DEFAMILIARIZATION IN THE POETRY OF 'ABD AL-WAHH�B AL-BAY�T� AND T. S. ELIOT: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

The recoil of 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati (1926-1999) from Romanticism with the publication of Abdriq Muhashshamah (Broken Pitchers, 1954),' sig- nalled a shift in his poetic style and subject matter. Al-Bayati's poetry turned increasingly oblique while it became involved in Pan-Arab socio- political affairs. His experimentation with poetic language and devices, how- ever, only matured with the publication of Alladhi Ya'ti wa /a Ya'ti (He Who Comes and Does Not Come, The outstanding characteristic of al-Bayati's poetry since Broken Pitchers became a progress towards achiev- ing defamiliarization. The term defamiliarization, which was coined by Victor Shklovsky, denotes the use of language and poetic devices that ren- der a poem a complex and an ambigious work of art because the "technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar The transition in al-Bayati's poetry occurred, in fact, as the result of the reception of the work of T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) in the Arab World through its translations, which, according to Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, had commenced in the 1940s.4 Eliot's free verse initiated the formation of the new literary movement of the so-called New Poets, which included Ndzik al-Mala'ikah (b. 1926), Badr Shakir al-Sayyab (1926-1964), and al-Bayati himself, who became the pioneers of free verse in the early 1950s.5 In this respect, Salma

A brief presentation on this paper's central concern and methodology was given in the First International Conference of the Association of Professors of English and Translation at Arab Universities, held in Amman, Jordan, August 28-30, 2000. ' 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati, Abariq Muhashshamah, in: idem, Al-A`malal-Kiimilah (The Complete Works), 2 vols. (Beirut: Al-Mu'assasah al-'Arabiyyah lil-Dirdsdtwal-Nashr, 1995), 1: pp. 11-88; hereafter referred to as al-Baydti, Broken Pitchers. 2 'Abd al-Wahh5b al-Baydti, Alladhi Ya'ti wa Id Yati, in: idem, Al-A`mdlal-Kiimilah, II: pp. 57-97; hereafter referred to as al-Baydti, He Who Comes. 3 Victor Shklovsky, "Art as Technique," in: Modern Criticism and Literary Theory: A Reader, ed. David Lodge (London and New York: Longman, 1996), pp. 16-30; p. 20; here- after referred to as Shklovsky. 4 Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, "Modern Arabic Literature and the West," in: Critical Perspectives on Modern Arabic Poetry, ed. Issa J. Boullata (Boulder, Colorado: Three Continents Press, 1980), pp. 7-22; pp. 12-3; hereafter referred to as Jabra. 5 On Eliot's influence on modern Arabic poetry, see, for example: Ihsan 'Abbäs, `Abd al- Wahhab al-Bayati wal-Shi'r al-Iraqi al-Hadith (Beirut: Ddr Bayrût, 1955), pp. 24-5; M. M. 168

Khadra Jayyusi explains that their dissatisfaction with the formal conven- tions of Arabic poetry prompted them to adopt Eliot's free verse because

Contemporary Arabic poetry on its own was not enough for the young Iraqi poets of the forties. If they were to achieve something vitally new, it was clear that some foreign fields would have to be explored.... It so happened that these foreign fields were mostly the English speaking countries, and it was poets like T. S. Eliot.... who were henceforth to have the greatest influence in Iraq after 1948.... Here poets of the stature of al-Sayyab, al- Mald'ikah, [and] al-Bayydti [sic] ... combined to give a strong front to the poetic revolution which they were to launch.... With true poetic instincts they were led to the more vital poets of the modern world, such as T. S. Eliot.... [Thus, the] ... rise of the new movement of free verse came in answer to a real need which sprang from the nature of art itself: the need for innovation and change.6

The adoption of Eliot's free verse was more extreme than any other revolt that Arabic literature has undergone so far. The New Poets rejected much of the basic conventions of Arabic verse: the bayt (line) that consists of two hemistichs of equal length disappeared to be replaced by a new mode of expression. Free verse also allowed the poet a greater freedom of expression and enabled him to realize a truly organic unity in his work.' In fact, the advent of Eliot's work on the Arab literary scene became no less influential than its impact on the West. Eliot's theory of depersonalization in "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1917), which encompasses his poetic device of the "objective correlative,"R led to the inception of the genre of defamiliar- ized poetry of Imagism that altered Anglo-American poetry. His poetic theo- ries were instrumental in laying the foundation for a literary theory of defamiliarization as it manifests itself in the Formalist theories of Shklovsky's "Art as Technique" (1917) and Roman Jakobson's "The Metaphoric and the

Badawi, Modern Arabic Literature and the West (London: Ithaca Press, 1985), pp. 99, 121, 123, and passim; hereafter referred to as Badawi, Modern Arabic; 'Atif Façlçlül,"Anglo- American Modernism and Arabic ljadiithah," Diriisiit: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Arabic-English Comparative and Contrastive Studies, Amman, August 28-31, (August, 1999), ed. Lewis Mukattash, pp. 35-45; hereafter referred to as Faddul; Salma Khadra Jayyusi, "Contemporary Arabic Poetry: Visions and Attitudes," in: Studies in Modern Arabic Liter-ature, ed. R. C. Ostle (Wilts, England: Aris & Phillips Ltd., 1975), pp. 46-68; hereafter referred to as Jayyusi; S. Moreh, Modern Arabic Poetry 1800-1970 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976), pp. 216-66; hereafter referred to as Moreh. 6 Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Trends and Movementsin Modern Arabic Poetry, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977), II: pp. 564-5; hereafter referred to as Jayyusi, Trend.s. Badawi, Modern Arabic, pp. 121-2. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," Selected Essays (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World Inc: 1932), pp. 13-22; hereafter, referred to as Eliot, Selected Essays. Eliot's theory of depersonalization advocates distancing the subject matter of poetry from the poetic subjectivity. Accordingly, Eliot's "objective correlative" proposes maintaining aes- thetic distance through investing sets of seemingly unrelated objects, images, or situations (and