the “Same and the Other.”^24 In “An Arab Cure for Love,” Qabbmnlsays about
his love.
It was a sword dormant within my flesh,
An invading army,
The first stage on the road to madness.
(On Entering the Sea, 104)What is of significance to this reading of a poetic terrain between tradition
and modernity is the woman poet’s effort to go beyond traditional elegies,
usually associated in classical male scriptoria with women poets. Her voice in
this paradoxical site of elegy and negation is no less drawn to the register of
sexual poetics which is usually absent from traditional elegies.
Claiming and naming the forebearThe relation of the modern poet to his forebears is one of ambivalence on
many levels. While claiming lineage and intimacy, the modern poet under-
goes great anxieties that relate to contemporary issues of political and reli-
gious nature. He needs the forebear as a mask, but he has also to distance
his/her voice to elude close comparison. This strategy is no less effective than
the first two. The forebear is displaced through a deliberate distortion of
names, accentuated anew, to carry on an ironic tone that has its blend of joy
and frustration. A pertinent example is Adnnls’ mask of the 1960s, Mihymr
the Damascene. Adopting Mihymr al-Daylaml’s (d. 428/1037) first name for
a mask, the poet identifies in part with Mihymr who changed names at a cer-
tain time in his life. At the hands of the renowned poet and descendant of the
Prophet, al-Sharlf al-Ra,l, Mihymr, otherwise Marzawayh, became a convert
to Islam in 394 H/1004 CE. Through his master, he was not only acquainted
with Shl‘ism, but also with chancery skills. Although copying his master and
emulating his skills, Mihymr excelled in poetry and wrote one of the best ele-
gies lamenting the death of al-Sharlf al-Ra,l. Adnnls’ deliberate partial use
speaks for his ambivalence in respect to both his ‘Alawite lineage and his
broad and unlimited vision and poetics. In AghmnlMihymr al-Dimashql
(The Songs of Mihymr the Damascene 1960–1961), in a poem titled “Qinm‘
al-’ughniymt” (The Mask of the Songs), the poet says: “He is the only faithful
seed? / The only one who settles in the trough of life.”^25
Especially in the poetry of the Bahraini Qmsim >addmd (1948), this
deliberate “disidentification,” distancing and recall of ancient poets through
slight misnaming or collapsing has a resonance of its own. An early poem in
this direction is “Ishrmqmt Yarafah Ibn al-Wardah,” [Epiphanies/Illuminations
of Yarafah Ibn al-Wardah]which recalls the pre-Islamic poet Yarafah Ibn
al-‘Abd while deliberately changing the rest of the name into “wardah,” that is,
POETIC DIALOGIZATION