5
please us when they are rightly sung. Those are not called poets who cannot compose a long work.
25. The poet must not spend his toil in vain. One should seem to him worthy of love; he must be devoted to one, he must employ all his art for her, he must praise her, he must set forth the glory of his beloved; he must wish for nought else, for her alone must his tongue be tuneful.[1]
26. Now let all know that I praise her whom I (erstwhile) praised; in this I have great glory, I feel no shame. She is my life; merciless as a leopard[2] is she. Her name I pronounce hereafter[3] with triumph and praise.[4]
27. I speak of the highest love—divine in its kind. It is difficult to discourse thereon, ill to tell forth with tongues. It is heavenly, upraising the soul on pinions.[5] Whoever strives thereafter must indeed have endurance of many griefs.
28. Sages cannot comprehend that one Love; the tongue will tire, the ears of the listeners will become wearied; I must tell of lower frenzies, which befall human beings; they imitate it when they wanton not, but faint from afar.[6]
29. In the Arabic tongue they call the lover "madman,"[7]
- ↑ Musicobdes.
- ↑ 2 Djiki. The traditional meaning is that here given. Cf. M., who suggests a connection with "Adighe"—Circassian. Cf. 893 note.
- ↑ Kvemore—"below, after this"; ? quatr. 3, 4 should follow 26.
- ↑ Ch. s.v. shep'hrkveva.
- ↑ M., "giving elevation to those who strive to endure and undergo many afflictions."
- ↑ M., "The wise cannot understand this unique, mad Love, (though) the tongue should speak of it till it was tired, and the hearer (attended) till his ears were wearied. Madness (of love) which is connected with the flesh I call base, and this it is they imitate, even when they do not the works of the flesh, but afar off lose consciousness"; or the last line may be rendered: "They imitate this (unique, mad Love)," etc.
- ↑ Professor Marr (T., xii., pp. l, li) shows how the hermit ideal grew up in Georgia side by side with feudalism, and by its insistence on the ecstatic love of God contributed to the growth of the idea of romantic love. This asceticism prevailed from the seventh or eighth century till the twelfth. Similarly, love of woman sent knights out into the wilderness. The mijnuris and majnunis were the saints of this secular cult among the Arabs, and, possessed by the djinn of love, became poets. The pagan Arabs looked upon mejnuns as prophets and poets, and on Mohammed's appearance thought him one of them.
