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The Countercanon: Adonis’s Anthology of Arabic Poetry

Robyn Creswell

in City of Beginnings

This chapter focuses on Adonis's Diwan al-shi'r al-'arabi [Anthology of Arabic Poetry], a three-volume florilegium published between 1964 and 1968 whose origins are in the dossiers of pre-Islamic ... More

This chapter focuses on Adonis's Diwan al-shi'r al-'arabi [Anthology of Arabic Poetry], a three-volume florilegium published between 1964 and 1968 whose origins are in the dossiers of pre-Islamic poetry first published in Shi'r. The Diwan was the most consequential revision of the classical heritage undertaken by Adonis. It is a massive critical project that hews strictly to the original impetus of Shi'r, a movement based on the paired goals of literary autonomy and deprovincialization. How do these goals affect Adonis's decisions as an editor of the corpus of classical poetry? As a collection of citations from the turath, the Anthology is a work of internal translation in which source and target texts are exactly the same, though provided with a new context. The chapter suggests that while Adonis's countercanon seeks to restore those voices silenced by orthodoxy, his own choices, tailored to the needs of the present, impose their own exclusions and repressions.Less

Pre-Islamic ‘Arabless-ness’: Arabian Identities

Peter Webb

in Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam

Developing Chapter 1’s findings on pre-Islamic Arabian society, this chapter proposes a new origin point for Arab communal consciousness. Chapter 2 seeks the first groups of people who called ... More

Developing Chapter 1’s findings on pre-Islamic Arabian society, this chapter proposes a new origin point for Arab communal consciousness. Chapter 2 seeks the first groups of people who called themselves ‘Arabs’ and explores how those people can be identified from historical records. We begin by appraising the evidence about Arabic language: when and where did it evolve and to what extent does Arabic-language use delineate Arab communal identity? We evaluate the surprising paucity of pre-Islamic Arabic records, and next turn to pre-Islamic poetry to examine its citation of the word ‘Arab’ alongside the senses of community the poets articulate. Pre-Islamic poetic reference to ‘Arabs’ is also almost non-existent, whereas alternative forms of communal identity are clearly expressed, in particular, a people known as Maʿadd. Marshalling theories of ethnogenesis to interpret the evidence, this chapter sheds new light on pre-Islamic Arabia’s fragmented communal boundaries. Chapter 2 closes with early Islamic-era poetry where poets first begin to call themselves ‘Arabs’, suggesting that Arab ethnogenesis was a result, not a cause of the rise of Islam.Less

Nationalist Poetry, Conflict and Meta-linguistic Discourse*

Yasir Suleiman

in Living Islamic History: Studies in Honour of Professor Carole Hillenbrand

This chapter discusses the role of poetry in identity formation and nation building in the Arab-speaking world. Western theories of nationalism treat the novel as the locus of national narratives. ... More

This chapter discusses the role of poetry in identity formation and nation building in the Arab-speaking world. Western theories of nationalism treat the novel as the locus of national narratives. The chapter argues that this view is Western-centric and that, in the Arab context, poetry plays that role more than the novel. It further discusses some Arabic poetry, and the Arab diaspora, mahjar, in which poetry, as a meta-linguistic discourse reflects on the role of language as a primary marker of Arab identity and emphasises its role in superseding ethnic tensions in the Arab body politic.Less

Rhythms and Rulers

in Silencing the Sea: Secular Rhythms in Palestinian Poetry

The sound was an important foundation of the Arab poetic tradition. The earliest rhythms of Arabic poetry probably evolved from a variety of sources, including the vast stillness of the sands or ... More

The sound was an important foundation of the Arab poetic tradition. The earliest rhythms of Arabic poetry probably evolved from a variety of sources, including the vast stillness of the sands or sweltering heat, and turned into a form that came to stand for Arabic poetry. This form has been known as qasida (ode) in Arabia for at least 1,600 years. This chapter explores some basic and influential concepts, techniques, words, figures, forces, and legends that animated and continue to animate the Arab poetic tradition, focusing on a set of encounters running through the history of Arabic poetry between political authority and the authority of poetry. It also examines the relation between Islam (and specifically the Quran) and poetry. By traversing the distance between the Quran and poetry, this chapter argues that in order to understand the place of local Palestinian poetry in the modern world, it is necessary to acknowledge its place in the larger Arab poetic tradition.Less

Rhythmical Freedom

in Silencing the Sea: Secular Rhythms in Palestinian Poetry

This chapter examines rhythmical freedom in Arabic poetry by focusing on the narratives of a number of Arab poets such as Mahmoud Abu Hashhash, Nazik al-Mala'ika, Al-Munsif al-Wahaybi, and Ahmad 'Abd ... More

