Chapter 27 Avelos' Quest

He thinks that tragedy is nothing but the art of praise... Ernest Renan: Averroth, 48 (1861) Abu Gualid Muhammad ibn-Ahmad ibn-Muhammad ibn-Rashid (this series of names is very long, and there are Ben Raste, Avin Riz, Aben-Rhasa in the middle De, Filius Rosardis, last to Averros, and it takes a long time to read in one breath) is writing the eleventh chapter of "The Destroyer of Destruction" to refute the author of "The Destruction of the Philosophers" , the Persian ascetic writer Ghazali, who claimed that God knows only the universal laws of the universe, which relate to the species as a whole, not to the individual.He wrote slowly and steadily from right to left; the operation of syllogism and the connection of large paragraphs of text did not prevent him from enjoying the comfortable atmosphere of the deep house in which he lived.There is the flirtatious murmur of pigeons in the sounds of nature; the murmur of a fountain in a distant courtyard; and Averlos, whose ancestors hail from the Arabian deserts, loves flowing water day and night in his bones.Below, gardens and vegetable gardens; further down, the rushing Guadalquivir, and then the lovely city of Cordoba, like a complex apparatus, but no less bright than Baghdad or Cairo.Aveiros also felt that the Spanish land around him stretched all the way to the border, empty as it was, but everything was real and always new.

The quill moved on the paper, and the arguments were indisputable, but Averros was a little bit disappointed by a trace of doubt.It is not Destruction, a whim, that raises doubts, but his attempt to demonstrate the philosophical problems associated with this brilliant interpretation of Aristotle.As the father of philosophy, the Greek was recognized as the man who could teach all things that can be known; interpreting his writings, as the sages of Islam interpreted, was a difficult task for Averlos.There is nothing more beautiful in history than an Arab doctor who devotes himself to the study of the mind of a man who was born fourteen hundred years before him; Greek, he worked from transcribed translations.Last night, at the beginning of "Poetics", there were two uncertain words that stumped him.Those two words are "tragedy" and "comedy".He had seen it in the third volume of Rhetoric a few years ago, and no one in the whole of Islam could figure out the meaning of these two words.He searched all the volumes of Alexandria of Aphrodisias, and all the editions of the Nestorians Hunain ibn-Isaac and Abu-Basar Mata, but found nothing.These two mysterious words abound in the Poetics; it is impossible to escape.

Averros put down his quill.He mused (without much certainty): what we seek is often within reach.He put away "Destruction" and walked to the bookshelf, which was lined with the multi-volume "Mokama" written by the blind Apen Sida copied by a Persian calligrapher.It would be absurd to think that he had not read these volumes.But these volumes aroused his leisurely re-reading.A rhythmic shout distracted him.He watched from the fenced balcony; shirtless children were playing in the dirt in the narrow yard below.A child stood on the shoulders of another child, apparently pretending to be a prayer teller; with his eyes closed, he shouted in a drawn voice: There is no God but God.The child who served as the ladder remained motionless and pretended to be the steeple of the temple; the third child crawled on the ground and pretended to be a priest.The game was soon over: everyone was competing to be the teller, and no one wanted to be a believer or a minaret.Averros heard them arguing in a vulgar dialect, the rudimentary Spanish spoken by the Muslim commoners of the Iberian peninsula.He opened Khalil's Kita Ulan and thought proudly: There is no better copy in all of Córdoba (or even in all of Andalusia) than this, and this is Emil Yacoub Almansu brought it to him from Tangier.The name of the port reminded him of the traveler Abu Qassim al-Assari who had returned from Morocco, who had dined with him at the home of the scholar Farah on the evening of his return.Abu Kassim said that he had been to the land of the Qing Empire in China; those who attacked him insisted that he had never been to China out of the special logic of hatred; even if he had been, it must be blasphemy in the Chinese universe Allah.It would take hours to recall that meeting carefully; Averroth picked up "Destruction" hastily, and continued to write until evening.

