Democratic Palestine : 33 (ص 29)
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- Democratic Palestine : 33 (ص 29)
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objective condition for an explicit or implicit alliance between
the writer who refuses injustice and the reader who lives under
this injustice. The sense of repression is the factor that unites
the reader and the writer, the intellectual and the ordinary man
who dreams of bread and human dignity.
THE DECLINE OF POETRY
Between theory and the novel there remains a narrow space
for poetry. In fact, there is a big place for the poets, while the
space of the poetic text diminishes. The poem is not equal to
the poet in the present Arab cultural arena. A group of poets
have managed to accentuate their positions and importance,
thanks to the cultural and informational roles they play,
thanks to their own cultural activity. Yet, for objective reasons
beyond their control, they have failed to create the suitable
conditions for reading their poetry in a broad and real sense,
because the position of poetry, its ups and downs, is always
bound by the social conditions.
Adonis (Syrian - born poet residing in Lebanon) has main-
tained his cultural significance and effectiveness due to his
leading role in renovating Arab poetry, his journalistic activity
and theoretical contributions to discussions about tradition,
innovation, modernism and poetic language, in addition to his
political essays and his struggle for freedom of thought and
creativity. Similar is the status of the Palestinian Mahmoud
Darwish who combines the poet, political leader and journalist
in his personality; his name has been associated with the
Palestinian cause to the point of becoming almost a symbol for
it. Almost the same can be said about several other poets, such
as Saadi Yousef of Iraq, Nizar Qabbani of Syria, Abdul Muti
Hijazi of Egypt, etc. They are practicing journalism, teaching
and political writing. Thus, poetry is only one of many aspects
of the poet, though it is what brought the others into being.
The development of the social life in the Arab world, which
is characterized by despotism, hunger and defeat, leaves little
room for poetry if it does not directly deal with the daily pro-
blems of the individual. The reader is not ready to bother
about anything except an explicitly political text which has
nothing to do with poetry. We live in circumstances of il-
literacy or semi-literacy, lack of education in poetry in par-
ticular and literature in general.
While the general national and social upsurge in the fifties
and sixties led to the appearance of great poets (Al Sayyab,
Hawi, Adonis, Qabbani, Darwish, Yousef, Hijazi, etc.) and
provided conditions for the rise of poetry readers, the recent
social changes have created a different cultural, political and
psychological climate. The circumstances of oppression do not
allow any direct contact between the poet and his audience.
The book or the magazine, when released by the censor, re-
main the sole place of meeting. Besides, the poet is increasingly
becoming an introvert, talking about the alienation of the soul
and the triviality of existence, often plunging into the abyss of
abstract stylistics, beyond the reader who doesn’t find any
trace of his problems in it. In other words, while repression has
eliminated the possibility of direct contact between the poet
and his audience, poetic formalism has eliminated the
possibility of indirect contact. In addition, the conditions of
hunger and deprivation oblige repressed people to look for
something other than poetry.
Democratic Palestine, June 89
The crisis of Arab poetry is, in fact, part of the overall crisis
engulfing Arab society. The development of poetry requires
freedom, the right to dream, a higher cultural level, open win-
dows to the culture of humanity, liberated mentality, belief in
man as a supreme value, etc. The dominant conditions in the
Arab world reject and deny all such things; they create
desperate, introverted people with an extremely narrow con-
sciousness and culture. Thus, the general sociocultural situa-
tion besieges both poetry and the poetry reader. Such condi-
tions present still another problem connected with the
development of modern Arab poetry. Modern Arab poetry
emerged during a period of political-cultural ascent, but the
development of social life has denied it the opportunity of
establishing its positions. It has been there without achieving
ultimate victory. Modern Arab poetry has been defending new
concepts in obvious contradiction, at fierce war, with all the
prevalent reactionary culture. The transformations of the last
twenty years have come to besiege the beginnings which have
not established their victory. Poetic modernity, therefore, has
looked as if it were an elitist appeal incapable of com-
municating its concepts to the ordinary reader. The reactionary
press, together with the decline of the critical poetry move-
ment, has contributed to this state of affairs and almost made a
caricature of modernist poetical creativity. This means that
defense of poetical modernity inevitably involves confronta-
tion with the dominant cultural and political values in cir-
cumstances where everything creative and rational seems to be
in crisis, fighting while retreating.
The Arab reader, through both home and school, has gotten
used to a certain Quranic language of rhetoric and a one-
dimensional perspective of poetry. Modern poetry has attacked
traditional poetry, and looked for a new language. Although
some poets in the past believed that the battle of poetry took
place within poetry itself, consequent social developments have
proven that the battle of poetic modernity is part of the entire
battle for social innovation. Such deficient consciousness of
adoring poetry, while forgetting reality, may have been one of
the reasons for the present crisis in poetry. The crisis is
manifested in the fact that poetry remains revolving around
itself without anything genuinely new, in the absence of
criticism capable of distinguishing between good and bad
poetry, and with the predominance of naive poetry, there are
hundreds of poets in the Arab world. Above all, the crisis is
manifested in the increasing distance between the reader and
the poet. The possibility of getting easily published is limited to
a few poets.
Generally speaking: Great poetry deals with the great issues
of man; Arab reality has reduced man to lost atoms occupied
with the search for banal needs. Such a reality posits many
tasks for the poetry movement including self-innovation in line
with social innovation, re-evaluation of its recent past, and
complete involvement in the overall struggle for the victory of
the new over the old, if possible keeping in mind that both new
and old are relative concepts.
In searching for new poetry that reflects the daily concerns
and dreams of the common man, we come across some poets
who make an effort to achieve something new. Yet in these
times of depotism, the echo of poetry is either pursued or in
exile or lost. @
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- Democratic Palestine : 33
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- المنشئ
- الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين
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