The Poetic Construction of Self

Author(s): Steven C. Caton

Source: Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 4, Self & Society in the Middle East (Oct., 1985),
pp. 141-151
Published by: The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3318144
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THE POETIC CONSTRUCTION OF SELF'

STEVEN C. CATON
Hamilton College
North Yemeni tribes perform an oral verse genre called the balah in their wedding ceremonies. It
is argued that the selfofthe honorable tribesman emerges in the compositionalprocess, particularly in
a routine of challenge-and-response carried out between competing poets. George Herbert Mead's
model of symbolic interaction is used to bring out the idea of the self emerging in an artistic act.
Implications for Middle Eastern research are considered.

"Through every part of the Arabian desert,

poetry is equally esteemed," wrote the great
nineteenth century Arabist and explorer
John Lewis Burckhardt (1831:251). "Many
persons are found who make verses of true
measure, although they cannot either read
or write." That poetry is not practiced by an
elite few but is an expressive medium open

to all, and that it is mainly oral rather than

written were to be confirmed by later
accounts, of which certainly the most
outstanding is Alois Musil's Mannersand Customs of the Rwala Bedouins (1928).
The Rwala love to hear, recite, and compose
It cannot be denied that the
poems...
Bedouins are poetically gifted. The composing
of all kinds of ditties and songs is mere play to
them, and they do not hesitate even at longer
poems (pp. 283-84).

To appreciate Musil's achievement one must

put his work in the perspective of a certain
scholarly tradition. Among the most outstanding Arabists who preceded him were
Count Carlo von Landberg (1901-1913) and
Albert Socin (1901) who collected, transcribed
and translated poetic texts and suppplemented them with grammatical notes and metrical analyses. E. Rossi (1939) was to continue
this tradition of close linguistic analysis of
poetic (and other) texts. What Musil did was
not only to transcribe and translate the texts
but also to situate them in their social and
political contexts, the result being the first
ethnography of poetry on the Arabian Peninsula (see also Montagne 1935, Serjeant
1951). Relying mainly on Musil's rich corpus
of texts and ethnographic descriptions,
Michael Meeker (1979) has reconstructed
and delineated in bolder relief a "culture of
poetry," a picture of tribesmen addicted to,
enthralled by, in awe of the poetic word
which they employed in the most central
institutions of society such as camel raiding
and warfare.?
Though the above-mentioned research

has revealed that poetry is used largely for

political purposes in tribal conflict (see also
Caton 1984), a recent study of Abu-Lughod
(1985) of poetry among Bedouin men and
women of the Awlad 'Ali (Western Egypt)
indicates that it may also be an important
expressive medium of sentiments connected with the Bedouin notions of self as
shaped by the ideology (or code) of honor.
Abu-Lughod's work has prompted me to
explore the relationship between poetry and
the self in Yemeni male verse, though my
data and analysis will differ from hers.
One of my aims is to show how a little
known genre of oral wedding poetry called
the balah is composed in the course of an
ongoing peformance and thus to explicate
the "oral"dimension of verse. Another point I
wish to make is that the poetic performance
is simultaneously a glorious deed of honor
(Meeker 1976), hence a "poetic construction
of self."
The analysis of the self as an entity
emerging in an ongoing process of social
composition owes much to George Herbert
Mead (1976). As we shall see, the construction of an honorable self crucially entails an
Other against whom glorious deeds are performed. Mead's concept of the generalized
other, which the self internalizes in an ongoing social act such as a game, is perfectly
realized in the balah performance, which is
culturally perceived as a la'bah or game.
Finally, Mead's construct of the spontaneous and creative "1"as opposed to the
conventional, role-oriented "me," and his
claim that the "1"would become most prominent in artistic acts prove useful in the
analysis of the balah, for it is the "1"which
becomes the basis for the construction of
the honorable self.
The region of North Yemen in which
these data were collected is known as
Khawlan at-Tiyal.3 It stretches due east of
141

