Rewriting the waste land: Badr Shākir Al-Sayyāb's "fī Al-Maghrib Al-Arabī"

Journal of Arabic Literature

Volumn 30, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 128-170

  Kadhim, Hussein N ^a  

^a DARTMOUTH COLLEGE   (United States)

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EID: 84856682929     PISSN: 00852376     EISSN: 1570064X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/157006499X00117     Document Type: Review

References (108)

1. Henri Massis, Defense of the West, trans. F. S. Flint (London: Faber and Gwyer, 1927).
2. John Gould Fletcher, "East and West," The Criterion June 1928:313.
3. Elleke Boehmer writes that "it is important not to mistake the cross-cultural conversation that emerged for a true shift in the terms of European cognition, or for a relationship of sharing or equal interchange." Elleke Boehmer, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors (New York: Oxford UP, 1995) 140.
4. Fletcher 310-11. See also Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1974) 219. I am indebted to Said's monumental work, Orientalism, which has proved the most enabling work in the field of Postcolonial studies. So great is my indebtedness to Said throughout that without his work mine would not have been possible.
5. T. S. Eliot, A Choice of Kipling's Verse (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons: 1943) 20.
6. T. S. Eliot, "The Function of a Literary Review," The Criterion July 1923:421.
7. T. S. Eliot, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (London: Faber and Faber, 1954) 113.
8. Eliot was too Virgilian/Dantean to embrace the British Empire as wholeheartedly as did Rudyard Kipling, professing instead a citi/.enship of the Roman Empire as imagined by Virgil: We are all, so far as we inherit the civilization of Europe, still citizens of the Roman Empire, and time has not yet proved Virgil wrong when he wrote nec tempora pono: imperium sine fine dedi. But, of course, the Roman Empire which Virgil imagined and for which Aeneas worked out his destiny was not exactly the same as the Roman Empire of the legionaries, the pro-consuls and governors, the business men and speculators, the demagogues and generals. It was something greater, but something which exists because Virgil imagined it. It remains an ideal, but one which Virgil passed on to Christianity to develop and to cherish. T. S. Eliot, "Virgil and the Christian World," On Poetry and Poets (New York: The Noonday Press: 1967) 146. Moreover, the often-quoted comment Eliot makes in a communication addressed to Maddox Ford, the editor of The Transatlantic Review, "I am all for empires, especially the Austro-Hungarian Empire," cannot be taken as cnnclusive evidence of Eliot's endorsement of Empire.
9. T. S. Eliot, "Communication to Maddox Ford," The Transatlantic Review Jan. 1924:95-96. There is, however, no dearth of such evidence in the corpus of Eliot's works. Of this I cite the following examples: Attributing French protest against British policies in Egypt to the French "ignorance" of foreign affairs, rather than to imperial rivalry, Eliot writes: "It [the political philosophy of M. Maurras] is also obscured by the fact that M. Maurras and his friends have often displayed a lamentable and even grotesque ignorance of foreign affairsthe ignorance which made it possible for M. Daudet to exclaim against British 'tyranny' in Egypt."
10. T. S. Eliot, "The Literature of Fascism," The Criterion Dec. 1928:289. Commenting on the disruptive effects of British rule on the indigenous cultures of India, Eliot writes: To point to the damage that has been done to native cultures in the process of [British] imperial expansion is by no means an indictment of empire itself, as the advocates of imperial dissolution are only too apt to infer.... It is noticeable that the most vehement criticism, or abuse, of British imperialism often comes from representatives of societies which practice a different form of imperialism-that is to say, of expansion which brings material benefits and extends the influence of culture. America has tended to impose its way of life chiefly in the course of doing business, and creating a taste for its commodities. Even the humblest material artefact, which is the product and the symbol of a particular civilisation, is an emissary of the culture out of which it comes: to particularise only by mentioning that influential and inflammable article the celluloid film; and thus American economic expansion may be also, in its way, the cause of disintegration of cultures which it touches. Eliot, Notes 91-92. In the introductory essay to his anthology of Rudyard Kipling's verse, Eliot laments: "For too many people, an Empire has become something to apologise for, on the ground that it happened by accident, and with the addition that it is a temporary affair anyway and will eventually be absorbed into some universal world association. "
11. T. S. Eliot, "Rudyard Kipling," in A Choice of Kipling's Verse 25.
12. Eliot, "Communication" 95.
13. Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialist 1st ed. (New York: Knopf/dist. by Randomhouse: 1993) 222.
