The hunt and its protagonists, whether hunter or hunted, human or animal, have always been recognized as an important theme in Classical Arabic poetry, but this is the first full-length monograph to examine the theme in modern as well as classical poetry. The poems analysed by Jaroslav Stetkevych range from the muʿallaqahs of the pre-Islamic period to the Ṭardiyyah of Muḥammad ʿAfīfī Maṭar (1992). The book consists of a number of papers which have been published previously (mainly in the Journal of Arabic Literature), which have been amended as necessary and supplemented by additional linking chapters in order to provide a comprehensive treatment of the subject. The word “comprehensive” is applicable despite the fact that there is no discussion of the centuries between the eleventh and the twentieth, when the theme of the hunt was neglected by poets.
As suggested by its subtitle, From Heroic to Lyric to Metapoetic, the work is divided into three parts. In Part I the hunt poem is seen as a thematic segment of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic qaṣīdah. The hunter is portrayed as either heroic or anti-heroic, depending upon the placement of the theme within the formal structure of the qaṣīdah: the “wretched hunter” on foot in the “desert journey” (raḥīl) section is contrasted with the “chivalrous hunt” on horseback in the praise/boasting (madīḥ/fakhr) section. The prey assumes the role of protagonist in the former, while the horse assumes an apotheotic role in the latter.
Part II shows how the hunt poem, or ṭardiyyah, emerges as a separate genre in the Abbasid period and escapes from the rigid formal structure of the traditional qaṣīdah. The “allegorical pathos” of the old raḥīl section largely disappears, while the “chivalrous hunt” ceases to be a Bedouin occupation and becomes a courtly pursuit. The new kind of hunter is not “chivalrously daring” but “courtly and discreet”. The hunt has become a “game” and the role of the participant, such as the dog, the horse or the falcon, is now to be “… a transferable, descriptive figment, a stylized affectation of the primary model-icon …What is left to the Abbasid hunter and the Abbasid hunt poem/ṭardiyyah are vestiges of otherwise invalidated habits and archaic poetic formulae that have to be ‘in-formalised’ and ‘in-habited’ anew” (p. 92). It is Abū Nuwās who “… stands in the creative epicenter of the genre-emergence of the ṭardiyyah” (p. 128) and who infuses his descriptive ṭardiyyahs, both objective (waṣf) and subjective (naʿt), with a new lyricism. Furthermore, his ṭardiyyahs were mainly composed in the rajaz meter, which marked another break with the conventions of the classical qaṣīdah.
The author illustrates his points with detailed readings of specific poems, which are valuable for their own sake as well as for the force which they add to his arguments. Thus, in his description of the pre-Islamic qaṣīdah the theme of the “wretched hunter” is illustrated by excerpts from a poem by Ibn Maqrūm and Labīdâs muʿallaqah, while the example of the “chivalrous hunt” is taken from Imrū al-Qays's muʿallaqah. The whole of chapter 3, which concludes Part I of the book, is devoted to a reading of one poem by al-Ḥuṭayʾah, which over thirty pages provides a fascinating interpretation of the poem on several different levels: in relation to the traditional “wretched hunter” theme, as an expression of the “ideal circle” of the Bedouin ethos of hospitality, and as a poem which lies “between scriptural philology and Eucharistic intent” (p. 82) in its treatment of the Abrahamic theme of sacrifice when the hunter considers the possibility of killing his own son.
The study of the lyrical ṭardiyyah in Part II concludes with an examination of Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī’s ṭardiyyah, which is the only extant ṭardiyyah composed in the rhymed couplets (urjūzah muzdawijah) which are generally associated with narrative poetry. Attempts by previous scholars to cast the poem as part of a new narrative genre are firmly dismissed and the poem's faults are exposed. The couplets result in a sequence of verbal “cartouches”, rather than achieving any momentum, and the narrative “…depends to a large degree on mostly precast ‘episodes’, consisting of monotonously shored-up, genre-familiar material…” (p. 202).
The ṭardiyyah genre was already declining in Abū Firās's time and the Palestinian poet Kushājim, who died c. 960, is named as the last major practitioner. Accordingly, Part III, entitled Modernism and Metapoesis: The Pursuit of the Poem, does not attempt to trace the future course of the genre but to examine how the theme has resurfaced in modern twentieth-century poetry. This is done through readings of three poems, each entitled “Ṭardiyyah”. The first two poems, by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī and Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Muʿṭī Ḥijāzī, use traditional elements of the hunt to provide metaphorical images of modern life: the hunting of a hare and the flight of grouse (qaṭā) respectively. In the third poem, by Muḥammad ʿAfīfī Maṭar, the hunt theme is used metapoetically so that the object of the hunt is the poem itself.
“ʿAfīfī Maṭar, an uncompromisingly Modernist poet, transforms the classical, predominantly descriptive hunt lyric into an allegory of the poet's search for the poem-qaṣīdah itself: that is to say, his poem of all poems, the proof of himself.”
In its detailed account of how the theme of the hunt originated within the formal structure of the Classical Arabic qaṣīdah and then developed into a genre in its own right, before disappearing for centuries and finally reappearing as a powerful metaphorical image in modern Arabic poetry, this book is a valuable commentary on the development of Arabic poetry as a whole. Particularly enjoyable, as well as useful, are the readings of poetry, including the author's elegant translations, which underpin every stage of the work. They demonstrate the author's obvious love of the poetry as well as his deep understanding of it.
