Grapes, part one
Dec. 26th, 2008 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urbpan"There is a devil in every berry of the grape."
This is a wonderful quotation or proverb, but where does it come from? If you rely on a quick search of the internet, the loud and clear answer is "The Koran." (Or the Quran or Qu'ran, but most of the time, "The Koran.")
But information and misinformation travel just as widely and as quickly on the internet, and given the sensitive nature of attributing a quotation to this particular text, it deserves a cross-check. I tried to nail down exactly where in the Koran this quote comes from. If you quote Biblical scripture, you follow it with the name of the Book, and the numbers of the chapter and verse. None of the sites I found alleging that this quote was from the Koran specified what chapter it was from.
I checked a searchable Koran site, and could not find the quote. There are some verses that mention grapes, including this nice one: "And of the fruits of the palms and the grapes-- you obtain from them intoxication and goodly provision; most surely there is a sign in this for a people who ponder." (The Bee 16.67) But the full phrase quoted above (even using the two words Iblis and shaitan that may be translated into "devil") doesn't seem to appear.
Deeper in the search results is another possible origin: Thomas A Kempis, medieval German monk, and author of Imitation of Christ, an influential Catholic text (I confess I knew the title only from a Psychedelic Furs song). A sizable minority of lists of quotations attribute the proverb to Kempis. At least one source claims that the phrase "there is a devil in every berry of the grape" comes from Imitation of Christ, but I couldn't prove that by searching a few different online versions of the book.
I did however find the phrase in another book. "...Perhaps everyone has not heard the proverb, 'There is a devil in every berry of the grape.' This proverb is in use in some parts of England, and is said to have strayed hither from Turkey." This is from Flowers and Flower-lore by Hilderic Friend, published in 1884. ("Turkey" in this period referred to the Ottoman Empire, which comprised most of the Islamic world.) This citation lends support to the notion that the quote has an Islamic origin, if not actually that of the Koran itself.
My best guess is that the proverb's origin is lost to history. We may never know the identity of the poetic teetotaller that coined it. I doubt that the saying even comes from the Islamic world; I suspect that it became attributed to the Koran as a way of making it seem more significant and "quotable." If someone reading this has studied the Koran or Imitation of Christ and can say for certain that the origin is in one of these texts, please do. And please provide chapter and verse numbers, so that we can all see it for ourselves.
This is a wonderful quotation or proverb, but where does it come from? If you rely on a quick search of the internet, the loud and clear answer is "The Koran." (Or the Quran or Qu'ran, but most of the time, "The Koran.")
But information and misinformation travel just as widely and as quickly on the internet, and given the sensitive nature of attributing a quotation to this particular text, it deserves a cross-check. I tried to nail down exactly where in the Koran this quote comes from. If you quote Biblical scripture, you follow it with the name of the Book, and the numbers of the chapter and verse. None of the sites I found alleging that this quote was from the Koran specified what chapter it was from.
I checked a searchable Koran site, and could not find the quote. There are some verses that mention grapes, including this nice one: "And of the fruits of the palms and the grapes-- you obtain from them intoxication and goodly provision; most surely there is a sign in this for a people who ponder." (The Bee 16.67) But the full phrase quoted above (even using the two words Iblis and shaitan that may be translated into "devil") doesn't seem to appear.
Deeper in the search results is another possible origin: Thomas A Kempis, medieval German monk, and author of Imitation of Christ, an influential Catholic text (I confess I knew the title only from a Psychedelic Furs song). A sizable minority of lists of quotations attribute the proverb to Kempis. At least one source claims that the phrase "there is a devil in every berry of the grape" comes from Imitation of Christ, but I couldn't prove that by searching a few different online versions of the book.
I did however find the phrase in another book. "...Perhaps everyone has not heard the proverb, 'There is a devil in every berry of the grape.' This proverb is in use in some parts of England, and is said to have strayed hither from Turkey." This is from Flowers and Flower-lore by Hilderic Friend, published in 1884. ("Turkey" in this period referred to the Ottoman Empire, which comprised most of the Islamic world.) This citation lends support to the notion that the quote has an Islamic origin, if not actually that of the Koran itself.
My best guess is that the proverb's origin is lost to history. We may never know the identity of the poetic teetotaller that coined it. I doubt that the saying even comes from the Islamic world; I suspect that it became attributed to the Koran as a way of making it seem more significant and "quotable." If someone reading this has studied the Koran or Imitation of Christ and can say for certain that the origin is in one of these texts, please do. And please provide chapter and verse numbers, so that we can all see it for ourselves.