14. The Waste Land 369-371, in The Complete Poems and Plays (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1952). Hereafter cited in the text as WL.
15. With regard to imperial anxieties related to dangers from within, David Trotter's article, "Modernism and Empire: Reading The Waste Land," Critical Quarterly 28. 1-2(1986):143-53, provides illuminating insights. Trotter proposes that The Waste Land is laden with imperial anxieties over race degeneration, and over decay of the imperial heart. "A Game of Chess" juxtaposes a sterile encounter between an upper-class couple with a "pub scene" involving two working class women one of whom "had five [children] already." (WL II, 160) This section of the poem Trotter sees as echoing a pervasive Edwardian anxiety: "In the lowest depths children abound; as we go up the social ladder they become less numerous.' The race was flourishing at the bottom, but 'dying' at the top, because late and sterile marriages had broken 'the strength of that proud order whose achievements made England free and gave it an empire in every Continent.."
16. William Barry, "Forecasts of Tomorrow," Quarterly Review 209(1908):7-8, quoted in Trotter 150.
17. In this respect Elleke Boehmer notes that "Eliot sets the shattered social landscapes and polyglot murmurings of The Waste Land (1922) in London, not on the Gangetic Plain. " Boehmer 145.
18. T. S. Eliot, "Ulysses, Order, and Myth," The Dial July-Dec. (1923):483. The most common interpretation of The Waste Land was rejected by Eliot himself: "I dislike the world 'generation', which has been a talisman for the last ten years; when I wrote a poem called The Waste Land some of the more approving critics said that I had expressed the 'disillusionment of a generation', which is nonsense. I may have expressed for them their own illusion of being disillusioned, but that did not form part of my intention. "
19. T. S. Eliot, "Thoughts After Lambeth," in T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays (London: Faber and Faber, 1972) 368. If we insist, as we must, that The Waste Land, a key metropolitan text, is more than "rhythmical grumbling" (see Eliot's own definition of what constitutes imperialism quoted in note 28 above), then an interpretation of the poem ought to take account of Eliot's conception with respect to the literary use of the myth. In a review of Ulysses Eliot writes: In using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneiiy and antiquity, Mr Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him. They will not be imitators, any more than the scientist who uses the discoveries of an Einstein in pursuing his own, independentt further investigations. It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history.
20. Eliot, "Ulysses" 483.
21. The following testimonials to the great influence al-Sayyāb has exerted on modern Arabic literature reflect a near consensus in Arab literary circles: "Al-Sayyāb took Arabic poetry out of the virtual dead end it had reached by the late 1940s and redirected it to broader horizons of contemporary human experience. Thanks to his genius this generation has been able not only to say poetry anew but also to cause springs to pour forth from the language itself, springs that impart vigor and vitality to the imagination of generations to come." Jabra Ibrāhīm Jabrā, Al-Nār Ma al-Jawlar: Dirāsāt fi al-Shi'r (Beirut: Oār al-Quds, 1975) 49; "Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb was the greatest of the poets of the new school of poetry; he left behind a legacy of poems that surpass in quantity and quality the corpus of any other poet." the Egyptian poet Ahmad 'Abd al-Mu'ti Hijazi quoted in: Fathi Sa'id, Al-Ghurabā" (Cairo: Al-Dār al-Qawmiyyah lil-Tibā'ah wal-Nashr, 1966) 79-80.
22. The poem appeared in Al-Adab issue of March 1956. A correspondence by al-Sayyab indicates, however, that it was being composed in November 1955. See correspondence to Suhayl Idris dated November 1, 1955 in Majid al-Samarrā'ī, Rasā'il al-Sayyab (Beirut: Al-Mu'assasah al-'Arabiyyah lil-Dirāsāt wal-Nashr, 1994) 120.