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POETIC CONSTRUCTIONOF SELF

the capital San'a to the outskirts of Marib,

famous for the ancient dam by that name
located in the vicinity. Khawlin is a confederation of about seven tribes which
belong to a yet larger confederation of tribes
in Yemen, the Bakil.4 They are sedentary
agriculturalists inhabiting fertile valleys and
cultivating such crops as sorghum, wheat,
corn, various vegetables and qdt (a bush
whose leaves are chewed for their slightly
narcotic effect). Patrilineal kinship stamps
the social organization. There is no longer
any head sheykh of the Khawlan tribes (the
last one having been killed in the early
seventies), and there are now three or four
sheykhs vying for power with no one as yet a
clear favorite.
The Cultural System of Honor

The studies that have been done on pastoralist and sedentary agricultural tribes of
the Middle East-and for the purposes of
this article I would single out Michael
Meeker's article "Meaning and Society in
the Near East" (1976), William Lancaster's
ethnography TheRwala Bedouin Today(1981 )
and Raymond Jamous' reconstruction of a
traditionalBerber society in Northern Morocco
in Honneuret baraka (1981)-reveal that the
cultural concept of honor or sharafis crucial
for an understanding of society.
As Jamous explains, honor is a certain
kind of prestige or value attached to an
individual or group and, as Meeker makes
clear, this value can be both inherited and
achieved. That is, if one has had an illustrious
ancestor, a person who has achieved honor
in his own lifetime, then one will inherit that
value by virtue of blood descent. Meeker
goes on to argue that kinsmen of the ancestor can be viewed analytically as a "community of significance;" they understand
that they share the same honor or are equal
to each other in the degree to which they
possess prestige. The result is that blood descent, though present as a notion of kinship
among Arab tribesmen, is secondary to
honor in defining who one's kinsmen are.5
Let us now consider how honor may be
achieved in social action. Meeker refers
analytically to those social acts which create
or achieve honor as "glorious deeds," among
which we can count (following Jamous) acts

142

of hospitality and generosity such as feasts

and various kinds of gift exchange, acts of
violence demonstrating courage, martial
prowess and physical strength or endurance,
and finally acts of public oratory, verbal
duelling of any sort and poetry. Jamous'
analysis makes clear the fact that honor is
achieved in other ways besides performing
glorious deeds, the most important being the
ownership of land (whose wealth can be converted into the food stuffs utilized in gift
exchanges) and which is attacked or defended in the glorious deeds of warfare and
public oratory.6 In addition to the possession
of land to signal a man's honor, there is also
his control of women and sons. The control
of women is symbolized by all sorts of
conventions-from veiling to the determination of whom the daughter will marry-and if
these conventions are not publically observed, people will wag their tongues and say,
"this man has no honor look at the way his
women behave." Jamous calls these other
sources of honor in land, women and sons
"control over prohibited domains." The point
is that a man achieves honor by performing
glorious deeds and by gaining control over
"prohibited domains" (his own as well as
others').
What is important for our analysis of the
oral tradition is Meeker's (1976) concept of
the glorious deed of honor. He argues that
this concept contains an implicit logic or
structurefor action. For example, it implies
the concept of the Other against whom a
glorious deed is performed (i.e., an adversary) as well as the Other who will recognize
and acknowledge the honorableness of the
deed (i.e., the adversary or the audience).
The Other whom one confronts in the
glorious deed must be an equal in the
cultural system, a person (or group) who is
on the same honorable footing as oneself
(Bourdieu 1965). If he were weaker, the contest would not be a fair one and the winner
would be branded a bully or tyrant. If the
other is stronger, then it would be foolish to
challenge him and the challenge would
never be accepted (nor would one be judged
cowardly by not accepting such a challenge).
The end result is that the glorious deed must
be a challenge of equals. From this it also
follows that a person who challenges an

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143

ANTHROPOLOGICAL
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equal can expect a counter-challenge in

return. There is an exchange of challenges
implicit in the glorious deed of honor.
With this cultural system of honor in mind
let us now turn to the analysis of the balah
performance. My aim will be not only to show
how one is a poet in this society, but how at
the same time one is a man of honor by composing poetry.
The Social Situation of the Samrah

