5 Dedications as poetic intersections
What is it that touched Mutanabbi^1
Other than this soil that felt his tread?
He betrayed many things,
But not his vision.
(Adnnls, “The Desert,” Pt. 19)Dedications in poetry as both gifts and sites of repression and displacement
deserve greater attention in theory and literary criticism for reasons which
this chapter proposes to discuss. Central to a large corpus of poetry since the
first decades of the twentieth century, dedications assume the significance of
presents and gifts while vying for recognition with or against each poet’s
ghosts. In a number of these poetic thresholds, poems grow into readings
of history, tradition, and politics of every kind. Their significance for the
present reading of the modernity–tradition nexus in Arabic poetry lies in
crossroads of tension, its claims to continuity or its opposite. What Alan D.
Schrift advocates for the “theme of the gift,” may well apply for dedicatory
poetry at large, as it “can be located at the center of current discussions of
deconstruction, gender, ethics, philosophy, anthropology, and economics.”^2
Nevertheless, dedications build on a tradition of gift exchange. Since the
appearance of Kitmb al-Hadmym(The Book of Gifts), allegedly written by al-
Jm.iz(d. 255 H), a number of books on presents have appeared to meet an
increasing demand. It is impossible to have compendiums on gift exchange
without an ongoing tradition of some sort. In Kitmb al-Tu.af wa-al-Hadmym
(The Book of Presents and Gifts) by AbnBakr Mu.ammad (d. 380 H) and his
brother AbncUthmmn Sacld (d. 350 H.), there are a large number of anecdotes,
poems, and references to other poets and patrons.^3 Taken together, these
appearances depict an age of affluence, which also cared to establish its codes
of subordination and allegiance. As if anticipating Marcel Mauss’s formula-
tions, prestation acts as a structuring element, for “through gifts a social and
economic hierarchy is established.”^4 As giving is a privileged position, it
usually substantiates caste, class, race, and gender.