Literature

In Byzantium

Byzantine literature may be broadly defined as the Greek literature produced in the eastern part of the Roman Empire from the reign of Constantine (AD 305–337), or sometimes, Justinian (reigned 527–565), until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. This writing, whose history spans several distinct eras, is characterized by the general traits that created its identity.

The Byzantine millennium was divided by the rupture that separated Late Antiquity from the Middle Ages. In the sixth century, the decline of the cities sparked off a process of change that the seventh-century invasions completed. Under Justinian, the Empire, together with Italy and Africa (which had been reconquered), extended over the entire East Mediterranean and included, apart from the capital, other important cities. After the Dark Ages (mid seventh to the end of the eighth century), it was reduced to Asia Minor and the Balkans with a single hub—Constantinople. In the ninth century, it underwent a renaissance, and at this point Byzantine literature became very productive. The capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204 brought this to a halt, but once the capital was won back (1261), the Palaeologan period (1261–1453), benefiting from the activity that had flourished in the Empire of Nicaea (1204–1261), experienced a fresh renaissance.

During each era, Byzantine literature was influenced by classical Hellenism. This classical tradition continued until the seventh century but, during the Dark Ages, the link was broken and the Byzantine peoples had to forge a link with their past and rediscover the ancient texts, which have now been handed down to us.

For the Byzantine people, the classical works were the archetypal models. They studied them in school, where they acquired the culture that was the preserve of the elite. Imitation, rather than originality, was the essential impetus for literary creation. Since the times of Classical Athens, Greek had changed but, for scholarly authors, the ideal remained the Attic language, and the gulf widened between literary and spoken Greek. Writing in simpler language was handed down, but written Greek was always different from the spoken language, which was only transposed into writing in the twelfth century.

In Byzantium, Christianity existed alongside Hellenism. Writers quoted the Old and New Testaments along with Homer and Hesiod, and they honoured the classical work of Christians like St. Gregory of Naziance (fourteenth century). This dual influence was unevenly represented in the texts, and the range of genres was very wide, comprising much religious writing of great quality and secular works.

However, Byzantine literature was essentially medieval, and very different from the classical model it was attempting to imitate. Certain genres, like the theatre, disappeared. Others, like poetry, were less prominent or appeared in new forms. Rhetoric, however, continued uninterrupted, and held an important place in Byzantium, with its ceremonial eloquence and epistolography[1]. History, another strength, differed from ancient history, even if certain writers looked to Thucydides as a model until the fifteenth century.  Twelfth-century Byzantine Romans were inspired by the Romans of Late Antiquity, but they freed themselves from this heritage during the Palaeologan era. Another narrative genre flourished—the lives of the saints— which, at certain periods, dominated literary production. Other authors, whose knowledge was more encyclopaedic, went beyond these conventional forms of literature: Psellos in the eleventh century and, later, Gregoras and Pachymeres.

The authors came from a variety of social milieu, ranging from the simple monk to the emperor. There were few scholastic writers and, men of letters, who lived in the capital, were close to the imperial administration or the high clergy. In the twelfth century, a new figure appeared—the man of letters who could earn his living from writing, thanks to the patronage of the aristocracy. Scholastic writers were probably writing for their peers, but also wrote other works for a wider audience. Byzantine literature was transmitted through copied manuscripts, then, from the eighth century, written in a new hand using lower-case letters, which eventually replaced the traditional writing with capitals. In medieval times, Byzantine books on parchment or paper were costly and rare. Therefore, an oral tradition was established, where works were read in churches and monasteries, and this also applied to secular texts, which were read to audiences. Nonetheless, Byzantine literature was not widely diffused.

Apart from these general traits, Byzantine literature can be classified into distinct periods, for which certain writers serve as reference points.

