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POETS FROM A WAR TORN WORLD

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ISBN: 978-1-62857-179-0

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... vii

PREFACE...... viii

ABOUT THE AUTHORS ...... ix

INTRODUCTION by Reuven Snir ...... x The introduction throws light on the cohesiveness of the four essays. It tells about both Arabic and Hebrew poetry in a broader context and puts the 1960s and 1970s into perspective. It comments especially on the poetry of the Syro-Lebanese poet, Adunis (Adonis), and the Palestinian poet, Mahmud Darwish.

FOUR ESSAYS by Aviva Butt ...... 1 Adunis, Mysticism, and the Neo-Suﬁ Trend ...... 2 From the 1960s, Adunis (Adonis) was at the center of a new mystical trend in modern Arabic poetry. This essay presents four of his poems—included in their entirety in English translation—and illustrates some of the developments in the new trend, as represented by Adunis.

Mahmud Darwish, Mysticism, and Qasidat al-Raml [The Poem of the Sand] . . .8 Not only was there a major shift in Palestinian poetics in the wake of the war of 1967 between Israel and the Arab states, but in 1972 when Mahmud Darwish (Mahmoud Darwish) settled in Beirut, he found himself in a new situation. Accordingly, his poetics changed and he turned to mysticism. The Poem of the Sand is one of his better known poems of the 1970s. The entire poem is presented in translation, and discussed.

The Earlier Poetry of Natan Zach ...... 16 Natan Zach articulated the poetic theories of the modern Hebrew poets of the 1960s in the State of Israel period. An excerpt of his poetic manifesto of 1966 and eight poems in their entirety are presented in English translation. Five of the eight poems are from his 1979 volume Tsfonit Mizrahit (English title: North Easterly).

v A Surge of Poetry: The “Younger Poets” of the State of Israel Period...... 27 This essay focusses on the surge of poetry in the 1960s and 1970s. It deals with the transition from pre-state “Hebrew” poetry to the “Israeli” poetry of the new period in Jewish history from 1948. Poems by Natan Zach, Yehuda Amichai, Meir Wieseltier, and Asher Reich are included in their entirety and translated to English.

NOTES...... 40

REFERENCES ...... 44

INDEX List of Poems...... 48

vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank the Dunedin Public Libraries (New Zealand), especially interloan librarian Ann Barton, who obtained books I requested from universities all over New Zealand and even from Australia. I could not have made these requests without the help of librarian Shirley Jones, who also helped me search the shelves.

Aviva Butt

vii PREFACE

Aviva Butt

My special thanks to Professor Reuven Snir, whose writings are innovative in the ﬁ eld of Arabic literary criticism, and who has made an effort to reach an English-speaking readership. I have been familiar with his writings for the past ﬁ fteen years or more. He has encouraged me to publish my own work.

There are not many sources of literary criticism in English on either Arabic or Hebrew poetry. Until relatively recently, there have been almost only pri- mary sources. I have turned to the reliable sources that I was able to ﬁ nd. I hope that my own translations and comments will be of interest.

Books in Hebrew sometimes have two titles—one Hebrew title and an Eng- lish title, as well. In Poets from a War Torn World, after a transliteration of the Hebrew title, the English title will appear in parenthesis: Title (Title). However, if the title of any book is the present writer’s translation, the title will appear next to the transliteration in brackets: Title [Title].

viii ABOUT THE AUTHORS

REUVEN SNIR is presently Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Haifa University, Israel. He lectures in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature. When preparing for his academic career, he wrote his M.A. and PhD dissertations on the subject of mysticism. His dissertations are: Ibn ‘Imran, al-Mu‘afa. MS. 359. Kitab al-Zuhd (Damascus: al-Zahiriyya) and Mystical Dimensions in Modern Arabic Poetry 1940–1980 [Hebrew], He- brew University, 1997, 559+31. As a literary critic, he has produced nu- merous publications in especially Arabic, Hebrew and English. He has also done extensive translation work between these languages. He is currently working on presenting classical and modern poems in English translation about the city of Baghdad from its earliest days under the Abbasid caliphate. His publications are listed on his website at Haifa University: http://arabic. haifa.ac.il/staff/rsnir.html See also Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia: http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuven_Snir

