The Style of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas: Aspects of the sublime
Author: Suheil B. Bushrui
Publisher: Bethesda, University Press of Maryland, 1995, 74 pages
Review by: Sen McGlinn
This is a beautifully produced slim book (74pp.), the first in
a projected series from the Bahá'í Chair for World Peace at
the University of Maryland. The text is equally beautifully written, but the
reader who approaches it expecting a study of the style of the Aqdas, or of
the meaning of "the sublime" in literature in the light of the
Aqdas, will find it rather insubstantial. The book does contain some
examples of the literary devices of the Aqdas (47-68), a section which is
both useful and, in the English-language literature, new. This is framed by
a much more extensive Foreword and Introduction, and a final discussion
of progressive revelation, which provide enraptured overall impressions
of the significance and beauty of the Aqdas, rather than specific
information or analysis. My suspicion is that it is these generalities,
rather than the examples of stylistic devices, that were the most
important message for the author--that is, that the book was intended to
impart a reverent engagement with the Aqdas to Western
Bahá'í readers, to ease them through the initial strangeness
of the Aqdas for such readers, rather than to provide a study of its style.
Thus it should be evaluated as a literary work itself, according to the
extent to which it brings its audience to the experience of the Aqdas
which the author intended, rather than as an academic study.
Nevertheless, it would be cavalier, in a review, not to
discuss the book's academic content, especially as it presents itself as a
study of style. I should say that the omissions which I will note are
presumably deliberate, since the author holds degrees in English literature
and must be capable of a literary analysis if that had been his object. The
most striking omission, if one is expecting a study of style, is the failure
to address the structure of the Aqdas and its apparent lack of literary
unity. This might be addressed textually, by identifying the sections
within the Aqdas which do have an apparent form, the passages which
might mark the beginnings and ends of these units,(1) and the devices which give a degree of unity
between the units. One might also approach this historically, by examining
how the text as we have it came into being. From this statement in the
seventh Ishráq, "Behold that which the
Will of God hath revealed upon Our arrival in the Prison City and recorded
in the Most Holy Book. Unto every father hath been enjoined the instruction
of his son and daughter in the art of reading and writing...",(2) it would appear that
Bahá'u'lláh had begun the conscious and written
composition of the Aqdas at or soon after his arrival in 'Akká in
September 1868. Some laws had been defined, though not necessarily in
writing or in the words which we now have in the Aqdas, even
earlier.(3) Bahá'u'lláh
himself apparently considered the Aqdas to have been completed in
1873,(4) although the process of
defining the laws continued in the Questions and Answers and elsewhere,
and the eighth Ishraq (August 1885)(5)
is explicitly said to be "accounted as part of the Most Holy
Book".
If we compare the structure of the Aqdas, and even this limited evidence
about its composition, with the structure and composition of the
Epistle to the Son of the Wolf or the Kitáb-i-
Íqán, it suggests that Bahá'u'lláh himself
may not have considered the book as a literary unit, or its composition or
compilation as one literary act.
Other explanations are possible: perhaps the Aqdas was written as a
single unit, but its structure is a deliberate imitation of that of the
Qur'án, in which the Surahs have been compiled in an arbitrary
order. Or perhaps, by analogy to the Qur'án again,
Bahá'u'lláh revealed sections to his secretaries, and
accorded them the status of being part of the Most Holy Book, but did not
himself determine the position in which every section should appear.
Opinions on these matters may certainly differ: Bushrui claims that there
is "a kind of inevitable relation ... between its component
parts" (74), and it may be that he has perceived an underlying unity
which I have missed. But he does not tell us what this unity or structure
might be, and a discussion of "the style of the Aqdas" without
any consideration of composition or over-all structure is, to say the least,
strange.
Other omissions include the contents of the Aqdas and
the relationship between content and style; the influence of Persian usage
on the language, and Bahá'u'lláh's grammatical innovations.
The treatment of small-scale literary devices also omits some features,
such as hyperbole, which appear so striking as to require discussion. Given
that the subtitle of the book is "Aspects of the sublime", it
might also have been useful to provide some orientation to the concept of
"the sublime" in literary criticism, from Longinus on. It is not
clear whether the author assumes his readers to be familiar with the
meaning(s) of "the sublime" in literary criticism, or is himself
unaware of the weight of history behind the term. It appears to used here
as synonymous with exalted and resounding language ( "a very
special kind of language", p. 26). Longinus, on the other hand, is
distrustful of the grand style, indeed of style and sublimity themselves if
these are considered as consisting of the show of grandeur and a thick
layer of literary devices. He defines the true sublime as that which
elevates the reader, on repeated reflection,(6) and as the example he notes in Genesis 1:3
shows,(7) this is achieved most
striking when an exalted thought is expressed in language of utmost
simplicity, devoid of literary devices.
