The Stone Serpent: Barates of Palmyra's Elegy for Regina his Beloved
()
About this ebook
Barates' elegy to his beloved wife, who died young at 30, is, however, not about mythologising history. With the poet himself an exile in Britain for 40 years from his birthplace of Damascus, the poem forges new connections with today, linking al-Jarrah's personal journey with that of his ancient forebear Barates, who resisted slavery with love.
Barates' Eastern song also questions whether the young Celtic fighters, the Tattooed Ones, were really barbarians, as they emerged from forest mists to defend their hills and rivers and their way of life from the Romans, and died or lay wounded at the twisting stone serpent that was Hadrian's Wall.
Nouri al-Jarrah
Syrian poet Nouri al-Jarrah was born in Damascus in 1956. He attracted attention with his debut collection of poems, "The Boy", published in Beirut in 1982 and has become an influential poetic voice on the Arab literary scene. Since 1986 he has lived in London, publishing 14 further collections, and founding and editing a number of Arabic literary magazines. His poetry draws on diverse cultural sources, and is marked by a special focus on mythology, folk tales and legends. Selected poems have been translated into a number of Asian and European languages, and some collections have been published in French, Spanish and Farsi.
Related to The Stone Serpent
Related ebooks
The Stone Serpent, Barates of Palmyra’s Elegy for Regina his Beloved: – An Eastern Serenade Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKing Candaules Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Arabian Nightmare: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings"The Mysteries of the People", or History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Trumpeter of Krakow Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Return of Sir Percival: Book 1, Guinevere's Prayer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nisida Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Bravo A Tale Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNow You Care Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Story of Mohammed Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sword of Welleran and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Queen of the Black Coast, Recrowned Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetry of Bliss Carman - Sampler: Threnody & Ode Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTomb of the Blue Demons: The Bronze Sword Cycles, #0.5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Last Galley Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Trumpeter Of Krakow, A Tale Of The Fifteenth Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sword of Bedwyr Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Heart of Darkness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Circassian Slave, or, the Sultan's favorite : a story of Constantinople and the Caucasus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sword of Welleran and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Book of Wonder Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeborah: A tale of the times of Judas Maccabaeus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBarbarossa Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA House of Pomegranates Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sword of Welleran Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTales of Wonder Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTales of Wonder Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTHE ARABIAN NIGHTS - 11 of its best known tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBits of Blarney Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBan and Arriere Ban: A Rally of Fugitive Rhymes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeowulf: A New Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enough Rope: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Things We Don't Talk About Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters to a Young Poet (Rediscovered Books): With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Stone Serpent
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Stone Serpent - Nouri al-Jarrah
The Stone Serpent
Barates of Palmyra’s Elegy for Regina his Beloved
An Eastern Serenade
img1.jpgThe Stone Serpent,
Barates of Palmyra’s Elegy for Regina his Beloved
First published in English translation
by Banipal Books, London, October 2022
Arabic copyright © Nouri Al-Jarrah 2022
English translation copyright © Catherine Cobham, 2022
Original Arabic title:
img2.pngPublished by Dar al-Mutawassit, Milan, 2022.
The moral rights of Nouri Al-Jarrah, the author of this work, and Catherine Cobham, the translator of this work, have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
A CIP record for this book is available in the British Library
ISBN 978-1-913043-29-2
E-book: ISBN: 978-1-913043-30-8
Front cover image of the tombstone of Regina
© Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums / Bridgeman Images
Banipal Books
1 Gough Square, LONDON EC4A 3DE, UK
www.banipal.co.uk/banipalbooks/
Banipal Books is an imprint of Banipal Publishing
Typeset in Cardo
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
img3.pngAn Eastern Serenade
CONTENTS
Author’s Note
An Eastern Serenade – Barates of Palmyra’s
Elegy for Regina his Beloved
After An Eastern Serenade
Voices and Songs
Regina’s Song by the River
The Archer from Palmyra
The Birth of the Painted Warrior
News of Boudicca
A Roman Elegy
The Tongue of Fire The Ruin
Julia Domna’s Missing Fingers
The Edict of Caracalla
Notes
Related References
Acknowledgements
About the author Nouri Al-Jarrah
About the translator Catherine Cobham
Titles from Banipal Books
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Who is this adventurer who came from the East to liberate a woman from the West and name her Regina, provocatively, as a challenge to the system of slavery that existed in the Roman Empire? Who is Barates¹ from Palmyra and who is Regina² the Celt? A farm worker was turning over the earth in the remains of a Roman fort in the heart of the British Isles, and produced these two names for us. How did a young man tanned by the sun of Palmyra come to put his arm around the waist of a Celtic girl with a red plait, and wander with her over the lush green hills by Hadrian’s Wall, down to the River Tyne, where brown men from Nineveh rowed in small boats carrying cargo from the big ships, chanting in sad voices songs that sounded like strange prayers? It is strange too that these men with their strong muscles and brown faces had left behind their boats in the warm waters of the Euphrates and joined the fleets of Septimius Severus, arriving in this cold water in the North, to become labourers and oarsmen in the shadow of a Roman wall that twists like a stone serpent.
Who is Regina, and who is Barates? Archaeologists found the Celtic woman’s tombstone in the Roman fort of Arbeia. She had died young, in her thirties, and a few miles away they found the grave of Barates. Everything we know about Barates is also everything we know about Regina, contained in one line that the shattered lover had engraved in Aramaic, his native language, on the Palmyrene-style tomb of the beloved woman. So we know that he freed her from slavery, named her Regina (‘Queen’), and she became his lover and his wife, and then he lost her. The hero of this poem did not forget to include his Syrian identity on the tombstone.
A single line fired my imagination, and I, and this poem, are indebted to it.
NJ