On al-Ḥarīrī’s Impostures: The Politics of Translation
Al-Ḥarīrī (d. 516/1122) was an acclaimed poet, a scholar of Arabic language and literature, and a government official from Basra, Iraq. He is famed for producing rhymed prose narrative, a genre more formally known as the Maqāmāt. Each Maqāmāt focuses on a protagonist who happens to be an authority in the Arabic language and also a vagabond. This imposture, this rogue, wonders across new cities and foreign lands, always scheming, deceiving, and posturing to be someone he is not. We find him in the form of a preacher, lying to authorities, pretending to be blind, etc.
In Impostures, translated by Michael Cooperson, the reader is graced by fifty different tales, translated into fifty different styles. The wordplay, the riddles, and the palindromes couched in classical Arabic survive too — only in a different form, as Cooperson transforms Arabic wordplay into English wordplay. Each maqāmāt uses different literary styles and devices — ranging from Mark Twain to Virginia Woolf and legal dictionary to Indian English. Al-Ḥarīrī’s collection of works — embellished and molded in various ways by Cooperson — is truly distinctive, diverse, and intriguing in every sense. This collection convinces the reader of the fluidity and operational power of translation and the English language.
The 16th imposture — Hobson’s Choice — is particularly intriguing. On reading the short prologue to the imposture, one will come to find that it is inspired by twentieth-century Indian English. When I first read this, I found myself mildly amused and thought it would prove to be “an easy read,” given that I was familiar with the dialect/style. However, this was not quite the case. The text was marked by poor grammar and awkward constructions, and despite my familiarity with Indian English, I found the text quite difficult to read.
At first, the stylistic elements almost seemed to be mocking to me — being cognizant of the reality that one’s fluency and eloquence in English is often an accurate predictor of a person’s economic class or social status in India. Armed with such a cognizance, this imitation seemed like some cruel Orientalist parody. As I read the notes at the end of the maqāmā, I found myself deeply puzzled: Cooperson’s translation was clearly not arbitrary and did exist in some linguistic consistency with other authors, linguists, and grammarians of the Indian subcontinent. He had, of course, “deliberately accentuated its distinctive features.” Even some of the sources that he leaned on to advise him seemed to be adulterated by some form of colonial bias — “Whitworth’s compilation of sentences he disliked was intended to improve Indian English, while John’s survey seems torn between an impulse to celebrate and a compulsion to mock.” Cooperson, in his notes, further writes: “But from a linguistic or literary perspective, the supposedly substandard texts produced by Indian writers are as deserving of interest as any other variety of English.” This statement raises several questions I invite you to ponder: Why did these texts deserve attention? Was it due to their linguistic brilliance and eloquence or due to their content? When it comes to English, what is substandard and what is not? And who gets to be the judge of this?
I realize that no matter how I try to answer these questions, I remain deeply unsatisfied. While one could argue — in a theoretical, purely academic sense — that the subjects of the empire can lay a legitimate claim on the language of the empire, I don’t see such an argument stand when I see the English language so closely tied to socio-economic class and elitism back at home, all of which happen to be colonial byproducts.
Further, do we treat other languages similarly? That is, do we allow others to define and mold them? Or do we only give English that status? If the answer to the previous question is affirmative, are we — the subjects of colonial rule — reclaiming English or cementing its dominance in a Eurocentric world?
These are questions I do not have answers to, but they are important considerations nonetheless — they teach us that translation is inherently political. Despite the aim of this publication to increase the accessibility of pre-modern Arabic literature and bring it to diversify audiences, it is important to acknowledge that most — if not all — texts discussed or analyzed are read in translation. This is further skewed by the fact that the question of what should be and is translated is likely influenced by Orientalist academic choices — and this is an unfortunate fact that should inform your reading of everything published by our blog.
Resources for further reading/research:
- A talk at Internationaler Literaturpreis by Teju Cole which indulges in the intricacies of translation and talks about the power that both literature and translation can have on our lives and their potential to catalyze sociocultural change: Teju Cole: On Carrying and Being Carried — from translation to migration and back again
- Kilito, Abdelfattah. 2008. Thou Shalt Not Translate Me. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
