three concepts, he argues, “are present in my poetry, for I realized since my
poetic beginnings the human estrangement and alienation in this universe,
then I discovered the alienating power of poverty, then I had to pass through
this three-dimensional experience for many years of banishment and with a
lot of suffering” (Ibid.). Fighting back recollections of old days and places, as
in his poem “al-Jur.” (The Wound) in his collection Al-Nmr wa al-kalimmt
(Fire and Words, 1964),^84 al-Baymtlhas worked out an ever-growing poetics of
exile that resists closure or ultimate findings and truths. The mask of the poet
Abnal-cAlm’ al-Macarrl(d. 1057 CE) leads the poetic voice into the precursor’s
dilemma, as is the case in a number of mask poems. Nevertheless, al-Baymtl
also delves into mythological space that allows his goddess cM’ ishah (Ishtar or
Astarte) to offer regeneration and rebirth that redeem the exiled poet from per-
manent suffering. In his poems her departure signals poetic drought and
throws the poet into disarray, usually imaged in scenes of loneliness and
imprisonment with walls and fences. In his Tajribatlal-shi‘riyyah(My Poetic
Experience), he stipulates that she is the “soul of renewal and newness through
death, for the sake of revolution and love” (Dlwmn, 2: 416). If she symbolizes
regeneration and love in al-Baymtl’s poetry and identifies with a promise to go
beyond limits and endow exile with meaning, she stands for dormancy in the
poetry of his contemporary Adnnls. In the latter’s Awrmq flal-rl.(Leaves in the
Wind), the poem “Al-Ba‘th wa al-rammd” (Resurrection and Ashes 1957) has
four canticles. In one of them, “Rammd cM’ishah” (cM’ishah’s Ashes), for exam-
ple, she stands for immutability, symbolizing a society and a culture that invite
change. This transformation of mythical structures sets the poets apart.^85
Nevertheless, al-Baymtl’s poems of exile suggest that the mythological
space, its freedom and exuberance, cannot sustain the poetic voice for long. It
is only through the impersonation of similar poets, like Nazim Hikmet,
Rafael Alberti and, in a way, Federico García Lorca, that al-Baymtlrecreates a
new homeland, a poetic space of forebears and ancestors who hold many
things in common and who offer him lineage and filiation. It should not be
surprising then that the poem grows into a homeland where the poet survives
calamity and death. It is my argument that al-Baymtl’s poetics of exile
emanates from a rupture, a wound, that signifies a memory of nostalgic
yearning. His sustained poetic effort reveals the progression and maturation
of his poetics of exile, however. It is through the endeavor to move beyond the
ideals of modernity, including its Eliotic appropriation of myth, that al-Baymtl
questions every tenet of truth or reason, and every single staple of unitary
discourse, identifying with his ancient precursor Abnal-cAlm’ al-Macarrl,
while manipulating his texts of alienation and cynicism into an exilic limi-
nality that resists closure. The mythical pattern of his Tammnzlcounterparts
is absorbed into a magical world, whereby gods and goddesses fuse into other
women who, in turn, lose identity to become symbols of the creative impulse.
Al-Baymtl’s voices speak freely in an exilic space made by texts of exile that
proclaim nothing outside their textual existence.
ENVISIONING EXILE