NOTES24 Anynn Sa‘mdah was the leader of the SSNP, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and
was a major influence on many intellectuals in Syria and Lebanon. His execution
in 1949 made him more of a mythical hero who sacrificed himself for future
regeneration. He was an ardent believer in a Great Syria, comprising the Levant
and Iraq. In one of the eight principles of his Party’s ideology, there is a celebra-
tion of the “The Syrians’ genius and mental superiority over their neighbors and
others” as they “civilized Greece and laid down the basis of the Mediterranean
civilization.” See Mabmdi’ al-.izb, quoted in Atif Faddul, The Poetics of T. S. Eliot
and Adunis(Beirut: Al-Hamra Publishers, 1992), p. 115.
25 Al-A‘mml al-shi‘riyyah al-kmmiiah (The Complete Poetic Works), (Beirut: Dmr
Al-cAwdah, 197), p. 386.
26 Adonis, “Poetry and Apoetical Culture,” trans., Esther Allen from the French,
in The Pages of Day and Night, trans. Samuel Hazo (Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press, 1994), p. 105.
27 Quoted in Atif Faddul, The Poetics, p. 97.
28 Mu.ammad Bennls, Nahr bayna janmzatayn(A River Between Two Funerals)
(Casablanca: Dmr Tnbqml, 2002).
29 Mu.ammad Bennls, Nabldh(Wine) (London: Riad El-Rayyes, 2003).
30 Ibid., p. 19; See Philip Kennedy on AbnNuwms, in The Wine Song in Classical
Arabic Poetry: AbnNuwms and the Literary Tradition(Oxford: Clarendon Press;
New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
31 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: Archaeology of the Human Sciences
(New York: Random House-Vintage Books, 1970), p. 50.
32 Mu.ammad Bennls, Nabldh, pp. 33–34.
33 Eugene Vance, “Roland and the Poetics of Memory,” in Textual Strategies, ed. Josu 2
V. Harari (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 374–403, at p. 374.
34 See Badawi, “Commitment” p. 33.
35 See Adnnls’ Zaman al-shi‘r(Poetry Time/Time in Poetry) (Beirut: Dmr
al-‘Awdah, 2nd print, 1978), p. 66.
36 Edward said, The World, the Text, and the Critic, p. 22.
37 Adnnls, Dlwmn al-shi‘r al-‘Arabl(Lebanon, Sidon: Al-Maktabah al-‘Axriyyah,
1964), my translation, see “Dedications,” for full reference, p. 29.
38 Using Robert Duncan, Joseph M. Conte comes up with this comparative reading
of the periodic and the aperiodic forms, the first indicating correspondence and
symmetry, while the second indicates discord, diversity, and multiple significa-
tions. See Unending Design: The Forms of Postmodern Poetry(Ithaca, NY and
London: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 55.
39 Robert Duncan’s terms, ibid., pp. 54–55. It is of interest that Duncan relates his
concept of the long and the serial poem to Dante, whom Miguel Asin Palacios
discusses in view of the Arab poet’s poetics and epistolary art. See Islam and the
Divine Comedy(London, 1926; reprint, New Delhi: Goodword Books, 2001).
40 Cited in my “Dedications,” p. 28.
41 Al-Baymtl, Dlwmn, 4th printing, 2 vols (Beirut: Dmr Al-cAwdah, 1990), 1:
710–18.
42 The poet relates what happened to al-Mutanabblat the court of Sayf al-Dawlah,
when either the emir threw an inkstand at him, cutting his forehead, or it was
the emir’s tutor Ibn khmlawayhi, who hit him on the face with a key. That was
the reason, it is said, that drove him to leave the court toward Egypt. For the
second version, see Ibn Khallikmn (d. 1282), Kitmb wafaymt al-a‘ymn(Book on the
Deaths of Prominent People) (Beirut: Dmr Xmdir, n.d.), vol. 1, p. 122.