3.2.7
“I, though, am free, praise God, from any such flaw. Nothing need come between me and my wife, no man will jostle me for her affections, she won’t find me a bore. My happiness will be hers, my wishes and hers the same. I am neither toothless nor foul of breath nor hunchbacked nor lame. I have two hands with which to work, two legs that, to earn their living, will not shirk, and if in my body there’s any distemper, it’s covered by my excellence of temper. I will object to none of her cooking, her clothes, or her manner of reposing, for she’ll sleep next to me and adopt what suits us both by way of clothing. What then should stop me from taking a mate, one possessed of each such happy trait, even should people, hearing that my spouse is full of affection, that with me her honor enjoys full protection and her face no visitor sees, envy me such abundant ease? Every choking sorrow will then seem easy to swallow, and it’s no secret what pleasure lies in giving the envious the finger—a pleasure over which no connoisseur will hesitate to linger. Not to mention the delight found by the psyche in the companionate gender, whose nearness to the heart comfort, and in times of stress an outlet, doth render. One who endures his toil by day only by night to sleep alone and who no bedmate to breathe into his nostrils or warm his blood from in front and behind owns is meet to be counted among the dead and thrown among the bones. In addition, I shall by her saliva to the need for drink be made immune, by the smell of her hair to the need for musk and other perfume, for they say that the smell of a woman from the roots of the hair (be those in the body’s cracks and crevices or on the head) may be inhaled and by it all the senses are derailed. Likewise, the heat of her body will suffice as fuel to keep me warm, the sight of her serve as antimony and balm, meaning that I shall save at least one silver coin a day, half of which for a daily morning visit to the bathhouse I’ll pay, leaving me the other half to live on, which is riches indeed and will suffice for any need.
3.2.8
“As to what people say about ‘women’s wiles’ and how they ride their husbands so hard they’re left beyond the reach of consolation, in most cases this isn’t true — and no rule’s without exceptions to its general application. I may be the first to expose this qualification and fashion, in praise of marriage for bachelors, such a commendation, and how could this not be so, when I’m a master of chaste language and eloquence, a man of craft and intelligence? Thus none of her cunning ways will defy me and none of her attempts at concealment get by me. I shall oppose her and remonstrate, and that my superiority to her compels her to obey and comply I shall demonstrate. One day I’ll tell her, ‘This is a day on which the married desist and active lovers to celibacy keep’ to which she’ll reply, ‘I shall be the first to desist and the last to sleep.’ Should I tell her, ‘It’s not attractive for a respectable married woman to put her charms on display,’ she’ll tell me, ‘Or flirt and play,’ and if I tell her, ‘A wife her husband once a week has a right to expect,’ she’ll tell me, ‘While remaining chaste and worthy of respect.’ If I tell her, ‘Jewelry’s no requirement for a wedding,’ she’ll tell me, ‘and nor is brocade, that most evil cladding.’ Taken as a whole, my life with her will be easy, my state happy, my good fortune extensive, my food wholesome, my drink healthy, my clothes clean, my bed comfy, my possessions well guarded, my house no longer lonesome. Good cheer will be there, my every effort blessed, my status one of note, my endeavors guaranteed success. Hie ye then to marriage with a jolly girl who’s full of coquetry, whose looks provide a cure for bankruptcy, and to bed whom is to ride the road to victory!” End.
3.2.9
I further declare that it is a fact, deeply rooted in our sticky human clay, that when a man sets his heart on getting married, God endears his spouse to him however she be and makes him believe she’s the best of people, morally and physically. And that’s not alclass="underline" the man may well believe that he’s been elevated above his peers and distinguished among his brethren to the point that he dismisses as trivial what previously he saw as important and imagines that he has become a new person, for whom the face of the earth ought, by rights, to be remade. It follows that the Fāriyāq no longer found contentment in the old familiar songs and poetry; instead, he substituted for them other, new ones of his own composition. In the process, he composed two poems17 in which he attempted to invent a strange new style, with the result that they turned out quite titter-making, as you shall see — and had he had the ability to invent a new form of speech to express his passion and rejuvenation, he would have done so.
3.2.10
Thus, should he lay eyes on a married man, he’d call out to him and sing as follows:
On the racetrack of marriage, I’m the front-runner
While you’re the also-ran last-placer.
My shaft soon will take the prize
While your luckless stick’s a failure.18
Or, should he see a bachelor, he’d tell him:
Bachelors, the creed of the single man
I have renounced, so do as I have done.
There is no wealth but marriage, so have at it, friends:
Enrich yourselves and gain what I have won.
And one day, infatuated with the idea of creating something strange and new, he became obsessed with the idea of composing a collection of poetry that would consist entirely of single verses.19 He wrote four and then gave up. They were:
Like a month is an hour of separation from you, but a year
In your company passes like an hour.
I spend the long night gazing at the stars enamored—
My contemplation being of heavenly bodies that are rounded.
My heart beats unbidden whene’er the east wind rises,
And the bright moon recalls to me your countenance.
Would I might know how long a heart that melts as it endures
Can suffer from separation in its many modes.
It would be officious of us to say here that he used to tell his fiancée, “You are the delight of my eyes, and I believe you to be the best of humankind. We are the envy of others and with you I have no need of riches. When close to you, I’m glad, when far, I’m sad. We shall always be as we are now. Your beauty distracts the unwed and I’m jealous of the breeze that ruffles the jet black tresses on your head. We are two bodies with one soul or two souls with one body. Each day you’ll find in me a lover new and all the time I’ll find fresh charms in you. We shall be the paragon of spouses and of lovers,” and so on in the usual vein adopted by such as he.