builds on the dethroned emir’s poetry while “dissolving the bond between the
poetic and the national (the religious) in respect to al-Mu‘tamid Ibn ‘Abbmd,”
developing “a multi-voiced poem that belongs to music as it belongs to the
modern poem, ridding myself of the conventional tendency to attain the
poetic” (Ibid. 14).
More significantly, Mu.ammad Bennls tries his hand at a poetic that
makes use of the Qur’mnic verse. He recollects, “I began to ask myself irrita-
bly why poetic modernity (the contemporary poem) did not take its lead from
the Qur’mnic structure instead of choosing that of the European poem.” The
poems that he wrote in this vein are “Bmb al-Marmthl” (The Elegies Chapter)
and “Al-laylah al-wm.idah ba‘da al-alfayn” (The First Night after Two
Thousand), which were published in 1970 (Ibid. 17). In these poems, the poet
“eludes the demarcation between poetry and prose” and devotes attention to
“the appeal of place” (Ibid.).
In sum, Mu.ammad Bennls has been in the line of the emerging
consciousness since the 1960s with its transgeneric markers, spatial tropes,
and dynamic engagement with both tradition and modernity. Seen in context
and in relation to achievements in theatre, fiction, narrative writing, archae-
ological excavations, and painting, along with the expansion of education in
the fields of technology and science, this consciousness manifests a set of rela-
tions like the ones constituting the Foucauldian episteme.^69 With extensive
grounding in Arabic and a good grasp of the poetics of modernity, this
emerging totality of relations and discursive practices differs from the earlier
Nah,ah or awakening of the early twentieth century. It is more in dialogue
with the late classical discussions than with the neoclassicism of the late nine-
teenth century. It is more cognizant of the modernist interplay of genres that
has been displacing the centrality of classical Arabic poetics of the qaxldah.
The modernist impulse and its aftermath
Literature in its broad cultural domains was so dynamically effective that
many ideological formations in the interwar period came from literary figures.
It is known, for instance, that the Egyptian leader Jamml ‘Abd al-Nmxir
(d. 1970) modeled himself partly on Tawflq al->aklm’s (d. 1987) protagonist
in ‘Awdat al-rn.(The Return of the Soul, 1933).^70 On the other hand, other
literati developed their ideological visions in view of the dangers of doctrinal
schisms and the break-up into ethnic and sectarian entities. The Syrian
Christian Michel ‘Aflaq (d. 1989), who established the Ba‘th Party in 1947,
sought to introduce a view of nationalism as an impassioned message like that
of Islam. That message, he argued,^71 gave the Arabs a sense of identity and
purpose beyond tribal solidarity or division. Building on many writings,
including those of ‘Abd al-Ra.mmn al-Kawmkibl(d. 1903) in Egypt, the
Lebanese Najlb ‘Aznrl(d. 1916), and also Western thought, advocates of
nationalism were no less influential than liberal or socialist intellectuals,
POETIC TRAJECTORIES: CRITICAL INTRODUCTION