context. “Al-Macarrlsubjects the beliefs and ideas of his age to a process of
questioning in which thought wears the guise of poetry and poetry has the
power of thought,” says Adnnls.^47 As life, death, and time are addressed anew,
free from the connotations of the theological and the moral, argumentation
serves as a viable method to unsettle verities (Ibid. 65). The Adnnlsian
engagement is keen, however, on underscoring al-Macarrl’s desire to make
poetry a means “to discover the truth and to know the self and the world”
(Ibid. 66).
Yet Adnnls’ preoccupation with innovation as a modernist constant in the
classical tradition draws him closer to al-Macarrl’s mannerism. Working
within tradition in order to deviate from its verities and to challenge its
“established truths,” al-Macarrl’s correlative is literary in the first place. To
Adnnls, al-Macarrlnavigates within words and meanings, as his “text is an
encounter between words we possess and meanings we are searching for.” The
very effort, with its questioning note, casts doubt on both “language and
meaning” (Ibid.). It is not difficult to trace Adnnls’ deconstructivist stance as
he hides behind his precursor. Looking upon al-Macarrlas dissolver of worn-
out habits of thought and styles, Adnnls recaptures the moment that draws
the forebear to his orbit. The ancestor resisted traditionalism and fought back
lineage, and the ephebe finds this empowering as far as his poetics presently
functions. While targeting hegemonic poetics, he nevertheless generalizes to
advance his critique. “In Arab society, poetry is the first criterion by which a
poet’s identity is measured; we can thus understand the challenge faced by a
poetry that establishes another concept of identity—one that is pluralist,
open, agnostic and secular.”^48
This is the culmination of Adnnls’ endeavor to discern dynamics of change
within the seemingly imitative and the mimetic. Writing in this vein since
1971 (the publication date of Introduction to Arab Poetics), Adnnls leaves
behind the Tammnzlfaith of the early 1950s. Under the impact of the French
surrealists and his own discovery of Sufism, especially in the metaphorical
writing of Mu.ammad al-Niffarl(d. 965) who liberates thought and language
“from functionalism and rationalism,” Adnnls the poet is more of a surrealist
than a Tammnzl.^49 His poetic re-creations of forebears after his preoccupation
with surrealism tend to veer away from any historical representation. In his
Al-Masra.wa- al-marmym, 1965–1967 (Stage and Mirrors) mirrors have more
of Pound’s vortex, but they are not meant to reflect. They have their refrac-
tions and disorientations. “Mir’mt Ablal-cAlm’ ” (The Mirror of Abnal-cAlm’
al-Macarrl) in the same volume, for instance, is more concerned with the
beholder, the addresser, whose recollections act on the historical substance of
al-Macarrl’s town, dwelling, and grave, in order to resurrect the poet’s voice,
his language, and, for that matter, his immortal presence in poetry beyond
physical annihilation. Al-Macarrl’s voice permeates time, which, paradoxi-
cally, takes a bodily form, whereas speech and language assume a body, too.
The exchange of the abstract and the concrete between the “body of days” and
POETIC STRATEGIES