Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition

the possibility of rebirth, usually associated with cultural resurrection. As the
present thwarts all these beliefs and expectations the poet reverts to an
opposite outlook, ironically linked in al-Baymtl’s early poetry with T. S. Eliot,
especially “The Waste Land” and “The Hollow Men.” In a poem dedicated to
Eliot, included in his collection Kalimmt lmTa mnt(Undying Words), al-Baymtl
sounds optimistic in his early poems, so he calls on Eliot to come and see a
different life and experience where sacrifice is the norm, and where there are
no “hollow men”:

There are men

Waiting

Burning

To lighten earthly cities

To sing for freedom.^29

In general, however, the poet who criticizes Eliot’s outlook has also made
more use of his poetry than, perhaps, al-Sayymb. What distinguishes al-
Baymtl’s poetry, however, is his intricate juxtaposition of opposing images,
sayings, and fragments that, as hypograms, pass through some conversion,
according to Riffaterre’s formulations.^30 According to this conversion, these
intertextual markers evolve as a generative power that endows poetic texts
with their own life (Ibid.). Thus, in “>ubb ta.ta al-mayar” (“Love under the
Rain”), we come across images from Eliot:

London streets were deeply sighing,

The dawn

Upon wet pavements in her eyes

Disguised itself within tree leaves.

The conversion to an optimistic outlook and regenerative poetic occurs at
a crucial intersection, when the reader has been led into thinking of Eliot’s
typist in “The Waste Land” and the mechanical night greetings of Londoners:

“I do not know,” said he and cried;

“See you tomorrow,” she replied.

He embraced her and kissed her eyes

Under the falling rain.

There is rain in al-Baymtl’s poem, and the kiss in his text assumes a transfig-
urative power that brings about life and tenderness:

Beneath his kisses, like night frost,

She was melting with tenderness.^31

DEDICATIONS AS POETIC INTERSECTIONS