23. Badr Shākir al-Sayyab, "Wasā'il Ta'rīf al-'Arab bi Nitājihim al-Adabī al-Hadith," Al-Adab Oct. 1956:22. The realization that, its formal independence notwithstanding, Iraq was still colonized by Britain appears to have been widespread among contemporary Iraqi intellectuals. The leading Iraq poetess Nāzik al-Malā'ikah, for example, cites as one of the reasons for the melancholy note of her first verse collection ('Āshiqat al-Layl, 1947) "my exasperation over the British colonization of Iraq, my resentment of the Iraqi government which was represented by Nǔrī al-Sa'īd [pro-British Prime Minister until 1958 when the Monarchy was overthrown] and 'Abd al-Ilah [the Regent]."
24. Nāzik al-Malā'ikah, "Al-Shi'r fi Hayati," Al-Majallah al-'Arabiyyah lil-Thaqdfah 4(1983):189. For testimonial of al-Sayyab's anti-colonial activism
25. see, for example, Khālis 'Azmī, Safahāt Matwiyyah min Adab al-Sayyāh (Baghdad: Ministry of Information, 1971) 9-12.
26. 'Īsā al-Nā'ūrī, "Al-Adib al-'Arabi wal-Thaqāfah al-'Ālamiyyah," Al-Adab al-'Arabī al-Mu'āsir: Proceedings of the Rome Conference on Contemporary Arabic Literature, Rome, 16-20 October 1961, ed. Simon Jargy (N.p.: Adwā', 1962?) 67.
27. The following remarks by al-Sayyab indicate a consciousness on his part with respect to the "ownership" of such mythological space: There is another group of younger Arab poets, however, who read and understood Eliot and were influenced by his spirit as well as by his technique. These poets saw in The Waste Land a most vehement lampoon of Capitalist society by comparison to which would pale all the lampooning by Communist poets for all its malignity and rancor. They saw in it [the WL]] on the other hand, his [Eliot's] lampoon of societies which abandoned true human values, the sublime religious values. It is a lampoon that applies not only to Capitalist society, but also to Socialist society-in Communist countries. Indeed it applies to a certain extent to sick, backward societies including Arab society. They [this group of Arab poets] saw how a Western poet was able to benefit from their own symbols, such as the symbols of Tammuz and Osiris, he thus called their attention to a matter to which they had previously paid no attention [emphasis added]. Badr Shakir al-Sayyāb, "Al-Iltizām wal-lā Iltizām fi al-Adab al-'Arabi al-Hadith," Al-Adab al-'Arabi al-Mu'āsir: Proceedings of the Rome Conference on Contemporary Arabic Literature, Rome, 16-20 October 1961, ed. Simon Jargy (N.p.: Adwa', 1962?) 249-50.
28. On the profound influence of Eliot on modern Arabic literature al-Sayyab writes: It is inevitable in this respect that we refer to the powerful influence of the distinguished English poet T. S. Eliot, especially that of his poem "The Waste Land," "Al-Ard al-Kharā0b" on committed poetry in modern Arabic literature.... It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that modern European civilization has not had to contend with a more vehement nor more profound lampoon (hijd') than that directed at it by T. S. Eliot in his poem "The Waste Land." Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb, "Al-Iltizam wal-la Iltizam" 248-49. A]-Sayyab's interpretation of The Waste Land as hijā' (lampoon) may have contributed to the somewhat declamatory tone of "Fī al-Maghrib al-'Arabi."
29. see: Mustafā al-Sa'dani, Al-Taghrib fi al-Shi'r al-'Arabī al-Mu'āşir: Bayn al-Tajrib wal-Mughdmaaah (Alexandria: Munsha'at al-Ma'ärif: 1988) 119-21.