The balah7 is composed and performed

only at wedding ceremonies-during a ritual
event known as the samrah.This Arabic noun
is derived from the verb samar which means
"to spend the evening in friendly conversation" and often a friend will inquire of another
nismir al-lel ("shall we samar tonight?"). The
friend will make his appearance after supper
and the evening prayer (around 8 pm) when
the two of them with perhaps some of their
acquaintances will sit together in the men's
sitting room or mafraj to gossip about the
events of the day, listen to the radio, play
games and sometimes dance. The groom's
wedding samrah, which takes place on the
night he is to consummate the marriage, is
the same type of event, except that the
entertainment takes place on a much more
grandiose scale. Up to a hundred or more
people might be in attendance in the larger
gatherings and the music, dancing and
poetic performances might go on until
dawn.
The Balah Performance

When the balah performance is about to

begin, two servants signal the fact by
vigorously playing a drum salute. A group of
about eight or more men will then stand up in
the sitting room and form a circle, facing
towards the center with their arms linked
around each other's waists. One of them
begins chanting a partiular tune (each genre
has specific melodies [sg., lahn; pl., alhian]on
which the verse is delivered), and if the
others applaud his choice, they will join him.
Otherwise, there might be some argument
before the tune is decided upon. The circle
of men acts as a chorus in the performance
(saff-en,literally "two ranks").One half of the
chorus chants a standard refrain line, the
other half picks up part of the poetic turn

delivered by a poet in the center of the circle,

and together they alternate in the chanting
of refrain and verse until a new poet or the
same one enters the circle to take another
performance turn. Since the poem is constructed verse by verse, the second half of
the chorus will be chanting only the last
poetic contribution, not all the preceding
ones.
One of the requirements of the balah is
that more than one poet must participate in
the performance. Anyone can assume the
poet's role, though of course it is expected
that he knows the art of performance, otherwise he will dishonor not only himself but
also the group to which he belongs. Ideally,
everyone should try to compose at least one
verse as a "gift"to the groom, and the spectators seated on the floor around the circle
of choristers are periodically exhorted to
gumu ("rise!") and participate in the performance. Although only a few members of the
welling party actually perform the balah,
these being the most talented who are relied
upon to carry the show, it is an important
cultural conception of the event that ideally
everyone should contribute.
Poetic Composition as a Glorious Deed

The balah is a type of oral composition. By

"oral" I mean not just a poem that is spoken
as opposed to being written or printed, but
rather one which is composed at the same
moment in which it is delivered before an
audience.8 While our literary poets might
recite or read their works out loud after they
have composed them, an oral poet would
deliver the poem while he is creating it, thus
giving the impression of spontaneous composition. In Yemen as in other parts of Arabia
where oral poetry flourishes, the spontaneous poet is held in awe by his audience;
he is the performer of the glorious deed.
Meter and Formula.

Our understanding of oral verse has been

immeasurably enhanced by the classicist
Milman Parry and the slavicist Albert Lord;
the fruits of their collaboration resulted in
the now famous work by Albert Lord, The
Singer of Tales (1960). In their theory of oral
verse composition, Parry, the classicist, had

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POETIC CONSTRUCTIONOF SELF

noted in his textual analyses of the Homeric

epics a repetition of set phrases such as the
"wine-dark sea," "the cords of ruin are fastened" or "the rosy fingers of dawn" which
have come to be called formulas, a set of
slightly varying words that occur at a precise
point in the metrical line and that express a
fixed idea. While his notion of the formula as
such was not original, Parry went beyond
traditional scholarship to suggest that it
facilitated the rapid composition of a metrically precise verse line created in an
oral performance.
In the oral composition of balah poetry,
there is a regular metrical pattern of alternating heavy and light syllables in the verse line.
A light syllable is the simplest, most universal syllable structure known in human
languages, a consonant followed by a short
vowel (Cv). A heavy syllable is any other
structure that exists in the language (in the
case of Yemeni Arabic these would be C1,
CvC, CvC, CvCC).9 The following half-line
from a balah poem illustrates the pattern of
alternating light and heavy syllables:
shafi' ana min jahannam harraha wal-kalil
u u u_ / u _
"Our intercessor u__
(keeping us) out of Hell, its
heat and fire"

