Ever tremendously conserve
Ever
tremendously conserve
In Brief
As the drinkers step out of Burke's pub, one says to another,
"Night. Night. May Allah the Excellent One your soul this
night ever tremendously conserve." The fantastic language of Oxen
of the Sun here seems to be drawing on some nighttime
prayer from the Middle East. There are many such prayers in
Islam, though no precise model has yet been identified.
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Thornton writes, "This appears to be a Moslem prayer, but I have not located this specific formula in any of the works on Moslem scripture or prayer which I have seen." Gifford declares more definitively that it is "A formal Arabic salutation (and prayer) pronounced at bedtime," but he cites no source. Slote, Mamigonian, and Turner ignore the sentence completely in their extensive annotations, as do Jeri Johnson and Declan Kiberd in their more selective notes, and Harry Blamires, Terence Killeen, and Patrick Hastings likewise neglect it in their guidebooks. In the face of so much scholarly silence one might be tempted to suppose that no allusion is involved.But Islam does have a strong tradition of bedtime and nighttime prayers, and their language often comes close to the sentence in Oxen. In a 5 June 2018 web article on "The Different Types of Prayer at Night" (www.islam21c.com), Assad Ahmad details various kinds and quotes the Prophet on their importance: "Be keen on night prayer as it is the habit of the righteous, it’s your mean of proximity to your Lord, expiation of sins and a barrier against sinning." Some Islamic bedtime prayers entrust the soul to Allah who has created it and who is all-powerful. One of the examples illustrated here recommends reciting the words, "O Allah, verily You have created my soul and You shall take its life, to You belongs its life and death. If You should keep my soul alive then protect it, and if You should take its life then forgive it. O Allah, I ask You to grant me good health." From this to Joyce's sentence, there is only a slight increase in extravagance.
There is also little conceptual difference from the familiar
Christian prayer prescribed for children: "Now I lay me down
to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if I die before
I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." But the Islamic
emphasis on the greatness of Allah, which Joyce's hyperbolic
language makes quite resonant ("ever tremendously conserve"),
imparts a much more majestic feeling to the parting salutation
under the stars.
