Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition

poets from tradition. They also allow a persona to intertextualize, discuss,
argue, and objectify. They broaden thereby the scope of poetry while recog-
nizing the limitations imposed by material reality on poetry, poets, and cul-
ture at large. “My era tells me bluntly: / you do not belong,” writes Adnnls
in “Xa.rm’, II” (“The Desert: The Diary of Beirut under Siege II”).^13 The Iraqi
Sa‘dlYnsuf’s (b. 1934) use of the al-Akh,ar Ibn Ynsuf is an early example of
a poetic persona. Yet, masking here involves self-questioning, too, in an effort
to assess a moment of poetic production. The poet tells us that “L’ Akhdar is
a very popular name in Algeria,” and “L’ Akhdar Ben Youssef is my mask. Ben
Youssef is my double.”^14 Referring to his exile in Algeria for seven years in
the 1960s and then in the 1970s, he says,

with this name I am putting myself into the place, making some

roots—not as a spectator but as a real person. And then I write from an

ordinary and real angle as well as from the vantage point of an artist.^15

His poem “L’ Akhdar Ben Youssef Wrote His Last Poem” (1976) unfolds to
revitalize his poetics, investigate the status of the poet, and map out the
whole cultural scene with its ruptures, troubles, anxieties, and concerns. The
dialogic technique shows first in the speaker’s divided voice between an
addresser and an addressee. Soon after a moment of bewilderment and chaos,
there comes a moment of creation, which summons poets and writers, Arabs,
French, and others, culminating in an intertextualizing experience whereby
the poem owes its being to a larger subtext.

Waves gush between his hands.

He grabs a stone (suddenly), and turns it into a shell.

He remains listening;

a wind gust (constant), blows, blows, constantly.

He enters the elements.

The sea holdings turn into a giant wave.

The earth holdings become a giant wave.

And he enters the elements:

a clenched fist

a stone

and a face with embossed features.

Here he’s in his familiar streets...

his steps quickened,

an oyster shell in his hand.^16

The stone, the shell, the wave, and the wind are among many elements and
significations that bring the speaker to the real, to a personal life that he rec-
ognizes in preparation for a poetic creation. This moment is not an easy one,
as it takes the speaker back to similar moments when the poet passed through

POETIC DIALOGIZATION