Islamic roots of the poetic syllogism, The

College Literature, Feb 1996 by Ludescher, Tanyss

But the Q'uranic injunctions against poetry continued to plague aestheticians. Although some Islamic theorists sought to defend the sincerity and truthfulness of poetry, most accepted the basic tenet that poetry was inherently deceitful, though for these thinkers deceitfulness became dissociated from the question of morality. As a result, a tradition developed in which poetry was freed from all connection with objective Truth. Increasingly, literary critics began to address the subjective nature of poetry, focusing on the poet's sincere expression of feelings and opinions, and not on his relationship with Reality or Truth (Cantarino 39-40).

This tendency reached its peak in the tenth and eleventh century when Al-Farabi and others elaborated the theory of takhyil, a concept which was to represent the creative flowering of Islamic literary theory. Going back to the pre-Islamic notion of the poet as a seer, who perceives reality in ways that others cannot, these thinkers insisted that the poet should not merely paint Reality, but imaginatively transform it (the affinities with Western Romantic notions are clear and deserve to be explored). The goal of the poet, according to these theorists, was not to imitate literal Reality, but to encourage virtuous action by eulogizing goodness and satirizing evil. To distinguish this activity from other arts, such as rhetoric, these theorists argued that while rhetoric persuades humankind to moral action through an appeal to the intellect, poetry operates by inspiring its audience with certain feelings, notably mercy and piety, that are conducive to moral action.(9)

This deintellectualization of poetry is essential to Arab literary theory. But if poetry is at odds with logical thought, how are we to explain the application of Aristotelian logic to aesthetics, an application that resulted in the development of the poetic syllogism? For a possible answer to this puzzling question, we can turn to the Secrets of Eloquence, by the eleventh century theorist Abdalqahir Al-Jurjani (d. 1078). His understanding of poetry and logic can give us valuable insights into the Islamic tradition of poetics, a tradition, I would argue, that, along with Aristotelian thought, strongly influenced Arab commentators. In his book, Al-Jurjani offers elaborate proofs that the statements found in poetry are illogical (Cantarino 95-98). At the same time, he argues that metaphor "was fundamentally a comparison and as such based on a logical equation of two members" (Cantarino 95). Al-Jurjani's belief that metaphor is logical rather than creative (takhyil) is based on the long-held belief that metaphors cannot be poetic because they are frequently used in the Q'uran (Cantarino 32-33). Certainly Al-Farabi and Avicenna's formulations of the poetic syllogism are more complex than Al-Jurjani's formulation. Both, for example, felt the need to defend the poetic syllogism from charges that it did not fulfill the criteria of the syllogism outlined by Aristotle. But Al-Jurjani's statements are useful for they reveal the way in which Arab poetic tradition could predispose the two great theorists to formulate the concept of the poetic syllogism.