AVIVA BUTT is a writer, poet, and screenwriter.She translates literary texts from Arabic and Hebrew to English. Her academic study at the University of Sydney in what was then the Department of Semitic Studies prepared her for further research in the area of Arabic and Hebrew literature. Her M.A. Honours dissertation was: The Infl uence of the Old Testament on Modern Hebrew Poetry in Israel. University of Sydney, 1981, bib ID286707, 151 leaves. As one thing leads to another her interest in the Middle East has inspired her to write several screenplays (theatrical feature fi lms) on Middle Eastern subjects. Her most recent screenplay is about the Israeli-Palestinian confl ict and takes place in New Zealand. She has published another book with SBPRA, titled Gifts from an Empty Suitcase and Other Short Stories: And Twenty Poems (2012). This book refl ects her broad outlook and interest in humanity at large.

ix INTRODUCTION

Reuven Snir

Poets from a War Torn World by Aviva Butt deals with the 1960s and greatly with the 1970s. In this period, there was a surge of creativity both in the Arab world at large and in Israel. From the Arab side, there was hope for a renewal of Arab civilization in the wake of modernization, connections with the West, and following the foundation of the State of Israel and defeats of the Arab states in wars against Israel. Arabic poets tried to show the way. From the Jewish side, there was hope for a change in government policy and acceptance of the Palestinian community and the Islamic world surround- ing Israel. Leftist Hebrew poets promoted this viewpoint. Both Arabic and Hebrew poets hoped to actively pave the way for a Middle East with peace and prosperity for one and all.

Arabic poets have a rich availability of mystical traditions—both Shiite and Sufi . One of the interesting phenomena in Arabic poetry since the late 1950s has been the employment of mystic concepts, fi gures and motifs, particularly Muslim, specifi cally Sufi , for the expression of contemporary experiences, philosophies and ideologies. Mystic dimensions in contemporary Arabic poetry refl ect nearly all aspects of mysticism, beginning with asceticism, that is, the via purgativa (the purifying path), and ending in the supreme mystical stage, the via unitiva (the unifying path). However, contemporary poets differ from the medieval Sufi poets in that they do not follow a mystic or Sufi way of life in practice.

From the beginning of the 1960s, alongside the expression of personal experiences, there has been a tendency among Arabic poets to combine ﬁ g- ures and concepts from the Suﬁ tradition with their own social and political views. By conjoining their views with their mystical outlooks, contemporary poets have succeeded in expressing their ideas in a most innovative and original way.

x Contemporary Arab poets make very frequent use of early Sufi terms and fi gures, loading them with new meanings. However, unlike the early Sufi poets, they are not solely committed to Sufi themes. As secular poets, they rarely concern themselves with the precise original meanings of the ancient terms, concentrating rather on the expression of their experiences and feelings as well as presenting their social views.

Neo-Sufi secular poetry is similar to classical Sufi poetry, especially from the point of view of its spontaneity and the expression of intimate and unme- diated contact with the divine. This is especially illustrated in the writings and poems of the Syro-Lebanese poet Adunis (‘Ali Ahmad Sa‘id Asbar) (born 1930), who pioneered modern Arabic poetry and is considered to be the greatest living Arabic poet. Together with the Egyptian poet Salah ‘Abd al-Sabur (1931–1981) and the Iraqi poet ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayyati (1926– 1999), Adunis was at the center of the new mystical trend. The fi rst essay Adunis, Mysticism and the Neo-Sufi Trend deals with the emergence of what would be known as “neo-Sufi ” poetry.

The second essay Mahmud Darwish, Mysticism and Qasidat al-Raml [The Poem of the Sand] is on the mystical poetry of the acclaimed Palestinian National Poet, Mahmud Darwish (1941–2008). Darwish, who even as a teenager was a recognized poet, in the 1970s took it upon himself to per- petuate the national identity of the Palestinian people. From 1972, he settled in Beirut and in the Exile as a poet of the “resistance” that is, resistance to oblivion, he turned to mysticism. He beneﬁ ted from Adunis’ work using for example the myth of the well-known mystic al-Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj (d. 922) as developed in modern Arabic poetry. However, he also turned to other branches of Arabic heritage as for example the ascetic philosophical poetry of Abul ‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri (973–1057). Moreover, the now-matured poet makes a conscious effort to continue to use the traditional qasida form as a point of reference.

