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According to Jorge Luis Borges, Abulgualid Mohammed Ibn Ahmed Ibn Mohammahd Ibn Rushd, better known as Averroes, was thinkingsomething like eight or nine centuries ago, more or lessabout a difficult question concerning Aristotle's Poetics. As you probably know, Averroes was a specialist on Aristotle, mainly on the Poetics. As a matter of fact, Western civilization had lost this book and had rediscovered it only through the mediation of Arab philosophers. Averroes did not know about theater. Because of the Muslim taboo on representation, he had never seen a theatrical performance. At least, Borges, in his short story "The Quest of Averroes," imagines our philosopher wondering about two incomprehensible words he had found in Aristotle, namely, "tragedy" and "comedy." A nice problem, since Aristotle's Poetics is nothing else but a complex definition of those two words, or at least of the first of them. |
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The novel of Borges is long and fanciful. Let me quote only two episodes. In the first one, Averroes is disturbed by some noise coming from downstairs. On the patio a group of boys are playing. One of them says, "I am the Muezzin," and climbs on the shoulders of another one, who is pretending to be a minaret. Others are representing the crowd of believers. Averroes only glances at this scene and comes back to his book, trying to understand what the hell "comedy" means. |
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In the second episode, Averroes and the Koranist Farach are talking |
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A longer version of this chapter was published in The Drama Review 21, no. 1 (March 1977). |
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