NOTESRelying in part on Noldeke and Sir Charles Lyall in the embedded quotes,
Nicholson subscribed to a neoclassical tenet that had been popular among
neoclassicists throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According
to these, better exemplified by Dr Johnson in Rasselas, the difference in
aesthetics lies between a mind that looks at the particular and a mind that syn-
thesizes and sees the whole not the part. Following the same application, as
prompted and proliferated by racist ideology in Europe by the end of the eigh-
teenth century, readings of some parts of the canon in these terms and against
Greco-Roman samples, bypassed other modes of poetry, including that of the
early Sufis. The approach falls within a long established tradition of paradig-
matic analysis that takes the most conspicuous or acclaimed in conservative
criticism as its yardsticks. There is therefore a fixed structure for the ode. No
matter how many deviational poems and poetics argue otherwise, traditional
criticism looks on these as occasional or marginal. Abnal-Faraj Al-Ixbahmnl’s
(d. 356/967) Kitmb al-aghmnl(Book of Songs) is put aside, and AbnNuwms’s
(d. 813/814) corpus and even al-Mutanabbl’s (d. 965) and Abnal-cAlm’ al-
Macarrl’s (d. 1058) poetry and critiques rarely appear in early discussions as sites
of opposition to hegemony and power politics. Even when poets are non-Arabs,
well-meaning critics find an excuse for dumping them as a Semitic non-
synthetic mind.
See Reynold A., Nicholson. Studies in Islamic Mysticism(London: Kegan Paul,
1921, reprint 1998), p. 163.2 THE TRADITION–MODERNITY NEXUS
IN ARABIC POETICS1 Vicente Cantarino, Arabic Poetics in the Golden Age: Selection of Texts Accompanied
by a Preliminary Study(Leiden: Brill, 1975), p. 4.
2 See Joseph Riddel’s analysis, “De-centering the Image: The ‘Project’ of
‘American Poetics,’ ” in Textual Strategies, ed. Josu 2 V. Harari (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 322–58, at pp. 347–48. Ynsuf al-Khml’s
dedication of his Al-Bi’r al-mahjnrah(Deserted Well) to Ezra Pound is of some
significance, as I argue below. See my “Dedications as Poetics Intersections,”
Journal of Arabic Literature, 31, no. 1 (2000), pp. 1–37, at p. 15.
3 There is a note on this subject later.
4 See Rashmd Rushdl, Mukhtmrmt min al-naqd al-adabl al-mucmxir (Cairo:
Anglo-Egyptian Bookshop, 1951). Also Muna.Khnrl’s translation of Eliot’s arti-
cle, “Nazrah flal-naqd al-adabl” (A View of Literary Criticism), Al-Adlb, 27, no. 3
(March 1955), pp. 20–21, and his translation of “Tradition and the Individual
Talent,” in Al-Adlb, 27, no. 1 (January 1955), pp. 32–36. Badawl’s translation of
the same article appeared in Al-Mdmb(Cairo, May–June 1956), n.p. Laylfah
al-Zayymt’s translation is included in her book, Maqmlmt flal-naqd al-adabl(Cairo:
Anglo-Egyptian Bookshop, 1964). See also cIzz al-Dln Ismmcll, “Al-Shicr
al-mucmxir wa-al-turmth” (Contemporary Poetry and Literary Tradition),
Al-Mdmb, 3 (1966), pp. 22–25. On translations, see Mmhir Shaflq Farld,
“Athar T. S. Eliot flal-adab al-cArablal-.adlth,” Fuxnl, 1, no. 4 (June, 1981),
pp. 173–92; Muhammad Shaheen, “Eliot in Modern Arabic Poetry,” in T. S. Eliot:
Man and Poet, ed. Laura Cowan (Orono, ME: National Poetry Foundation, 1990),
vol. 1, pp. 151–64, and TerrlDeYoung, “T. S. Eliot and Modern Arabic Poetry,”
Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, 48, 2000, pp. 3–21.