The Diwan of Abu'l-Ala: Dedication

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 — and her dismissal of the entire translating enterprise with "Oh, what good is it?" — 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 — 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.

The Diwan of Abu'l-Ala: Dedication

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