Impostures. al-Ḥarīrī
and one of Johnson’s favorite drinks (see Boswell, Life, 1791 ed., I:135). The Arabic has “mixed him a cup,” using a rare word for “mix.” The expressions of affection between men described in this passage, and again in many other Impostures, are part of what Shawkat M. Toorawa, following Eve Sedgwick, has called the “homosocial” character of the pre-modern Arabic scholarly milieu. This is to be distinguished from the homoerotic, which appears as well (see Imposture 10).
Al-Ḥārith’s native place (§2.4) is Basra, which, being al-Ḥarīrī’s home too, is more fully realized than any other place mentioned in the Impostures (see 48 and 50). “El-Bohtoree” (§2.4) is al-Buḥturī (d. 284/897), an Abbasid court poet and leading representative of the so-called Modern school, famous for its complex images. The verses cited here compare teeth to pearls, hailstones, and daffodils. “If Rubies . . .”: Spenser, Sonnet XV in Works, p. 123, with “her” changed to “his” to match the Arabic. Preston, Makamat, 399, quotes part of this poem as well.
The Arabic verses in §2.5 add a comparison to hearts of palm and bubbles. To match it I have used “Rubies, Cherries, and Roses . . .” from The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, Lib. 2., in Sidney, Complete Works, I:209. In the citations of sixteenth-century poetry I have modernized a few of the spellings to make for easier reading.
The Qurʾanic verse in §2.6 is from Ḥujurāt 49:12, here given in the 1734 translation by George Sale (1877 edition, p. 419).
The Arabic poem in §2.7 replaces the teeth with tears, which it compares both to pearls and to rain, besides adding henna-dyed fingers to the line. For this I have used “Oh teares . . .”: Sidney, Sonnet C, in Complete Works, I:282. Abū Zayd’s next lines compare the face to the moon and tears to pearls dropped from a perfumed ring. My equivalent is “Alas I found . . .”: Sidney, Sonnet LXXXVII, in Works, I:277. “The proof of the Pudding . . .”: This is the form attested in the OED citations for 1790 and 1802.
Abū Zayd’s topper (§2.8) describes parting from a veiled lover who is weeping and biting her hands in grief, which he describes as “biting crystal with pearls.” My English (“I sighed her sighs . . .”) continues Sidney, Sonnet LXXXVII, in Works, II:277.
Section §2.9 is the first recognition scene in the Impostures: that is, the first of the many scenes in which al-Ḥārith recognizes the eloquent stranger as his old friend Abū Zayd. Abdelfattah Kilito has argued that the recognition scene is what defines an Imposture (Séances, 122). For a typology of recognition scenes see Zakharia, Abū Zayd, 189–212; and for a thematic study, Kennedy, Recognition, esp. 246–306. Abū Zayd’s envoi is cobbled together from lines by Johnson, all of them from “The Vanity of Human Wishes,” except “Fate! snatch away . . . ,” which is adapted from “Stella in Mourning.”
Bibliography
Boswell, James. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. London: Henry Baldwin for Charles Dilly, 1791.
. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. London: Richardson, 1823. [Edited by Edmund Malone.] This fifth edition of the work contains Boswell’s supplements and additional correspondence redistributed in chronological order. Unfortunately, many pages (in the electronic edition, at least) are missing or out of order.
[ ]. Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Abridged and edited by Charles Grosvenor Osgood. [? Princeton, 1917.] Though abridged, this edition has the advantage of being searchable, at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1564/1564-h/1564-h.htm.
Chappelow, Leonard. Six Assemblies; or Ingenious Conversations of Learned Men Among the Arabians. Cambridge, 1767.
[Johnson, Samuel]. The Yale Digital Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson http://www.yalejohnson.com/frontend/node/3#subject#Genre/Poem.
Johnson, Samuel. A Dictionary of the English Language: A Digital Edition of the 1755 Classic by Samuel Johnson. Edited by Brandi Besalke.
Kennedy, Philip F. Recognition in the Arabic Literary Tradition: Discovery, Deliverance, and Delusion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016.
Lockhart, L. “Ḥulwān.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Leiden: Brill, 1960–2007.
[Qurʾan]. The Koran, or, Alcoran of Mohammed. Translated by George Sale. London: William Tegg, 1877; originally published 1734.
[Sidney, Philip]. The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney. Edited by Albert Feuillerat. Vol. I. Cambridge, 1912.
[Spenser, Edmund]. The Works of Edmund Spenser. Volume V. Edited by J. Payne Collier. London: Bickers, 1873.
Toorawa, Shawkat M. “Language and Male Homosocial Desire in the Autobiography of ʿAbd al-Latif al-Baghdadi (d. 629/1231).” Edebiyât: The Journal of Middle Eastern Literatures, new series, 7, no. 2 (1997): 251–65.
Imposture 3
Sing o’ Rich, Sing o’ Poor
In this episode, Abū Zayd produces on demand a poem in praise of a gold coin, and then a poem disparaging it. Being directly about money, this Imposture lent itself to translation into the English of Singapore, which despite its diminutive size is regularly ranked as one of the world’s most competitive economies. It is also a place where English has been transformed by contact with local languages, producing a creole called Singlish that is difficult to follow for speakers of other varieties. Because the diction of the Impostures is highly formal and often archaic, they too can be difficult to understand. This was true in the past as well, to judge by the many commentaries on the text and the definitions scribbled in various languages, including Arabic, on the manuscripts. These associations provided a pretext for choosing Singlish—in the style of the comedy routines still practiced by the likes of Selina Tan and Sebastian Tan—as the model English for this episode. One striking feature of this variety is the use of particles like ah and lah at the ends of sentences to convey emphasis, seek clarification, and the like. As these particles have no fixed translation, the notes usually do not provide one, but the meaning in any given case can be guessed from context. The Singlish of this Imposture was corrected by Jeremy Fernando.
3.1Dat Haris bin Hammam guy tell story:
Went to Higher Arabic party wit’ kaki, we macam bubbles in bubble tea. No one blur blur over dere, no