Several centres were active until the seventh century, and their production comprised religious, secular—and even pagan—works. In Alexandria, philosophy remained a bastion of pragmatism (Simplicius), before taking on Christianity. Further north, Gaza was proud of its rhetoric. Classicizing, secular history was incarnated by Procopius of Caesarea, his successor, Agathias, and, around 640, by Theophylact Simocatta. Certain poetic genres remained productive, such as the epigram (Agathias), and descriptive verse (Paul the Silentiary). Christian writing, however, predominated through its energy. In the historical genre, alongside ecclesiastical history, a more popular genre developed—chronography—, incarnated by John Malalas under Justinian. During the same era, Romanus the Melodist was writing religious poems that were free from the rules of classical prosody. Hagiography was extremely popular—Cyril of Scythopolis (sixth century) and Leontios of Neapolis (seventh century), and successful works like the Life of Mary the Egyptian, and the Spiritual Meadow of John Moschos—, while Christological struggles encouraged the development of theology.

From the end of the sixth century, secular literature declined. Religious literature lasted longer, with authors like Maxim the Confessor and John Climacus (Ladder of Divine Ascent), but Byzantium was plunged into the Dark Ages. The religious writers remained active, like Germain of Constantinople, or in the Islamic lands, John of Damascus, but it was not until the end of the eighth century that the capital witnessed a revival, with the Short Chronicle by Nicephorus which, around 760, marked the revival of the historical genre. During the second iconoclasm (815–843), the abundance and quality of religious writing (Theodore the Studite and Nicephorus) showed that the cultural climate had changed.

After the middle of the ninth century, the literary revival was incarnated by the patriarch Photios (c.810–893), to whom we owe a precious library, containing his commentaries on numerous secular and religious authors. Byzantium had reconnected with its past and the movement continued. The tenth century was marked by the activity that developed around the Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (reigned 913–959), who himself wrote political treatises. Technical compilations are also attributed to him and, under his initiative, a collection of extracts from historians was assembled. The historical genre was also represented by Joseph Genesius, who was supported by the Emperor, and by the Continuation of Theophanes, on which he personally collaborated. He was also interested in hagiography, a popular genre at the time.

The reign of Basil II (976–1025) was less productive, but witnessed the work of a great mystic, Symeon the New Theologian. Barlaam and Joasaph, a Greek version of the Buddha's life, was probably written around the same time. However, it was only after the mid eleventh century that Byzantine writing flourished, with the work of Michel Psellos (c.1018–1078), a philosopher and orator, to whom we owe a detailed Chronography of his personal memoirs. His disciple, the philosopher Jean Italos, was condemned by the Church—a judgement which shows just how much intolerance there was towards literary expression. The era of the Comneni saw an increase in rich and varied forms of literature. There was a revival of fictional writing, scholastic eloquence flourished, and learning became more widespread. It was also the era of Digenes Akritas's epic about a hero at the Arab frontier. At the end of the century, the great figure was the scientist Eustathius of Thessalonica, who wrote about Homer, Pindar, and Aristophanes, and various works including an account of the capture of his city. The historical genre was represented by Anne Komnene, who dedicated her Alexiade to her father Alexis I. Theodore Prodrome, author of a novel, letters, and poems, some of which are in vulgar Greek, represented the new type of semi-professional writer.

After the capture of Constantinople in 1204, intellectuals sought refuge in the Empire of Nicaea, where Niketas Choniates finished his historical work consecrated to the period 1118–1206. With imperial support, scholars like Nicephorus Blemmydes and George Akropolites developed the sciences and literature and, after the conquest in 1261, cemented the link with Constantinople (Palaeologian era), where they flourished once more. George Pachymeres and Theodore Metochites, a statesman and encyclopaedic scientist, embodied Christian humanism. The scientist Nicephorus Gregoras wrote a history of the years 1204 to 1359, while the Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos composed his Memoirs in his retirement, in which he justified his reign. They both took part in the debate between Barlaam and Palamas, which generated an abundance of polemical writing. Maximus Planudes (c. 1255–1305) was renowned for his erudition and translations from Latin. The Byzantine world opened up to Western influences, as the novels of the era confirm. Intellectual life developed outside the capital—in Mistra (Peloponnese), the philosopher Gemistos Plethon attracted brilliant disciples. The Fall of Constantinople in 1453 did not signal the end of this intellectual movement: four historians (Doukas, Kritoboulos, Chalkokondyles, and Sphrantzes), related its history in different styles, while George Scholarios, patriarch of Constantinople, continued his theological work.