30. See also Hasan Nāzim, "Li Mādhā Kāna Shi'r al-Sayyāb Shi'ran Kabīran," in Al-Ādāb 1-2 Jan-Feb. (1996) 59.
31. A comprehensive treatment of the corpus of al-Sayyab is Ihsān 'Abbas's, Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb: Dirāsah fi Hayātihl wa Shi'rihi (Beirut: Dār al-Thaqāfah, 1969) especially pages 225-321. Works that make brief references to or contain some discussion of the poem include:
32. Hasan Tawfiq, Shi'r Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb: Dirāsah Fanniyyah wa Fikriyyah (Beirut: A]-Mu'assasah al-'Arabiyyah lil- Dirāsāt wal-Nashr, 1979) 204-06;
33. Pieter Smoor, "The Influence of T. S. Eliot on a Representative Modern Arab Poet, Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb," in Centennial Hauntings: Pope, Byron and Eliot in the Year 88, ed. C. C. Barfoot and Theo D'Haen (Rodopi: Amsterdam, 1990) 347-50;
34. Hasan Nāzim, "Li Mādhā Kāna Shi'r al-Sayyāb Shi'ran Kabīran," in Al-Ādāb 1-2 Jan-Feb. (1996) 59;
35. Mansour Guissouma, Badr Šdkir as-Sayyǎb: essai sur la créativité poétique (Tunis: Publications de la Faculté des Lettres de Manouba, 1989) 147-151;
36. Mājid al-Sāmarra'i, Rasā'il al-Sayyāb, 2nd ed. (Beirut: Al-Mu'assasah al-'Arabiyyah l11-Dirāsāt wal-Nashr, 1994) 120-21;
37. Iliya al-Hawi, Badr Shäkir al-Sayydb: Shd'ir al Anäshid wal-Marāthi, part 2 (Beirut: Dār al-Kitab al-Lubnani, n. d.) 95-8;
38. Mustafā al-Sa'dani, Al-Taghrīb fi al-Shi'r al-'Arabi al-Mu'āsir: Bayn al-Tajrīb wal Mughāmarah (Alexandria: Munsha'at al-Ma'ārif: 1988) 119-21;
39. Jalal al-Khayyat, "Al-Tabshir bil-Thawrah wa Qiyamuha fi al-Shi'r al-'Iraqi al-Mu'dsir," in Al-Shi'r wal-Thawrah: Mukhtdrdt min al-Abhāth al-Muqaddamah li Mihrajdn al-Mirbad al-Thālith 1974 (Baghdad: Dār al-Hurriyyah, 1975) 57-8.
40. A translation of the poem by Lena Jayyusi and Christopher Middleton is included in Modern Arabic Poetry: An Anthology, ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi (New York: Columbia UP, 1987) 437-42. A more recent study on al-Sayyāb which devotes several pages to a discussion of the poem is
41. Terri DeYoung, Placing the Poet: Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb and Postcolonial Iraq (Albany: SUNY Press: 1998) 81-95. The present study had been completed when this book came to my attention. Nevertheless, I will make several references to DeYoung's book in the notes. The difference between my work and previous treatments of al-Sayyāb is one of focus: the present inquiry is concerned not so much with Eliot's influence on al-Sayyab as with how al-Sayyǎb rewrites/subvertt Eliot as a decolonizing strategy. Works on the influence of Eliot in modern Arabic literature include the following:
42. 'Abd al-Wāhid Lu'lu'ah, Al-Nafkh fi al-Ramād: Dirāsāt Naqdiyyah (Baghdad: Dār al-Rashīd, 1982) 169-98;
43. Mohammad Shaheen, "Eliot in Modern Arabic Poetry," in T. S. Eliot: Man and Poet, vol. 1, ed. Laura Cowan (Orono, Maine: The National Poetry Foundation, 1990) 151-64;
44. Nāyif al-'Ajlūnī, "Al-Turāth wal Mu'āsarah: Muthāqafah Mujziyah Bayn al-Sayyāb wa Eliot," Al-Bāhith, 13. Jan-March (1994) 33-50;
45. Jabrā Ibrāhīm Jabrā, "Min al-Marji'iyyah al-Gharbiyyah ilā al-Marji'iyyah al-'Arabiyyah: Al-Ustūrah wa Tahawwulātuhā fi al-Qasīdah al-'Arabiyyah al-Mu'āsirah, " in Al-Mu'aththirāt al-Ajnabiyyah fi al-Shi'r al-'Arabi al-Mu'āşir: Proceedings of al-Halaqah al-Naqdiyyah fi Mihrajān Jarash al-Thālith 'Ashar, ed. Fakhri Salih (Beirut: Al-Mu'assasah al-'Arabiyyah lil-Dirāsāt wal-Nashr, 1995) 47-55;
