Eliana El Hage -The Ecstasy of Wine (دَعْ عَنْكَ لَوْمي فإنّ اللّوْمَ إغْرَاءُ)

Eliana El Hage – Corporate Business Development Director (MEA Region). IE Business School

Reading:

The Ecstasy of Wine (دَعْ عَنْكَ لَوْمي فإنّ اللّوْمَ إغْرَاءُ) (fragment) by  Abu Nawas (756-814).

I will cut the cords of care with the wine glass For there is no physician for care like the wine glass

(Interpretation but not literal translation.– Abū Nuwās. In a mood of wonderment, the poet praises this drink as something beyond medicinal. The potency of wine is such that she has the alchemical power to animate a stone, causing it to experience joy)

A pale wine whose house is not visited by sorrows, imparting joy even to the rock that touches it.
(The description of wine thus marks an ecstatic and, as such, a poetic departure from the epistemological framework that foregrounds the opening apostrophe).

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