Byzantine literature was not closed to outside influence. It was at times open to Eastern influences, and embraced the West in the final centuries of the Empire. It also left a cultural heritage, both in the orthodox nations, where it gave rise to religious literature, and in the Western Renaissance, which benefited from the manuscripts and knowledge of its scholars.

B.F.

In Islam

Today Arabic literature is associated primarily with the southern banks of the Mediterranean as well as a large part of the Middle East, the result of a long historical process but which in actual fact also involved the countries of the Mediterranean’s northern shores: Spain, Portugal and Italy, as well as those far distant countries, Iran and India.

We can trace the roots of this literature’s history to its oldest Arabian manuscripts from the sixth and seventh centuries. These rhymed and rhythmical poems that influenced the many cultures of the Mediterranean both thematically (courtly love) and formally (the use of rhyme did not reach the West until the tenth century) became more diversified over time, undergoing many transformations and alterations as they travelled from culture to culture. In terms of Arabic prose, the first literary writings appeared in the course of the 8th century, or at least what we would define as a “book”, namely an orderly composition that unites several writings of the same genre, conceived as a coherent whole and clearly destined for a reader. This first book—profane in nature—would have a formidable impact on the entire sphere of the Mediterranean.

How was it composed we might well ask? Kalila and Dimna is a highly elaborate collection of beast fables written for kings and princes that sheds light on new ways of governing, but it was also aimed at all people, young or old, who sought out its wise morals. It was not, strictly speaking, an Arabic creation but an adaptation taken from a literary work with a long tradition behind it which had already proved its worth.  Kalila and Dimna originally came from India, where it remains, even to this day, a widely read book known as the Panchatantra. It travelled to Persia in the 6th century, under the reign of Kosroès Anoushirwan, and then, in the early part of the Abbasid dynasty, was adapted and translated into Arabic by a remarkable secretary to the Chancellery of Persian origin, one of the founders of classical Arabic prose, `Abdallâh ibn al-Muqaffa‘, who came to a tragic end in 756.  

The Indian version, like its Persian equivalent, has since been lost and, hence, it is thanks to the Arabic adaptation by ’Ibn al-Muqaffa‘(including an independent, secret Syriac text) that the book survived and consequently spread to a surprising number of different cultures and languages. It has been translated into Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Spanish, then into Italian, French, English, Dutch, Judeo-German, Hungarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Slav, etc. The diffusion of the Arabic version, from language to language throughout Europe, beginning in the Middle Ages, is in itself extraordinary. And furthermore, within the Arab world the book was greatly appreciated as it was rendered, on a number of occasions, into verse to facilitate its memorisation and these different handwritten copies were often true works of art, very carefully compiled and decorated with splendid miniatures. What was it, then, that made this literary treasure so successful?

The Arabic versions of Kalila and Dimna usually contained three introductions and some twenty or so chapters for a total of around eighty fables. These introductions, the fables and the narrative techniques employed are all important if we are to understand the aims and general gist of the works, and hence its success.

Let us begin by what on the face of it is the most simple: the fables. La Fontaine’s fables, of great didactic interest, are undeniably the most popular and prestigious of all French fables. Their author recognised his debt to, among others, Kalila and Dimna, and more specifically to the key protagonist of the collection, “Pilpay the Indian sage”. Kalila and Dimna is in fact very “present” in La Fontaine’s writings. Here are two examples which, perhaps better than a demonstration, illustrate this strong underlying presence. The first example is one of the most famous fables of all time in the French repertory, namely The Raven and the Fox. It is usually attributed to Aesop or Phaedrus, the one Greek and the other Latin. But the interconnections go much further when we include the Arabic influence, and further still with that of Persia and India. The second part of the fable in Kalila and Dimna entitled The Dove, the Fox and the Heron is a remarkable variation on the theme of “Flatterers thrive on fool’s credulity”(from the French: “tout flatteur vit aux dépens de celui qui l’écoute”) except that here the exchange is between the fox and the heron and what is at stake is not simply a cheese but the heron itself who, falling into the trap of being flattered, ends up in the stomach of his cunning predator. Naturally, however, La Fontaine did not draw directly from the Oriental version—and this is even more striking—but the narrative and didactic substrata is the same and it affected his readers wherever the fable went, as widely and as successfully, whether in the East or the West.