This chapter examines rhythmical freedom in Arabic poetry by focusing on the narratives of a number of Arab poets such as Mahmoud Abu Hashhash, Nazik al-Mala'ika, Al-Munsif al-Wahaybi, and Ahmad 'Abd al-Mu'ti Hijazi. Abu Hashhash, who mostly publishes free verse, found Ramallah, the seat of a tattered sovereignty, a place from which he hoped to start collecting the pieces of Palestinian existence. In addition to free verse, Abu Hashhash also dabbles in prose poems to show that he is not exclusively committed to a single form. His narrative reflects the idea that the secular has its own rhythm, a rhythm that appreciates the act of return. The poet who devalues repetition and who searches for freedom from rhyme also finds the present more complex than the past. To repudiate traditional verse, it is not necessary to be born in Palestine or in a refugee camp. For example, al-Mala'ika pioneered free verse in Baghdad.Less

The Laity Outside Poetry's Temple

in Silencing the Sea: Secular Rhythms in Palestinian Poetry

This chapter examines how secularism pervades Arabic prose poets' relation to the public. Unlike the traditional poets who place themselves above the public and unlike modernist poets of free verse ... More

This chapter examines how secularism pervades Arabic prose poets' relation to the public. Unlike the traditional poets who place themselves above the public and unlike modernist poets of free verse who consider themselves ahead of the public, prose poets have a tendency to position themselves in a place that not only contains the two earlier positions but also transcends them. For prose poets, poetry is its own realm. Paradoxically, their argument that poetry is self-sufficient is punctured by another claim: that their poetry requires mediation for the laity. Six female poets mentioned in this book were devoted mainly to prose while occasionally dabbling in free verse. Two of them found the prose poem to be more feminine, presumably consistent with the secular freedom advanced by feminism in its dominant modes.Less

Metrical Discipline and Mastery

in Silencing the Sea: Secular Rhythms in Palestinian Poetry

This chapter focuses on the traditionally lyrical al-'āmūdī form of Arabic poetry and its non-secular topography. Both Mahmoud al-Desouqi and Ahmad Bekheit said they memorized a significant amount of ... More

This chapter focuses on the traditionally lyrical al-'āmūdī form of Arabic poetry and its non-secular topography. Both Mahmoud al-Desouqi and Ahmad Bekheit said they memorized a significant amount of canonical Arabic poetry, all al-'āmūdī form. Although they primarily compose al-'āmūdī, they occasionally dabble in free verse. However, they never practiced the prose poem, the poem without meters, which they do not consider to be a poem at all. Another poet who abstains from the prose poem, even after entirely abandoning al-'āmūdī, is Samih al-Qasim. The non-secular rhythms of al-Qasim's story is evident in his account of freedom, an account that deviates from certain triumphant liberal visions (negative or positive) of freedom as an absence of restrictions and an insertion of autonomy. He, along with Hanna Ibrahim, claims that meters are initially difficult and restrictive, but once mastered, they come naturally. This chapter also looks at another Arabic poet, 'Abd al-Majid Hamid.Less

Conclusions: Secular Prayers

in Silencing the Sea: Secular Rhythms in Palestinian Poetry

This chapter explores the connection between form and content in Arabic poetry by analyzing the poems themselves. Contemporary literary Arabic poetry is difficult to comprehend because its authors ... More

This chapter explores the connection between form and content in Arabic poetry by analyzing the poems themselves. Contemporary literary Arabic poetry is difficult to comprehend because its authors often vindicate “rational” (that is, nontheistic) authority in society, but their poems are characterized by increasingly “irrational” (mythical) content. Paradoxically, Arabic poetry employs familiar words of daily Arabic but binds them with an opaque significance. This chapter addresses this paradox by looking at the work of an eminent Muslim-born poet: Adonis. It examines his poetry anthology Songs of Mehyar the Damascene (1971), which includes both measured and prose poetry and alludes to an affinity among forms of poetry, freedom, and society. Adonis's writing permits general conjectures about the secularity of modern Arabic poetry. He establishes affiliations with Christianity in search of a secular mode of self-flourishing that extend beyond his choice of single words (mazāmīr vs. anāshīd). Moreover, his enactment of the secular exceeds his disavowal of theistically driven life in general and Islam in particular.Less

Modern Poets and “Conservative” People

in Silencing the Sea: Secular Rhythms in Palestinian Poetry

With a mixture of nationalist, communist, and socialist voices, Nazareth used to be a venue in which to speak about redemption through Arab nationalism or communist internationalism. This chapter ... More

With a mixture of nationalist, communist, and socialist voices, Nazareth used to be a venue in which to speak about redemption through Arab nationalism or communist internationalism. This chapter focuses on how Arabic poetry in general and Palestinian poetry in particular is secularized and how modern Arab poets such as Edmoun Shehadeh, Ahmad Kiwan, 'Abd al- Karim Abu Khashan, Muhammad al-Batrawi, and Ahmad Dahbour push secularism into the Arab literary imagination. Shehadeh's road to his free verse poetry was paved by Iraqi poets such as Nazik al-Mala'ika and Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. Kiwan was dismayed by the Palestinian and Arabic poetry scene.Less

Redeeming Prose

in Silencing the Sea: Secular Rhythms in Palestinian Poetry

This chapter examines the condition of prose in contemporary Arabic poetry, focusing on poets whose sounds are no longer tonally measured verse, but poetry that is a dream. The narratives of poets ... More

This chapter examines the condition of prose in contemporary Arabic poetry, focusing on poets whose sounds are no longer tonally measured verse, but poetry that is a dream. The narratives of poets such as Hussein al-Barghouti, Hilmi Salim, 'A'isha al-Mughrabi, Hussein Muhanna, and Izz al-Din al-Manasra focus on conditions and consequences of this dream. Their contemporary prose poetry was underlain by both prayer (salaa) and dream (hulm). This chapter explores how poets of highly secular sensibilities produce a seemingly otherworldly poetry, and how “the dream” of poets, their poems, underlie and undermine the secular to which they aspire. In the dreams generated by prose poets, measuring sound becomes completely obsolete and an “ordinary” public borders on irrelevance. The chapter concludes by analyzing how faith in the Palestinian revolution disappeared in Palestinian poetry, along with faith that poetry could affect anything outside poetry.Less

Introduction

in Silencing the Sea: Secular Rhythms in Palestinian Poetry

Arab poets in general, and Palestinian poets in particular, have radically transformed the sound structures of their poems in order to modernize poetic forms by turning to free verse and prose poems. ... More

Arab poets in general, and Palestinian poets in particular, have radically transformed the sound structures of their poems in order to modernize poetic forms by turning to free verse and prose poems. Through these forms, poets, not “the sea,” stand sovereign over rhythms. Over the past seven decades, Arabic poems have become ever more silent, marked by ever more irregular rhythms. This book, an ethnography of “literary” transformation, investigates how forms of ethics, politics, epistemologies, and imaginaries have led to this prevailing silence in contemporary Arabic poetry. Drawing on interviews with forty-seven poets, including six women, the book shows how poets' emerging “silence” reflects contradictions and ambiguities of secular formations in modernity as movements in the sounds of rhythms, as well as beyond them. It argues that poetic forms and forms of life are inseparable and makes a number of assumptions about poetry, poets, and poetic form. It looks at the current Palestinian poetry, which is dominated by three forms: a traditional ode in use for more than 1,500 years and two modern arrivals, free verse and prose poetry.Less

Poets for “The People”

in Silencing the Sea: Secular Rhythms in Palestinian Poetry

This chapter presents the results of the author's interview with the Palestinian poet Hanna Abu-Hanna, who lives in Haifa, Israel. In his autobiography Zillu al-Ghayma (The Shade of the Cloud), ... More

This chapter presents the results of the author's interview with the Palestinian poet Hanna Abu-Hanna, who lives in Haifa, Israel. In his autobiography Zillu al-Ghayma (The Shade of the Cloud), Abu-Hanna describes life in his home village, al-Raineh, near Nazareth, the processions held by local peasants to ask for rain, his Quranic schooling in the town of Sdoud, and his time at the boarding school in Jerusalem under British rule. In his conversations with the author, he revealed his early attachment to romanticism in poetry through his enduring love for Gibran Khalil Gibran. In a typical triumphal vision of secular modernity, the word “tradition” appears as the inimical space of atrophy for both Abu-Hanna and Gibran. Gibran's rebellion inspired Abu-Hanna to shift to socialist realism despite the former's reputation as a pioneer of romanticism in the history of modern Arabic poetry. The question of poets' relationships to their audiences, the people, inevitably surfaced in Abu-Hanna's conversations with the author.Less

When Meter Melts

in Silencing the Sea: Secular Rhythms in Palestinian Poetry

The “Path of the Poem” (Darb al-Qasida) in Israel features poems by both Arab and Jewish poets, men and women. There are free verse and prose poetry, none of which are classical. Furthermore, none of ... More

The “Path of the Poem” (Darb al-Qasida) in Israel features poems by both Arab and Jewish poets, men and women. There are free verse and prose poetry, none of which are classical. Furthermore, none of the featured Arab poets is from the 1967 occupied part of Palestine, which allows identity to trail behind the borders of national sovereignty. Memory, including that of Palestinian poetry, is a site of contestation in the struggle for national sovereignties. This chapter explores the Arab prose poet's relation to rhyme, meter, and rhythm. The narratives of these poets, including Zakariyya Muhammad, Taha Muhammad Ali (Abu Nizar), Mahmoud Amin al-Alim, and Nida'a Khoury reveal the kinds of struggles they have faced to ensure the vitality of their techniques along secular lines of belonging. The foundational definition of Arabic poetry as a rhyming and measured speech has lost its authority over poetry.Less

