Modern Arabic Poetry

Badawi al-Jabal (1907-1981)

Born to a distinguished family of Northern Syria, Jabal served in the government as a member of Parliament and as Minister of Health. His political career ended in exile, however, when the radical Syrian Communist Party and Baath Party gained control of the government and accused several opposing Conservatives of high treason. Jabal's style is classical, relying on Arabic literary conventions popular for hundreds of years. He brings the influence of the mystical tradition in imagery to his poetry. The following is "Immortality," questioning the appeal of a pleasant afterlife.

Immortality

Immortality and the vaunted joys
of eternity cannot be reconciled.
All who dwell there weary of their bliss
just as the sick man tires of his sick bed.
The eons pass over them one like the other
each day the same, filled with facile laughter.
They look for nothing new in their immortality
night and day worn down by eternity's tedium.
No more dear hope is nursed in their dreams;
there is no more distinction between faith and denial.
You wretched soul, after fulfillment
Emptied now of desire, regret and bitterness
All these immortals made stale by eternity--
Even angels' solicitude could not stir them.
They recline among houris, but without joy;
they drink the wine, though they do not thirst.
They would trade the bounteous honey and wine,
they would trade blessings of diamonds and rubies
for one moment of anguish assuring them
of their communion with pain.

Al-Jabal's condemnation of the pleasant, peaceful afterlife reveals the epidemic of skepticism that has plagued modern literature. This poem is not a distortion of optimism, a claim that man should accept tragedy as inescapable, or even as a shaping experience. Here, al-Jabal questions the desire for tranquility; no human, born to know grief, could endure endless comfort. That said, his ultimate argument is that life should be regarded with perhaps higher esteem than the afterlife. Life, with its torments and pain, is a human experience that should be not merely borne, but cherished. There is a sense of fear that concentrating on the (ambiguous) "what will be," allows the present experience to completely lose meaning. Al-Jabal's poetry argues that men were not placed on earth simply to reach heaven, but to be on earth, to be thirsting and hungering, and striving. By painting immortality so perversely, al-Jabal reminds us that the human condition should not be ignored nor forgotten.


Yusuf al-Khal (1917-1987)
Born in Lebanon, al-Khal was the son of a Protestant minister and earned a degree philosophy from the American University of Beirut. After a career of traveling, he returned to his country to begin the poetry journal Shi'r, a quarterly publication devoted to modern, experimental literature. Al-Kahl translated several the works of several modern English poets (Eliot, Pound, Frost, et al.) into Arabic, as well as supplying a new Arabic translation of the Bible.

Cain the Immortal

When you turn at the road's
last bend
you eat the distance with your eyes
as if it were an idol raised to heaven.

You can't go back,
you will wither and fall
or reach the crossroad
until some oracle appears
like an image on the wall.
Perhaps the oracle is nothing
but the fist of God
dropped open with a sign?

No,
you are leafed with worry,
devoured by stares.
Grumbling, you pierce the dust
with a curse
like Adam's rib,
and wander off
into forbidden grounds
into a cleft between
two shores--
the region of your death.
Not knowing
where you belong.
Your pallbearers are carrying
no one in your coffin.

Cain cannot die.

Al-Khal's poem reveals the endless, empty path drawn by hatred. He describes the desolation of the emotion, with desert imagery and unyielding focus on the poem's subject, and there is utter hopelessness in Cain's anxious expectation and unknowing. He journeys alone, in uncharted desert, to an unrevealed destination; his actions have placed him in this position--he can't turn back from the path he's chosen. Al-Khal succeeds in bringing the proud futility of hate to his phrases. Cain could repent and find forgiveness, but pride prevents him and further fuels his hatred. The sadness is in knowing that the state is self-perpetuating, immortal. Hate will always exist as long as pride begets it. Pride is misplaced reverence, the fatal misstep conscious beings are prone to.