among the Arabs, as a “history-conscious” one. “... there was the new anguish
of a vast nation in travail” (Ibid). He argued in bitterness:
The Arabs were suddenly on their own: independent in most cases,
but beset by a world that seemed to make a travesty of their inde-
pendence, with the added trauma of having most of Palestine hacked
up into an illogical Zionist state.
(Ibid. 193)In poetic terms that had already become the leitmotif of the Tammnzl
movement, he collapsed the political and the mythological, the ontological
and the theological. “A supreme agony, a crucifixion. The poet’s response was
severe and radical” (Ibid.).
Jabrm’s identification of the new sensibility is worth noticing, as it offers
further justifications for his early pronouncement for engagement with
modernity toward change. That phase in Arab life was “... history-conscious,
humanity-conscious and above all, freedom-conscious” (Ibid.). The implications
for modern poetry are deep and many, for the poet has to deploy his conscious-
ness against evil.
In defense of his stance, the poet would now question and expostulate.
His poetry, once reveling in oratory, became more and more of a
soliloquy, a dramatic monologue, which soon gave its speaker the
look and manner of a rather incomprehensible ‘hero,’ an outsider at
variance with his society.
(Ibid.)We can tell that Jabrmtried to account for the impulse of the modern against
a rhetorical tradition, whereas Adnnls took his grounding in heritage as a
starting point to establish a comprehensive poetic.
Nevertheless, Adnnls raised more questions and objections, and proved to
be more controversial. The English poet Stephen Spender, as a discussant and
participant at that conference, had some reservations against what he deemed
as Adnnls’ radical shift beyond Arabic heritage.^104 In other words, Adnnls’
theorizations at Rome in 1961 raised a variety of questions and provoked
a number of positions of great bearing on issues of modernity and tradition.
Adnnls: the challenge of tradition
Adnnls’ concern with modernity cuts across chronology, for modernity is
a constant, an ongoing process that resists closure and fixity. It is no wonder
that his Rome Conference paper addresses tradition as the context within
which modernity works its way in poetic strategies. This view still sustains
his writings, but was not easily condoned by classical critics in the 1960s.
THE TRADITION/MODERNITY NEXUS