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by Emilio Alzueta …

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Emilio Alzueta

Emilio Alzueta is the vice dean of the College of Languages in Motril (Granada, Spain).

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The Readiness of the Soul

Reflections on a Sonnet by Martin Lings

Martin Lings (d. 2005) is widely known as a scholar of Sufism and Shakespearean literature, as well as the author of a celebrated biography of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ in beautiful high English prose.¹ Less familiar, however, is Lings the poet, although his consummate mastery of language permeates all his works.

His Collected Poems is a slender but intense volume.² It is divided into two sections: his early poems—written in the 1920s, when he was at Oxford University and a student of C. S. Lewis—and his late poems, written from the 1950s onward.³ Despite their separation of more than twenty years, the two sections have a remarkable unity of form and meaning. It was perhaps due to his choice of topics and his classical diction, so removed from the contemporary poetic scene, and to the scarcity of his output that Lings never became recognized as a significant poet in the canonical English literary tradition. Yet his work is certainly worthy of attention, and it contains some pieces—such as the extraordinary “Meeting Place”—that should be part of any true anthology of twentieth-century English verse.

The Roads of the Sonnet

Lings’s Collected Poems includes eight exquisite sonnets, six belonging to his early poems and two to his later ones.⁴ In employing the sonnet, Lings is choosing one of the most distinguished and enduring poetic forms in Western poetry, one that has proven capable of attracting poets throughout history and in many languages and of conveying a seemingly inexhaustible range of themes. As Christopher Kleinhenz, the distinguished scholar of Italian literature, said, “For centuries, the sonnet has remained the most popular and the most difficult poetic form in Western literature.”⁵

Though its centrality to the Western literary tradition cannot be overemphasized, the formative period of the sonnet may surprise us with some profound cultural intermarriage. The sonnet—from the Italian sonetto, or “little song”—was reputedly created in Sicily in the first part of the thirteenth century. The first example that is preserved was written by Giacomo Lentini at some point between 1233 and 1240. The first quatrain places the sonnet in the orbit of courtly love, in which it would quickly find its maturity:

Amore è uno desio che ven da’ core
per abondanza di gran piacimento;
e li occhi in prima generan l’amore
e lo core li dà nutricamento. 

Love is a yearning that comes from the heart
Through the abundance of so much delight.
It is the eyes that first give birth to love
And the heart that provides its nourishment.⁶

Lentini was the chancellor in the cosmopolitan and highly Arabized court of the king of Sicily (later Holy Roman emperor) Frederick II, and it was around this multifaceted Norman king that “the last flowering of the Provençal tradition” took place.⁷

During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the troubadours in the Provençal language—one of the first vernacular offshoots of Latin—had been singing their love songs in the courts of southern France, northern Italy, and northern Spain. Their poetry would center on the theme of courtly love, in which the lady held dominion over the poet, almost like a feudal lord over his vassal. The literary circle in Sicily would adapt the troubadour themes and style into the vernacular language of southern Italy, developing the new form of the sonnet. According to André Ughetto:

It then existed in the island… a popular song that the Italians called strambotto, and that in the Sicilian variant was known as ottava.… Those eight verses of regular measure already consisted of a doubling of quatrains with similar rhymes: abab abab. It (then) became a habit to precede or follow the ottava with a sestina (six lines).⁸

From Sicily, the sonnet then traveled to Tuscany and the school of the dolce stil novo (sweet new style) of Cavalcanti and Dante. In his La Vita Nuova (The New Life), Dante traces the amatory-spiritual experience of his love and loss of the angelic Beatrice (later rediscovered in her heavenly aspect in the Divine Comedy) in prose interspersed with delicate and poignant sonnets. It was, however, the humanist Francesco Petrarca who—in his Canzoniere—gave the sonnet its definite model, after which it would extend to all major European languages.

What is remarkable is that each of those first three steps in the formation of the sonnet, before its definitive Petrarchan coinage, corresponded to a literary movement that was influenced by Arab poetry and Islamic literature and spirituality. The songs of the Provençal troubadours were largely an offshoot of the Arabic love song, which came into southern France from the high culture of Al-Andalus. One of the great cultural attractions of Spanish cities at the time were the qiyān, or young women singers, who had a repertoire of songs on the subject of courtly love. María Rosa Menocal records how Duke William IX of Aquitaine, one of the first troubadours, took a group of these singing women to his court after the Norman conquest of Barbastro, in the north of Spain.⁹ In fact, according to some literary critics and historians, the very word troubadour could have come from the Arabic word ţaraba, “to sing” (although some scholars believe it has its origin in the Latin trovare, “to find or invent”).