The conversation at Farah's house had gone from the viceroy's incomparable virtues to the virtues of his brother Amir; then in the garden the conversation turned to roses.Abu Kasim swore that Andalusian red roses were incomparable without even looking at them.But Farah didn't think so; he said that the learned Ibn Qutaiba had described a rose in the garden of Hindustan, which was an excellent variety that bloomed for a long time, and there were words on the bright red petals, which read: There is no God other than Allah , Muhammad is the apostle of Allah.And said that Abu Qasim must have seen that kind of rose.Abu Kassim gave him a surprised look.If he said that he had seen it, he would be taken for granted as a liar; if he denied it, they would say he did not believe in God.So he muttered that the key to unlocking all the mysteries in the world is in the hands of Allah, and all evergreen or withered things in the world are recorded in Allah's holy book.This remark is on record in the opening chapters of the book; it was greeted with a respectful murmur.Abu Qasim was proud of his eloquence, and was about to say that Allah's actions are perfect and undetectable.Averros, recalling one of Hume's still controversial arguments, interjected:

"I'd rather guess that it was the clerical error of the learned Ibn Qutaiba or a scribe than that there are roses in the world that profess faith." "Yeah, that's the truth," Abu Kassim said. "A certain traveler," said the poet Abdamalic, "talked of a tree whose fruit was green birds. I find his words more credible than the written rose." "This is probably a misunderstanding caused by the color of the bird's feathers," said Averros. "Besides, fruits and birds are things of nature, but words are art. It is much easier to go from leaves to birds than to go from roses to words." "

Another guest vehemently objected to calling words art, since the original of the Mother of Books existed before the beginning of chaos, and has been preserved in Paradise.Another guest said that there is a substance whose form can be both human and animal, and this view is similar to that of those who maintain duality.Farah expounded the orthodox doctrine at length.He said, like mercy, it is one of the attributes of Allah; it is written in the book, on the lips, and in the heart; language, symbols, and characters are all created by human beings, but they are eternal.Averros, interpreted, could have pointed out the similarities between the mother of books and Plato's model, but he said that theology was a science beyond the comprehension of Abu Qassim.

Others also noticed this, and Abu Qasim was urged to tell some miracles.Then, as now, the world was perilous; the daring made his way, the poor resigned.Abu Qasim's memory reflects only covert cowardice.What has he to say?Besides, they wanted him to tell about miracles, and miracles couldn't be told at all: the moon in Bengal was different from the moon in Yemen, but the language used to describe it was the same.Abu Kasim thought about it for a moment, then said in a tone of voice: "Those who have been to many regions and cities certainly have much to tell. There is one thing I have only said to the king of Turkey. It happened in New Karan (Canton), where the River of Life enters the sea."

Farah asked if that city was far from the Great Wall, which Iskanda Karnain (Alexander of Macedon with the horned helmet) built to defend against the invasion of Gog and Magog. "There's a huge desert in between," Abu Kassim said with complacency. "It takes forty days for the camel caravan to see the beacon tower of the Great Wall, and it is said that it will take another forty days to reach the bottom of the city. I have not met a single person who has seen or heard of the Great Wall in New Karan." Averroth suddenly felt a sense of awe at the boundless space.He looked at the symmetrical garden; he felt old and useless and out of place.Abu Kassim went on to say: One afternoon, Muslim traders in New Karan took me to a wooden house where many people lived.It's hard to describe the painted house. In fact, it can only be regarded as a large room with rows of attics or balconies stacked on top of each other.People were eating and drinking in the separate space, as well as on the ground and roof deck.There were drums and harps on the platform, and fifteen or twenty people (in scarlet masks) were praying, singing, and talking.They suffer in captivity, but don't see the cell; they ride, but don't see the horse; they fight, but they hold a bamboo pole; they fall and die, then get up again.

"The tricks of the lunatics," Farah said, "that normal people can't understand." "They're not crazy," Abu Kassim had to explain. "A businessman told me they were describing a piece of history." No one understood, and no one seemed to want to understand.Overwhelmed, Abu Kassim explained awkwardly to those who listened: "Let us imagine that they were not telling stories but acting them out. Even the story of the sleeping man in Ephesus. We saw them go back to bed and pray to sleep. They slept with their eyes open and grew up while sleeping. Waking up after 309 years. We watched them pay ancient coins when they bought from peddlers, and saw them wake up with dogs in heaven. That's what the people on the platform played to us that afternoon."

"Do those people talk?" Farah asked. "Speak of course," Abu Kassim defended the veracity of a performance he could barely remember, utterly weary. "They talked and sang and gave speeches!" "In that case," Farah said, "you don't need twenty people. No matter how complicated it is, one person can explain it all." Everyone agrees with this view.They extolled the virtues of the Arabic language; they said it was the language in which God directed the angels; and then they praised the poetry of the Arabs.After giving Arabic poetry its due praise, Abu Damalik said it was outdated for the poets of Damascus or Córdoba to cling to pastoral images and Bedouin vocabulary.He said that the mighty Guadalquivir River is close at hand, but it is ridiculous to praise a well.He advocated innovation in metaphor; five centuries, he said, had worn away the admiration that people had when Zuhail compared fate to a blind camel.Everyone agrees with this view, although it has been heard many times by many people.Averros remained silent.When he finally spoke, he seemed to be talking to himself.

