Impostures. al-Ḥarīrī
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Presently I praised them to the Companie, that adopted them as Friends; and by my doing shook before them laden Boughs, that battered them down wth Frute. We were that Evening at a high Camping-Place that gave a view of the Towns below, and of the cheerful Fires kindled therein, at which Sight, Aboo Zeid, perceiving that his Budget was now as full as his Miserie abated, declared himself filthish and mucky, and asked leave to descend to a Town, where he might bathe himself, and join Healthe of Body, to Ease of Mind.
4.8I answered him thus: “If thou must go, make all haste to depart, and as much to repaire.” To which he replyed: “I shall be agayn before you as quick as Sight to the Eye.” Presently he started up like a Horse pricked wth the Spurr, bidding his Sonne: “Goe, runne, flye!” I no more mistrusted them of Fleeting, than suspected them of Fraud.
As longingly as men attend a Feast, so did we attend their Return, but Nothing. At length we sent certain of the Companie to look for their Coming, but yet Nothing. How long we attended, it were tedious to write; let it suffice, that like a Bank or Cliff that hath been eaten by the Floode, so that some Part of it every Hour falls, the Daye by stealth dropt away; and, like a lewd Strumpet who, at the coming of old Age, repents of the hot assaults of Youth, and vows to end her Dayes in Rags, the Sunne, forgetting it had once been young, sank behind a tattered Cloud; seeing which, I said to my Companions: “Our Friend is false, even as Musk, although it be sweet in the Smell, is sour in the Smack. We have tarried too long, and lost the Daye. Let us stand not in a Mammering, but depart, for we have swallowed a Gudgen!”
4.9As I rose to mount my Camill, my Eye fell on the Saddle, and I saw that Aboo Zeid had scribbled on the Pommel:
O Friend in my Adversitie,
Acquit me of Uncourtesy:
Not in Weariness, nor Pride,
Did I command my Son to ride,
But in Duty to the Holy Verse
That sayeth: “Sup ye, then disperse!”
I read this scribble alowde to the Companie, so that those that had blamed him might forgive, and those that rebuked him be content. Marvelling no less at his Tale, than at his Bale, no more at his Fame, than at his Bane, we mounted, wondering where, the Sky grown dark, he should find another Mark.
Glossary
4.2
feres companions
4.3
though he fall from his to me though he fail in his duty to me
quat me wth his Slibber-Sawce nauseate me with his dirty wash-water or filthy ointment
pinch on thy Side avoid paying what he owes you
4.4
Wither art thou carried? You can’t be serious!
meacock weakling
fain compliant
4.5
Cark distress
pinned to his Sleeve wrapped around his little finger
standing on his Pantofles holding his head high
4.7
Cloutes clothes
Budget wallet
4.8
Smack taste
stand not in a Mammering not hesitate
swallowed a Gudgen been tricked
4.9
Bale wickedness
Bane misfortune
Notes
Although al-Ḥarīrī and Lyly share a penchant for balanced clauses and rhymed prose, they differ in other respects. Al-Ḥarīrī uses a great deal of obscure vocabulary, but the need to rhyme at regular intervals keeps his clauses relatively short. Lyly, conversely, makes no special effort to pile on difficult words, but revels in long, tangled sentences. The translation splits the difference: it uses shorter sentences than Lyly would like, but tries to employ as many of his favorite rhetorical devices as possible. To imitate al-Ḥarīrī’s use of rare words, I have used expressions from Lyly that may not have been rare in his time but are now oddly charming or completely unknown. The more difficult of these are explained in the Glossary. Whether listed there or not, all the words in the translation are attested either in Lyly’s works or (in those few cases when those did not suffice) in OED citations from the same period. The spelling reproduces a few features of Lyly’s (very inconsistent) orthography, in the hope of conveying a sense of the visual character of Elizabethan writing and printing.
“Pinch on thy side” is adapted from “to pinch on the parson’s side,” to save money by withholding the tithe one owes the church (Lyly, Euphues, p. 72, n. 2).
“As a pair of shoes” probably refers to a pair of horseshoes, as the left and right were the same.
The sequence about waiting a long time is based on a letter Lyly wrote to Queen Elizabeth protesting her neglect of him (Lyly, Complete Works, 1:70–71). The extended metaphors of the cliff and the sun are based on mere phrases in al-Ḥarīrī, but since Lyly loves to extend his metaphors, I chose to expand these, thereby also compensating in part for the many Haririan metaphors I have smoothed away elsewhere. Part of the language about the cliff comes (anachronistically) from Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v. j-r-f.
Bibliography
Lyly, John. The Complete Works of John Lyly. Vol. 1, Life: Euphues: The Anatomy Of Wyt; Entertainments, edited by R. Warwick Bond. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1902.
. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit; Euphues and His England. Edited by Morris William Croll and Harry Clemons. London: Routledge, 1916.
Imposture 5
Woolf at the Door
In this episode Abū Zayd tells a tearjerker of a story about meeting his long-lost son. Since Abū Zayd tends to lie, his account has a feeling of unreality about it, especially in view of his private comments to al-Ḥārith at the end. To capture that effect in English, he adopts the style of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925), whose stream-of-consciousness narration leaves the reader unsure of what is really happening—or more exactly, perhaps, suddenly aware of how much we rely on the contrivance of the omniscient narrator. The poems are based on various styles of light verse by other authors of the period, as specified in the notes on each section.
5.1It was Hárith—Hammám’s son—who told us.
He remembered Kúfa, sitting up till all hours of the night talking; the sky now striking light to the earth, now darkness, the moon a chink of silver, an amulet. The others were wholly admirable, companions in the art of exquisite address, as if they had been given to suck on it since childhood, and could now draw a great sweeping brush across the memory of names as great as Sahbán’s. Everybody owed these men words, but how wonderful to feel no strain, only at one’s ease with them and light-hearted. They went on talking until the moonlight had gone. Even afterwards they sat awake,