philosophy, and Sufism interact with the poetic in a discursive site, which he
intentionally draws in textual terms as a matn(text) and .awmshl(margins) in
Al-Kitmb: Ams al-makmn al-mn: Makhynyah tunsab lil-Mutanabbl(The Book
Yesterday, the Place Now: A Manuscript Attributed to al-Mutanabbl). They
reflect on each other, and both purport to interrogate each other in a poly-
phonic moment, which he specifies as “something unprecedented in poetics,”
and which takes al-Mutanabbl’s history and career in context.^52 It leans, as
one suspects, on Ymhm>usayn’s many arguments in this respect, especially in
his Maca al-Mutanabbl(In the Company of al-Mutanabbl),^53 but it takes issue
with others. In this book on al-Mutanabbl, and in his company through an
intimate engagement with his personal life and textual presence, Ymhm
usayn investigates various accounts of a poetic career and a controversial
personal record. His book has its insights into a cultural and political life, but
its criticism of the present is there, too.^54 The critic is not a neutral figure,
and his voice interacts with the poet’s or veers away from it. He has his likes
and dislikes, but it deliberately challenges critical insights that build on non-
poetic bases. Both the navigational movement among a number of positions
and accounts, and the critical insight behind the whole survey provide an
indirect explanation of al-Mutanabbl’s revolt (Ibid. 52–55). Ymhm>usayn’s
overall critique is one of assessment and sifting that serves as the culmination
of preceding efforts. It is also a manifestation of a new critical spirit that ques-
tions historical narratives and undermines traditional analysis, while arguing
for “the national character and specific identity of the Arabs.”^55 Drawn to
texts in context, it offers also an oblique criticism of Arabic literary tradition.
Adnnls could have read Ymhm>usayn’s and other critiques, since his Kitmbis
a textual engagement of matnand hawmshlthat underscores comparison and
relieves history of its monologic directives. The whole endeavor—as a com-
bination of the poetic and the prosaic, the body and the margin—fits into his
effort to account for the ups and downs in the history of the Arabs since the
Umayyads, a position which he has already developed in his discussion of the
literary and the historical in Al-Thmbit wa al-muta.awwil(The Mutable and
the Immutable).^56 Al-Mutanabblis a locus for “a panoramic expanse as vast
as history,” he says in the interview for Banipal. He adds that “Arab history
is staged in this book as though it were an all-encompassing film, in every
scene of which, on every page, showing how multi-dimensional ages criss-cross
each other, how the subjective, and the old struggles with the new.”^57
Nevertheless, Adnnls’ al-Mutanabblis present to test selfhood amid a historical
complexity. Adnnls’ effort is larger than any other poetic reconstructs given
by fellow poets. It reminds one of Pound’s definition of tradition as a “return
to origins,” a return that “invigorates because it is a return to nature and
reason.”^58 Nevertheless, this is not a servile return, for Adnnls takes issue
with a tradition at large, through its written heritage, as it is handed over
from one generation to another. Poetry becomes a register again, but with a
number of accentuations and voicings that also imply, to use Said’s reading of
POETIC STRATEGIES