From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Fri Oct 26 2001 - 14:00:21 MDT
>> From: Damien Broderick:
>> >The poetry is quite
>> >striking, even if one does not give it literal credence.
> From: Natasha:
> Thank you Damien.
>
> "The Arabic form of the Koran is in many ways more important
> than the text's meaning."
Thank you, both too. I agree, the poetry is lovely. And the Arabic
form gives a multilayered meaning to the document.
What is even more lovely, is that the poetry is not what it seems
either, but if a person is not interested to know the subtle, allegorical,
or double meanings of the words in the Koran, then it can still,
as a whole be appreciated for some of its aesthetic qualities.
Here are a few more words from a different, but related, body of work,
about 1000 years later:
"The arrow needs an archer, and a poetry a magician. He must ever
hold in his mind the scales of meter, rejecting the long and the
short. Truth is his mistress, astride a black steed, veiled in allegory.
>From beneath her lashes shoot a hundred unerring glances. The poet will
decorate her fingers with multihued jewels, adorn her with the perfume
and scent of saffron metaphor. Alliteration will ring like footbells;
on her bosom will be the mystery of concealed rhyme. Together with
the secrets of inner meaning, the concealing eyes, these make her body
a perfection of mystery."
(from a Sufi poet of the 17th century in "Key of the Afghans",
translated by T.Plowden)
Amara
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Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com
Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/
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"If you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into
you." - -Nietzsche
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