(the symbol/u/ stands for a light syllable, the

symbol / /stands for a heavy syllable). The
pattern consists of two metrical feet, one of
which is/uu_/
and the other of which is/
u _/, the two alternating in the line.'0 Now
compare this harf"half-line"" to ones from
other bllah performances in which almost
the identical words are used.
yishfa' lana min jahannam harraha I-lahibah
- u- I- u
u- Iu_ /"He intercedes for us(to keep us) out of Hell,its
flaming heat"
najitana min jahannam harraha I-hamiyah
/u
_ u _ /u
u__
_
Hell, its scorching_heat"
"You saved us from
'ala n-nabTdhTshafa' min hom nTran12
u- u _/ -u - /- (u) _L
"(Prayers)for the Prophet,who saved (us) from
the heat of the fire"

In all the examples, one main idea is

expressed, that the Prophet Muhammad will
intercede with God on the final Day of Judgment to prevent pious Muslims from going to
Hell. The meter is regular(shortened slightly

144

in the final example to accomodate a briefer

melody), and the words employed are very
similar. It is only the end of the harf which
shows real variation and this of course is due
to the rhyme which changes from one poetic
performance to the next.
To indicate how a harf is constructed out
of formulas consider this opening of a
balah.
wabda' bik ad' ika ya rahman y~ miktafil//
u- /_ u /
-(u)
/- uya mithag at-t&-rbil-jinhen hTnyitahil
u L (u)
_
Lu"Ibegin with
You,O (u)_
MercifulOne, O Provider'
"He who holds up the bird by its wings when
it travels"

The opening formula is wabda' bi- "I begin

(composing) with" which has its echo in filbid'a "In the beginning" which begins many
other poems. Next follow two vocative formulas ya rahmanya miktafil "O Merciful One,
O Provider." The following harf begins with
another common formula ya mithagat-terbil-jinhen "He who holds up the bird by its wings"
and concludes with a phrase that incorporates the rhyming word and is semantically congruent with the preceding formula.
Nearly the entire line consists of formulas
which have been stitched together to form a
metrically regular hemistich.
Poets, then, do not create verse completely from scratch. They have a stock of
traditional formulas which they use systematically to build the verse line. By this
technique they manage to produce a poem
that expresses conventional ideas in a
highly constrained metrical pattern within a
matter of a few seconds. It is an entirely
unconscious process, as far as I know, for
poets were never able to articulate the
methods by which they composed their
verse; they would only say, "Allah made it
spring from my heart."
The Routine ofDa'wi

w-ijtibah

Having just stated that the verse line in

balah poetry is composed of pre-fabricated
formulas, let me make one importantqualification to that generalization. There are conventional parts that begin the poem and
conclude it in which formulas are heavily
used: the invocation of God at the beginning,

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145

ANTHROPOLOGICAL
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the call for prayers on behalf of the Prophet

and his successor'Ali (North Yemeni tribesmen being Zaidi Shi'a Muslims for the most
part), then long and effusive greetings of
various honored guests in attendance at the
wedding samrah. Now abruptly begins a middie section which is referred to as the da'wa
w-ijdabah("challenge and retort"). It is often
highly improvisatory, demanding poets to
think up original verse lines. For example, a
poet might begin to tease another poet
about what happened to him on a previous
day of the wedding, a reference which could
not be made by a stock of traditional formulas but requires a poet to compose verse
de novo. Herein, it is said by tribesmen, comes
the real test of the oral poet: that is, has he
not only mastered the traditional rhetorical
devices but does he also possess the wit,
imagination and stamina to compose verse
lines in an improvisational manner? Here we
come to the true glory of the poetic deed.
Here we also come to the true glory of the
honorable deed. A deed of honor implies an
act performed against a significant other.
Only the best and bravest poets dare to
enter the circle when it is clear to everyone
that a contest of challenge and retort has
begun.
To capture the idea that this verse composition is simultaneously a competition, the
poets will refer in the performance (i.e., metapragmatically) to the balah as a game. This
game, as everyone knows, consists of certain rules, such as that the rhyme must
remain consistent throughout the poem of
anygiven performance (e.g., if the end-of-line
rhyme is -un, then every line must end in this
sound) and that the same rhyming word may

not be repeated (unless it is a homonym).If

one of the poets forgets these rules and the

audience catches the mistake, the assembly
will shout harf magsis ("a broken half-line")
and the poet's offering to the performance
will be disqualified. He will have either quickly to devise a substitute or concede his turn
at versification to a competitor. But the most
thrilling aspect of this or any other game is
when a contestant must pit his skill against
that of other poets. Let us now turn to an
extended example of such a game.
and (yet) verses of
A. O time of the
such ignorance! b.lah

