Faces of the Infinite

Neoplatonism and Poetry at the Confluence of Africa, Asia and Europe

Edited by Stefan Sperl and Yorgos Dedes

British Academy

Proceedings of the British Academy

Interdisciplinary approach combines comparative literature with philosophy to produce the first comparative overview of the interaction between poetry and Neoplatonism in the greater Mediterranean region
An extensive introduction prepares the ground for the general, non-specialist reader
Broad regional and cross-cultural coverage of relevance to present day concerns draws attention to the kinship between poetic traditions of different languages, cultures and religions often perceived to be at variance with each other
Covers poetry in seven languages cited in English translation in the published volume and the volume's accompanying website lyrics-of-ascent.net features the texts in the original languages with English translation

Faces of the Infinite

Neoplatonism and Poetry at the Confluence of Africa, Asia and Europe

Edited by Stefan Sperl and Yorgos Dedes

British Academy

Proceedings of the British Academy

Description

Neoplatonism, the dominant philosophy of Late Antiquity, inspired not only the intellectual traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam but also their arts. Neoplatonic notions of the ascent of the soul, the nature of love and beauty, divine immanence and transcendence, and the interplay between the many and the One, have for centuries left comparable marks on the poetry of Western Asia, North Africa and Europe. This volume focuses on the Greater Mediterranean and discusses authors who wrote in Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Persian, Spanish and Turkish, from medieval times to the present day. Among them are many celebrated exponents of their respective classical traditions, including Dante, Ibn Arabi and Ibn Gabirol. Major contemporary poets writing in these languages have continued to engage with the Neoplatonic heritage assimilated by their forbears. Particular attention is therefore given also to the modern period.
The findings gathered here demonstrate that Neoplatonism is a cross-cultural phenomenon of outstanding importance which has given rise to a distinct 'Neoplatonic poetics' and remains relevant by pointing the way towards an inclusive sense of identity commensurate with a pluralist world.

Faces of the Infinite

Neoplatonism and Poetry at the Confluence of Africa, Asia and Europe

Edited by Stefan Sperl and Yorgos Dedes

British Academy

Proceedings of the British Academy

Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: 'A Thing All Living Faces', STEFAN SPERL AND YORGOS DEDES
PART 1. From Paganism and Eastern Christianity to the Islamic World (fourth to seventeenth centuries CE)
1:Neoplatonism and Poetics in Ancient Greek and Byzantine Literature, DAVID HERNÁNDEZ DE LA FUENTE
2:Stages of Ascent: Neoplatonic Affinities in Classical Arabic Poetry, STEFAN SPERL
3:What are Neoplatonic Poetics? Allegory; figure; genre, ALEXANDER KEY
4:Beauty Stings: Plotinus and Ruzbihan Baqli on Beauty, KAZUYO MURATA
5:Ottoman Poetry: Where the Neoplatonic Dissolves into an Emotional Script for Life, WALTER G. ANDREWS
6:Mihrî Hatun and Neoplatonic Discourse: Legitimation of Women’s Writing in Early Modern Ottoman Poetry, DIDEM HAVLIOGLU
7:Poetry and Ishraqi Illuminationism among the Esoteric Zoroastrians of Mughal India, CARL W. ERNST
PART II. Jewish Neoplatonism and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim and Christian Realms (eleventh to seventeenth centuries CE)
8:Andalusian Hebrew Poems on the Soul and their Afterlife, ADENA TANENBAUM
9:Karaite Poems about the Nature of the Soul from the Muslim East, Byzantium and Eastern Europe, JOACHIM YESHAYA
PART III. Christian and Jewish Neoplatonism in Italy and Spain (fourteenth to seventeenth centuries CE)
10:'Nostro intelletto si profonda tanto': The Philosophical Background of Dante's Paradiso I, 1-12 and IV, 22-60, CRISTINA D’ANCONA
11:Agathon Redivivus: Love and Incorporeal Beauty in Ficino’s De Amore, Speech V, SUZANNE STERN-GILLET
12:‘A Man within a Woman, or even a God’: Vittoria Colonna and Sixteenth-Century Italian Poetic Culture, ABIGAIL BRUNDIN
13:The Ascent of the Soul: Neoplatonic Themes in the Literature of Golden-Age Spain, COLIN P. THOMPSON
14:The Christian Neoplatonism of Francisco de Aldana in the Carta para Arias Montano, TERENCE O’REILLY
15:A Poetics of Difference: Neoplatonism and the Discourse of Desire in the Early Modern Spanish Love Lyric 339, JULIAN WEISS
PART IV. Neoplatonism in Modern Poetry: Splintered but Vibrant
16:An Equivocal Echo: Eugenio Montale, PETER ROBINSON
17:Eroticism of the Infinite: Neoplatonism, Kabbalism, and Sufism in the work of José Ángel Valente, CLAUDIO RODRÍGUEZ FER
18:Body and Soul in the Arabic Literature of the Americas, ROBIN OSTLE
19:Neoplatonist Echoes in Modern Arabic Poetry: The Case of Mu?ammad ?Afifi Ma?ar, FERIAL J. GHAZOUL
20:Shards of Infinitude: Neoplatonist Relics in Modern Persian Poetry, AHMAD KARIMI-HAKKAK
21:The New Image of the Beloved in the Old Mirror: Reflections on the Neoplatonic Tradition in Modern Turkish Poetry, NESLIHAN DEMIRKOL and MEHMET KALPAKLI
22:Neoplatonists in Modern Greek poetry, DAVID RICKS
Index