46. Jabrā Ibrāhīm Jabrā, Al-Nār wa al-Jawhar: Dir̄sāt fi al-Shi'r (Beirut: Dār al-Quds, 1975) 49-76;
47. Jabrā Ibrāhim Jabrā, Al-Rihlah al-Thāminah: Dirāsāt Naqdiyyah (Beirut: Al-Maktabah al-'Asriyyah, 1967) 21-9;
48. Rashīd Mubārak, Mīthāt 'Arabiyyah wa Sharqiyyah fi al-Shi'r al-'Arabi al-Hadīth (N.p.: Dar Mdhir, 1995) 169-98;
49. Muhammad Banīs, Al-Shi'r al-'Arabī al-Hadīth (Casablanca: Dār Tubqāl, 1990) 200-4, 213-22, 261-65;
50. Anas Dāwūd, Al-Ustūrah fi al-Shi'r al-'Arabi al-Hadīth (Cairo: Dār al-Jil, 1975) 213-98;
51. S. Moreh, Modern Arabic Poetry: 1800-1970 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976) 196-288;
52. Issa J. Boullata, "The Poetic Technique of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab," in Critical Perspectives on Modern Arabic Literature, ed. Issa J. Boullata (Washington: Three Continents Press, 1980) 232-43;
53. Nazeer el-Azma, "Free Verse in Modern Arabic Literature," diss., Indiana U, 1969, 123-63, 178-96;
54. Nazeer el-Azma, "The Tammuzi Movement and the Influence of T. S. Eliot on Badr Shākir al-Sayyab," Critical Perspectives on Modern Arabic Literature, ed. Issa J. Boullata (Washington: Three Continents Press, 1980) 215-31;
55. 'Ali Shalash, "T. S. Eliot fi al-Majallat al-Adabiyyah: 1939-1952" Fusul 3-4(1983) 311-15;
56. Arieh Loya, "Al-Sayyāb and the Influence of T. S. Eliot," Muslim World 61(1971) 187-201.
57. Other works that deal with the life and corpus of al-Sayyab include: Nāji 'Allūsh, Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb: Sirah Shakhsiyyah (Beirut: Dār al-'Awdah, 1974);
58. 'Ali 'Izzat, Al-Lughah wal Dalālah ft al-Shi'r: Dirdsah Naqdiyyah fi Shi'r al-Sayyab wa 'Abd al-Sabūr (Cairo: Al-Hay'ah al-Mişriyyah al-'Ammah li al-Kitab, 1976) especially pages 21-46;
59. Khālis 'Azmi, Safahāt Marwiyyah fi Adab al-Sayydb (Baghdad: Ministry of Information, 1971);
60. Haydar Tawfiq Baydūn, Badr Shakir al-Sayyāb: Rā'id al-Shi'r al-'Arabi al-Hadīth (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyyah, 1991);
61. Muhammad al-Tunji, Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb wa al-Madhāhib al-Shi'riyyah al-Mu'āsirah (Beirut: Dār al-Anwār, 1968);
62. See also Salma Khadra Jayyusi, "Modernist Poetry in Arabic," in Modern Arabic Literature, ed. M. M. Badawi (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992) 132-79;
63. Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry, vol. 2 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977) 530-747;
64. Kamāl Khayr Beik, Harakat al-Hadāthah fi al-Shi'r al-'Arabl al-Mu'āsir (N.p.: Al-Mashriq lil-Tibā'ah, 1982) 41-62;
65. Jalal al-Khayyāt, Al-Shi'r al-'lrāqī al-Hadith (Beirut: Dār Sadir, 1970) 170-201;
66. and M. M. Badawi, A Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1975) 250-58.
67. The Palestinian scholar Jabrā Ibrāhīm Jabrā writes that "[i]t was by coincidence that Badr became acquainted with this myth in two chapter from a volume I had translated from The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer (the two chapters were published in a Baghdad magazine in late 1954). When Badr read these two chapters he found in them an immense poetic means which he henceforth utilized for his idea for more than six years during which he wrote his most exquisite and profound verse." Jabrā, Al-Rihlah al-Thāminah 24.
