For the fourth week of our #ArabicTranslationChallenge, a hunting poem:
By Kevin Blankinship
Thanks to all who took part in last week’s challenge, and a very special thanks to Rachel Schine for hosting. Just a reminder that the challenge goes up every Tuesday, and then you have until that Friday at noon EST to send your translations via WordPress comments, Facebook or Twitter (@AmericanMaghreb), or email at info@arablit.org — submit wherever you like, but please do submit! Then we’ll do a roundup on Saturday to showcase your talents. Remember that it’s not a contest, but a chance to celebrate each other’s work in as broadminded a way as possible. The more, the merrier!
Now on to this week’s challenge. The fall theme for ArabLit Quarterly is “CATS,” and to that end, we’ll have a look at some feline poetry over the next few weeks (I’m counting on you for some strong GIFs and memes). Even though I hate to repeat the same poet, it’s time once again for Abu Nuwas, best remembered for his wine poetry but who was also a master of the hunting poem (tardiyyah). The following two lines come from one such poem in rajaz meter describing a rare animal in the Arabic literary imagination: the cheetah (fahd):
Numrah: spots. Al-shabaH al-Haa’il: any moving figure. Bayna shariijay: “between the divided bow rod,” i.e. between the two conditions of x and y. Tama`: ambition, desire. Hard: lack, need. This is no cowardly lion from The Wizard of Oz, but rather a jungle cat that’s “ready to pounce on any moving figure” (li-l-shabaHi l-Haa’ili musta`iddi). As hunting animals, cheetahs sometimes appear in medieval manuscripts accompanying their masters on horseback; in the context of animal tales, lions and leopards often go together (for a great rundown of cats in Persian manuscripts, see this post over at the British Library’s Asian and African Studies Blog). Philip Kennedy translates as follows from his Oneworld book on Abu Nuwas, pp. 114-115:
Like a lion yet with stippled coat
Ready to pounce on any moving figure …
After a period of want and economy
There is no benefit from a hunt without a cheetah.
While I personally can’t say whether the last line is true, what I can say is that it would be a loss for the classical Arabic tradition if we didn’t have cheetah poems like this one. Very excited to see how you interpret Abu Nuwas’s answer to The Tiger King!
Kevin Blankinship is an assistant professor at Brigham Young University.
spotted lion, tense
tired of lockdown
take the cheetah hunting?
wait and pine
Lion (low) but spotted,
Shapeshifter, arched back,
An arrow poised between want and need,
A hunt without it is “ghayr mufeed”!
Like a lion but with speckled skin,
Ready to attack the ghost within.
Whether for greed or for grumps
Without a leopard, no need to hunt.
The word فهد bears the same Persian etymological origins with the middle English “pard,” a mythical beast whose offspring with a lion is, rather oddly, the actual beast that is the leopard. Pard can be just a synonym for the latter, though it is also still used in heraldry (because heraldry), where—just to confuse matters—it is the term for a lion passant guardant (walking, with his head turn towards the viewer). As in medieval Europe the hunt goes hand-in-gauntlet with heraldry, that seemed a suitable vocabulary into which to coerce (not always with complete precision) the Arabic. (I read the third hemistich as the state of mind of a predatory beast—half hunger, half slaughterlust—so حرد I read (anachronistically?) as fury.)
A lion but of blemished pelt,
Regardant for a beast passant.
Poised between hunger and fury—
Hard is the hunt, save with a pard.
Since Arabia’s “dirty” poet Abu Nuwwas had very Marquis de Sade’s “interests” and since “hunting” in the Arab Lingo is Freudianly linked to Sex, and since “Fahd” is a lion between the dog and the tiger and since it is known to sleep a lot and the verb “fahida” is to sleep…The Spots are the marks of of a condom that increase frictional pleasure…Jild as coat is the condom increased by the word “hail” later….”Sharijay” between but also “sharj” is anus…”hard” is lack or need but also friction so I refer to penis envy than the backdoor….so the following Arabic “hunting” verses have to be read-with lust I concur- at the second or third “shade” and translated as follows:
Like a mopped Cunt yet with Studded Sheath
Wet for any shagging Shadow
Twitching between Cornhole and Envy
How Good will courting be if a Doggy is not its curtain call?