Nizar Qabbani Quotes3/20/2021
Qabbani, who had spent much of his life as a diplomat and ardent Arab nationalist, also spent much of his life as a romantic in more conventional terms, and through verse he brought his world and its muses into vivid, living color.Much of the way in which Qabbani achieved this was by using the language of the everyday, stripped of pretense and elitism.
![]() ![]() In the second poem, the narrator laments that he is unable to give a woman all that she dreams of because he is A laborer from Damascus poor, who soaks his morning loaf in blood his hair in spit. Nizar Qabbani Quotes Free Expression OfWrapped up in the complications of love are the complexities of the poets relationship with these classed geographies, lending credence to Darwishs point that Qabbani viewed the health of the nation and the free expression of sexuality as intertwined; his humble Damascene roots are thus both a source of pride and anxiety during courtship, while his lurid portrayal of Beirut goes hand in hand with learning the art of sadness from a practiced, female teacher. Indeed, it is through these ambivalent depictions of contemporary locales and the socioeconomic realities that they intimate that the poet fashions some of the most poignant portions of the poems. In the spirit of rediscovering old chestnuts anew, he tells the reader in Ode to Sadness (the title of which is itself a throwback to the traditional qada with its opening refrain of love lost and its peripatetic, camel-mounted middle section) that his lover teaches him to act like a child, to read stories of knighthood and gallantry, and to think of women in terms of all the visually delighting but timeworn tropes that the canon has to offer; reading across the two poems, we find a woman whose lips are like pomegranates and whose eyes are like gulf water she is redolent with fragrance and her eyes are kohl-rimmed. With respect to imagery, this is a very back-to-basics, classicizing approach to depicting a lover, though encased in the modern structure of free verse rather than the old-school ghazal, or metered love poem. In addition to pairing himself with his beloved, Qabbani marries his Christian, Arab, and more trans-regionally Middle Eastern identities and experiences in these pieces: we find references to church bells and heaven-sent manna alongside allusions to the erstwhile courtyard of the Sasanian sovereign Khosroes (the iwn kisr ) in Ctesiphon and the Thousand and One Nights. And I have needed, for ages A woman to make me sad A woman in whose arms I could weep Like a sparrow, A womanto gather up my pieces Like shards of shattered crystal. Your love has taught me How love alters the turning of time It has taught me that when I love, The earth holds back its spinning Your love has taught me things That were never part of the accounting So I read the stories of children I entered the palaces of the jinn kings I dreamed that the daughter of the sultan Married me Those eyes of hers purer than the gulf waters Those lips of hers more luscious than a pomegranates bloom And I dreamed that I safeguarded her Like the knights, I dreamed that I gifted her, With strands of pearl and coral Your love has taught me, my dear, what delirium is It has taught me how life goes on, With the sultans daughter never coming. And I have needed, for ages A woman to make me sad A woman in whose arms I could weep Like a sparrow, A woman to gather up my pieces Like shards of shattered crystal. ![]() And I believe in bread and saints, And I dream of love like the others, And a partner patching up the holes In my robes A child sleeping on my lap Like a field sparrow Like the glow on the water I think of love like the others Because a lover is like air Because a lover is a sun, shining Upon the dreamers behind castle walls, Upon the toiling breadwinners, Upon the wretched And those who lay down in beds of silk And those who lay down in beds of sobbing You want, like all women do You want the eighth Wonder of the World, But I have nothing, Except my boasts. Her research interests include orality and storytelling practices, gendersexuality and racerace-making in popular texts. Her dissertation is titled, On Blackness in Arabic Popular Literature: The Black Heroes of the Siyar Shabiyya, their Conception, Contests, and Contexts. Trained as a physicist and historian of science, she brings these sensibilities and knowledge into her poetry.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |