Exotic Erotic

You can lose yourself in the results of a key word search through early American periodical poetry-- especially when your keyword is  "Arabian" and you time period 1820- 1860.  I was struck by the focus on romantic and erotic love depicted both in poems attributed to Arab men, and in poems written by American women with a self-proclaimed Arabic theme.  For one thing, I was surprised at the men and women who considered themselves expert enough after traveling amongst Arabs, to title their poems "Arab Song."  Further, the sexualized characters in the poetry written by women surprised me.  Were they simply mimicking other Arabic poems?  Or was the title "Arabic Song" a safeguard, allowing them to write in a different character and thus not bound by social expectations?  Many of the poems praise women and romantic love, depicting the love interest as a precious jewel, flower, and reason for man's living.  The poems seem excessively romantic compared to other poems (even romantic British Victorian poems) and the sexual nature of the woman characters attractions seems less covert than the typical vague garden and fruit references in Victorian poetry.  While other poems speak of an imaginary garden existing separate of the woman subject, these poems place the garden image as a part of the woman in a much less subtle way.  Or maybe I'm just reading too much into them.

With all that said, I chose to look at a collection of several Arabic poems which appear crammed on a page in the Christian Spectator Apr 1, 1825 edition.  Entitled "Specimens of Arabian Poetry" this page collects several incongruous poems including: "On Moderation in Our Pleasures," "On Avarice," "To a Friend on His Birthday," and "On a Cat That Was Killed as She Was Attempting to Rob a Dove House."  The first of these poems is attributed to Abou Alcassim Eben Tabataba and has a very different tone than the romantic poems I found at first.  In fact, all of these poems seem to be a direct rebuttal of the "othering" of Arabic people which occurs in the erotic and exotic romantic poems.  In the first poem, the poet seems rational and fair, focused on monogamy and marriage rather than sexual pleasure in the first poem (an idea supported by Arabic symbols like a allusion to the wedding lamp, which is explained and underscored in an editorial footnote).  In the second poem, by Hatem Tai (noted to be a generous Arabic chief) expounds on the temporary state of wealth-- a "you can't take it with you argument" which aligns neatly with Christian notions of charity and greed.  The third poem "To a Friend on His Birthday," is short and sweet, depicting a kind of a toast to a friend, but with the caution to live "that at thy parting hour" your friends weep at your loss and you are rewarded or dressed in smiles after death.  The final poem is, admittedly, the reason I selected this group.  Any poem on the death of a cat is tops in my book.  But this one is spoiled a bit by another editorial footnote (the editor really wants us to see the moral implications of these poems, I think.  As a side note, the notes' font is larger than that of the poems... take that as you will).  This note states: "The occasion of these verses and their real intent are variously related: but the opinion generally received is that they were composed by Abou Beor as an elegy, on the death of a friend who owed his ruin to the rash gratification of a headstrong passion."  Really ruins the poem for me with that heady moral attached.  In the poem, the narrator has a very jovial, humorous tone, sad about his loss of a cat, but accepting that she had to die because of her behavior.  That is really scary, actually.  Especially if we imagine the poem is symbolic of other particular life errors or sins.  The idea that we just have to accept death as the punishment for falling for temptation seems a bit heavy for poetry.  But what does this mean about the religious doctrine of the Christian Spectator?     

More questions:
What was the goal of the Christian Spectator in presenting this alternative view of Arabic culture which is so closely aligned with Christian values? Why are they called specimens?  Is this a reaction against the erotic nature of other examples?  Is the Christian Spectator capitalizing on the fascination with the exotic Arabian in order to present Christain values and refute immoral insinuations of other texts?