"I also supported Abdamalic's argument," said Averros, "though less eloquently, but the truth is the same. It was said in Alexandria that only those who have made mistakes and repented will not repeat them; we It may be added that in order to avoid mistakes it is better to have knowledge. Zuhail said that after eighty years of pain and glory, he had seen many times that fate suddenly trampled people to pieces like a blind camel ;Abu Damalik knew that the parable was no longer impressive. There are many replies to this charge. First, if the purpose of poetry is to surprise, the time used to calculate surprise is not centuries but days, Hours, even minutes. Second, the famous poet should not be the creator but the discoverer. When praising the poet Ibn al-Sharaf of Berja, it was repeatedly pointed out that only he could think of the stars at dawn like the leaves falling slowly. if true, would only prove that such an image is worthless. The image that one man can bring up has nothing to do with anyone. There are thousands of things in the world; anything can be compared. The comparison of stars to leaves is a Unfounded, not much different from comparing them to birds and fish. On the contrary, no one would think that fate is strong and clumsy, simple and indifferent. Anyone can have such thoughts, short or long-lasting, but Only Zuhail wrote it in poetry. No one can express it better than him. Besides (this may be the essence of my thinking), the time that can wear down the castle makes poetry more substantial. Zuhail was When poetry was written in Arabia, the image of the old camel and fate was compared; The one component has now become four. Time has widened the scope of the poems and, as far as I know, some poems to music have been widely circulated. A few years ago, in Marrakech, I was thinking hard about Cordoba and could not help but groan Recite what Abdulrahman confides to an African palm in Ruzafar's garden: Palm, you are like me, It is also in a foreign land... This is the unique benefit of poetry; the words spoken by a king who misses the East are used by me in exile in Africa to express my longing for Spain. Later, Averlos speaks of the earliest poets of the pre-Islamic savagery, who had expounded various things in the inexhaustible language of the desert.It is not unreasonable for him to be shocked by Ibn-Sharaf's vagueness. He said that the ancients and li had already covered all the content of poetry, and he denounced the ambition of innovation as ignorance and arrogance.Everyone listened with gusto as something ancient was maintained. When Averros returned to his study, the timekeeper was calling for morning prayers. (In the backyard where the female relatives lived, the black-haired slave girls bullied a red-haired slave girl, but he didn't know until the afternoon.) He seemed to understand the meaning of those two difficult words.In a steady and careful hand he added to the manuscript the following lines: Aristotle (Aristotle) ​​called the works of praise tragedy, and the works of satire and condemnation comedies.There are wonderful tragedies and comedies here and there in the chapters of the book and in the sacristy of the monasteries. Drowsiness hit him, and he felt a little cold.He took off his turban and looked in the bronze mirror.I don't know what he saw because historians never describe what he looked like.All I know is that he vanished suddenly, as if burned by a fire that did not shine, and with him the house, the fountain that could only be heard but not seen, and books, manuscripts, doves, many black hairs the trembling red-haired slave girl, Farah, Abu Qassim, the rose tree, and perhaps the Guadalquivir. In the above story, I want to describe the process of a failure.I think first of the Archbishop of Canterbury who tried to prove the existence of God; then of the alchemists who searched for the Philosopher's Stone;In the end, what I think is more poetic is a self-contained person who sets goals but doesn't allow himself to explore them.I thought of Averlos, who had shut himself up in Islamic circles, and could not understand the meaning of the words "tragedy" and "comedy."When I was describing this incident, I suddenly had the feeling of the god mentioned by Burton. The god wanted to create a ox, but instead created a buffalo.I felt like I was being mocked by the work.I think that Averros who knows nothing about drama but wants to know the script is no more ridiculous than me, because I can figure out Averros's story only from the words of Renan, Lane and Asim Palacios. Condition.On the last page, I feel like what I'm writing is symbolic of the person I'm writing, which is me; in order to write the story, I have to be that person; in order to be that person, I have to write the story, and so on. (Once I stopped trusting him, "Averros" disappeared.)