The Epistle of Forgiveness. Abu l-'Ala al-Ma'arri
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builds to some extent on his own Risālat al-Malāʾikah (The Epistle of the Angels), mentioned above as a work on morphology. In this work, composed probably a few years before the Epistle of Forgiveness, al-Maʿarrī imagines that he himself discusses oddities of the Arabic lexicon with angels in the afterlife. He surprises the angels with his analysis of the word for “angel” (malak, pl. malāʾikah),44 and he discusses other words with them. He argues that those who end up in heaven enjoying the ḥūr (black-and-white-eyed damsels) and other delights such as the sundus and istabraq (“silk and brocade”) should at least be aware of the morphology and etymology of these words.45 The imagined conversations are at times very similar to those in al-Ghufrān, for instance when al-Maʿarrī quotes poets and grammarians to prove a point, whereupon an angel exclaims, “Who is this Ibn Abī Rabīʿah, what’s this Abū ʿUbaydah, what’s all this nonsense? If you have done any pious deeds you will be happy; if not, get out of here!”46 There is clearly some self-mockery here.
Similarly, although al-Maʿarrī is clearly mocking Ibn al-Qāriḥ in al-Ghufrān, one suspects that many of the philological concerns of the latter were also his own. Ibn al-Qāriḥ’s fictional persona often uses obscure and rare words, which he immediately explains in plainer language; it looks as if he is being mocked for his pedantry. However, al-Maʿarrī does the same when he writes in his own voice; he appears to flaunt his extraordinary knowledge of the Arabic lexicon. A passage in Part Two hints at another, practical reason why he added his glosses: our blind author fears that his dictations, with their recondite diction, may be misunderstood or garbled by his scribes.47 Likewise, one assumes that some of the criticism voiced by Ibn al-Qāriḥ on points of grammar and versification is shared by al-Maʿarrī. A similar preoccupation with philology is found in other works by him, such as The Epistle of the Neigher and the Brayer. It is clear that for al-Maʿarrī and, as he imagines, for Ibn al-Qāriḥ the expected delights of Paradise are not primarily sensual but intellectual. The various delights provided by pretty girls, music, food, and drink are generally described in a somewhat ironical vein and the comparisons of heavenly substances with earthly equivalents are couched in ludicrously hyperbolic expressions; but the pleasures of poetry and philological pedantry are taken, on the whole, rather more seriously, even though here, too, a modicum of mockery is not altogether absent.
It is not surprising that in almost all translations of The Epistle of Forgiveness such passages about grammar, lexicon, and prosody have been drastically curtailed or omitted altogether, for a combination of reasons: they will not greatly interest those who do not know Arabic, they will seem an annoying interruption of the narrative to those who read the text for the story, and not least because they are rather difficult to translate and in need of copious annotation. When Bint al-Shāṭiʾ published her adaptation of Part One of the Epistle of Forgiveness for the stage, as a play in three acts,48 she naturally excised much of the philology, even though she lets the actors discuss some matters regarding grammatical case endings and poetic meters on the stage. It is not known if the play has ever been performed and one cannot but have some doubts about its viability.49
Al-Maʿarrī’s rationalist critique of religion has influenced and inspired neoclassicist and modernist Arabic writers and poets, such as the Iraqi poets Jamīl Ṣidqī l-Zahāwī (1863–1936) and Maʿrūf al-Ruṣāfī (1875–1945). The former wrote a verse epic, Thawrah fī l-jaḥīm (Revolution in Hell, 1931) in which he offers an interesting and subversive interpretation of the Epistle of Forgiveness, involving many well-known figures from Western and Arab history and culture. Heaven is the place for the establishment, Hell for the maladjusted and the socially ambitious, who are punished for their courage. Finally, supported by the angels of Hell, they storm Heaven, claiming it as their rightful place since it is they who have advanced mankind.50 Ḥadīth ʿĪsā ibn Hishām (The Story of ʿĪsā ibn Hishām), a well-known work of fiction first published serially between 1898 and 1902 by the Egyptian author Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī (1858?–1930), is often linked with the Maqāmāt of Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (d. 398/1008) but it has several things in common with Risālat al-Ghufrān: a protagonist who is resurrected from the dead before an imaginary journey, implicit and explicit criticism of contemporary beliefs and customs, and a style in which rhymed prose alternates with ordinary prose.
The varied fate of the text, with its incomplete, truncated translations and its transformation into a play, clearly shows how difficult it is to classify it, to those who love neat classifications. Although called a risālah and addressed to one person, it is not an ordinary letter, nor is it intended to be read only by the addressee. While containing a narrative complete with a lengthy flashback it is not a normal story, qiṣṣah, ḥadīth, khabar, or ḥikāyah. It incorporates much of what normally belongs to the genre of philological “dictations,” amālī. It contains, in al-Dhahabī’s words quoted above, “much adab,” which here has all its meanings of erudition, literary quotations including much poetry, moral edification, and entertaining anecdotes. Searchers for the “organic unity” of this heterogeneous literary work will have an arduous task. One could argue that part of its originality and its attractiveness lies precisely in the impossibility of pigeonholing it; but not every reader, critic, or publisher will be charmed by this.
A Note on the Text
Language, Style, and Translation
The present translators originally harbored some doubts about translating the text in full. However, it is the admirable purpose of the Library of Arabic Literature to present complete texts, in the original Arabic and in an English translation. We consented and took on the task as a daunting but stimulating challenge. The present translation, for the first time in any language, is complete, for the sake of the integrity of the text and in order not to distort its actual character, which reflects the author’s character, as far as we can know it. Abū l-ʿAlāʾ is not first-and-foremost a storyteller: he is a satirist, a moralist, and a philologist who, in his physical blindness and linguistic insight, lives in a universe of language to such an extent that one could even say that, in addition to the two or three “prisons” mentioned above, he also lived in the admittedly very spacious prison of the Arabic language. It was a prison in which he felt at home like no other. The reader should be warned that The Epistle of Forgiveness is not exactly an easy read; but the philological passages can be skipped by impatient readers.
Telling a story could be done in a simple, unadorned style. The stories in al-Faraj baʿd al-Shiddah (Relief after Distress) by al-Muḥassin al-Tanūkhī (d. 384/994), for instance, are written in a relatively plain Arabic, and so are innumerable anecdotes and stories in various collections and anthologies. However, the aim of epistolary prose, in al-Maʿarrī’s time, was not always primarily to express one’s meaning clearly: that would be paramount to an insult, as if the recipient could only understand plain speech. One ought to employ a flowery style, rich in metaphors, allusions, syntactical and semantic parallelism, recondite vocabulary, and above all sajʿ or rhymed prose, usually in the form of paired rhyme (aabbccdd . . .). Such an ornate style is found especially in preambles of letters and books, and in descriptive, “purple” passages, or on any occasion where the author wishes to display his erudition and stylistic prowess. Already in al-Maʿarrī’s lifetime interesting experiments had been done to introduce sajʿ into narrative prose texts continuously rather than on specific occasions, Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (d. 398/1008) being a pioneer in this field, as the “inventor” of the maqāmah genre.
Al-Maʿarrī, in Part One of his Epistle, does not use sajʿ throughout but only at certain points. Since it is such a characteristic and striking element of classical Arabic prose, it has been imitated in the translation, at the risk of sounding somewhat quaint.51 The same has not been done, except very occasionally, in the translation of Ibn al-Qāriḥ’s epistle; likewise, the frequency of sajʿ in Part Two of Risālat al-Ghufrān will make it impossible to imitate it in English. The reader should be aware that many a strange expression could have been caused by an Arabic rhyme; as Nicholson says, perhaps