Assuming that these omissions and the fact that barely a third of the book
is devoted to a limited stylistic analysis reflect the author's intentions
rather than his limitations, it would be fair to retitle the book "An
appreciation of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas" and to consider how well
it can impart to Western readers the author's love of the Aqdas. Section I
discusses the Arabic language, and will certainly be helpful to those not
acquainted with that tongue. Section II begins with a discussion of the
nature of Revelation, focusing almost entirely on written revelation.
There is a curious non sequitur here, on page 36, which passes from
the fixity of the sacred (Hebrew) text following the Council of Jamnia to
the unity of the religions with a logic which I can neither follow nor
relate to the style of the Aqdas. The concept of progressive revelation is
reintroduced at the end of the book, from pages 70 to 73, again without
any apparent relationship to the style of the Aqdas. These two section
seem poorly integrated with the book as a whole, and to address different
concerns. It may be that the author felt required to include some mention
of this key Bahá'í doctrine for the benefit of possible non-
Bahá'í readers. The section continues with brief sections on
"Form" and "Content", although form in fact refers
to style ("similes, metaphors, metonymy, and other linguistic
embellishments") except for a passing mention of the lack of a
conventional literary structure. The section on content is confined to the
broadest of generalities and the bald assertion that form and content are
sublimely congruent (40).
The section on "Style" which follows is an essay on the
importance of sublime style as an evidence of the divine origin of the
Qur'án and Aqdas, rather than an analysis of the style of the Aqdas
itself. That follows, to some extent, in the subsequent sections on
literary devices and key words (beginning on page 47) which, for this
reader at least, might very happily be extended to a verse-by-verse
commentary on the literary devices of the Aqdas. What we have here was
for me tantalising rather than satisfying. The examples given are too
scattered, and too few, to provide a sense of the literary quality of the
Aqdas in the original.
As an analysis of the style of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the book would
more appropriately have been published as an article in a journal such as
World Order: it is exceedingly thin for a book. As a work of
literature intended to bring its audience to share the author's experience
of the Aqdas, I at least found it less than convincing. I also doubt whether
the experience which it does convey, of an Aqdas assumed to be a given
unity and described in terms of stylistic devices, is true to the Aqdas
itself, with its complex structure and history of composition and its
sparseness of style.
Endnotes
1. For instance,
paragraphs 78 to 97 deal with the theme of civil governance, and might
plausibly have been composed at one time. Paragraph 98 then begins:
"Various petitions have come before Our throne ... We had, in Our
wisdom, withheld Our Pen until, in recent days, letters arrived from
number of the friends, and We have therefore responded...". The
implication is that the work had been set aside for some time, and is now
resumed in response to specific questions. However it would be risky to
assume that all of the verses were composed or entered into the Aqdas in
a chronological order corresponding to the arrangement of the text as we
now have it. Another passage which appears to mark the end of a unit is
paragraph 17, concluding a section on the key religious observances of
obligatory prayer and fasting: "These are the ordinances of God that
have been set down in the Books and Tablets by His Most Exalted Pen. Hold
ye fast unto His statutes and commandments, and be not of those who,
following their idle fancies and vain imaginings, have clung to the
standards fixed by their own selves, and cast behind their backs the
standards laid down by God."
2. Tablets of
Bahá'u'lláh (Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre,
1978) 128.
3. For instance, the
pilgrimage to the House of the Báb in Shiraz had been confirmed,
and the details of the rites and prayers had been revealed in writing while
Bahá'u'lláh was in Edirne. See Denis MacEoin, Rituals in
Babism and Bahá'ísm (London: British Academic Press, 1994) 52. ]
4. According to a
statement which I have not myself seen, in Amr wa khalq, Shoghi
Effendi says that the book was "Revealed soon after
Bahá'u'lláh had been transferred to the house of Udi
Khammar (circa 1873)..." (God Passes By [Wilmette:
Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1944] 211). However the final
verse was apparently added as late at 1882.
5. The dating is based on
a Memorandum from the Research Department of the Bahá'í
World Centre dated 2 April 1996, which states (in part): "In a Tablet
of some 40 pages addressed to Várqa, which appears to have been
revealed over a period of more than a month and which bears on its final
page the date 19 Muharram 1303 AH (29 October 1885),
Bahá'u'lláh informs Várqa that on 9 Dhi'l-Qa`dih
1302 (21 August 1885), a very long Tablet has been revealed for
Jalíl-i-Khú'í on the Most Great Infallibility. This
date actually forms part of the text of the Tablet to Várqa. Since
the Most Great Infallibility is a theme discussed at great length in the
Tablet of Ishraqat, it seems likely that it is to this Tablet that
Bahá'u'lláh is referring."
6. On the Sublime VII.
7. On the Sublime IX:9.