41). In other words, the gift as such buys its way through a narrative of some sort, which is another name for time or waiting for time, or waiting without forgetting. He suggests, the thing as given thing, the given of the gift, arrives, if it arrives, only in narrative. And in a poematic simulacrum of narrative (Ibid.). DEDICATIONS AS POETIC INTERSECTIONS 133 There is much to corroborate Derridas simulacrum of narrative. However, poets proceed at times from claims counter to gift exchange in order to highlight their vocation while meeting the expectations of the donee, the patron in this case. Indeed, al-Mutanabbl (d. 354 H) tends to annul casual formations of exchange in order to establish another paradigm of restitution. Addressing Abn Shujm Fmtik in 348 H, the poet sets himself apart from current exchange: You have no steeds to offer, neither do you have money Let utterance help,

12 Whenever al-Mutanabbls (the prophetizerhe who claimed to be prophet) panegyric searches for both reward and absolute distinction, the address is toward the self as much as it is toward the emir of Aleppo. In addressing himself in the third person, al-Mutanabbl valorizes his mission and his career as a poet, while establishing the basis for his address to the emir. Through this double-edged

13 While this panegyric assumes its own invocation of selfgenerating poetics independent of divinity, its play on the components of the panegyric (i.e. the utterance and the reward) involves it in the very politics of dedication as gift. Significantly, in another instance of incomparable selfaggrandizement, the poet openly objects to the patrons acceptance of other poetic shows of allegiance and homage, stipulating that he is to be rewarded for every other panegyric recited, for it is no more than an echo of his poems: Time itself is a reciter of my odes; I compose a poem, and then time recites it. Recluses rush out to bruit it abroad; With it the tuneless raise their voice in song. Reward me for every poem recited to you; For what panegyrists bring is but my poems repeated. Leave off every voice but my voice; Mine is the uttered cry, the others, echoes.

14 To use Marcel Mauss reading of the gift, there is in the panegyric a tendency to restitution, for between the patron and the poet there is a contract of giving and repaying. What is also distinctive of al-Mutanabbls panegyric, however, is the insistence on the originality of his gift, its unique nature that, paradoxically, invites servile imitations. To use Derridas reading of Mallarms Aumne, al-Mutanabbls poem is compared to a work that would have been born from the poet alone, without couple or without woman.15 In fact, the verb to offer, and next to it reward are used in line with an ongoing tradition DEDICATIONS AS POETIC INTERSECTIONS 134 of homage and allegiance whereby the poem as an intertextual space betrays its dialogue with other utterances while laying claim to originality. The significance of this panegyric, in line with the dedicatory, or as an independent mode of address, lies in its drive for recognition within the poetics and politics of that classical age of afflue