68. The reference is to Aşhāb al-Kahf, "the Companions of the Cave," the name given in the Qur'ān (18:9-26) to (the Christian legend of) the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. See 'Abbās 267-75. 'Abbās, the author of the most comprehensive study on al-Sayyāb to date, considers the poem under review as belonging to al-Sayyab's al-Qasd'id al-Kahfiyyah "The Cave Poems," as well as to his "Arab Poems," the Pan-Arab poems al-Sayyāb published in Al-Ādāb review in the 1950s which include: "Qāfilat al-Dayā'" (on the plight of the Palestinian refugees), "Risalah min Maqbarah" (a tribute to the Algerian resistance), and "Būr Sa'īd" (on the Tripartite Aggression on Egypt in 1956 by Britain, France, and Israel, invariably and misleadingly referred to by colonialist historians as "the Suez Crisis"), all of which were published in 1956. 'Abbās asserts that, unlike "The Canticle of the Rain" which he sees as informed by the Tammuz myth, "the Arab poems are not subject to the Tammuz symbol." He cites as reasons for al-Sayyab's aversion to the myth during the Al-Ādāb stage of his poetic career the incongruity between the themes of al-Sayyāb's poems of this period and the theme of the Tammuz myth, al-Sayyāb's failure to sufficientty assimilate the myth, and the fact that the Al-Ādāb period represents the time of his acute consciousness of Arab nationalism. To employ pagan symbols would have run counter not just to the tenets of Islam but also to Arab nationalism which al-Sayyāb saw as indissolubly linked to Islam. What 'Abbās fails to see is that the Tammuz myth, Arabized and Islamicized, forms the very structural as well as thematic basis of "Fī al-Maghrib al-'Arabī." 'Abbās 267-75, 303-5. Issa J. Boullata, however, includes the poem among what he calls al-Sayyāb's "Tammūzite poems" and maintains that in the majority of such poems the poet's "emphasis is mostly on the present suffering of the Arabs, their tragic malaise being very much his own personally. In hopeful moments, he extols the heroic, redemptive, aspects of Arab sacrifice and death, as in 'Ilā Jamīla Būhayrid', 'Risāla min Maqbara', 'Fī al-Maghrib al-'Arabi'."
69. See Issa J. Boullata, "The Poetic Technique of Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb: 1926-1964," Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. 2(1971) 110. Terry De Young recognizes that "the chain of events described in the poem follows the pattern of death/rebirth, where the sacrificial death of a youth, the 'beloved of the gods' (in this case the speaker), leads directly to the regeneration of the land." There are two points to be made about this statement: first, in the poem what is emphasized is not the speaker's death but Muhammad's. The speaker's death is consequential to that of Muhammad: "For he has died/And we died in him, both the dead and the living" (Lines 21-22); second, what leads to the regeneration in the concluding part of the poem is not the sacrificial death of the speaker but the willingness on the part of the Arabs as a collectivity to make redeeming sacrifices. See De Young 86.
70. The Waste Land, 1. 24-29. This passage is also quoted by Pieter Smoor who writes that [I]n his nationalistic, pan-Arab period, Sayyab took a closer look at particular passages of Eliot's poetry, and sometimes provided them with his own interpretation, as was the case with his rendering of a well-known passage from The Waste Land, Part I, "The Burial of the Dead".... This picture, adapted to Sayyāb's own uses, appears in his poem, "In the Arab West." Despite its title, the poem's subject is the whole of Arab civilization and its glorious past. Eliot's "red rock" has become a "boulder" and a "red tile," upon which the name of the poet Sayyāb, rather than "Petrus," for example, has been written.
71. Robert L. Schwarz, Broken Images: A Study of The Waste Land (London: Associated University Press, 1988) 86.
72. In a later poem al-Sayyāb addresses his son Ghaylān as his shadow extending after his own death. "Marhd Ghaylān," Diwdn Badr Shākir al-Sayydb (Beirut: Dar al-'Awdah, 1971) 326.