Furthermore, Frederick II—around whom the Sicilian school flourished—knew Arabic and liked to surround himself with Muslim scholars. He also founded one of the first universities in Europe (the medical school in Naples) on the model of Islamic universities, and he promoted the translation into Latin of great Arabic scientific texts, such as the Canon of Medicine by Ibn Sīnā, continuing the tradition of the Toledo School of Translators in Spain. As stated by Samar Attar, “The formation of Italian literary texts between 1200 and 1400 cannot adequately be understood without reference to the various Arabic and Islamic sources that date back to the seventh century onward.”¹⁰ The very invention first of the ottava and then of the sonnet in Sicily might have been indebted to the structures of Arabic poetry, at a time when the romance languages first evolved from Latin. Kamal Abu-Deeb writes that the sonnet has “schemes, or structures, that are variations… on structures of the muwashshahat produced by Arab poets.”¹¹ Ughetto also discusses the possible influence of the Andalusian zajal and the Arabic ghazal on the sonnet, not only from the point of view of the form itself but also on account of the existence of cycles of ghazals, which could have influenced the birth of the great Italian sonnet cycles.¹²

Finally, Dante—the main exponent of the Tuscan school of the dolce stil novo and one of the towering figures of Western literature—was also very probably influenced by various spiritual and philosophical aspects of Islam.¹³ As Miguel Asín Palacios noted as early as 1919, Dante’s masterpiece, the Divine Comedy, draws from medieval translations of texts on the Prophet Muhammad’s mi‘rāj, or miraculous Night Journey and Ascension to heaven.¹⁴ Moreover, the Fedele d’Amore (Love’s Faithful), an esoteric group to which Dante belonged, not only rested on the tenets of Neoplatonism and Christianity but was arguably influenced by Islamic spirituality. Ibn ‘Arabī’s poetry for his beloved Niżām, perceived as a theophanic locus (tajallī) of the Divine, precedes Dante’s portrayal of his Beatrice, who becomes a manifestation of heavenly grace.

This historical excursus is not a mere digression but a way to deepen our understanding of what Lings is doing in his sonnets. He is a Muslim poet who is steeped in both the Western and the Islamic traditions and who uses a form that is both quintessentially Western and historically indebted to Islam, showing the illusion of the impermeability of these two traditions. Moreover, he writes about ideas that have largely been lost in the contemporary Western world, reinvigorating Western literature from the living tradition of Islam, and about ideas that are profoundly relevant to both Muslims and non-Muslims—in fact, to any human being. We will find the fuller import of this in the discussion that follows.

“Readiness”

Among Lings's sonnets, one of his later pieces stands out for its extraordinary pregnancy of meaning: “Readiness.” It is a Petrarchan sonnet, which Chiara Sibona calls a “bi-logical” form—with an antithesis between the content of the octave and the sestet—in contrast with the “tri-logical” Shakespearean sonnet.¹⁵ In both its forms, the sonnet is a highly sophisticated and concentrated literary model that—in the space of fourteen lines—combines the metaphorical and emotional intensity of lyricism and human drama with the syllogistic possibilities of formal logic and the procedures of rhetoric.

The poem goes as follows:

Half souls, scarce differing, each his difference frantic to stress!
Unheard of themes, trite themers—O, for the opposite!
Banish whatever is but was not, only admit
What was and is and shall be; but, the old to express,
Be new thyself, by being thyself, and being no less.
The soul fulfilled is new, unique; own every bit
Of thine, have power, when truth comes, to assent to it
Utterly, therefore uniquely: such is readiness.

Then, only then, upon the sea of verse unmoor
Thy vessel, and spread these new-found sails in plenitude.
Let them be white, or black for sorrow or as rich mood
Of soul may dye them, plain or patterned with sacred Lore.
Let them be worthy that the Wind its breath may pour
Into their fullness, to spirit thee from shore to shore.

A first reading of the sonnet easily reveals that the word “readiness” is not only the title but a sort of pivot in its formal unfolding, given special relevance by its position at the very end of the octave. Understanding its full meaning is thus a good place to start. Webster’s Dictionary registers the following meanings:

1. Quickness; promptness; promptitude; facility; freedom from hindrance or obstruction.
2. Promptitude; cheerfulness; willingness; alacrity; freedom from reluctance.
3. A state of preparation; fitness of condition.

Readiness—the state or quality of being ready—can therefore mean not just preparation or willingness, the most common meanings in modern English, but also a wholehearted and cheerful disposition or acceptance, an inner freedom to give oneself entirely. That is, for example, the sense of the word in Acts 17:11, in the King James Bible: “They received the word with all readiness of mind”—that is, giving themselves to it without inner obstruction.

