agonies, so do would-be-martyrs, but they always tread into memory as if to
remind us of our better, buried or murdered, self. In this space of agonies and
ruptures dwell poems of exile that evolve as the most stereographic. In their
anxieties, preoccupations, fears, and regrets they often borrow from a large
exilic subtext, as the poetry of Darwlsh and al-Baymtldemonstrates, while
striving for an independent voice. As the following detailed study of
al-Baymtl’s poetry shows, experience, acculturation, and native cultural
consciousness work together to provide a distinctive poetics of exile which
derives its character from a constant faring among anxieties and locations.
The poetics of exile therefore grows in this in-betweenness, as the defense of
identity against erosion and loss.
Exilic trajectories
Exile takes many forms in modern Arabic poetry. While negotiating these
forms and manifestations between the ancient attraction to travel and the
Islamic sympathy for strangers, there is also the strong sense of dislocation,
the classical stance of foreignness among lands that were once part of a central
‘Abbmsid rule. Al-Mutanabbl’s famous verses on his foreignness in Bawwmn^73
are popular enough to evoke a mixed feeling of nostalgia for the past and a
sense of alienation enforced by dislocation and repression. The complexity of
exile cannot be categorically summarized within these patterns, however.
Responses vary, and one must cite a number of examples before providing a
focused reading through one single poet.
1 Forebears and masks: The poetic of exile may take forebears for masks, or as
an intertextual meeting ground integrating the past and the present. The
ephebe throws his or her lot into the matrix of the strong poet or intellectual.
Ma.mnd Darwlsh fuses his poetics and experience into that of the established
precursor AbnFirms al->amdmnl(d. 968). He ably gives al->amdmnl’s expe-
rience contemporary overtones through terms of allegiance and betrayal,
poetry and war, sentiment and prowess, and poetry and recitation. In this
poem, Ma.mnd Darwlsh is not after identification. Rather, the ancestor’s
Byzantine odes serve as subtext through which both the self and the nation
are seen.^74 The precursor was a knight, a warrior of great feats, as well as a
poet. His wars with the Byzantines elicited outpourings of prowess, courage,
and emotion, but many readers are drawn in particular to his prison poems
written when he was captured (in 962), without immediate ransom from his
cousin the prince of Aleppo. Darwlsh dwells on this detail, and loads it with
the Palestinian predicament. Darwlsh obliquely directs feelings of agony
against those who leave the Palestinians to their fate, with no serious
commitment to their human suffering. The interchange between the cell as
an enforced habitat and the imprisoned self borrows from the precursor’s
agonies, an imprisoned prince and warrior, to appropriate the Palestinian
ENVISIONING EXILE