabian culture with which we are most nearly concerned is its poetic achievement, and the ultimate influence which it brought to bear upon Spanish literary composition. The poetry of this richly endowed and imaginative people had at the period of their entrance into Spain arrived, perhaps, at the apogee of splendour. Its warm and luxuriant genius was wholly antagonistic to the more restrained and disciplined verse of Greece and Rome, which it regarded as cold, formal, and quite unworthy of translation. It surpassed in bold and extravagant hyperbole, fantastic imagery, and emotional appeal. The Arab poet heaped metaphor upon metaphor. He was incapable of seeing that that which was intrinsically beautiful in itself might appear superfluous and lacking in taste when combined with equally graceful but discordant elements. Many critics hasten to reassure us regarding his judgment and discrimination. But even a slight acquaintance with Arabic literature will show that they have been carried away by their prejudice in favour of the subject on which they wrote. In the garden of the Arabian poet every flower is a jewel, every plot is a silken carpet, tapestried with the intricate patterns of the weavers of Persia, and every maiden is a houri, each of whose physical attributes becomes in turn the subject of a glowing quatrain. The constant employment of synonym and superlative, the extravagance of amorous emotion, and the frequent absence of all message, of that large utterance in which the poets of the West have indicated to the generation they served how it might best grapple with problems of mind and soul—these were the weaknesses of the Arab singers. They made apophthegm take the place of message. They were unaware that the fabric of poetry is not only a palace of pleasure, but a great academy of the soul.

The true love of nature, too, seems to have been as much lacking in the Arab as in the Greek and the Roman. He enamelled his theme with the meticulous care of a jeweller. Not content with painting the lily, he burnished it until it seemed a product of the goldsmith’s art. To him nature was a thing not only to be improved upon, but to be surpassed, a mine of gems in the rough, to be patiently polished.

But it would be wrong to refuse to the imaginative literature of the Arabs a high place among the world’s achievements, and we must regret that, for causes into which we cannot enter here, opportunities for development and discipline were not vouchsafed it. As we read the history of the Arabian states with their highly developed civilization, their thronged academies, and their far-flung dominions, reaching from Central Asia to the western gates of the Mediterranean, and turn, to-day to the scenes where such things flourished, we must indeed be unimaginative if we fail to be impressed by the universal wreck and ruin to which these regions have been exposed. The great, emulous, and spirited race which conquered and governed them gathered the world to its doors, and the rude peoples of Europe clustered about its knees to listen to the magical tales of unfolding science which fell from its lips. From the desert it came, and to the desert it has returned.

Djamshîd, the palace is a lions’ lair

Where ye held festival with houris fair;

The desert ass bounds upon Barlaam’s tomb:

Where are the pomps of yesterday, ah, where?