73. "Poor Young Simpleton" (lines 41-44)
74. Edith Sitwell, The Canticle of the Rose: Selected Poems 1920-1947 (London: Macmillan, 1949) 173.
75. For al-Sayyāb's appropriation of Sitwell's "steel-birds, "
76. see for example his poem "Marthiyat Jaykūr" in al-Sayyāb, Diwfn 403.
77. See also Lu'lu'ah 182. Lu'lu'ah, a literary scholar and a friend of al-Sayyab, writes that around the mid-1950s, "Badr [Shākir al-Sayyāb] borrowed a volume of poems by an English poetess [Dame Edith Sitwell] who became famous with the publication of her The Canticle of the Rose which contains selections from poetry she wrote between 1920 and 1947. The book was published in 1949. Of this volume professor Jabrā [Ibrāhīm Jabrāl had a copy (possibly the only copy then in Iraq), so Badr borrowed it and never returned it to its owner [Jabrā] to this day [1981]." Lu'lu'ah 178. Lu'lu'ah, furthermore, makes the observation that the title of al-Sayyāb's masterpiece "The Canticle of the Rain," was chiselled out of the titles of two of Sitwell's poems: "The Canticle of the Rose," and "Still Falls the Rain," both of which were contained in Sitwell's aforementioned volume. Lu'lu'ah 182-85.
78. See also el-Azma, "Free Verse in Modern Arabic Literature," 173. Al-Sayyāb's "The Canticle of the Rain" was published in Al-Ādāb in August 1954-it was composed in 1953 during the poet's exile in Kuwait, see letter to Suhayl Idris dated March 25, 1954 in al-Sāmarra'ī 105-6. Al-Sayyāb was therefore familiar with Sitwell's works when in 1955 he wrote "Fī al-Maghrib al-'Arabi."
79. "The Hollow Men" 11-12 in The Complete Poems and Plays (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1952) 56.
80. Al-Ādāb May 1956:59.
81. Al-Addb June 1956:74.
82. Al-Ādāb January 1955:33.
83. See Jaroslav Stetkevych, Muhammad and the Golden Bough: Reconstructing Arabian Myth (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996) 36-48.
84. Al-Sayyāb, Dīwān 389-93. Also quoted in al-Hāwī 98-99.
85. Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957) 34-51.
86. The Mufaddalīyat: An Anthology of Ancient Arabian Odes Compiled by Al-Mufaddal son of Muhammad, ed. Charles James Lyall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921) 322.
87. Al-Ādāb February 1955:8.
88. It is to be noted that the pre-Islamic Arab king of Hīrah shares with the anemone an identical name in Arabic: al-Nu'mān (line 54). Frazer's reference to anemone, with which al-Sayyāb was familiar through Jabrā's translation, is as follows: [T]he scarlet anemone is said to have sprung from the blood of Adonis, or to have been stained by it; and as the anemone blooms in Syria about Easter, this may be thought to show that the festival of Adonis, or at least one of his festivals, was held in spring. The name of the flower is probably derived from Naaman ("darling"), which seems to have been an epithet of Adonis. The Arabs still call the anemone "wounds of the Naaman. " The red rose also was said to owe its hue to the same sad occasion; for Aphrodite, hastening to her wounded lover, trod on a bush of white roses; the cruel thorns tore her tender flesh, and her sacred blood dyed the white roses forever red. See Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Part IV, Adonis Attis Osiris, vol. I, 3rd. ed. (London: Macmillan Press, 1980) 225-26.
89. The Complete Poems and Plays 54, note to line 360.
90. As an advocate of Realist committed literature, al-Sayyāb attempts in "Fī al-Maghrib al-'Arabī" to highlight the shortcomings of contemporary Arab society. In this he saw himself as emulating Eliot who, al-Sayyāb believed, "undertook in his remarkable poem 'The Waste Land' a deep and sincere analysis of his society, nay, of the whole European society, an analysis that contains a large number of facts." Badr Shākir al-Sayyab, "Wasā'il Ta'rīf al-'Arab bi Nitājihim al-Adabī al-Hadith," Al-Ādāb Oct. 1956:23.