Textually, the poem “Readiness” can be said to gravitate around that pivotal word. Its middle position, just at the end of the octave, connects it both to the beginning of the poem—“Half souls”—and to its end—“from shore to shore”—establishing a sort of tension line:

Half souls ------------- Readiness ------------- [Then, only then] from shore to shore

The dynamic relationship among these terms—underlined by the poem’s division into octave and sestet—brings out the basic or root meaning of the poem, which can be expressed as the transformative undertaking of two consequent steps. The first step—in the octave—consists of the soul’s transformation from a fragmented “half soul” to a soul that has reached the state of readiness. The second—in the sestet—consists of the soul’s inspired traveling “from shore to shore,” which can only take place (“then, only then”) after it has reached the state of readiness.

The first step is made up of strife and purification, and, consequently, the discursive structure of the octave—with its intricate dialectics and syncopated lines—underlines the tension between opposites. The essence of that tension is the paradoxical contrast between the old and the new, between tradition and innovation, between being an imitator and truly being oneself. The second step, however, is made up of inspiration and aesthetic or spiritual movement, which is underlined by more fluent and lyrical poetic discourse.

A Philosophical Reading

Lings starts the sonnet with two somewhat cryptic lines, which can be said to encapsulate the condition of modern man:

Half souls, scarce differing, each his difference frantic to stress!
Unheard of themes, trite themers—O, for the opposite!

Modern man is obsessed with what we could call the “superstition of originality.” For him, to be successful in the human project means to affirm his own personality, his particular way of thinking, feeling, and behaving. For Lings, however, this obsessive—“frantic”—affirmation comes, as it were, from the periphery of our selves. If we are not integrated and do not have real access to the most profound dimensions of our being, to what we truly are, we are only “half souls.”¹⁶ We simply identify with our ego-self (nafs) and body, and with the most mechanistic and worldly aspects of reason (‘aql), but we have —if at all—only dim and intermittent access to our spiritual heart (qalb) and spirit (rūĥ).

However, in paradoxical contrast with modern man’s strong urge for individuality, modern civilization is very much a civilization of uniformity. Increasingly, the West has imposed over the world a monoculture—from habits of conduct to architectural styles—that has undermined the cultural variety of the world. There is a crucial difference between unity and uniformity. The first is the manifestation of the One in diversity, and it is expressed in harmony; the second is only a parody of unity and, ultimately, a sort of denial of the One. The paradox is that despite their obsession with originality, modern men are “scarce differing,” increasingly identical and governed by power dynamics designed to control man as an isolated consumer. He may believe that he is more and more free to think and behave, but both his thinking and behavior are increasingly conditioned, distorted, and surveilled. As the French philosopher Gustave Thibon once said, there is no prison more effective than one with invisible bars.

Another “superstition” characteristic of modernity is novelty. Modern man compulsively looks for new ideas, new topics, new forms—often feeling that it is their very novelty that makes them worthy, not paying attention to whether they are true, or conducive to the truth. Indeed, they become for him a kind of addiction, given the postmodern conditioning that truth not only cannot be found but does not even exist. Modern man searches for “unheard of themes,” but he lives in the periphery of his being and follows the dictates of the ego-self and an increasingly superficial culture: he is a “trite themer.” Lings, however, yearns for the opposite:

Banish whatever is but was not, only admit
What was and is and shall be; but, the old to express,
Be new thyself, by being thyself, and being no less.

Lings yearns for a condition in which we can express the same eternally true themes, but can do so from the very core of our being. In order to do so, we have to realize and actualize our full nature, to live and speak and create from our center, our purified spiritual heart, and from a transformed, mature self. True intellection, true realization (taĥqīq), comes from the complete, purified being; as Plotinus said, “Never can the eye see the sun unless it had first become sunlike, and never can the soul have vision of the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful.”¹⁷ This implies a transformation that is also a renewal. When man becomes a real human being, when he regains the Adamic archetype that lies at his core, then his soul becomes new and unique:

The soul fulfilled is new, unique; own every bit
Of thine, have power, when truth comes, to assent to it
Utterly, therefore uniquely: such is readiness.

We are left, then—as so often in the realm of the spirit—with a paradox. Our attempts to stress our difference, to search for superficial novelty, to live and talk from our ego-selves, unexpectedly lead to uniformity and triteness. However, as we “move inwardly” and progress from difference to inner unification, real uniqueness is manifested.