Faces of the Infinite

Neoplatonism and Poetry at the Confluence of Africa, Asia and Europe

Edited by Stefan Sperl and Yorgos Dedes

British Academy

Proceedings of the British Academy

Author Information

Edited by Stefan Sperl, SOAS, and Yorgos Dedes, SOAS

Stefan Sperl, a graduate of Oxford (Arabic) and SOAS (PhD 1977), and former staff member of UNHCR (1978-88), is now Emeritus Professor of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS. His publications include articles on Arabic, Islamic and Refugee Studies, as well as Mannerism in Arabic Poetry: A Structural Analysis of Selected Texts (1989), Qasida Poetry in Islamic Africa and Asia (with Christopher Shackle, 1996) and The Cosmic Script: Sacred Geometry and the Science of Arabic Penmanship (with Ahmed Moustafa, 2014), which won the Iran Book of the Year Award (2016). His most recent publication is 'The Qur'an and Arabic Poetry' (The Oxford Handbook of Qur'anic Studies, 2020).

Yorgos Dedes's teaching includes courses on Ottoman and Modern Turkish language, literature and culture. Since 2005 he has also been teaching at the Intensive Ottoman and Turkish Summer School in Cunda, Turkey. His research interests focus on Ottoman literature and Turkish culture with special reference to frontier epic traditions and relations with Byzantium and Greece. Another area of interest is the aljamiado literature of the Greek- speaking Muslims of the Ottoman empire. Recent publications include a book chapter on Bursa in Europe: A Literary History, edited by David Wallace (CUP 2015), an edition of the Greek aljamiado translation of Süleymân Çelebî’s Mevlid-i nebî (Journal of Turkish Studies, 2013) and an article on Ottoman poetry with Stefan Sperl (“‘In the rose-bower every leaf is a page of delicate meaning’: An Arabic perspective on three Ottoman kasides”, in Eski Edebiyat Çalismalari VIII, Istanbul 2013).

Contributors:

Andrews, Walter G. / University of Washington
Brundin, Abigail / University of Cambridge
D’Ancona, Cristina / University of Pisa
Demirkol, Neslihan / University of Münster
Dedes, Yorgos / SOAS, University of London
Ernst, Carl W. / University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Ghazoul, Ferial J. / The American University in Cairo
Havlioglu, Didem / Duke University
Hernández de la Fuente, David / Universidad Complutense, Madrid
Kalpakli, Mehmet / Bilkent University, Ankara
Karimi-Hakkak, Ahmad / University of Maryland
Key, Alexander / Stanford University
Murata, Kazuyo / King’s College London
O’Reilly, Terence / College, Cork
Ostle, Robin / University of Oxford
Ricks, David / King’s College London
Robinson, Peter / University of Reading
Rodríguez Fer, Claudio / University of Santiago de Compostela
Sperl, Stefan / SOAS, University of London
Stern-Gillet, Suzanne / Bolton and Manchester Universities
Tanenbaum, Adena / Ohio State University
Thompson, Colin P. / University of Oxford
Weiss, Julian / King’s College London
Yeshaya, Joachim / University of Leuven