On Muḥammad V, Ibn al-Khaṭīb and Sufism

Cynthia Robinson and Amalia Zomeño

in The Articulation of Power in Medieval Iberia and the Maghrib

This chapter is centred around a rereading of a much-studied narrative of the mawlid celebration held at the Naṣrid court in 764/1362 and preserved in Ibn al-Khaṭīb's Nufāḍat al-jirāb fī ʿulālat ... More

This chapter is centred around a rereading of a much-studied narrative of the mawlid celebration held at the Naṣrid court in 764/1362 and preserved in Ibn al-Khaṭīb's Nufāḍat al-jirāb fī ʿulālat al-ightirāb. It seeks, first, to rehabilitate the extensive body of verse declaimed at the mawlid as a valid source of information concerning the Naṣrid dynasty's attitude toward Sufism, particularly as regards its ongoing renewed project of dynastic legitimisation, and, second, to begin the task of interpreting both compositions and celebration against the complex backdrop of Naṣrid religiosity.Less

Enough “Screaming”

in Silencing the Sea: Secular Rhythms in Palestinian Poetry

In her 1949 collection, Shrapnel and Ashes, the Iraqi poet Nazik al-Mala'ika reflects on her generation's rebellion against the classical Arabic ode. In this collection, all the words of Arabic ... More

In her 1949 collection, Shrapnel and Ashes, the Iraqi poet Nazik al-Mala'ika reflects on her generation's rebellion against the classical Arabic ode. In this collection, all the words of Arabic poetry seem to be incendiary. Her recollection of what happened at that time illustrates how she and others were changing the sounds of their verse to meet the contemporary demands of their souls. Poets like al-Mala'ika are working with the form of free verse in their attempt to compose a quieter and deeper poetry. Among poets of free verse, the secular is more pronounced because it reverberates in their articulation of poetry's realm, tools, and public in ways that sustain secularism's sequestering of spheres. Nine years into the Palestinian collapse of 1948, one poet, Mahmoud Darwish, published the first free verse in al-Jadid. In the narrative of another modern Arab poet, Taha al-Mutawakkil, rhythm is equated with screaming or droning. In their desire to belong to secular modernity in Palestine and elsewhere in the Arab world, poets distanced themselves from the sound of words.Less

Ataturk Becomes ͑Antar: Nationalist-vernacular Politics and Epic Heroism in 1920s Egypt

Marilyn Booth

in Studying Modern Arabic Literature: Mustafa Badawi, Scholar and Critic

This chapter examines the emergence of colloquial Arabic poetry as populist-political commentary in Egypt by offering a reading of Mahmud Bayram al-Tunisi's series of texts, which figured political ... More

This chapter examines the emergence of colloquial Arabic poetry as populist-political commentary in Egypt by offering a reading of Mahmud Bayram al-Tunisi's series of texts, which figured political contestation in the thematic-formal mould of the sira shaʻbiyya. It first provides an overview of the sira shaʻbiyya (folk epic, folk romance) before discussing at least four Bayramic sira compositions, all of which narrate the Turkish–Greek conflict over possession of Asia Minor in the context of postwar intra-European negotiations for neocolonial primacy. The texts, labelled ‘Sira Kemaliyya’, chronicle the conflict between Greece and Turkey in 1919–1922, highlighted by the exploits of Turkish ‘epic hero’ and nationalist leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The chapter explains how Bayram manages the duality of heroic posturing as a heavy-handed colonialist tactic versus the effective heroism of Mustafa Kemal.Less

The Career of Muṣṭafā 〉Ibrāhīm 〈Ajāj: A Giant of Egyptian Popular Literature

Pierre Cachia

in Exploring Arab Folk Literature

While modern Arabs have changed their attitude to the language in some respects, few have given serious attention to popular literature. This chapter discusses popular literature with emphasis on ... More

While modern Arabs have changed their attitude to the language in some respects, few have given serious attention to popular literature. This chapter discusses popular literature with emphasis on Mustafa Ibrahim Ajaj. Mustaf Ibrahim Ajaj was a literate who wrote in a language that the public understood. While he composed in classical Arabic and in accordance with the conventions of Arabic poetry, he used colloquial language and employed a variety of postclassical metrical forms. Most of them are in a hemistich in classical poetry which forms a complete unit, called here ‘a line’.Less