There are profound metaphysical implications here. Though we live in the world of diversity, in the infinitely changing manifestation of the One—and, therefore, all human beings are truly different—this diversity is not chaotic but harmonious and based on archetypes. Harmony and principially anchored diversity are the necessary expressions of unity. While God’s absolute and incomparable unity (aĥadiyyah) means that nothing at all is like Him (Qur’an 42:11), God’s principial unity (wāĥidiyyah) gives rise to multiplicity as its ultimate first principle and deepest unifying reality. It manifests in the fact that none of His creations are fully alike—not two leaves from the same tree, not two bees from the same beehive—but also in the harmony that permeates that diversity and in the fact that all individual bees correspond to the same archetype of the bee. Though no two fingers have the same print, all fingers are alike; though no two personalities are the same, all human personalities follow the same basic pattern. Difference and unity, permanence and variation, have to be affirmed in the proper dimension, in the proper manner, and with the proper courtesy.¹⁸

The inner realization that Lings proposes, then, takes us from the fragmented and peripheral areas of our being to an inner transformation that allows us to assent to the truth and progress in the gradual realization of the truth. This is the genuine manifestation of “readiness” of the spirit. “Then, only then” can the inspired traveling of the sestet take place:

Then, only then, upon the sea of verse unmoor
Thy vessel, and spread these new-found sails in plenitude.
Let them be white, or black for sorrow or as rich mood
Of soul may dye them, plain or patterned with sacred Lore.
Let them be worthy that the Wind its breath may pour
Into their fullness, to spirit thee from shore to shore.

The sails symbolize the spiritual aspiration and knowledge that arise when we come into our true selves. The sails—the spiritual heart—not only acquire different spiritual coloring but become the tablet in which wisdom—“sacred Lore”—is inscribed, a knowledge that is not acquired (kasbī) but granted (wahbī). Sincere and wholehearted assent to the truth makes the heart worthy of and receptive to the wind of inspiration so that the human being can fulfill the journey from the shore of this physical world of harmonic multiplicity to the shore of ultimate Unity, Beauty, and Perfection.

A Literary and Aesthetic Reading

On the aesthetic and literary level, the relationship between tradition and original personal expression has often been a subject in literary criticism. Tradition, in this sense, is not just the historical collection of works in a particular language or of a particular civilization but something more, the organization of that collection into a concrete but not immutable canon, which remains always relevant to the present. T. S. Eliot, in his classic essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” famously summed up this conception in the framework of Western literature:

[Tradition] involves, in the first place, the historical sense… and the historical sense involves a perception not only of the pastness of the past but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer, and within it the whole of literature of his own country, has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.¹⁹

In all civilizations, and even in Western history up to the nineteenth century, literature and art were largely produced against the background of that traditional canon, which served as a model and a criterion. It was commonly understood that an artist had to imitate and master traditional forms until he was able to make a truly worthy individual contribution. Imitation, in this sense, although it could sometimes become stifling, was generally seen not as negative or as precluding measured innovation but as a way to aspire—especially in the presence of real talent—to the level of the great beacons of the past. Imitation also provided the artist with a discipline and a shared code that would make his new contribution truly valuable and sufficiently universal. This was even more acutely so in the Islamic world, in which the literary and artistic canon was governed by principles and forms that were part of a wider revelatory and religious tradition, while in the West, that tradition had started to unravel at least since the Renaissance.²⁰ Not until modern times did an emphasis on individual authorship, as is now prevalent in the West, start to circulate in the Islamic world.

The whole point of Eliot’s conception is balance. The way in which the strict rules of the sonnet stimulate personal inspiration—as so many poets have experienced—reminds us of the fact that setting limits, both by adhering to a particular form and by imitating models and examples, fosters creativity rather than precluding it. Moreover, the examples of the great masters of the past help us to extract what is true and valuable from ourselves.

In “Readiness” we find a poignant longing for this balance. Lings invites the artist or the writer to embody tradition and its norms as a way—only superficially paradoxical—to be truly original. In fact, the word original comes from the Latin origo, originis (origin): we are really original inasmuch as we reconnect ourselves with the origin of things. Similarly, the Arabic word mubdi‘, which comes from the root bā’, dāl, and ‘ayn and is sometimes used in classical Arabic to refer to a great artist, is a reflection of one of the names of Allah, al-Badī‘, the One who unceasingly creates new creatures, never repeating Himself.²¹ What Lings says is that true originality and innovation have to be searched for in the depths of our soul, not in our immature ego-self and our caprice (hawā). That inner depth will also shine on the self, but it will do so from the eternal truths of “what was and is and shall be,” renovated in each true poet by the imperative of “being thyself, and being no less.”

The traditional conception of art, both in the Islamic and in other civilizations, underlined three necessary requisites or steps, which we can call imitation, expression, and effusion.²² The first, imitation, is not only connected with the relationship between the individual artist and tradition but also with the imitation of nature—not of its objects but of its operation. The word poiesis in Greek means “making” and “creating,” but it also refers to the “coming forth” (aleteia) in nature: art imitates the operation of nature and can also reflect the higher imaginal and spiritual worlds, which shine through in nature.²³

The second requisite, expression, points to the inner presence of heart and intellect in the work, in all stages of practice, as well as to the paradoxical ability of “the soul fulfilled, new, unique.” In this regard, the exquisite essayist Simon Leys has said, in the context of a discussion about Chinese calligraphy: