Plato and the animals. Yet the knowledge enabled by music and embodied
by the meaning of the picture is crooked-hatted. This meaning proves
more powerful than the European-style, equated with the organ attributed
to Aristotle and critiqued through his defeat against Plato’s music.
The animals in the painting resemblefigures familiar from illustrations
of the popular fables ofKalila and Dimna, compiled from several ancient
Indian texts, translated into Pahlavi in the late sixth century, into Syriac by
Bud and Arabic by ibn Muqaffa in the mid-eighth, into Persian verse by
Rudaki (858–941), into Persian prose by Nasrullah Munshi in the mid-
twelfth century, rendered as the PersianLights of Canopus(Anwar-i
Suhayli) by Husayn ibn‘Ali al-Wa’iz before 1505, and modified as the
‘Iyar-i Danishby Abu’l Fazl at the Mughal court in 1578. An illustrated
version of Abu’l Fazl’s rendition survives, with animal images comparable
to those in this illustration.^30 Although frequently conceived as entertain-
ment in modern discussions, the extensive translation of the fables under-
scores ibn Muqaffa’s assertion, in thefirst introduction to the Arabic
rendition, that it is a book of wisdom for sophisticated readers.
Translated during the era in which Islamic texts became normalized, it
became central to its discursive frameworks through repetition in many
guises.
Quoting theLights of Canopus, the Brethren link the affectivity of music
with sleep, death, and the instinctual apprehension of animals used as
metaphors for humans.
The nocturnal lament of the lute string
is sweeter to my ear than [the cry of]“God is great!”
If the plaint of the lute string–and do not think this strange–
attracts its prey from the wide plains,
With no arrow it yet from time to time
pierces its body, the dart transfixing the heart,
Now weeping, now grief-stricken,
from break of day through noon till dusk.
Although bereft of a tongue, its eloquence
can interpret the lovers’story,
Now making the madman sane,
now casting the sane under its spell.^31
(^30) de Blois, 1990 : 6; Grigore, 2013. (^31) Wright, 2010 : 165.
Plato and the Organ of Painting 87