Those of us raised in the West to hate and fear Islam, to see only the perversion of it that puts angry men on our tv screens with spittle in their beards and hate in their eyes, have a lot to learn.
Last night I read about classic Portuguese poetry -- a medieval genre of great beauty called "cancioneiro."
It had connections to the poetry of Provencal France -- but also to a surprising source from far away -- Islam.
"Spanish Muslims developed and cultivated ... a type of lyric which undoubtedly was diseminated into Romance-speaking territory ... The influence of the Arabic poetic art on cancionero can be debated only in respect to degree," says my source.
The great works of Arabic literature are an unknown country to me -- and one that I can't wait to explore, once I get through ancient Rome. I have several of them, waiting patiently upon my shelf for me to finish with Phaedrus, Juvenal, Tacitus and the Early Church Fathers.
There is a soft, beautiful, even romantic aspect of classic Islamic culture that is worth the time of an educated person.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Another world
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3 comments:
At the very beginning of the Iraq invasion, during the looting, I found myself being more shocked than awed.
I will always remember the news video of the curator woman in the museum...all details and particulars escape me... but of her anguish at the museum having been looted. She was there slapping her chest, lamenting, and weeping. The broken, empty glass display cases, and the smashed relics around her.
The origins of language, art, mathematics, science, all gone.
I wept with her.
What have we lost?
And what do we continue to lose - not only the tangible objects but the cultural intercourse,the countless students and tourists who should be visiting these places with eyes wide as saucers, returning to Milwaukee or Miami forever changed.
YES!!
You are a brilliant wordsmith. Kudos.
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