And they would not follow you
Because of their hatred of those who are above you?
(Ibid. 18)Notwithstanding the dramatic power of the play, its achievement lies in its
political overtones, use of historical narrative, and daring practice of subver-
sion. In other words, the poetic dramatization of the Sufi plight brings into
poetry issues and concerns that increase dialogic potency and power.
Al->aydarl’s experimentation is different. He knew how damaging the
dramatic could be to the lyrical flow of poetry, and in this poem, >iwmr
al-Ab‘md al-thalmthah (Dialogue in Three Dimensions), there is an effort to coalesce
the narrative, the epical, and the dramatic. The poem makes use of the three
dimensions as representative of the three modalities of the human, in relation
to the self, the outside reality, and the absolute. The poem is keen on figuring
out the possibility of convergence among the three; yet its underlying theme is
one of doubt. The paratextual reference from Dostoevsky, “Beware, beware!
Patricide is the worst crime in history,” only intensifies the dilemma and
increases the tragic dimension of life. Although al->aydarlwas a gifted lyricist,
the philosophical side persists in the poem, maintaining al-Ma‘arrl’s intellectu-
alism interspersed this time with insights from Rilke, Dostoevsky, Freud, and
Nietzsche. In the introductory note to the poem, the first voice of man appears
true to self for being divided between faith and doubt, hope and mistrust.
All of you, all,
You, empty presence,
Who every moment passes by my dim abode,
Who bear the burden of my heavy night, in mute hypocrisy?
Here I am, dying for years,
Crawling for years,
A bleeding thread between the wound and the knife.
—Sleep madman, sleep. We wish to sleep.
—Sleep, damn you, sleep...we wish to sleep, to be redeemed
by the dark.^76In these examples, modern Arabic poetry develops a way to diversify its concerns
in a poetic that cuts across modernity and tradition as sites of many tracks,
discontinuities, ruptures, thresholds, limits, and series, to use Foucault’s
applications to history.^77 The early concerns of the first awakening as well as
the early preoccupations of the late 1940s are left behind in an arduous search
for meaning and role in modern life and culture. Every site assumes a meaning
and a challenge, and every word, in many of the texts under consideration,
has a role to play. There is rarely a random application of language, and even
paratexts appear to be analogous or divergent sites of great potential, as the
next chapter argues.
POETIC DIALOGIZATION