91. Federico García Lorca, Selected Poems, trans. Merryn Williams (Newcastle, Eng.: Bloodaxe Books, 1992) 107.
92. See Al-Addb June 1956:24.
93. Jabrā, "Min al-Marji'iyyah al-Gharbiyyah" 49.
94. See el-Azma, "Free Verse in Modern Arabic Literature" 145.
95. in this connection al-Sayyāb writes: The political circumstances which the Arab countries were going through [in the 1950s] with respect to intellectual terrorism and the absence of freedom, favored the resort to [the use of] symbols through which they [Arab poets] expressed their indignation over the political as well as the social conditions of their countries and their hope for a new resurrection that would raise them [their countries] from their death. Al-Sayyāb, "Al-Iltizām wal-lā Iltizām" 250.
96. Commenting on al-Sayyāb's famed poem "Unshūdat al-Majar," el-Azma writes: The differences between the attitudes of both poets towards the rituals of fertility and vegetation here must be kept in mind. However, we find striking similarity between the theme of "The Waste Land" and the themes of Tammūzī poems in general. It can be seen that "The Waste Land" had left its mark on al-Sayyāb's major themes. Remarkably, he employed not only Eliot's themes but also his images, monologues and even his poetic vocabulary. And while from a religious standpoint Eliot elevated his vision to the tragic level of a cultural crisis, al-Sayyāb's vision was framed by the political, social and economic conditions of his environmentt He did not fail to surpass those conditions and, in so doing, transcend his [al-Sayyāb's own] vision. See el-Azma, "Free Verse in Modern Arabic Literature" 183-84.
97. See also el-Azma, "The Tammūzī Movement" 220-21.
98. B. C. Southam, A Guide to the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968) 69.
99. Gareth Reeves, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994) 95.
100. David Craig, "The Defeatism of The Waste Land" in T. S. Eliot The Waste Land: A Casebook, ed. C. B. Cox and Arnold P. Hinchliffe (London: Macmillan, 1968) 200-15.
101. Eloise Knapp Hay, T. S. Eliot's Negative Way (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1982) 48.
102. Comparing al-Sayyāb's famous poem "Unshudat al-Matar" with Eliot's WL, el-Azma writes: Hope for resurrection and rebirth is the most characteristic feature of al-Sayyāb. The vision of life and water in "Ode to the Rain," through which he foresaw the Iraqi revolution, became a legendary song on the lips of his people. The rain in the not-toodistant future will wash Baghdad, and the wind will sweep away injustices, hunger and tyranny from the barren city. That was al-Sayyāb's message in "Ode to the Rain"; Eliot's was quite the opposite. There is no water to revive the wasteland of Western civilization.
103. See el-Azma, "Free Verse in Modern Arabic Literature" 182-83.
104. See also el-Azma, "The Tammūzī Movement" 220.
105. The notion of blood bringing fertility is well-known in classical Arabic poetry. However, a shift is discernable with regard to the source of blood; in classical poetry it is almost invariably the blood of the enemy whose spilling was perceived as regenerative. For a full discussion of the symbolic significance of blood in classical Arabic poetry, see Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell UP, 1993) especially 55-83; 206-38. In more recent times, however, the reverse has been true; it is almost invariably our blood shed by our foes, or willingly by us in defence of our land and our honor that is seen as bringing life and regeneration. This change perhaps reflects changed power relations and the fact that Arabs in modern times perceive themselves as a beleaguered people.
106. In a later poem of al-Sayyāb ("Madīnat al-Sindibād," 1960) blood and rain become interchangeable: "Tabāraka 'I-Ilāhū, wāhibūl Damī 1-Maīar" "Blessed is the Deity, giver of blood rain. " Al-Sayyāb, Dīwān 464.
107. El-Azma notes that "[w]hile Eliot returns to the church as the only remaining hope for mankind, al-Sayyāb resorts to revolution and martyrdom. In the final analysis death for both Eliot and al-Sayyāb becomes the open gate to rebirth; and while the former finds himself a Catholic Christian faith, al-Sayyāb attaches himself to the human forces in their ethical struggle of good against evil." See el-Azma, "Free Verse in Modern Arabic Literature" 186.
108. See also el-Azma, "The Tammūzi Movement" 223.