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Poetry as a Social Document: The Social Position of the Arab Woman as Reflected in the Poetry of Nizâr Qabbânî

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Arieh Loya
Arieh Loya
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin
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Extract

No other people in the world, perhaps, have given more information in their poetry on their cultural and social life than have the Arabs over the centuries. Many years before the advent of Islam and long before they had any national political organization, the Arabs had developed a highly articulate poetic art, strict in its syntax and metrical schemes and fantastically rich in its vocabulary and observation of detail. The merciless desert, the harsh environment in which the Arabs lived, their ever shifting nomadic life, left almost no traces of their social structure and the cultural aspects of their life. It is only in their poetry – these monuments built of words – that we find such evidence, and it speaks more eloquently than cuneiform on marble statues ever could.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , October 1975 , pp. 481 - 494
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

page 481 note 1 Subhâr, Muhyi ’l-DînNizâr Qabbânî Shâ‘iran wa Insânan (Beirut: Dâr al-Kitâb al-Jadâd, 1965).Google Scholar

page 482 note 1 From his poem ‘Baytî’ (my house), in his collection Qasâ’id (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Tijârî, 1964), p. 57.Google Scholar

page 482 note 2 For a detailed study of these problems see Hourani, A. H., Syria and Lebanon (London, 1946),Google Scholar also Rabbath, Edmond, Unité syrienne et devenir Arabe (Paris, 1947).Google Scholar

page 482 note 3 Sex as a powerful force and its effects on social and political upheavals is only recently being studied and taken into consideration by sociologists and political researchers. To my mind, one can hardly disregard this dynamic force when studying modern Arab social movements without risking attaining partial answers.Google Scholar

page 483 note 1 ‘AllûSh, ‘Abd al-Jabbâr, ‘Al-Hubb wa’l-Mar‘a fî Shi‘r al-Sayyâb’, al-Âdâb, 2:4 (Beirut, 1966).Google Scholar

page 483 note 2 Qabbânî, Nizâr, Poetry Is a Green Lantern (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Tijârî, 1964), p. 122.Google Scholar

page 484 note 1 His poem ‘A Note to a Reader’, included in his collection The Brunette Said to MeGoogle Scholar

page 484 note 2 This fact is confirmed in a handwritten biography in my possession.Google Scholar

page 484 note 3 His poem ‘A Robe in Panic’, p. 38.Google Scholar

page 484 note 4 His poem ‘In Front of Her Mansion’, p. 55.Google Scholar

page 485 note 1 His poem ‘In a Coffee-Shop’, pp. 63–4.Google Scholar

page 485 note 2 His poem ‘To a Tourist’, p. 102.Google Scholar

page 485 note 3 His poem ‘Her Room’, p. 73.Google Scholar

page 486 note 1 See his poems ‘A Mouth’, ‘Firm Breasts’, ‘Your Breast’, ‘A Symphony on the Pavement’, etc.Google Scholar

page 486 note 2 al-Jayyûsî, Salmâ Khadrâ, Wathîqa Ijtimâ’iyya Hâmma, vol. II (al-Âdâb, Beirut, 1957), p. 1.Google Scholar

page 486 note 3 His poem ‘To a Hag’, page 131 in The Brunette Said to Me.Google Scholar

page 486 note 4 Ibid. p. 133.

page 487 note 1 His poem ‘The Despot’, The Brunette Said to Me, p. 154.Google Scholar

page 487 note 2 His poem ‘Whispers’ in The Childhood of a Breast, 1948.Google Scholar

page 488 note 1 His poem ‘With a Woman’, Ibid. p. 168.

page 488 note 2 His poem ‘The Two Sisters’, from You Are Mine, p. 16.Google Scholar

page 492 note 1 Qabbânî, Nizâr, Yawmiyyât Imra'a Lâ Mubâliya (Beirut: Manshú;rât Nizâr Qabbânî, 1969).Google Scholar

page 493 note 1 von Grunebaum, G. E. in Medieval Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 264, states: ‘Social custom supports impersonality. In Mohammedan times the family feels disgraced when one of their womanfolk is mentioned by a poet as the object of his affection… It is bad manners to use other than fictitious names in erotic verse’.Google Scholar

page 494 note 1 Qabbânî, Nizâr, Qasâ’id, p. 175.Google Scholar

page 494 note 2 Croce, Benedetto, My Philosophy (New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. 146.Google Scholar

page 494 note 3 Qabbânî, Nizâr, The Brunette Said to Me, p. 25.Google Scholar

page 494 note 4 Qabbânî, Nizâr, The Childhood of a Breast, p. 9.Google Scholar