LITMIR.BIZ

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maintained there.

      All the above features have been retained in the present edition, which does, however, differ from its predecessor in one important area: in this edition a less laissez-faire approach has been taken to the meter of verse in the standard (i.e., non-“rural”) language. Major violations of meter have been corrected, often by reference to citations in other works. In practice, this has often meant returning to the readings of the Bulaq edition, whose editors no doubt went through the same process. In making these changes, we have been guided by the maxim that most poets would rather commit errors of grammar than of meter and that the solecisms that have been removed probably represent the slips of unschooled copyists rather than admissible variants to what are, in many cases, well-known lines of verse. Without these metrical faux pas the verse is often, naturally, less hurtful to the ear.

“Rural” verse poses particular metrical problems. The verses that al-Shirbīnī so characterizes exhibit both colloquial and literary features. Taking the “Ode of Abū Shādūf” as an example, it may be seen that readings imposed by the meter (al-ṭawīl) sometimes contradict colloquial norms by including both short word-final vowels that conform to literary rules (e.g., yaqūlu, vol. 2, §11.1) and short word-final vowels that conform to neither colloquial nor literary rules (e.g., Abū Shādūfi, vol. 2, §11.1). In the latter case, one cannot be certain how these would have been pronounced; here we treat them as remnants of an underlying literary form (Abū Shādūfin → Abū Shādūfi), though we might, with equal validity, have assigned to them any other character to represent this unknown vowel (e.g., Abū Shādūfo). Examples of tanwīn also occur (e.g., lawʿatun, vol. 2, §11.5). As van Gelder has pointed out, “it would seem that one is supposed to read as many classical forms as possible . . . to the extent of producing hybrid forms.”⁷² Indeed, such verses might be described as belonging, as a whole, to a hybrid colloquial/literary language variety. Nonfinal short vowels in colloquial words, in prose or in verse, are given literary values (e.g., miḥrāt, “plow,” rather than muḥrāt). This convention is employed simply to avoid having to justify the voweling for every transcribed colloquial word, it being assumed that that voweling was not always the same in the seventeenth century as it is now. Occasional exceptions are made, either because the author makes a colloquial spelling explicit (e.g., libbih for libbah (vol. 2, §11.23.9) and yiʿiffu for yaʿiffu (vol. 2, §11.36.14)) or because the meter demands colloquial forms (e.g., wa-yitʿanṭaz . . . wa-yijjaʿmaṣ (vol. 2, §10.11.3).

In the case of the “Ode of Abū Shādūf” itself, we have found it necessary, in this edition, to revise our understanding of the acceptable parameters of the meter in question. Thus, while the only possible endings of a line in standard ṭawīl meter are SLLL, SLSL, and SLL,⁷³ the frequent occurrence of SLX SL or SLL L in the “Ode” have convinced us that this unconventional form is intentional. New vocalizations have therefore been given in this edition. Thus we read, for example, yaḍāl naḥīf (vol. 2, §11.1) and khulbat līf (vol. 2, §11.4). This adjustment also allows us to avoid such bizarre forms, required by the standard meter, as takhawīf and tajarīf in favor of takhwīf (vol. 2, §11.6) and tajrīf (vol. 2, §11.14).

The footnotes to the 2005 edition, which contain all variants that are viable according to the stemma (family tree of the manuscripts), have been omitted from this edition. Here, with rare exceptions, only corrections to the 2005 edition, whether of the metrical solecisms mentioned above or of misprints, are included, though only where these affect the consonantal skeleton. In such cases, the original form is preceded by بي, standing for “Peeters: OLA 141.” When the new form is not to be found among the variants listed in the apparatus of the 2005 edition, that is, does not occur in any of the witnesses, all readings are noted.⁷⁴ The exceptions concern one passage present in the 2005 text that has been excluded from the present edition, based on a reexamination of the stemma (see §1.4), and the replacement, in the verse and commentary, of طحونتنا (“our mill”) (§5.8) with طاحوننا since, though the former is supported stemmatically for Brains Confounded, it does not fit the meter, and the latter, which does fit the meter, is the form found in Risible Rhymes.

      In this edition, verses that are the subject of commentary are indented; other verses are right-aligned. Reiterations in the body of the text of verses that are the subject of commentary are enclosed in parentheses, following the example of the first Bulaq edition (in the manuscripts, such verses and their pericopes are generally distinguished by marks such as a triangle of dots, or overlining, or rubrication, or a combination of these).

The present translation is a revised version of that published in 2007.⁷⁵ In revising the translation, I have sought to correct errors in its predecessor. I have also shortened the notes in keeping with the guidelines of the Library of Arabic Literature; areas that have been systematically cut in the interests of reducing the academic apparatus are the two particularly complex areas of the sourcing of prophetic traditions and the tracing of sources for prose stories and topoi. I have, however, been able to increase the number of identifications of poets cited anonymously or erroneously by al-Shirbīnī (though, again in the interest of reducing the academic apparatus, ambiguous and disputed attributions have largely been omitted); this has been possible due only to the efforts of Geert Jan van Gelder, to whom I am greatly indebted, for this as for much else.

In addition, I have removed from the endnotes most references related to the lexicology of Egyptian words. Interested readers are referred to a lexicon that I have compiled dealing with words not found in Martin Hinds and El-Said Badawi’s A Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic.⁷⁶ Those who wish to study in greater depth what Brains Confounded can tell us about Egyptian Arabic in al-Shirbīnī’s day are referred to my dissertation on the topic.⁷⁷

      The difficulties of rendering poetry into another language are well known; I have tried, at least, to use rhyme and rhythm in these passages, though without seeking to produce anything that imitates, for example, Arabic meter, but because Arabic hemistichs often appear as a single line in the translation, verse consisting of a single line in Arabic (two in English) is not usually rhymed. The reader should also bear in mind that much of the poetry, whether a quotation or made up by the author, was deliberately chosen or written to be bad. If such verse reads as doggerel, the translation has achieved its purpose.

      Rhymed prose—phrases, usually short, that rhyme but are not metered—poses a special problem, as English has no equivalent category. Its role in the structure of the work is, however, important, because it is used at moments of heightened emotional or rhetorical tension or to lend authority to and drive home an argument elaborated in immediately preceding unrhymed prose. I have used rhyme, indeed, but also assonance, alliteration, and rhythm, to distinguish many of these passages. I have also been influenced, however, by Newmark’s theories of “importance,” according to which “the more important the language of the text, the more closely it should be translated” (Newmark, Translation, 1)—“important” language being defined, in this context, as “language that denotes what is exceptionally valuable, significant, necessary, or permanent” (idem, 2). I have therefore sacrificed, on occasion, the aesthetic demands of the text to the need for literalism. This is the case with passages that convey facts or opinions whose significance I believe to be too great, from the author’s standpoint, to permit the massaging that inevitably occurs in the search for aesthetic equivalence. An example of such a passage is that beginning “Indeed, they never escape their condition of uncouthness because . . . ,” in which the author provides an initial description, in rhymed prose, of the countryman that is critical for an understanding of his attitude towards him (§2.3); this and equivalent passages I have rendered in unrhymed prose. I have made no attempt to rhyme the “Ode of Abū Shādūf” itself for the same reasons.

      English is the metalanguage of this series. In the translation, technical terms, such as those referring to rural officials and rhetorical devices, have been rendered by English equivalents

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