{Islamic Art – The Word (1) [continued]}[14th April 1991]

[Redbook9:96-97][19910414:1104b]{Islamic Art – The Word (1) [continued]}[14th April 1991]

19910414:1104

[continued]

‘The poetry of the Arabs consisted in the beginning of praise and satirical poems thought to be full of magic qualities. The strict rules of the outward form of the poems (monorhyme, complicated metre) even in pre-Islamic times led to a certain formalism and encouraged imitation.

‘Goethe’s statement that the stories of The Thousand and One Nights have no goal in themselves shows his understanding of the character of Arabic belles lettres, contrasting them with the Islamic religion, which aims at “collecting and uniting people in order to achieve one high goal”. Poets, on the other hand, rove around without any ethical purpose,* according to the Qur’ān. For many pious Muslims, poetry was something suspect, opposed to the divine law, especially since it sang mostly of forbidden wine and of free love. The combination of music and poetry, as practised in court circles and among the mystics, has always aroused the wrath of the lawyer divines who wielded so much authority in Islamic communities. This opposition may partly explain why Islamic poetry and fine arts took refuge in a kind of unreal world, using fixed images that could be correctly interpreted only by those who were knowledgeable in the art.

**

*cf Plato’s Republic

**– ibid (Encyclopaedia Britannica) 22:45 (which, see)

[continued]

[PostedBlogger28for31072024]