for post-Second World War consciousness and its manifestations in poetry,
narrative, drama, and the plastic arts. The emerging recognition of the
marginalized individual that informed painting and writing in the late 1940s
went hand in hand with a total change of vision. Language was no longer the
rhetorician’s monopoly, and the emerging consciousness opened up tradition
and modernity for extensive dialogues of far-reaching consequences.
Fragmented as the first outcome in criticism tended to be, it nevertheless set
the stage for further investigations of continuity and divergence that were
carried out by poets in the first place.
An exceptional discussion by the well-known Iraqi sociologist ‘Allal-Wardl
(d. 1995) came out, however, in 1955–1956, on the association between
classical poetics as hegemonic discourse and authoritarianism. In a number
of articles, brought together later in book form, ‘Allal-Wardlargued the case
against classicism as poetic elitism, a mode that caters for the interests of
feudalism and exploiters of every kind. His articles provoked many responses
which he included in a book titled Usynrat al-Adab al-Raf‘(The Myth of Elite
or Highbrow Literature). In the introduction to the book, he says:
There is a story behind these articles. A few months ago, I began
publishing some articles in the >urriyyahdaily in which I blamed
writers for their tenacity in upholding ancient literary traditions
regardless of the enormous social and intellectual transformation
that was taking place. Many a writer was against me, criticizing and
slandering me and writing at random in a battlefield, which they
own. I am obliged to respond.^45‘Allal-Wardl’s Usynrat al-Adab al-Rafl‘is of some significance because of
the equation which the author develops between elitism, aristocracy, and
prosperous classes. He castigates the critics who think of him as someone who
is cheapening literature by lowering its standards of grandeur. Singling out
one of these critics, he argues:
Such a man and his like from among sultans’ littérateurs surprise me.
They glorify the poetry that caters for the affluent and lives on the
remains of their banquets; but nonetheless, they speak of such poets
as the lamps of knowledge and art. As for the poet who is close to
the public and its concerns, they look upon him as no more than a
useless salesman.
(Ibid. 9)In this argument, the writer associates elitism and neoclassicism with oppor-
tunism. Targeting panegyrics, ‘Allal-Wardlthinks of the strain as no more
than a parasitic endeavor which runs counter to the spirit of the age. Making
use of theories of elitism, he argues that the elite class “strives to use
POETIC TRAJECTORIES: CRITICAL INTRODUCTION