He who does not polish his lines has no place

among us.
B. (taking up A's challenge)
May God grant you long life, O poet. I'm
not lazy
If you have a line, give it and the boys will
chant it.
C. (defending A and attacking B).
Don't criticize my namesake's poetry-if it's
short or long
The rest of the poetry belongs to him.
Beware! He's only just begun.
MayGod preserve you, O poet. Isee that your
voice is hoarse
I'mone of the men who attacks and carries
(i.e., the verse).
A. (responding to B).
You call yourself a horned ram.Infact, you're
our lamb
We'll play the balah all night long and see
that you don't shudder with fright.
B. (responding to A).
Fromthe weight of the poetry that is on you,
you might stumble
O what a pity, O my namesake. See that
you don't give up.
A. (responding to B).
Andto you greetings, as manyas willfit in our
tribe's territory
A Faxri, long life to you - you're a horse's
ass!
C. (responding to A).
O balah, don't wear out the assembly with an
unreasonable cut
Everyone is trying to outdo the other.
D. (concludes the poem).

The first challenge is hurled by Poet A to

the assembly at large. The next turn is taken
by poet B who responds to him by saying
that he is "not lazy" because he has already
contributed a number of turns to the performance, whereas the challenger A has yet to
prove his mettle by composing more than
one turn. Hence, he challenges him with the
taunt "if you have a line, give it, and the boys
will chant it."Poet C comes to the defense of
the initial challenger A with this admonition,
"Don't criticize my namesake's poetry, if it's
short or long." The reference to the poetry
being short or long is not a reference to
meter but to the number of turns which a
poet has taken in a single performance. He
then warns that his namesake has only just
warmed up in the performance and will surely compose many turns to follow. Poet C then
follows up the attack on B with this rebuke, "I
see that your voice is hoarse." Though B may

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POETIC CONSTRUCTIONOF SELF

have boasted that he is prolific, C would
remind him that his strength is failing him
and he might not be able to go on much longer. In contrast to B, poet C claims that he
does possess the stamina to "attack" and
"carry"the verse in the chant. Not only has
this poet defended a friend, and thus shown
himself to be honorable in one sense, he has
also defied an opponent and demonstrated
his courage, thus again building a reputation
for honor. Now poet A rejoins the fray. He has
been previously challenged to compose
more verse and does in this turn.
A. You call yourself a horned ram. In fact, you
are our lamb.
We'll play the bal all night long and see that
you don't shudder with fright.

This is indeed a witty line. He suggests that

his opponent boasts out of proportion to his
true talent (the epithet "horned ram" is used
in reference to a brave fighting man)
because rather than being a winner in the
contest of honor, his opponent will turn out
to be its victim (metaphorically, the lamb). In
other words, he implies that his opponent
will be sacrificed to his poetic blade, and
given that he will brandish that blade all
night long, his opponent will end up shuddering with fright. The sheer humor of the verse
signals this to be a superior poetic turn and
its poet to have more than established his
mettle in the performance, thus also enhancing his reputation for honor.
Poet B now has his back against the wall.
He has been attacked by two men in the performance, one of whom has delivered him a
stunning retort. He must come up with a
rejoinder he hopes to be of equal or greater
wit and poetic skill, in order to save face and
maintain his reputation for honor.
B. Fromthe weight of the poetry that is on you,
you might stumble.
O what a pity, O my namesake, see that you
don't give up.

The turn is addressed to poet A. He implies

that the task of composing verse in the balah
is a burden of great weight, and he warns the
challenger not to assume a greater undertaking than he can handle. But in the next
hemistich he goads him on, telling him not to
be daunted and "give up."While his rejoinder
does have some force, it is in my view not as
strong as A's challenge, nor did the audience

146

seem as moved to laughter by it.

