The Knight and the Poet

 

 "Azellal d Urkkab" or "A debate between a Knight and a Poet" is an ancient Amazigh song by Rais Boubkr Anchad. He has succeeded in embodying the eternal conflict between the poet and the conventional man (or in using Plato’s cave allegory: Between an intellectual and ordinary caveman). The former observes the world from a celestial, rather than an ideal perspective. He is entranced by his reveries, he wonders and observes the universe with ardour and exultation. The poet is a person whose soul can be satiated by the exquisiteness of the cosmos, and is ardent enough to tread the labyrinths of satyr and consecrated passion. He sees in the daily occupations and delights of the ordinary people an odious fetter, and thus he is always chary of being overtaken by public opinion. A conventional man, however, is induced at a young age by society to believe that success lies in imitating and obeying, in servitude and in monotony. He yields to the social project of turning himself into a superman that his upbringing emphasises, and he is immutable and determined to fulfil this need.

Throughout the song, the two characters endeavour to exhibit, with effusion, the enticements and the inestimable natures of their lifestyles. It was not a decent conversation, though, as both men talked rashly about one and other’s occupations. They were very vacillating, as each one of them talked with solemnity of his pursuit while detracting and devaluing that of his counterpart. 

This is a narrative poem about the encounter of a poet and a knight and their earnest conception of the meaning of life. The poet opened the debate by vaunting about his triumphant hedonistic lifestyle. He boils down the meaning of life into pleasures and delights and shuns all responsibilities and worries. Additionally, he further criticises those who can not see divine and ultimate beauty in these delights. He passes the word to the knight who in turn indulges in praising chivalry and knighthood. He praised horses and their hoofs, gunpowder, fire, heroism and generally, the traditional standards of masculine identity as determined by society.

The allegory in this song is so intense that a listener would enjoy both the aesthetic symbolism along with its sagacity. This poem perfectly portrays two inconsistent and different perspectives. It is a very ancient debate concerning the meaning of life:  Is it to fulfil one’s endless and ephemeral lusts or to submit to the community and to try to make sense of how society shapes one’s sense of self and identity.

For native Amazigh people, this song provokes a confusing feeling. We are taught to estimate both poets and knights, and all craftsmen and jobs alike. What really determines one’s value is their knowledge and wisdom as manifested in their language and their poetic abilities. In other words, people who can scrutinise the depths of their knowledge of language and extrapolate meanings, then translate them into beautiful metaphors and allegories. 

The Amazigh civilization is often referred to as the civilization of the verb, as we actually sanctify language. The latter is equated with authority, dignity and sublimity. We say in Tamazight, for instance; that “ It is preferable to destroy a man’s house than to break his word”. Furthermore,there used to be weekly meetings in Amazigh tribes where people gather to enjoy poetic debates.  The winner is chosen based on prudence, rhetoric, bravery, passion and fervency. That is why I consider this song to be an early monologue of an adolescent poet, and his attempts to create this balance between his personal inclinations and desires and social aspirations. It might even denote Anchad’s tormenting psychological experience, as he was only 12 years old when he started working as a shepherd to help his family following his father’s demise.

Boubakr Anchad was a liberated soul, his songs denote an independent and conscious mind, free from all fetters that humans usually fall into once they are born. He was very young when he fell in love with the melody of the breeze, and the authenticity of solitude. He courted nature, and created arts to please himself first. His exquisite indifference to the notion of “Rule” is particularly manifested in one of his songs where he innocently preferred Love-making to Fasting, when his beloved urged him to wait until sunset. Boubker Anchad was born in the last decade of the 19th century and died in the early 1940s. Unfortunately, we do not have an exact picture of Rais Boukr Anchad as many people confirm that the popular picture that is believed to be his is actually that of Rais Bounsir. According to Mohamed Walkach (an amazigh radio presenter and researcher in traditional Amazigh arts) Boubkr Anchad may be the man carrying an Oud in the middle.