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Blesséd be He, in the Koran |
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English Translations
A. J. Arberry
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Part 7 - A. J. Arberry - translation 1953
In this rapid review of the Koran in English translation a number of other versions have been left out of account; their examination would add very little to the discussion. The discriminating reader will not have failed to remark, even in the short extracts quoted, a certain uniformity and dull monotony characteristic of all, from the seventeenth down to the twentieth century. A conscientious but slavish faithfulness to the letter – so far as the letter has been progressively understood – has in general excluded any corresponding reflection of the spirit, where that has at all been appreciated. In choosing to call the present work The Koran Interpreted I have conceded the relevancy of the orthodox Muslim view, of which Pickthall, for one, was so conscious, that the Koran is untranslatable. Some of the implications of that doctrine are sketched out in the preface to my The Holy Koran: an Introduction with Selections (Allen & Unwin, 1953), and it is not proposed to repeat the same argument here. Briefly, the rhetoric and rhythm of the Arabic of the Koran are so characteristic, so powerful, so highly emotive, that any version whatsoever is bound in the nature of things to be but a poor copy of the glittering splendour of the original. Never was it more true than in this instance that traduttore traditore. My chief reason for offer ing this new version of a book which has been 'translated' many times already is that in no previous rendering has a serious attempt been made to imitate, however imperfectly, those rhetorical and rhythmical patterns which are the glory and the sublimity of the Koran. I am breaking new ground here; it may therefore be thought appropriate to explain in short my intentions and my method. The Koran, as is well known, is made up of 114 Suras of varying length. This volume contains the first twenty, comprising a little over one‑half of the whole. The Suras, collected into a volume after the death of Muhammad, are not arranged in any chronological order; indeed, most of those reproduced in this volume were revealed to the Prophet in the later years of his mission. But as I am trying in this interpretation to indicate what Muslims of all ages have known as their sacred book, and not how a handful of European scholars have latterly essayed to recast it, I have followed the traditional arrangement for all its admitted perplexities. The Suras themselves are in many instances – and this has been recognized by Muslim students from the earliest times – of a composite character, holding embedded in them fragments received by Muhammad at widely differing dates; but I have disregarded this accepted fact, wishing to show each Sura as an artistic whole, its often incongruous parts constituting a rich and admirable pattern. The verses into which the individual Sura is divided usually, but not always, represent rhetorical units, terminated and connected together by a rhyming word. A few bold spirits have ventured on occasion to show this feature by rhyming their translations; the resulting products have not been very impressive. For my own part I have preferred to indicate these terminations and connections by rounding off each succession of loose rhythms with a much shorter line. The function of rhyme in the Koran is quite different from the function of the rhyme in poetry; it therefore demands a different treatment in translation. That has been my method in interpreting narrative, argumentative and legislative passages. Where, however, the original, as often enough, interposes between these leisurely periods sudden outbursts of sharp rhetoric or shapely lyric, I have called attention to such changes of mood and tempo by making corresponding variations in my own rhythmical patterns, In this fashion I have also striven to isolate and then to integrate the diverse sections of which each Sura is composed. The reader may wish to compare the results of applying this analysis and method with the traditional way of translating the Koran; here then is my version of the Birth of Jesus:
when she withdrew from her people to an eastern place, and she took a veil apart from them; then We sent unto her Our Spirit that presented himself to her a man without fault. She said, "I take refuge in the All merciful from thee! If thou fearest God ..." He said, "I am but a messenger come from thy Lord, to give thee a boy most pure." She said, "How shall I have a son whom no mortal has touched, neither have I been unchaste?" He said, "Even so thy Lord has said: 'Easy is that for Me; and that We may appoint him a sign unto men and a mercy from Us; it is a thing decreed'." So she conceived him, and withdrew with him to a distant place. And the birthpangs surprised her by the trunk of the palm tree. She said, "Would I had died ere this, and become a thing forgotten!" But the one that was below her called to her, "Nay, do not sorrow; see, thy Lord has set below thee a rivulet. Shake also to thee the palm trunk, And there shall come tumbling upon thee dates fresh and ripe. Eat therefore, and drink, and be comforted; and if thou shouldst see any mortal, say, 'I have vowed to the All merciful a fast, and today I will not speak to any man'." Then she brought the child to her folk carrying him; and they said, "Mary, thou hast surely committed a monstrous thing! Sister of Aaron, thy father was not a wicked man, nor was thy mother a woman unchaste." Mary pointed to the child then; but they said, "How shall we speak to one who is still in the cradle, a little child?" He said, "Lo, I am God's servant; God has given me the Book, and made me a Prophet. Blessed He has made me, wherever I may be; and He has enjoined me to pray, and to give the alms, so long as I live, and likewise to cherish my mother; He has not made me arrogant, unprosperous. Peace be upon me, the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I am raised up alive!"'
If, set out like this, the Koranic treatment of this most sacred theme seems to recall, however distantly and however faintly, some mediaeval Christian carol, the resemblance is surely not fortuitous; but I make bold to claim that the point escapes notice in any other kind of translation. There is a repertory of familiar themes running through the whole Koran; each Sura elaborates or adumbrates one or more – often many – of these. Using the language of music, each Sura is a rhapsody composed of whole or fragmentary leitmotivs; the analogy is reinforced by the subtly varied rhythmical flow of the discourse. If this diagnosis of the literary structure of the Koran may be accepted as true – and it accords with what we know of the poetical instinct, indeed the whole aesthetic impulse, of the Arabs – it follows that those notorious incongruities and irrelevancies, even those ‘wearisome repetitions’, which have proved such stumbling‑blocks in the way of our Western appreciation will vanish in the light of a clearer understanding of the nature of the Muslim scriptures. A new vista opens up; following this hitherto unsuspected and unexplored path, the eager interpreter hurries forward upon an exciting journey of discovery, and is impatient to report his findings to a largely indifferent and incredulous public. During the long months, the dark and light months, of labouring at this interpretation, eclectic where the ancient commentators differ in their understanding of a word or a phrase, unannotated because notes in plenty are to be found in other versions, and the radiant beauty of the original is not clouded by such vexing interpolations‑all through this welcome task I have been reliving those Ramadan nights of long ago, when I would sit on the veranda of my Gezira house and listen entranced to the old, white‑bearded Sheykh who chanted the Koran for the pious delectation of my neighbour. He had the misfortune, my neighbour, to be a prominent politician, and so in the fullness of his destiny, but not the fullness of his years, he fell to an assassin's bullet; I like to think that the merit of those holy recitations may have eased the way for him into a world free of the tumult and turbulence that attended his earthly career. It was then that 1, the infidel, learnt to understand and react to the thrilling rhythms of the Koran, only to be apprehended when listened to at such a time and in such a place. In humble thankfulness I dedicate this all too imperfect essay in imitation to the memory of those magical Egyptian nights.
The Koran Interpreted - A Translation by A. J. Arberry, A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster
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The Nativity of Jesus,