Poet A answers him in rather abusive

terms calling him in the next turn a "horse's
ass" which goes beyond the bounds of tact,
and that is why Poet C reprimands him for
"cutting an unreasonable cut." In other
words, he warns the poet that he has gone
too far in his attack on a person's honor and
therefore should temper his attacks if he is
not to spoil the game of the balah. Before
things can heat up much more, the next poet
concludes the performance on the standard
formulaic expression.
Bearing in mind the significance of social
acts of honor and comparing them with the
balah performance, I think it is clear that we
are justified in interpreting the composition
of such a poem as a performance of a
glorious deed, entailing significant others
(poets and audience) whom one challenges
and who judge one's challenge. Furthermore, built into the composition of the poem
is an exchange of challenges between
equals which is exactly parallel to the
exchange of glorious deeds between honorable men. What is created in this perfor-

mance is not only a poem, it is also social

honor.
What is being created in the ongoing process of the poetic performance is an honorable self. I will rely on George Herbert
Mead's model of the self to make the point
and will now outline it.
George Herbert Mead's Theory of the Self

For Mead, man is not born with a self, but

with a certain reflexive capacity on which the
emergence of the self is dependent. He
would claim that man is unique for being
able to experience himself as an object of his
own contemplation (Mead 1962:136-37).
The self then is acquired; there is a history to
its development.
The self can only emerge in society and
through language which Mead defines as a
system of significant symbols and their
meanings (Mead 1962:45-46). There has to
be some significant Other whom the individual
experiences, and they have to interact with
each other in an ongoing process. At some
point in this process, the other must communicate to the individual his or her sense of
and attitudes toward that individual on the

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147

ANTHROPOLOGICAL

one hand, and that individual must be able to

understand the communication on the other.
Communication and the understanding of
that communication require language.
Different senses in which Mead's term of
the Other can be understood are not always
clearly distinguishable in his writings. The
most obvious and concrete Other is that of a
particular individual's concepts of, and attitudes towards, a person, whereas a slightly
more abstract Other would be constituted by
a collectivity of individuals and their concepts of, and attitudes towards, a person. But
Mead has in mind an even more abstract and
complex notion of the Other, called the
"generalized Other," which entails not
merely the person's awareness of particular
individuals' or groups' attitudes towards him,
but also their attitudes towards the social
activity in which they are engaged as a
whole.
Some of the ongoing social processes in
which a person acquires a self and a notion
of the (generalized) Other, according to
Mead, can be seen in how a child learns to
adopt the attitudes and behaviors of others
in play. One moment it will assume the role of
doctor, the next it will be playing the part of
the patient. Having been the Indian one day,
it willswitch to the cowboy the next. But play
is still too unstructured an activity for a
notion of the generalized Other to emerge.
This requires an organized game.
The attitudes of the other players which the
participantassumes organize into a sort of unit,
and it is that organization which controls the
response of the individual.The illustration(is)
of a person playing baseball. Each one of his
own acts is determined by his assumption of
the action of the others who are playing the
game. What he does is controlled by his being
everyone else on that team, at least insofar as
those attitudes affect his own particularresponse. We get then an "other" which is an
organization of the attitudes of those involved
in the same process (Mead 1962:154).

A game then is an ongoing social process or

situation out of which an organized personality emerges. Through internalization of
the attitudes of particular individuals and of
the attitudes of the collective, the individual
develops that concept of self Mead called
the "me." The "me" knows what particular
individuals, groups and the generalized

QUAR TERLY

Other expect or anticipate of the selfs responses to conventional situations. The "me"
has a memory; it remembers how one acted
previously in a situation, the attitudes and
responses this action elicited in others, and
the expectations these others have of the
action being repeated in the situation.
If this were all of Mead's framework, we
would be hard put to account for creativity in
such individuals as artists who have a strong
sense of a "spontaneous" self, therefore
Mead incorporated into his theory of the self
the notion of the "1."
The "1"gives the sense of freedom, of initiative.
The situation is there for us to act in a selfconscious fashion. We are aware of ourselves,
and what the situation is, but exactly how we
will act never gets into experience until after
the action takes place.
Such is the basis for the fact that the "1"
does not appear in the same sense in
experience as does the "me".The "me" represents a definite organization of the communitythere in our own attitudes, and calling
for a response, but the response that takes
place is something that just happens. There is
no certainty in regard to it. When it does take
place, we find what has been done. The above
account gives us, Ithink,the relative position of
the "1"and "me" in the situation and the
grounds for the separation of the two in
behavior.The two are separated in the process,
but they belong together in the sense of being
parts of a whole .... If (the self) did not have
these two phases, there could not be conscious responsibility and there would be
nothing novel in experience (Mead 1962:17778).

