About this text: The Ode on the Soul

Suhrawardī, The Occidental Exile (Qiṣṣat al-ghurba al-gharbiyya)Ishraqi philosophy · firm

Suhrawardī says in his preface that he read Ibn Sīnā's Recital of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān and wrote his own tale to carry it further. His captive soul in the city of the West, who falls back from Sinai into prison, takes up the Avicennan theme of the soul's exile that the Ode states in verse.

Carried byغربةghurbaroot غرب“exile”

In the library:al-Ghurba al-gharbiyya ¶44al-Ghurba al-gharbiyya ¶4Path: The fall and the return of the soul

• Henry Corbin, Avicenne et le récit visionnaire (1954): Studies Ibn Sīnā's visionary recitals and presents Suhrawardī's Occidental Exile as a sequel written in response to them.

Ibn Sīnā, The Recital of the Bird (Risālat al-ṭayr)Falsafa (Arabic philosophy) · probable

From the same author, the Recital of the Bird tells the soul as a bird caught in a net and a cage, longing for its first home, as the Ode does. The prose recital narrates the escape and the journey to the King that the Ode only touches on.

Carried byشركsharakroot شرك“net, snare”

In the library:Risālat al-Ṭayr ¶6Risālat al-Ṭayr ¶7Path: The fall and the return of the soul

• Henry Corbin, Avicenne et le récit visionnaire (1954): Treats the Recital of the Bird together with Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān as one cycle of Ibn Sīnā's symbolic recitals of the soul.

Ibn Sīnā, The Recital of Ḥayy ibn YaqẓānFalsafa (Arabic philosophy) · probable

In this other work by Ibn Sīnā, the wicked companions who bind the soul correspond to the heavy body that fastens on the dove in the Ode. The dark western clime corresponds to the low place where she sets instead of rising.

Carried by“the soul's bondage and the western place of setting”

In the library:Ḥayy (Ibn Sīnā) ¶8Ḥayy (Ibn Sīnā) ¶13

• Henry Corbin, Avicenne et le récit visionnaire (1954): Translates and interprets the Recital of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, including the companions and the geography of the climes.

Ibn ʿArabī, The Interpreter of Desires (Tarjumān al-ashwāq): the effaced abodesSufism · probable

Both poems take over the opening of the classical Arabic ode, the halt at the ruined encampment and the tears shed there, and use it for a spiritual longing. Neither needs the other: each draws on the desert-ode convention.

Common ancestor: The nasīb of pre-Islamic and classical Arabic poetry, with its halt and weeping at the ruins (aṭlāl)

Carried byأطلالaṭlālroot طلل“ruined traces of the encampment”

In the library:Tarjumān al-ashwāq ¶52Tarjumān al-ashwāq ¶53

• Jaroslav Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Najd: The Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasīb (1993): Documents the nasīb, the lament over the ruined campsite, as a lasting convention of classical Arabic poetry.

Plotinus, Enneads IV.8 'On the Descent of the Soul into Bodies', in its Arabic paraphrase (the 'Theology of Aristotle')Neoplatonism · suggestive

The questions of why the soul came down, whether willingly, and what it gains from the descent are those of Plotinus in Ennead IV.8, which reached Arabic readers in the paraphrase known as the Theology of Aristotle; the Ode shares this Neoplatonic frame while taking its imagery from Arabic poetry. Our library holds Ennead VI.9, where Plotinus asks why the soul does not remain above.

Common ancestor: Plotinus, Enneads IV.8, transmitted in the Arabic Plotinus paraphrase

Carried byκάθοδοςkathodos“descent of the soul”

In the library:Ennead VI.9, ch. 10

• Peter Adamson, The Arabic Plotinus: A Philosophical Study of the Theology of Aristotle (2002): Studies the Arabic paraphrase of the Enneads and its account of the soul's descent and return.

Suhrawardī, The Temples of Light: rational souls kept from their worldIshraqi philosophy · probable

Suhrawardī describes the rational souls as angelic in substance and held back from their own world by bodily occupations, close to the dove held by the snare and barred from the open heights. No particular borrowing from the Ode is claimed.

Carried by“the soul barred from its own world”

In the library:Hayākil al-nūr ¶28Hayākil al-nūr ¶27

Ibn Ṭufayl, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān: the dweller who left the houseFalsafa (Arabic philosophy) · probable

At the gazelle's death Ḥayy concludes that the one who lived in the body departed before the house fell, leaving the body behind. The Ode's soul likewise sets out and leaves the body 'bound in alliance with the dust'.

Carried by“the body left behind”

In the library:Ḥayy (Ibn Ṭufayl) ¶80Ḥayy (Ibn Ṭufayl) ¶81

Quran 7:172, the primordial covenant (the 'Day of Alast')Quran and hadith · suggestive

The Quran speaks of a pledge taken from the children of Adam before their birth, which people may later forget, and the Ode's covenants made in the sanctuary and then forgotten have a similar shape. The poem does not cite the verse, so the link is left as a resemblance.

Carried byعهدʿahdroot عهد“covenant”

Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Masnavī, opening 'Song of the Reed'Persian poetry · probable

Rūmī's reed flute, cut from its reed-bed, laments its separation and longs to return to its origin, making the soul's exile heard as a voice of mourning as the Ode's dove does. No borrowing is claimed.

Carried by“lament of separation from the origin”

The 'Hymn of the Pearl' in the Acts of ThomasGnosticism · probable

A prince is sent down from his father's kingdom into Egypt, forgets his origin, and is woken by a letter that flies to him like an eagle. Forgetting in exile and a return that recovers what was lost appear in both texts, and in Suhrawardī's hoopoe with its letter.

Carried by“forgetting in exile”

In the library:al-Ghurba al-gharbiyya ¶9

William Wordsworth, 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood' (1807)Romanticism · suggestive

Wordsworth's soul comes from elsewhere 'trailing clouds of glory' and gradually forgets its home as the 'shades of the prison-house' close in. Like Ibn Sīnā's ode, it pairs the soul's descent with forgetting and with the body as a prison.

Carried by“prison-house; forgetting”

Plato, Symposium: Diotima's ladder of ascentPlatonism · probable

Diotima describes only the climb, step by step from beautiful bodies to the beautiful itself, and gives the lover a way up. The Ode dwells on the fall, and even its ascent ends as a flash of lightning that folds away.

Carried byἐπαναβασμοίepanabasmoi“steps of ascent”

In the library:Symposium 211cPath: Love: the soul's longing back

Early Buddhist teaching on non-self (anattā)Buddhism · probable

The Ode assumes a single soul that existed above, came down, and can return home knowing more. Early Buddhist teaching explains bondage through craving and denies an abiding self that could make such a journey, so liberation there is no homecoming.

Carried by“anattā (non-self)”