ISBN : 9782296042902
LITERATURE AS PERFONNANCE: THE THEATRE OF AL-HATI111I'SAL-RISALA AL-MUDIHA
Wen-chin Ouyang
What I had set forth stunned Abu al-Tayyib, arrested his eloquence and
detained his tongue from giving a response. He would have rioted if the awe
of Vizier Abu Muhammad [al-Muhallabi] had not filled his heart. He had
before avoided a debate [with me] like a debtor evading his creditor. When I
reached this point [of my discussion of his poetry], he got up in anger, and
that was the last we saw of him in that house. He left, bolting like an ostrich
[in fright], [and stormed out in a huff] to wander aimlessly about. He did not
show his face again until he was ready to leave Iraq [Baghdad] for Kufa.
Some educated young men had thought him an easy target for their mockery,
and some poets took it upon themselves to disparage him. Even those who
never considered him an enemy suddenly shot their arrows at him out of
animosity, tearing his skin and ripping it from his body. In fact, one of the
fools of Baghdad, a nobody in the intellectual circles with no share in virtue
or foothold in literary arts known as Ibn al-Hajjaj had thought himself,
despite the inferiority of his worth and absurdity of his aspiration, as the one
who ran him (al-Mutanabbi) out of town, forcing