A Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry

THE RECOIL FROM ROMANTICISM 240

the new age' (n, 5 81). Much of the poetry is very obscure, but in a poem such

as 'This is My Name' (1969) we can detect what is in effect a lament for Arab

defeat:^54

I have said this broken jar

Is a defeated nation... (n,631)

Elsewhere in the poem he says, "We rave, I rave so that I may die well', and
at one point, in anguish:

I try to spell and draw a star.

Fleeing from my country in my country,

I try to spell and draw a star.

In the wake of its defeated days.

O ashes of the word.

Is there a child in store for my history in your night?

ONLY MADNESS REMAINS (11,642)

It seems that here the poet evinces a desperate and extreme reaction to the
Arab tragedy. For to bring about a rebirth everything has to be changed, in-
cluding the basic rules of logic and sanity. Hence the incomprehensible and
illogical language of Adunis's poetry. It is a sad irony that a poet who is
motivated by an overwhelming desire to change Arab reality and recreate
Arab society should, by the very means he adopts towards that end, namely
to recreate the Arabic language, simply end in such solipsism.
One of Adunis's most recent works to date is entitled >1 Tomb for New York
(1971). In it we read:

New York, a woman, the statue of a woman holding in one hand a rag

called liberty by paper we call history and with the other hand strangling

a child called the Earth (n,647).

Here in prose poetry revealing obvious biblical influences in rhythm and
structure of sentence, the poet gives expression to his political preoccupations,
recording, among other things his response to the horrors of New York and of
American civilization, with its dehumanizing features, especially the brutal-
ities of American foreign policy in Vietnam and the Middle Bast. Towards
the end of the work the poet asserts his absolute freedom from all rules:

Thus I end all rules and for each moment I make up its rule. Thus I ap-

proach, but do not go, and when I go I do not return (n,671).

It may be wondered whether this last stage of Adunis's development is not in
fact a dead end, which if universally followed could spell the end of all Arabic
poetry. In any case, many of his young admirers have produced modish works
which are no less ephemeral than the psychedelic popcrete/concrete verse of