The Wine Song in Classical Arabic Poetry: Abu Nuwas and the Literary Tradition (Oxford Oriental Monographs)

Rating:
Summary: A startlingly careless book!
Review: This is a very puzzling book. It opens with an argument that seems to be unnecessary, and which doesn't make sense.

The argument begins by retelling a tale of Abu Nuwas, who had written some verses on a door in the palace, beginning "Because written on this door my poetry has gathered blight..." This offended the Caliph, who summoned the poet to answer for his misdeed. On his way there, Abu Nuwas erased some of the writing, which altered the poem to read, "Because written on this door my poetry has gathered light..." So the offense vanished, and the Caliph and Abu Nuwas had a good laugh.

This story is almost surely aprocryphal, but Kennedy uses it to support two further arguments: (1) Abu Nuwas' poems were not, by his design, "etched in stone" (2) Neither should any critical analysis of his poems be "etched in stone."

Well, the fairy tale about Abu Nuwas does not support (1) or (2) any more than "Goldilocks" or "Jack and the Beanstalk." But... this is only a book of literary criticism, so maybe we should just let it slide?

I don't think so. Argument (1), taken to an extreme, simply says that establishing critical texts for important writers like Abu Nuwas is both foolish and unnecessary -- a very odd position for a professor of literature, to say the least. Argument (2) seems utterly mysterious, until you read the next paragraph, where Kennedy admits that his entire book was written using a defective text of Abu Nuwas!

That is to say, Kennedy used the decent, but erroneous edition of al-Ghazali as his reference text for Abu Nuwas, and not the critical edition of Ewald Wagner, whose volume of the wine poetry of Abu Nuwas appeared in 1988. Kennedy's book was published in 1997. As Kennedy tries to explain the situation, "Only after amassing the bulk of my references was...the Ewald Wagner edition...made available to me." Kennedy therefore gathered most of his references before 1988, or simply remained unaware of the major event in Abu Nuwas studies of this century.

Kennedy says he has checked the Wagner edition and verified that there are no major discrepancies -- and that he has "noted" any discrepancies. But that hardly handles his problems, as can be seen on page 79, where Kennedy's reading of a poem's conclusion is just blown away by the critical edition, because Kennedy has misread the word "hurr" (freedom) as "hirr" (vagina)! Kennedy notes this disastrous misreading, but rejects the correct reading and lets his "analysis" stand uncorrected!

Later on, in his translation of the famous poem, "Da'a 'Anka Laumi," Kennedy makes a big mistake, translating one verse as "Time is indebted to them," rather than "Time is subservient to them." When you look into the reasons for this mistranslation, you discover that the Arabic text is corrupt! The correct word "dhull" has been mysteriously replaced by the incorrrect word "dan," which can be explained by a transfer of a dot from one letter to another, but still results in an obviously incorrect text and translation. In this place, Kennedy's asssertion that he has checked his text with the Wagner edition is revealed to be an empty boast. His silly word "dana" is not even on the list of known variants in the Wagner edition, so we must assume it's just an error introduced by Kennedy himself. (!) Imagine a translator of Shakespeare corrupting the English text he was about to translate!

It's hard to imagine scholarship getting so slipshod. But look at this:

"Summoned to see the ruler he past [sic] by the door on which he had writen [sic] his flippant verse and erased the tale [sic] of the 'ayn from the verb...."

This is not your imagination. Three glaring spelling mistakes in ONE sentence! And it's not a one-time freak: the book is riddled with errors in spelling and grammar.

All this in a book from Oxford University Press, at the very expensive price indicated! What is going on here?

Rating:
Summary: A startlingly careless book!
Review: This is a very puzzling book. It opens with an argument that seems to be unnecessary, and which doesn't make sense.

The argument begins by retelling a tale of Abu Nuwas, who had written some verses on a door in the palace, beginning "Because written on this door my poetry has gathered blight..." This offended the Caliph, who summoned the poet to answer for his misdeed. On his way there, Abu Nuwas erased some of the writing, which altered the poem to read, "Because written on this door my poetry has gathered light..." So the offense vanished, and the Caliph and Abu Nuwas had a good laugh.

This story is almost surely aprocryphal, but Kennedy uses it to support two further arguments: (1) Abu Nuwas' poems were not, by his design, "etched in stone" (2) Neither should any critical analysis of his poems be "etched in stone."

Well, the fairy tale about Abu Nuwas does not support (1) or (2) any more than "Goldilocks" or "Jack and the Beanstalk." But... this is only a book of literary criticism, so maybe we should just let it slide?

I don't think so. Argument (1), taken to an extreme, simply says that establishing critical texts for important writers like Abu Nuwas is both foolish and unnecessary -- a very odd position for a professor of literature, to say the least. Argument (2) seems utterly mysterious, until you read the next paragraph, where Kennedy admits that his entire book was written using a defective text of Abu Nuwas!

That is to say, Kennedy used the decent, but erroneous edition of al-Ghazali as his reference text for Abu Nuwas, and not the critical edition of Ewald Wagner, whose volume of the wine poetry of Abu Nuwas appeared in 1988. Kennedy's book was published in 1997. As Kennedy tries to explain the situation, "Only after amassing the bulk of my references was...the Ewald Wagner edition...made available to me." Kennedy therefore gathered most of his references before 1988, or simply remained unaware of the major event in Abu Nuwas studies of this century.

Kennedy says he has checked the Wagner edition and verified that there are no major discrepancies -- and that he has "noted" any discrepancies. But that hardly handles his problems, as can be seen on page 79, where Kennedy's reading of a poem's conclusion is just blown away by the critical edition, because Kennedy has misread the word "hurr" (freedom) as "hirr" (vagina)! Kennedy notes this disastrous misreading, but rejects the correct reading and lets his "analysis" stand uncorrected!

Later on, in his translation of the famous poem, "Da'a 'Anka Laumi," Kennedy makes a big mistake, translating one verse as "Time is indebted to them," rather than "Time is subservient to them." When you look into the reasons for this mistranslation, you discover that the Arabic text is corrupt! The correct word "dhull" has been mysteriously replaced by the incorrrect word "dan," which can be explained by a transfer of a dot from one letter to another, but still results in an obviously incorrect text and translation. In this place, Kennedy's asssertion that he has checked his text with the Wagner edition is revealed to be an empty boast. His silly word "dana" is not even on the list of known variants in the Wagner edition, so we must assume it's just an error introduced by Kennedy himself. (!) Imagine a translator of Shakespeare corrupting the English text he was about to translate!

It's hard to imagine scholarship getting so slipshod. But look at this:

"Summoned to see the ruler he past [sic] by the door on which he had writen [sic] his flippant verse and erased the tale [sic] of the 'ayn from the verb...."

This is not your imagination. Three glaring spelling mistakes in ONE sentence! And it's not a one-time freak: the book is riddled with errors in spelling and grammar.

All this in a book from Oxford University Press, at the very expensive price indicated! What is going on here?