Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition

The self stands in confrontation to that enormous Romantic resource
that established the poet’s early reputation, prior to his exile, in Malm’ikah
wa-shaymyln(Angels and Devils 1950), and Abmrlq muhashshamah(Broken
Pitchers 1954), before reaching into the relatively changing mood of Ashcmr
flal-manfm(Poems in Exile 1957).
As solitude becomes synonymous with suffocation, the wound reopens
to direct the mind into the trodden paths of recollection that surge with
images of minarets, domes, lamps, stars, butterflies, faces, and delusions.
Suffering division (in The Wound), the voice argues against memory and
the self. The wound stands for a whole generation, which al-Baymtldescribes
as schizophrenic.^87 Sad recollections impel the persona to address the
preexilic self, to put an end to these flooding recollections that poison his
present:

You, exile, talk to me, don’t put out your candles

It is time that you spread in the dawn your masts

To cauterize your wound, to stab your spear

In the dragon’s mouth, in the old wound.^88

This voice gains ascendancy whenever empowered by will. It is not so when
relapsing into the past. Painful memories come back as unhealed wounds:

Whenever you come back from exile

Your eyes focus on the old wound

A dome of dreary night

Childhood lamps,

Butterflies and star weddings

And windmills

Filling the night with weeping

Whenever you come back, you trace the wound in the same images

Cock crows and the tribe’s fires

Glittering and fading to be dusk ashes

Departure kerchiefs

Through the door of the impossible

Whenever back, you see the wound in the guide’s eye

It is the old wound

Which you always carry in the dreary European night,

It is the wound that has broken Sindbad’s heart,

It is the same ashes

Filling the very cup from which you drink.

(Ibid.)

The wanderer is paralyzed and immobilized at times by memory that
acts as a bleeding wound. In “Intizmr” (Awaiting), in his collection

ENVISIONING EXILE