The second example is just as famous. It is the fable of The Dairywoman and the Pot of Milk with its heroine Peggy who has become the symbol, par excellence, of all of us who “build castles in Spain”. Her old “Oriental” equivalent can be seen in Kalila and Dimna in the first part of the fable entitled The Excessively Pious Man and the Mongoose. There are several interesting connections between the “idiot” in La Fontaine’s tale—here a woman—and the Arabic versions (for there are many different versions, as we will see) in which it is a man; hence, if misogyny is to be found here, it is clearly a western phenomenon that stems from western adaptations in which the “idiot” is most often portrayed as a woman. Furthermore, in Kalila and Dimna a woman who purports to be wise counsels her (imbecile of a) husband by telling him the tale. The framework of the action is nevertheless the same. The two fables give the impression of taking place in the “countryside”, in an agrarian context, and what was “clarified butter” (Kalîla) to be marketed and that which would reap greater profits has simply become the “milk” (in La Fontaine’s version), the principle in both cases being animal husbandry and the successive sales what would make a fortune. This is what assures its success, regardless of the language of place and time.

But Kalila and Dimna is not only an excellent choice of stories, stories that are particularly suggestive and well constructed, it also employs an elaborate narrative technique and contains a particularly open-minded vision towards mankind and his world. Let us begin by the narrative technique: Most of the fables are contained within other fables—the story within a story. A (wise) character generally explains to another (ignorant) person that if they continue to behave in such and such a way something will happen to them that happened (for example) to the “the ascetic who had a pot of clarified butter”. “And what happened to the ascetic?” asks the ignorant person….and thus the fable itself begins. What is most remarkable in this structure is its modelling, the way the reader finds himself plunged “inside” the tale, having to choose whether to follow the advice contained within the “sage’s” tale or to behave like the imbecile who is headed for certain failure. But is this really a choice? Who would want to conduct themselves like an “imbecile”? The book turns out to be a formidable tool for learning that in reality leaves no room for indecision or versatility. 

Its global vision on the world and men is presented under the pen of a Persian “doctor”. This is one of the most striking passages in Kalila and Dimna. What is the fundamental dilemma of humankind? Surely it is the fugacity of their existence, for their destiny is inescapably death. And a doctor, however good he may be, can only hope to gain some time but he can never defeat death. And consequently we turn to religions for help, or so says Kalila and Dimna, for religions, better than anything else, have answers for what to do in the face of death, namely to triumph and reach a better world. Yet the book’s discourse is not as “religious” as it may seem and very soon another question arises: Everyone says their religion is the best yet they know almost nothing of other ones. All they have ever done is follow in the footsteps of their kin, adopting without question the religion of their ancestors. Hence, what religion should the practicing sage follow? And what arguments should he adopt? Kalila and Dimna goes even further in its effort to formulate an answer—a very precise one at that—a surprising answer that is still pertinent today and which all readers, young and old, could benefit from by reading the tale. Finally, from what we have seen, the general characteristics pertaining to the fable and the way in which they are told, the way they are framed in an introductory tale, are undoubtedly the very elements that made of this early book of Arabic literature one of the first books to have had such widespread appeal and the first to have appeared, as a result, in all the current western languages of the Middle Ages.

Let us now consider another monumental treasure of medieval Arabic literature, The Thousand and One Nights. Rare are the works of Arabic literature that have resulted, and as consistently, in so many publications, translations, commentaries and adaptations, in all countries and rendered by some of their most distinguished authors: Jorge L. Borges to Yukio Mishima, from Stendhal to Edgar Allan Poe, Marcel Proust to John Barth and Naguib Mahfouz, the latter having produced a sequel to it and even his own The Thousand and One Nights. Here again we may well ask: Why such success? How did the story multiply and why so many variations?

These tales have their origin in a Persian book, the Hézâr afsâné or A Thousand Tales.  But contrary to what the designation “folk tale” would have us think, it did not enter into the Arab-speaking community by oral transmission. For the most part and from a precise point in time, it appeared in written form. We have this information thanks to a certain bookseller in Baghdad in the tenth century who had the book in his possession and kept a Catalogue. The Nights were translated or, more exactly, adapted from the Persian into Arabic, presumably in the eighth century and in very similar circumstances to Kalila and Dimna. Parallel to this, the Arabic text on paper—the oldest compiled document (dated 879)—reproduced, among other things, a fragment of The Thousand and One Nights! The impact it had, like its public and mode of circulation, was clearly limited to the cultured few. But this fragment indicates that the work, caught up in the great melting pot of human and intellectual exchange that fashioned Arab culture at the time, was already on its way to opening up, to encountering a new world and, above all, to a great transformation.  