The "me" is important for the artistic process

insofar as conventions (the expectations of
form harbored by the other toward the
artist's work) are evident in genre, but the "I"
is in some artistic traditions even more so, in
that it emphasizes the spontaneous and the
novel. Mead makes the significant point that

it is in art that the "1"is more evident than in

any other social process. "In the case of the

artist, the emphasis upon that which is
unconventional, that which is not in the
structure of the "me," is carried as far,
perhaps,as it can be carried" (Mead
1962:238).
The Poetic Construction of Self

Let us now interpret the balah performance in Meadian terms. Clearly, the

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POETIC CONSTRUCTIONOF SELF

performance is an ongoing social process

entailing language. This is the beauty of
using oral poetry for the purpose of demonstrating Mead's claim that the self emerges
in a public act, for in written literature the self
of the creative artist is further removed in
social action from the Other (his audience).
The distinctly competitive nature of balah
composition, moreover, makes this verse
genre particularly relevant for Mead's ideas,
because the self emrges in an agon with the
other of poets.The the competitive relationship
of poets as well as a fairly complex set of
conventions for verse composition (meter,
rhyme, formulas, etc.) give this performance
its quality of a game, the participants in
which internalize a notion of the generalized
Other. That is, they must understand what
others expect of them in terms of organized
responses to each other's verse and the
ongoing process of composition.
I have been arguing that a balah is not
only a game of poetry, for on a deeper level
of analysis it is also a game of honor. What
emerges in the course of the performance is
a notion of both the self and the other as
being honor-bound. The creation of an oral
poem is considered to be a glorious deed of
Here
challenge and counter-challenge.
again I think the Meadian model is particularly apt in bringing into relief the significant points of the data. Honor can only be
achieved by performing a glorious deed in
dialectical relationship to an Other.
But let us recall that in Mead's scheme
the "1" is the spontaneous, unpredictable
part of the self which is especially important
in art. This "1"emerges in the course of a
balah performance when an opponent challenges the honorable self of an individual in
a non-formulaic, particularly witty or otherwise spontaneous fashion, and the "1"of that
individual's self must devise an apt reply.
Since this routine of da'wa w-ij~bah is the
highlight of the performance, it stands to

148

reason that the "1"gains prominence over

the "me" which controlled the balah's more
formulaic and predictable parts. It is also in
the middle section that the game of honor
becomes most intense; to step into the
poet's circle at this stage is indeed to risk
complete loss of face in the glorious deed.
Hence, the construction of the honor-bound
self depends largely on the poetic "1"rather
than the poetic "me" responsible for the formulaic, predictable parts that constitute the
genre's conventions. It is, furthermore, this
"1"which distinguishes the truly great and
inspired poets from the more conventional
and competent versifier. One cannot, then,
aspire to heroic heights unless one is also a
poet of greatness (an "1"surpassing the "me"
of the performance). Mead's model allows us
to conjoin some of the most profound
aspects of art (creativity and the imagination) with the social emergence of the self,
and for this reason should be of interest not
only to students of culture-and-personality
but also to those concerned with the interface of anthropology and particularly
verbal art.
To the extent that Middle Eastern tribal
societies seem to be dominated by a "culture of (oral) poetry" (cf. Meeker 1979;
Samatar 1982; Abu-Lughod 1984, 1985;
Caton 1984), it would seem that the Meadian
framework-with its emphasis on the emergence of self in a public verbal act-would
have wider relevance than the Yemeni context. Furthermore, the last decade or more of
anthropological research in the Middle East
has revealed that an analytical notion of the
person may be as crucial as, and perhaps
more so than, the notion of the group in
social action (Geertz 1976; Eickelman 1976;
Rosen 1979). The Meadian "1"of the poetic
performance which occurs in Yemeni tribal
wedding ceremonies may prove useful in
further elucidating the concept of the person
in the Middle East.

