Narrative Silences: Notes for a phenomenology of the lacuna in Arabic and Persian texts of the classical period

Within the framework of a research project on the silences that Islamic sources offer to our view today, this contribution aims to investigate the presence and nature of certain types of lacunae in the narrative structure of some Arabic and Persian textual traditions of the classical period. The narrative backbone of the Koran, particularly relating to the prophetic stories, is distinguished by the fragmentary and syncopated nature of its accounts compared to other earlier or contemporary versions of the same stories, inevitably constituting an essential model and reference point for any subsequent elaboration. Taking as a case study the Koranic story of Moses’ arrival at the Source of Life and his encounter with al-Khaḍir (sura XVIII, 60-65), along with its original connection to the legend of Alexander the Great (the “Two-Horned” of sura XVIII, 83-98), we thus investigate its composite and yet dry structure, and its subsequent transformations. If the homiletic and strongly allusive procedure of this exemplary Koranic narrative was progressively supplemented by the work of the Koranic commentators and even more so by the authors of the qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ (“Stories of the prophets”), through the retrieval of extra-canonical information, it was precisely this work of integration and consolidation of the narrative structure that was then to be confronted with two main types of drive towards a new elaboration of reduced and elusive forms: on the one hand a pulse for ellipsis typical of the Arabic rhetorical tradition; on the other hand, the tendency of the literary tradition to base certain fragmentary references on an implicit shared knowledge of the basic narrative pattern on the part of the audience. The result is that even lyric poetry can become a vehicle for complete narratives, through laconic mentions that are swollen up with silent underlying meanings.