Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition

The dramatized monologue that addresses the homeland becomes a venue for
self-interrogation. Impersonating the homeland and buttressing it with mark-
ers of coercion, the speaker works out the questioning process to justify his
exile. Another exile from Iraq, Burhmn al-Shmwl, lets dreams create an alterna-
tive homeland in a short piece titled “Wayan” (Homeland), with clear-sighted
awareness of the disparity between the imagined homeland and its reality.

I dreamt I drew a homeland

I let the sea break out there, and it did

I run among its lands with joy

And I walked among its parts with anxiety

I baptized it with fire...it burnt me

I sprinkled it with water, and it burnt down

I let the sun there, but it died out

I gave it thunder, it did not lighten

I slept, and my body as on fire

And I woke up...

I wish the dream did not come true.^12

Urgency is not always the best of moods for poetry, but dissent and opposition
take a number of forms to deal with the real, whether it is foreign occupation
or totalitarian and absolutist rule. As we noticed in the readings of socio-
cultural issues in Chapter 1, each case enforces its own technique. Even
within the normative, there is enough space for innovation. Whether in dia-
logue with the society, the family, the self, traditional attitude, or ancient
forebears and figures, poetry assumes significance as much as it responds to
audiences, real or implied. With the exception of love lyrics, with their musi-
cal manipulation of emotional and passionate togetherness and separation,
poetry makes a challenging progress through dissent. Its success lies in oppo-
sition, not conformity. In this respect, we may cite a number of dialogic sites
that enable the poem to retrieve narrative space although sustaining its poetic
mode in a tradition–modernity nexus. We may outline, for convenience, this
polyphony within a creativity and dissent dynamic, as follows.

Personae and voicing

There is first the strategy of letting go a poetic voice that verges on the
schizophrenic, and which appears independently among other voices. The
early reference to Xalmh cAbd al-Xabnr’s “Mudhakkirmt al-Malik cAjlb...”
(Memoirs of King cAjlb.. .) draws attention to one kind of poetic dialogiza-
tion whereby the poet distances his or her voice through multivoicing that
also allows a persona or a mask to intervene. Other examples take on con-
temporary poetic voices, singers, and prisoners of conscience, along with

POETIC DIALOGIZATION