Where Did Spring Come From?

A friend met me once on a night in Kanun when I had no overcoat on, and he said: "Where is your overcoat?"

I said: "I have no need of an overcoat; the weather is warm and I feel nothing of the cold." He said: "But we are in Kanun."

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I remembered this incident the day an article on "spring" was asked of me for the month of April. And I was struck by this faith, among the great mass of people, in whatever the yearly calendars decree: in the winter season we must be cold even if the weather is warm; in the summer season we must "swelter" even if all the winds of the north are blowing; and in spring we must be merry, for it is the season of gaiety and splendor.

And so I am left at a loss what to say about spring.

The first thing that occurred to me is that people couple it with youth—and here I am, knowing nothing in youth of the merriment people ascribe to April, nor have I ever made the acquaintance of a laughing season in my life. What, I wonder, can this word mean? I wished I had been asked for an article on winter, so that I might speak of its storms, its cold, and the anxiety of its nights; or an article on autumn, so that I might speak of the withered dreams falling here and there. But the article is on "spring," and spring is a stretch of time fixed by the yearly calendars and imposed upon us as a laughing season.

At last I come, in Ibn Qutayba's book Adab al-Katib, upon a definition of spring. He says that the common people use the word "spring" for the season that follows winter, and that this is an error; for the Arabs used to call spring the season that follows summer, or the season that follows autumn, or the season that follows winter. (Here ends Ibn Qutayba.) That is, the Arabs did not fix spring to a stretch of time; they made of it a stray season which a man may set down wherever he wishes.

Spring, then, is a clear moonlit night in Kanun, flanked on this side by a storm that knows no truce, and on that side by clouds pouring out upon the earth what they pour of heaven's anger.

And spring is a cool breeze on an evening of the scorching days of July.

Spring is a state of the human soul that comes unappointed and departs unappointed. It is most merry in troubled souls—souls that know how to live the storm in its winter, and know how to feel the pang of death in the evenings of autumn. Neither April brings us a spring, nor does our longing for April. Rather, this spring comes laughing on the wings of the storm we met, or began with, in the winter.