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149

ANTHROPOLOGICAL
QUARTERLY
NOTES

Research for this article was funded by Ph.D. field

grants from Fulbright-Hays and the Social Science
Research Council (1979-81). I would like to thank the
following colleagues who kindly read and criticized
earlier versions of this article: Paul Riesman, Lila AbuLughod, Beverly Nagel, Kim Rodner, Jon Anderson and
Dale Eickelman. Also helpful were the insightful comments of Joe Hellweg and Gery Ryan of Carleton College.
I am also grateful to the reviewers of the Anthropological
Quarterlyfor their useful criticisms. This version is based
on a paper delivered at the 1984 American Anthropological Association Meetings and I would like to thank the
members of the panel "Self and Sentiment in the Muslim
Middle East" (organized by Lila Abu-Lughod and Steven
C. Caton), and especially its discussant Dale Eickelman,
for their comments and questions. Taha Hamudi helped
with the translation.
2 Research on tribal poetry in and outside Arabia has
recently resulted in a number of works, among which the
reader should consult Samatar (1982), Lila Abu-Lughod
(1984, 1985) and Caton (1984).
SYemeni Arabic has two long vowels /I/ and /Io/;
"classical" qaTfisusually pronounced /g/ and the classical
consonants /z/ and /d/ merge into /d/.
4 Khawlan was historically connected to the Himyaritic
and Sabaean Kingdoms which ruled southern Arabia in
the days of the spice and incense trade to the Roman
world. Little archaeological research has been done in
these parts and so the history still remains relatively
obscure. An issue of interest to the Arabist is whether or
not the oral tradition of these same tribes is historically
connected with the ancient pre-islamic poetry which it
resembles in some respects, although I cannot address it
in this article. Some of the major issues raised today
about the nature of pre-Islamic verse are covered in
Michael Zwettler (1978). Itshould be noted that the forms
of contemporary verse seem, at least at first glance, to be
more at variance with, than similar to, the pre-Islamic
tradition; but this question will not be resolved until more
careful comparative research has been undertaken. Saad
Sowayan's Nabati Poetry (1985) came out too late to
be considered.
5 Though Meeker does not explicitly say so, it would

seem that he is in sympathy with David Schneider's critiques of kinship studies in anthropology which have too
often assumed that notions of blood descent are primary
in cultural systems of kinship without in fact demonstrating that this is the case.
6 He does not make the economic factor of land
ownership the material cause of symbolic forms of
behavior, if anything, it is just the reverse in his
argument.
7 As far as the poetic system of the Khawlan tribes is
concerned, there are at least three major genres in use.
The greatest of these, the one most esteemed by poets
which may have a long historical tradition on the Peninsula dating back a thousand years or more, is called the
qasFdah.It is a long ode, sometimes several hundreds of
lines long, which usually celebrates some political or
military exploit of the tribes. A very much terser, almost
epigramatic genre is called the zamil. Only two lines long,
it is composed during wedding festivals and especially
during tribal dispute mediations, and because it puts less
demands on imagination, skill, and sheer stamina than
does the qasTdah,it is more accessible to even the least
talented of poets.
8 For the development of the idea of oral poetry, see
the now classic articles by Milman Parry(1930, 1932) and
the book by Albert Lord (1960). For more recent
statements see also Tedlock (1977) and Hymes (1981).
9 To completely justify the metrical analysis I would
have to present a theory of syllabification, an analysis of
syllable structure of Yemeni Arabic and a linguistic theory
of meter which go beyond the scope of this article (see,
however, Caton 1984).
O10Students of the Classical Arabic tradition will
recognize this pattern as basit. This technical term,
however, is unknown to the tribes of Khawlan. Indeed, I
was unable to elicit any terms for metrical patterns in
general.
i1 in the local tradition harf refers to a hemistich,
whereas bet refers to a verse line.
12Thisharf produces a truncated meter. The melody is
shorter than most, so the poet had to abbreviate the verse
accordingly.

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