{[Literature in Islam [continued] – Poetry]}[11th April 1991]

[Redbook9:76-77][19910411:0935n]{[Literature in Islam [continued] – Poetry]}[11th April 1991]

19910411.0935

[continued]

‘Poetry lent itself particularly well to this device, which was freely used in panegyrics, satires, and lyrics. As a form of of effective expression, poetry is eminently characteristic of the East. *|The Arab genius is almost natively poetical with its strong and vivid imagination not easily amenable to the rigorous order that reason imposes on the mind.|* This borderline attitude between the real and the unreal was particularly favourable to the development, in all medieval Islamic literatures of the Middle East, ** of the lyric and panegyric forms of poetry wherein every line is a self-contained unit. Much more importantly, it afforded a specially suitable vehicle for a type of mystic poetry in which it is sometimes impossible to determine whether the poet is talking of earthly love or spiritual love. For the same reason, poetry proved an effective haven for thinly veiled deviations from and even attacks on the literalist religion of the orthodox.’

***

*|{cf [[Redbook9:102][19910414:1104]{Islamic Art – The Word (2)}[14th April 1991],] 102}|*

**{c[ontra] [[[Redbook9:102][19910414:1104]{Islamic Art – The Word (2)}[14th April 1991],] ] 102}

***– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica 22:] 38-39

[Single paragraph in source & ms split between last previous ts entry & this one]

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