and endowed with greater connotations in Eliot’s exceptional poem. For
al-Baymtltoo, this yearning is soon subsumed into his poetry, echoing, but
consciously deviating from, al-Sayymb’s “Hymn” or “Canticle of the Rain.” Of
less patience than al-Sayymb, al-Baymtl follows Eliot in invading poetic
terrains, involving these in juxtapositions or connections, and experimenting
freely with poetic styles. Although it is difficult to cite one poem in al-Baymtl’s
rich corpus that equals Eliot’s The Waste Land, his poetry at large offers a variety
of symbols, mythical patterns, archetypal structures, images of cities, gates,
pavements, and bridges. Faces, ancient and modern, emerge every now and
then to populate poems of wailing, criticism, anticipation, or despair. On
many occasions, but especially in his “Lament” and “Nightmare of Night and
Day,” al-Baymtluses Eliot’s skeletal narrative to offer a stark and chaotic
image of reality. His allusions only highlight this chaos while initiating a
deep substructure of cohesion and connection. Al-Baymtl’s persona traverses
lands and times, a rover or a prophet, a rebel or a victim, garbed with the rags
of history while claiming total abandonment of these.
Contrary to Eliot’s poetics, al-Baymtlspeaks of poetry in his own vein, as a
harbinger of change. Yet, his reading of this vocation is not in line with his
Tammnzlcounterparts. This premise is worth a moment’s thought, as he has
developed a poetics that varies from al-Sayymb’s. The latter’s attraction to Eliot is
noticeable, but his early Wordsworthian intimacy with nature and common life
involves his poetry in some deviation rather than rapprochement, as his “Canticle
of the Rain” demonstrates. The Eliotic element in al-Baymtl’s poetry resists
Romanticism, exchanging it with clear-cut political and historical concerns.
Disinheritance through excessive patching
The mosaic nature of The Waste Landwith its diversity of cultural codes and
shreds provided an instance of perpetual anxiety for the Iraqi poet of exile. In
its images, as in its functional manipulation of quotes, the poem offered
al-Baymtla method that was unavailable to him when writing his “Village
Market” with its random use of proverbs and sayings. Here in The Waste Land,
quotes offer, in G. Pearson’s words, “an acute crisis of disinheritance”^29 which
al-Baymtlendorsed as fitting his sense of dislocation. Disorienting past and
present, ancient tradition and contemporary literature, these quotations are
forms and entities of aggression despite the apparently peaceful fusion in the
text. In Svarny’s words, each “quotation wrenches lines from their original con-
text and places them as foreign bodies in an alien structure” (p. 162). Al-Baymtl
deploys the method in dialectical negotiation among other figures, ancestors,
precursors, or contemporaries, beyond borders or cultures, disinheriting
original owners while making no claims to a personal poetic originality.
“The Nightmare of Night and Day” offers a very intricate negotiatory site
whereby the two voices of Lorca and Eliot are brought together. The whole
premise of rebirth and mythical regeneration is addressed anew, for the
THE EDGE OF RECOGNITION AND REJECTION