The persona in Darwish’s poetry is not only a man expelled from his home- land, but a poet who records the feelings and aspirations of his tribe—a single person from a jama‘a, a collective, that imposed on him the task of representation. The personal and public voices are always co-mingled and the persona-poet’s distress is the synecdoche for that of an entire people.

xi Darwish, whose interest in Sufi texts had been mainly limited to cultural and literary allusions, started in the mid-1980s to present in his poetry a persona whose poetic experience is sometimes intermingled with the mystical one, culminating in his long poem “Al-Hudhud” [The Hoopoe]. Thus it is no wonder that in his exchange of open letters with his Palestinian compatriot Samih al-Qasim (b. 1939) he used a mystical pretext in order to explain his desire to write poetry even though he was very much aware that poetry has in fact no real value. In fact, on the subject of generic relationship of poetry to prose, Darwish asserts the dominance of fi ction over poetry, and adds, “If television has left to it any remnant.” However, he says if the poet himself is also writing prose, he should not mix the two activities since poetry is, “an explosive desire.” Just as the mystic cannot help but speak of his experience because love overfl ows in his heart, so the poet cannot resist this desire; he must “put himself in the wind and madness, because the poet cannot be but a poet.” Nevertheless, for Darwish the writing of poetry is not only an overfl ow of his emotions, but also a rational choice—mind and heart are in harmony. The poem discussed in the present essay, “Qasidat al-Raml,” is an especially well-known example of his poetics of the 1970s.

The Hebrew poets in the two essays on modern Hebrew poetry are mainstream poets, familiar with European Romanticism. Whereas modern Ara- bic poetry came as a result of adding a synchronic dimension to Arabic poetry, modern Hebrew poetry was initially developed in Europe by Eastern European Yiddish poets through contact with the output of the general community. It is thus apparent that modern Arabic poetry and modern Hebrew poetry are parallel developments. Although the so-called “ultra-orthodox” Hasidic Jews in Europe studied Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), mainstream “orthodox” European Jews prefer to avoid mysticism. Literary theory as a branch of philosophy is thus more available to these Hebrew poets than mysticism.

The ﬁ rst essay on Hebrew poetry The Earlier Poetry of Natan Zach, as the title suggests, deals with the poetry and poetics of the German-born Hebrew poet Natan Zach (born 1930). This poet is among the poets to articulate the poetics of the 1960s and 1970s and is generally considered to be the leading poet in Israeli modern Hebrew poetry. To quote this essay, Zach “starts from philosophy and from there he ﬁ nds his politics and the ‘something-to-say’ in his writings.” He leans heavily on European literary philosophy, his desire

xii to surmount linguistic obstacles, and his own potent for experimentation with various styles and forms of poetry.

The last essay of this small book is on the poems of leading Hebrew poets of the generations of the 1950s through to the 1980s—Natan Zach, Yehuda Amichai (1924–2000), Meir Wieseltier (born 1941), and Asher Reich (born 1937). The essay is titled “A Surge of Poetry” because the 1950s to the 1970s saw a surge of creativity in the effort to write a new distinctively Is- raeli poetry. The poems selected for discussion (and quoted in their entirety) illustrate the characteristic developments of each decade, in the poetry of these younger poets of the State of Israel period.

Aviva Butt included essays about the leading Muslim Arabic and Jewish Hebrew poets. No doubt she participates in a love for both cultures and it is her personal preference to see one and all as part of a shared world, the Middle East. Moreover, as the title Poets from a War Torn World suggests, there is every reason to suppose that the intellectual output of each of the countries in geographical proximity in the Middle East would be mutually of interest. Aviva Butt translates whole poems rather than excerpts, which makes pleasurable reading. Her translations are unusually poetical and ac- curate—an achievement in translation.

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