longing of the whole Tammnzltradition. >mwl’s “Lazarus” sets the tone for
a dismaying image of the present and the future. True to his vision, >mwl
committed suicide in 1982.
mwl’s act as much as his later writing left his contemporaries in disarray.
While some, like Buland al->aydarl,^64 were there to dedicate poems in
memoriam using >mwl’s poems as subtexts, al-Baymtlwas more concerned
with questioning the very vocation of poetry. In line with a non-complacent
view of modern poetry, al-Baymtlargues for the poem not the person. Hence,
the elegized Arab poets from among his contemporaries are driven to the
background, while the poem is singled out as the unhealed wound, the undying
seed, as he says in “The Sufferings of al->allmj.”^65
Al-Baymtl’s “Elegy to Khalll Hmwl” has drawn significant attention.^66
Pedro Martínez Montávez wrote on this text, “which may seem cold on the
surface, but I see that it evolves from an inner feeling, bare, rigorous and over-
whelming, in line with the occasion that inspired it.”^67 Martínez Montávez is
not surprised to find the poem in fragments, for it uses three times, past,
present, and future that “register the story of the elegized poet’s existence.”
Nevertheless, it is in the third part that “there is a clear, sincere, and deep
praise for the dead poet,” he concludes.^68
Martínez Montávez comes across a number of points specifically highlighted
in al-Baymtl’s elegy to Khalll >mwl, such as the speaker’s sense of horror, his
faith that the “kingdom of death is also the kingdom of hope” (Ibid. 148–49)
and his blend of the individual and the universal (Ibid.). Nevertheless, the
elegy derives its actual strength from its referentiality. Indeed, every part of
the elegy echoes and foregrounds the typical preoccupations of al-Baymtl
the poet. The first part works with the past, but it is actually meant for the
living. The poet delves into fertility cults and vegetation myths where,
textually figurations assume their generative power to subvert and under-
mine state machinery and sites of coercion. The “cM’ishah” or “Lmrm” and
“Khuzmmah” of this part are the poet’s significations for poetry, exiled and
driven to death, only to pass through some transfiguration, and evolve into
“verses,” “blood,” and “vows of the poor”:
A lyric in the poetry of AbnTammam
She became Beirut and Jaffa
An Arab wound in the cities of creativity
Vowed for love
Possessed by fire
She became Ishtar.^69The poem derives its potential from gathering al-Baymtl’s recurrent symbols,
his images and patterns of thought, to draw attention to the transcending
power of poetry at the very moment when its revolutionary potential is high-
lighted. The first part blends rituals, scriptures, lore, portents, and classical
DEDICATIONS AS POETIC INTERSECTIONS