allows no doubts or hesitations to disturb the addressee, and the message is
therefore one of consolation and comfort despite the speaker’s affliction. Faith
summons the rhetorical to its side, whereas doubt disperses this and calls on
other techniques to compensate. Faith may work against the dialogic princi-
ple, as it imposes its indisputable markers onto the message, whereas the
wounded voice comes up with apologies, justifications and negations to make
up a case. The wounded voice offers a dialogic principle like a dramatic
monologue, while the voice of faith is self-sufficient. Hikmet speaks with
certainty and leaves no place for doubts.
DemystificationA fifth strategy relates to a focused undermining of closure and mythical
imposition. This argument involves debating mythical structures, as Badr
Shmkir al-Sayymb does in “Medlnat al-Sindbmd” (City of Sinbad 1960) which,
although mentions Babylon in the last part, refers to his own native city
Basrah, as the abode of Sinbad the sailor.^34 Written in 1960, it culminated his
disappointments with the political situation in Iraq and the onslaught on
nationalists.^35 Mythical patterns of the early Tammnzlmovement no longer
hold, and the long poem, with its final part, looks upon scenes, sites, and
marks as an inventory of apocalypse, or a convergence of chaos. The speaker
uses the title ironically, for instead of an abode of glory and good life, “Basrah
is in ruins” (Ibid. 102). It gives the lie to all myths and stories of resurrection,
regeneration, and fertility. In the final part the speaker relies on a Babylonian
subtext to highlight the opposite.
Its hanging gardens are sown
With heads cut off by sharp axes,
And the crows peck at their eyes,
While suns set in the west
Behind their hair dyed in branches.
And is this my city? Are these the ruins
On which was inscribed: “Long live life!”
With the blood of its slain?
Is there no god in that place, no water or fields?
(Ibid. 103)The poet’s dismay at a godless universe is expressed in symbols and images of
deceit, betrayal, brutality, and torture that work together to depict a city of
loss and death where the mythical structure of regeneration loses meaning.
Is this my city? Daggers of the Tatars
Sheathed above its gate, and the desert pants
With thirst around its streets, unvisited by the moon?POETIC DIALOGIZATION