{"collection":"Texts of Islam","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_isl_daa_daa01_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_isl_daa_daa01_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_isl_daa_daa01_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/isl/daa/daa01.htm","summary":"This is the prefatory dedication to *The Diwan of Abu'l-Ala* (1909), Henry Baerlein's English verse translation of poetry by the medieval Syrian philosopher-poet Abu'l-Ala al-Ma'arri. Written as a familiar letter to a friend (likely journalist E.J. Dillon, who had earlier translated Abu'l-Ala into English prose), the preface is more memoir than argument: Baerlein recalls shared travels through Bulgaria and across the Adriatic, evoking a cast of vivid companions including a Chicagoan millionaire, the Russian liberal politician Milyukov, and a proselytizing American widow aboard a boat under Adriatic stars. The widow's flat refusal to read Abu'l-Ala \u2014 and her dismissal of the entire translating enterprise with \"Oh, what good is it?\" \u2014 becomes the piece's quietly pointed punchline, which Baerlein deflects with the Latin \"Feci quod potui, faciant meliora potentes\" (I have done what I could; let those who can do better). The preface makes no direct case for Abu'l-Ala's importance, instead establishing the translation as a labor of friendship and intellectual companionship undertaken against indifference. Its distinctively personal, almost novelistic tone signals that the book positions itself as literary adventure rather than scholarly edition \u2014 the cover vignette of thistledown blown by wind, glossed in Arabic as \"all things pass away,\" reinforces the poet's famously skeptical, transience-haunted philosophy.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"The Diwan of Abu'l-Ala: Dedication","tradition":"Texts of Islam","translated_text":null,"word_count":656}