Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition

to the Orient in his poetry and articles, invigorated a search for sources of
poetry and poetics beyond neoclassical limits. Navigating between Greek and
Middle Eastern mythology, al-Sayymb wrote to Ynsuf al-Khml (d. 1987), the
editor-in-chief of Shi‘r:

Have you read what T. S. Eliot said of the individual talent and

tradition and their relation to poetry? There must remain an inter-

section holding the ancient and the modern. Some of the features of

the old should remain in the thing which we call new. Our poetry

should not be a mimic of the West in Arab or semi-Arab attire. Let

us make use of the best in our poetic tradition while making use of

the achievements of Western writers, especially the Anglo-Saxon, in

the realm of poetry.^38

His tradition had not yet coped with the Sumerian heritage despite its
great relevance to his Southern background. He had the Babylonian in mind,
especially the myths of Tammns and Ishtmr, and the Middle Eastern lore at
large. The Sumerian song and ritual are new comers, and many, like the poet
Ma.mnd Darwlsh, may find in this lore a subtext to recreate a moment that
may be in sharp contrast with the flowing Sumerian wine and the rites of
wedding there. In “>allb Inmnnm” (“Inanna’s Milk” 1999), the speaker says:

Yours are the twins of prose and poetry,

as you fly from epoch to epoch,

safe and whole upon a cosmic howdahof stars your

victims, your kind guards,

carry your seven skies caravan by caravan.

Those who tend your horses, approach the water

between your hands and the twin rivers:

The first among goddesses is the one most filled with us.

A loving Creator contemplates His works.

He is enchanted with them, and longs for them:

ShallI do again, whatI did before.

The sky’s ink burns the scribes of your lightning.

Their descendents send swallows down upon

the Sumerian woman’s procession, whether ascending or descending.^39

In Sumerian mythology, Inanna, the daughter of the Moon couple Nanna and
Ningal, has the power of other deities and is therefore “the virtual Queen of
the Universe,”^40 whose being has gathered “the opposing pairs of creation”
(Ibid. 18). Enheduanna was the Sumerian High Priestess to the Moon God
Nanna at his temple (Ur, 2300 BCE) and was the one who, in her poetry, elevated
Inanna, child of the Moon God above all other deities, as the supreme fusion
of the divine and the real. With this combination of opposites, she culminates

POETIC DIALOGIZATION