An Introduction to Arab Poetics by Adonis

Author:Adonis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780863567377
Publisher: Saqi

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Poetics and Modernity

We will only be able to reach a proper understanding of the poetics of Arab modernity by viewing it in its social, cultural and political context. Its development in the eighth century was bound up with the revolutionary movements demanding equality, justice and an end to discrimination between Muslims on grounds of race or colour. It was also closely connected with the intellectual movements engaged in a re-evaluation of traditional ideas and beliefs, especially in the area of religion.

The dominant view held that the state was founded on a vision or message which was Islam. On the one hand, this state was constituted as a caliphate, in which the designated successor not only followed on from his predecessor but preserved the heritage and conformed to it in both theory and practice; on the other hand, it was a state formed of a single community, meaning that unanimity of opinion was an essential requirement. Politics and thought were religious; religion was one and permitted no divergence.

This explains why for the most part those in power fought against these revolutionary and intellectual movements. Politically, they were considered as a rebellion against religion because they attacked the caliphate, which represented religious authority. From an intellectual and philosophical point of view, their adherents were seen as heretics and apostates, either for restricting the role of religion in the teaching of virtue, or for denying the role of revelation in knowledge and saying that knowledge and truth were the business of reason. The authorities viewed the mystical elements in these movements as constituting an attack on the law and practice of Islam; this was because they made a distinction between ‘the evident’ (al-ẓāhir) and ‘the hidden’ (al-bāṭin), or between ‘the law’ and ‘the truth’, asserting that knowledge and truth come from ‘the hidden’, hence the possibility of achieving a kind of unity or union between God and existence and between God and man.

To put it another way, those in power designated everyone who did not think according to the culture of the caliphate as ‘the people of innovation’ (ahl al-iḥdāth), excluding them with this indictment of heresy from their Islamic affiliation. This explains how the terms iḥdāth (innovation) and muḥdath (modern, new), used to characterize the poetry which violated the ancient poetic principles, came originally from the religious lexicon. Consequently we can see that the modern in poetry appeared to the ruling establishment as a political or intellectual attack on the culture of the regime and a rejection of the idealized standards of the ancient, and how, therefore, in Arab life the poetic has always been mixed up with the political and the religious, and indeed continues to be so.

The problematic of poetic modernity (ḥadātha) in Arab society goes beyond poetry in the narrow sense and is indicative of a general cultural crisis, which is in some sense a crisis of identity. This is linked both to an internal power struggle which has many different aspects and operates on various levels, and to an external conflict against foreign powers.

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