At the time of its Arabic adaptation, the original Persian title changed name, for in Persian it was entitled A Thousand Tales. An erudite scribe whose name we may never know devised an excellent title for the Arabic version—that ever curious and yet so familiar title of “Alf layla wa-layla”, “The Thousand and One Nights”.

Other significant changes occurred with additions to the stories to make them easier and more “exportable”, keeping that which gives all its meaning and originality to the text: The story’s framework and hence the very first story with the heroine of Scheherazade. This exceptional character has a very particular function when it comes to the stories she tells, for the stories are what allow her to stall time and thus escape with her life. We find other stories being exchanged within the work, as though they were a ransom that could be bought to save human lives. Their value is contained within their capacity for being “strange” and “marvellous”, that is ‘ajîba and gharîba. From the first title of the first night in Galland’s manuscript and from the very first story, three old men offer to tell a genie an ‘ajîba and gharîba, a “strange” and “marvellous” story and Dinazad says to Scherehazade, again and again and night after night, “What a strange story!”

A form of literature did already exist in the Arabic sphere that drew from the notions of ‘ajîb and of gharîb. It included quite a vast range of literary production that was relatively open-minded. It developed over a period of almost a thousand years, from several founding stories in the ninth century attributed to religious or wise figures to a larger, anonymous collection entitled The Book of Strange Tales and Surprising Stories (attributed to the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries). During this long period in Iraq, Syria, Egypt and even the Maghreb, the works in question matured and developed into a sort of “bourgeois” literature of entertainment, more demanding when it came to their dramatic qualities than to their moral or didactic content. But while they departed from a strictly erudite tradition, they were not completely cut off from oral or “folk” tradition, as the one and the other tend to nourish each other and thus there was a link between the two—a literature that one might call, more accurately, “intermediary” or “average”.  

The Thousand and One Nights developed within this genre. The tales circulated amidst a throng of other similar texts, but still in manuscript form and still little known even to this day. Their frontiers opened as did, furthermore, folklore and erudite literature.  This is what gives them such variety and richness: A tale that was deemed “interesting” would naturally enter another collection, passing easily from one literary register to another. And depending on how it was copied, it entered this or that manuscript of The Thousand and One Nights, following the example of Ma’rûf le savetier, Sinbad the Sailor or The Story of the Awakened Sleeper.  But can we safely say The Thousand and One Nights is a true fairytale? The answer of course is that it is first and foremost a strange and marvellous tale. And considering the style of creation of the period, a genre built on anonymity, appropriating the story became that much easier and might even include transforming it or rewriting it completely. From that point on, a truly good story tended to find its place within The Thousand and One Nights.

In this thousand-year-old journey, three hundred years ago exactly in 1704, an event rendered the work—literally from one day to the next—the most famous literary production of all times: The translation or French adaptation by Antoine Galland.

Drawing from the French versions, themselves taken from other languages, country after country adopted The Nights, which soon encircled the entire globe. For when the collection arrived in Europe, it met with particularly favourable circumstances; each one of the three elements that are needed to ensure the success of a work was there, simultaneously: the author or editor of the text; the text; the reader.

Here the author was first and foremost a translator, an erudite scholar of orientalism, highly respected by his peers and, as a result, a qualified person for playing the role of intermediary between the two cultures. He looked for his sources directly in eminent Arabic manuscripts and even Turkish ones, giving his work the stamp of authority and legitimacy. But Antoine Galland was at the same time an author in his own right—a true writer—and in the style of the cultured Arab scribes who gave birth to these Nights, he did not hesitate to modify them or even re-write them as he saw fit, adding other tales such as Aladdin and Ali Baba. For these two tales are in actual fact Franco-Syrian compositions! A Syrian storyteller monk recounted the story of Ali Baba (6 pages) to Galland as well as Aladdin and Galland turned them into longer compositions (36 pages for Ali Baba).

