Is it one of those puzzles?
I like this poem, but there's a problem with it. No, not theological - linguistic:
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)Ibrahim Bin Adham (ابراہیم بن ادھم) (death 777), was a Sufi saint. His full name was Sultan Ibrahim bin Adham, Bin Mansur al-Balkhi al- Ijli, Abu Ishaq.
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one who loves his fellow men."
The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!—Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
The problem with Hunt's poem is that "Abou ben Adhem" means, basically, Adhem. It's "father of the son of Adhem"... not a well-formed Arabic name at all. (I guess "Ibrahim" would have spoiled the meter... could've said "Sultan" though.)
Labels: humor, language, miscellaneous, poetry
8 Comments:
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At 11:14 PM, October 03, 2007
Barry Leiba had this to say...
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At 5:20 AM, October 04, 2007
The Ridger, FCD had this to say...
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At 2:27 PM, October 04, 2007
fev had this to say...
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At 3:06 PM, October 04, 2007
Barry Leiba had this to say...
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At 3:14 PM, October 04, 2007
The Ridger, FCD had this to say...
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At 3:45 PM, October 04, 2007
Barry Leiba had this to say...
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At 4:26 PM, October 04, 2007
fev had this to say...
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At 5:41 PM, October 04, 2007
Barry Leiba had this to say...
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<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->Is it really a "problem", though? You probably know that in this context, "Abou" isn't meant to be taken literally, but is a title of fond respect. You wouldn't say that a priest called "Father Johnson" really just meant "John".
Well, but Johnson is an hereditary surname that doesn't really mean Son of John anymore, unlike Ben Adhem which is a genunine patronymic. And Father Johnson wouldn't mean "Father OF John's son" even if Johnson were a patronymic, anymore than "Father Ted" means "Ted's father."
But all I know is my Arabic-speaking friend giggles at this name, so it sounds funny even if it's possible.
This may be way off base (books at home, I'm downtown), but isn't "abu" here the front end of a genitive compound, meaning the "of" really _ is_ part of it?
There's a lot of weirdly formed Arabic running around the world of fiction: Lovecraft's Abdul Alhazred, a family name Bin Sheik in some Tom Clancy novel or another, stuff like that. And don't even get started on representations of Arabic in romance novels ....
Yes, that's what The Ridger has already been saying, about "ab[o]u". And yes, usually when it's used in the "title of fond respect" sense it's done in a context that makes linguistic sense. Mahmoud Abbas is "Abu Mazen" because his first-born son is named Mazen. Yasser Arafat was "Abu Ammar" because Ammar was a famous warrior... so "father of Ammar" is a fanciful honorary title. Something like "Abu Salaam" (father of peace) might also make sense.
And there's a lot of weirdly formed things in fiction derived from all sorts of languages. Fiction writers often don't go through too much rigor in using languages other than the one they're writing in (Umberto Eco notwithstanding).
Don't get me started on the guy - can't remember his name - who wrote a spy thriller with some Russians in it. Clearly he'd noticed that all Russian "middle names" end in -ich, but he didn't know why. So he had characters with patronymics that didn't match their fathers' names (a Sergeevich whose father was Igor, for instance) and, worse, he had a woman named something like Katerina Pavlovich instead of Pavlovna.
OK, just to wrap this up (for me; Ridge already wrapped it up for herself): I ran into a Lebanese colleague[1] (Rafah — "prosperity"), and posed the question to her. Indeed, she confirmed that you would never say "Abou Ben Adhem"... that even when you use "Abou" as an honorific, it has to make semantic sense.
Q.E.D.
[1] Truth be told, I ran into her on purpose, so's I could ask her this. Anyway, it's very cool to work in the kind of office where I do, where we have people from EVERYwhere (except, oddly, Japan).
I think the phenomenon's true of most languages when they land in American fiction; a friend of mine told me about a bad Steamy Latin Revolution novel in which one of the characters shouts "Chinga usted!" (formal address, exceedingly, uh, informal verb).
Dunno if it _actually_ happens more with Middle Eastern languages than with others or if it just seems that way because that's the form of the phenomenon that gets my attention. There's a research thread there if someone wants to play with it.
Nice to meet you, Barry. I've enjoyed your posts (and Ridger's hospitality) before.
Hi fev; good to meet you, too.
This is straying a bit from the original conversation, but you reminded me of the English subtitles on the rental DVD of the movie "Y tu mama también". At the beginning of the movie a disclaimer says that it's been edited for language, which seems odd for a DVD. And the audio track has definitely not been edited. But the subtitles are often "softer" than the Spanish.
So when one of the characters says to another, "¡Chinga tu madre!", the subtitle says, "Up yours!" Quite a bit of difference in, um, nuance there.
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