More Maqamat, and a Maqama

Having suggested yesterday that popular literature like the 1001 Nights could be translated into European high culture easily, but that the Maqamat were too full of sophisticated wordplay, double meanings, and irony, I thought I'd give you an example of one. I think it will confirm that it doesn't translate well, but at least it will give you a sense of the form if not the beauty. So, herewith, a translation of al-Hamadhani's Maqama of Knowledge. I used a 1915 translation by Pendergast as a basis but redid or reworded a lot of it to make it closer in spirit if not in grammar to the original. You'll see that on the surface it has some literary merit, but not much, and will have to take my word for it that the original is one surprise after another, with layer upon layer of associations and secondary meaning:

Isa Ibn Hisham said, "I was traveling in a land where exile had thrown me, when suddenly I came across one man questioning another. 'How have you acquired knowledge?' he asked him.

The response: 'I sought it out and found it elusive.

You can neither shoot it with an arrow nor discern it through divination.

It is not seen in a dream and cannot be controlled with a bridle.

It is neither inherited from relatives nor borrowed from the generous.

To attain it I took the bare earth as my bed, a stone for a pillow,

shaking off weariness, braving danger, vigilant throughout the night,

making travel my companion, with much reading and meditation.

I found it a thing not consumable in the present but suitable only for planting,

and planted only in the mind.

A quarry rarely netted and never caught, save in the heart. A bird that can be lured

only with a word and ensnared only in the memory.

I imbibed it with my soul and seized it with my eyes. I spent all I had,

but stored up the stockpile of my mind. I came to write elegantly after so much

reading, and passed from reading to interpretation, and from interpretation to

composition, relying throughout on divine guidance.'

Now this was language that penetrated the ear, pierced the breast, and entered the heart. So I asked him, 'from where does this sun standing before me rise?'

His response, 'Alexandria is my home, if only because there I rest.

But my nights I pass in Syria, in Iraq my days'."