The status of the work thus changed. It was no longer just fictional entertainment or a pleasant invention. Coming from the distant Orient and still unknown in the 17th century, or at least difficult to come by, it also represented for these new-comers—as Galland points out—a useful work, a source of information and a magic mirror to those faraway societies and their countries, enabling readers to have contact with them through their own literature.  In other words, not only was it not necessary to be “Oriental” or a scholar of orientalism to approach The Nights, the work was especially suited to all readers, even those who knew nothing of the cradle of The Nights but who simply “dreamed” about it. This new status fed the collection’s future success and gave birth to what for the eighteenth-century French reader were societies and countries that were certainly strange and marvellous but ultimately more the products of fantasy and a rich imagination than anything based reality.

And then, on the receiving end, the reader to whom it was addressed was not so much part of the bourgeoisie as the aristocracy, the members of the court who set the tone and dictated the fashions of the day for European society. When it entered the elite circles of French society, The Thousand and One Nights was as soon diffused as a model and met no obstacles and thus spread rapidly. The extracts of Galland’s Journal, which are so eloquently written, are particularly pertinent in this regard.

It appears that even today, of all Arabic literature, The Thousand and One Nights is most present in our memories. No fictional character from this same culture can boast the acclaim of Scheherazade, Sinbad the Sailor or Aladdin. The stories of The Thousand and One Nights have in fact become a permanent reference, a reference in terms of the literary production of the Arab world, but also in terms of its richness of imagination and the art of storytelling.

One of the most important themes of the text contains both a local and a universal dimension, ancient and modern: The utility and function of literature itself. What are the stories for? In what circumstances are they told and to what purpose?

We find a number of different answers to these questions in The Thousand and One Nights, contained within the framework device of a story within a story. The tale for instance is offered as an argument, the knowledge of which allows the narrator to convince his audience. This is the case of The Seven Viziers (also known as Sinbad the Wise or Sytipas) in which the viziers narrate, one after the other, and quite convincingly, stories designed to persuade the king not to act rashly by putting his son to death. This exercise of influence through the intermediary of a tale, or what today would be a novel or a film, is in fact an important phenomenon that draws from the ideological nature of discourse itself.  Yet the story in The Nights still acts as a means of entertainment, in relation to its literality. Each story’s particular qualities that are generally their “strange” and “marvellous” nature—omnipresent terms, as we have seen—take us back to the element of pleasure in the text. Scheherazade uses these qualities to hold the king’s attention and to stall time, thus putting off the menace weighing on her. However, there is a third function attributed to the story that we could see as a variation on the two preceding functions, namely “to save a life”. This function posits a question that in reality is connected both to the aesthetic of a text and, strange as it might seem, to the exercise of justice: A person has been condemned to death (by the king Shahryar) but can one in actual fact buy back a life by simply telling a tale? What does that imply? Will the story be so perfect as to merit such retribution or is one human life so small, so insignificant that a mere wave of the hand can take it away and likewise the mere telling of an incredible story save it? And hence by raising such questions, The Nights remains pertinent—another reason for its success—for these questions are as valid in the East as in the West. And to go even deeper we could study the corpus of this epic, or, for an even richer discovery, compare it to the texts of other cultures.  

 And finally, if we consult one of the latest works of reference on The Thousand and One Nights: The Arabian Nights Encyclopaedia (U. Marzolph and R. van Leuwen, Santa Barbara, 2004) as well as many other recent studies, such as New Perspectives on Arabian Nights (W.-C. Ouyang and G. J. van Gelder, London-New York, 2005), we will see that the links The Nights establish between the East and the West have in fact strengthened over time. Even within what became The Nights in all its different languages are a great number of stories that European translators such as Galland, then Weil, Burton and Mardrus took the liberty of adding to their own texts. Such new additions like Ali Baba have also contributed to the success of The Nights, even if they represent mixed creations, both Oriental (Ali Baba originally came from Syria) and Western, for they have been re-written and transformed in order to fit inside the tales of The Nights. This new form of The Thousand and One Nights, simultaneously Arabic and French, German or English is the greatest homage to a literary work, namely that of making it one’s own.

A.B.Ch.