Studying Literature

Study and Literature

PARIS LARBY

THE OUTSTANDING DEFECT in the general approach to mystical

literature in the areas known by me is profound. This approach,

having no means whereby to analyse such literature, yet continues

to study, translate and quote it, sometimes with grotesque

results.

As an example: Dervish literature contains several different

meanings. Sometimes these are contradictory. When this is the

case the reason is that the piece is designed partly to stimulate,,

through 'shock', the human mind. But the intellectual, finding

inconsistencies in this literature, automatically assumes that it is

defective in some way.

Second: what is on the surface poetry or dramatic prose, or

even history, may contain, when interpreted in a certain manner

all sorts of exercises, theories and doctrines below the surface.

But the orientalist and the conventional Eastern student, simply

has no idea of that. For these reasons almost all of the mystical

literature available is in reality incomprehensible to the current

student, of East or West.

Third: literature is given to people to study for a reason. It

has been chosen and given out in order to help the individual's

training. But, again in East or West, if someone is given a

book to read, he will not only gallop through that one, but will

search indefatiguably for everything and anything connected

with its theme, by the same person, or mentioned in the text.

From the point of view of efficient study (if not from that of

academic tradition) such a process is a grotesque of the intended

effect.

Without a teacher to give out suitable exercise-literature,

without a course of study which will lead somewhere, omniverous

reading will cause satiety—and worse. The Sufis say: 'Man

likes what is bad for him, and dislikes what is good for him.'

If I have learned anything at all, it is that this teaching is

clearly evidenced as correct in the situation where man

approaches special literature in such a wholly distressing frame

of mind as to imagine that he can teach himself better than a

teacher. It indicates a man who is not really a student, though

he may think he is one. A student is one who either follows a

teacher, or who has the capacity to understand what he is doing.

FARIS LARBY is a Moroccan who has made a special

study of the use of literature among the mystical

fraternities of the Maghrib (North-West Africa) and

in Persia.