'Tis the height of merit in a man that his faults can be numbered.
Then I will proceed to speak of his beauties and to set forth in due order the original and incomparable characteristics of his style.
The radiant stars with beauty strike our eyes Because midst gloom opaque we see them rise."
It was deemed of capital importance that the opening couplet (maṭla‘) of a poem should be perfect in form and meaning, and that it should not contain anything likely to offend. Tha‘álibí brings forward many instances in which Mutanabbí has violated this rule by using words of bad omen, such as 'sickness' or 'death,' or technical terms of music and arithmetic which only perplex and irritate the hearer instead of winning his sympathy at the outset. He complains also that Mutanabbí's finest thoughts and images are too often followed by low and trivial ones: "he strings pearls and bricks together" (jama‘a bayna ’l-durrati wa-’l-ájurrati). "While he moulds the most splendid ornament, and threads the loveliest necklace, and weaves the most exquisite stuff of mingled hues, and paces superbly in a garden of roses, suddenly he will throw in a verse or two verses disfigured by far-fetched metaphors, or by obscure language and confused thought, or by extravagant affectation and excessive profundity, or by unbounded and absurd exaggeration, or by vulgar and commonplace diction, or by pedantry and grotesqueness resulting from the use of unfamiliar words." We need not follow Tha‘álibí in his illustration of these and other weaknesses with which he justly reproaches Mutanabbí, since we shall be able to form a better idea of the prevailing taste from those points which he singles out for special praise.
In the first place he calls attention to the poet's skill in handling the customary erotic prelude (nasíb), and particularly to his brilliant descriptions of Bedouin women, which were celebrated all over the East. As an example of this kind he quotes the following piece, which "is chanted in the salons on account of the extreme beauty of its diction, the choiceness of its sentiment, and the perfection of its art":—
"Shame hitherto was wont my tears to stay, But now by shame they will no more be stayed, So that each bone seems through its skin to sob, And every vein to swell the sad cascade. She uncovered: pallor veiled her at farewell: No veil 'twas, yet her cheeks it cast in shade. So seemed they, while tears trickled over them, Gold with a double row of pearls inlaid. She loosed three sable tresses of her hair, And thus of night four nights at once she made; But when she lifted to the moon in heaven Her face, two moons together I surveyed."[575]
The critic then enumerates various beautiful and original features of Mutanabbí's style, e.g.—
1. His consecutive arrangement of similes in brief symmetrical clauses, thus:—
"She shone forth like a moon, and swayed like a moringa-bough, And shed fragrance like ambergris, and gazed like a gazelle."
2. The novelty of his comparisons and images, as when he indicates the rapidity with which he returned to his patron and the shortness of his absence in these lines:—