Deutschland uber Allah…

…apparently some diplomatic wags made this one up when discussing Kaiser Wilhelm’s forays into peace making on his extreme eastern front.

I derived it from the book titled ‘The Orientalist’ sub-titled ‘Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life’ by Tom Reiss.

He is seeking the eventful history of Kurban Said, aka Essad Bey aka Leo Naussimbaum.

We trace his origins in Baku, the oil rich capital of Azerbaijan, and his subsequent escape and wanderings as a stateless refugee.

It makes fascinating reading about the revolutionary shiftings of the times in which he lived. So many things we Western Europeans never even broach in our histories.

I feel closer to understanding why Stalin and Hitler came to power, as he outlines the horrific events that prompted their rise.

The link to our Bard is tenuous yet important to sticking it to one of conspiracy theorists’ perennial arguments.

The fact that Shakespeare’s family (excluding Gilbert whose signature we have) were illiterate.

Illiteracy does not mean you have no soul, no poetry. So what John and Mary Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s wife and daughters were illiterate.

Words arise in the heart and soul of a person and for many thousands of years their transmission was oral. Tongues speaking what the heart and mind desired.

Illiteracy does not mean you lose the power to think and articulate ideas. Or that you are cut off from ideas that are transmitted by books, a simple e.g. the Bible.

Reiss describes on pages 94-95 of Leo experiencing the last of the “poetry contests” that illiterate peasants would hold in village after village, which came to represent (for him) everything noble about the Caucasian culture. These contests were native to the Caucasus and Persia and thousands of years old.

In exchange for gifts, treats, and affection, they would compose verses on the spot and could recite something pious or obscene on the spot.

There were no restrictions of rank or wealth: only skill counted. The contestants would face off on an open square and face off in every genre.

Often the audience would suggest a theme, and the poets would improvise on it.

Leo’s most famous description is in his book ‘Ali and Nino’. The competitors dressed in silken robes, strut in front of the crowd, eyeing each other suspiciously, until one lets loose a volley of verse:

“Your clothes stink of dung, your face is that of a pig, your talent is as thin as the hair on a virgin’s stomach, and for a little money you would compose a poem on your own shame.”
The other answered, barking grimly: “you wear the robe of a pimp, you have the voice of a eunuch. You cannot sell your talent, because you never had any. You live off the crumbs that fall from the festive table of my genius.”

(this opening salvo is reminiscent of the dissing contests of modern day rappers).

…Then an old grey-haired man with the face of an apostle arrived, and announced the two themes for the competition: “the moon over the river Araxes” and “the death of Aga Mohammed Shah”…

Then the more soft-spoken one cried out: “What is like the moon over the Araxes?”
“The face of thy beloved,” interrupted the grim one.
“Mild is the moon’s gold!” cried the soft-spoken one.
“No, it is like a fallen warrior’s shield,” replied the grim one. In time they exhausted their similes.

Then each of them sang a song about the beauty of the moon, of the river Araxes, that winds like a maiden’s plait through the plain…

Now i am not suggesting for a minute that Elizabethan poetry (or rap) is influenced by Eastern poetry contests.

Though let’s not forget many an Englishman and European had passed, like barbarian hordes, through these lands on the 3 crusades; slaughtering Christian and Moslim alike.

But the truth is that illiterates can have poetry in their soul. If it is true for illiterate Caucasian peasants, it is equally true for the rising Elizabethan middle classes.

Truth and facts, as Leo complains later in this book, are two completely different things. And truth is the higher of the two.

‘O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends
for thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed,
Since truth and beauty on my love depends,
so dost thou too, and therein dignified.’

Sonnet 101: 1-4.