"Poetry in its true fullness"

Qantara: In your book "Der Arabische Diwan", you have written introductions alongside each of the poems in which you compare pre-Islamic poetry with social media today. What is the meaning behind this comparison?

Stefan Weidner: On the Arabian Peninsula 1,500 years ago, poetry emerged as the official means of communicating among the tribes. It was used to introduce oneself, to spread political messages, to air opinions, and also to attack, insult and threaten others. Ancient Arabic poetry is teeming with insults on the one hand and proclamations of one's own achievements on the other. Trump would have felt right at home.

Poems were also used to express grief or as love letters. Poetry has rhyme and meter; it was easy to disseminate because the verses were easy to remember. Back then, poetry took on functions generally filled by our media today.

That is the biggest difference between the contemporary role of poetry in the West: in our country today, it is primarily used to express what cannot be said in other media, such as complex feelings and deep thoughts. Poetry has been pushed back by the other media over time. With the ancient Arabs, we can see poetry in its authentic fullness, and that makes for a fascinating reading experience. 

Why were some of these poems passed on orally and why were some eventually written down—and how much of the original is left?

A canon developed over time. Texts that were considered particularly important or linguistically exceptional have survived. Moreover, many texts have been preserved that encapsulate the cultural memory of the tribe the poet came from. In other words, the texts that survived were those that were considered to have historical significance. 

The texts in the book date from the sixth and seventh centuries, and they will have been recorded by the eighth century at the latest. Manuscripts from the tenth century have survived to the present day, but we know that the recording began earlier.

There used to be discussions about how many verses truly date back to pre-Islamic times. Today, scholars assume that most of these verses are authentic. But there are exceptions, such as the poems of the love jester Madschnun, who sang about his lover Laila. These texts were extremely popular. It is difficult to say with certainty which of them were written by Madschnun himself and which were later put into the poet's mouth by enthusiastic imitators.

You spoke of an established canon. Are these poems still well-known in the Arab world today? What role do they play in contemporary Arabic poetry?

They are classics that are taught in schools and universities. This poetry is still regarded as the cultural memory of the Arabs. Poetry is the divan, i.e. the cultural archive of the Arabs, according to an old saying. The title of my book, "The Arabic Divan", alludes to this. 

The word diwan can mean authority, meeting place or archive, but it also refers to a volume of poetry. Governments are recognising the pre-Islamic heritage and actively promoting it, for example by supporting literature and translations. The focus is no longer only on Islam, which is politically more problematic than the old poetry. To this day, literature and poetry symbolise the secular tradition of Arab culture.

You said that the texts date from the sixth and seventh centuries, i.e. from the time immediately before the Prophet Muhammad's ministry or during the emergence of Islam. To what extent are these poems still "pre-Islamic"?

From a purely chronological point of view, the pre-Islamic era ends with the appearance of the Prophet Muhammad in 610, but in reality, there are overlaps. Many of these poets were already known before then but lived to see Muhammad. Apart from a famous poem paying homage to him, the selected poems have nothing to do with Islam. If they allude to it at all, they tend to distance themselves from the new religion. Pre-Islamic is to be understood in the book as "not characterised by Islam".

What do the poems reveal about the era and society they come from?

These are very concrete texts that describe the environment and the Arab tribal culture of their time, the family structures, the wars and the harsh customs. Hunting and everyday life feature prominently, and so do travelling by sea, the desert heat, and love stories. The realism and detailed depiction of wide-ranging aspects of life make this literature so fascinating. 

In contrast to the poetry of later times, be it in the Muslim world or Europe, there is no cultural superstructure that cushions and shapes the mere existence of these people in terms of civilisation. Ancient Arabic poetry is archaic and direct, unlike almost any other genre when it comes to hate, love, nature, sexuality and a host of other themes. 

What is important, however, is that many of the motifs and literary forms of the ancient Arabs became more widespread during the spread of Islam. They spread to the Persian-speaking world and finally to Europe. They exerted a great influence. The most famous example is the myth of Laila and Madschnun, which was recounted in countless epics, first in Persian and then in numerous other Muslim-influenced languages.

What criteria did you use to pick the texts for this book?

The basis was the canon that has developed throughout Arabic literary history. The Arabs used to draw up rankings of their best poets and poems and argued a lot about which poets were the greatest. Incidentally, this gave rise to medieval Arabic literary studies. 

I also looked at which of these poems are considered important in Western Arabic studies, a discipline of which I count myself as a member. In general, I focused on what I personally relate to, while also bearing in mind what will work well in German.

Finally, I also wanted to tie this history in with the history of Western translation, because the earlier translations by Goethe (German poet, 1749-1832, ed.), for example, who translated from third languages, or by Friedrich Rückert (German orientalist, 1788-1866), seem outdated today and are no longer read.

It is noticeable that, unlike Goethe and Rückert, you largely dispense with rhyme.

That's not entirely true; the linguistic form changes from text to text. I even rhymed more often than I originally thought possible—simply because it was often very easy and fit well. 

However, I favour using contemporary language. Even Rückert rarely adhered to the formal requirements of the original. He turned the old Arabic mono rhymes into couplets. He split up the long Arabic verses and so on. Ultimately, he translated them into the language of German Romanticism. Goethe did not use any rhymes at all in his adaptations from oriental languages but instead favoured free rhythms. 

From this point of view, my translation is a mixture of Rückert and Goethe but infused with 21st-century language. I was surprised at how well it works to translate these old texts in a modern way.

Would you recommend reading several translations to get a better idea of the original?

It depends on what you want. Reading various versions can cause confusion because you learn more about the translation preferences of earlier eras than about the original, especially as earlier translators often had a poorer textual basis than we do today. Of course, they also made mistakes. 

If you want to get as close as possible to the original without knowing Arabic—and want an idea of how difficult the original is to understand!—you can consult an interlinear translation (word-for-word translation, ed.), such as those produced by Arabists a hundred years ago. If you do this, you will find the relevant references in the detailed appendix of my book. But this is more for specialists than for a general readership. I'm aiming this book at a wider audience, including students and other interested parties who don't speak Arabic.

Der arabische Diwan: Die schönsten Gedichte aus vorislamischer Zeit
Die Andere Bibliothek
420 pages

This is an edited translation of the German original. Translated by Jess Smee.