Till it became the landlord and we the guests. We opened our houses, our hearts, our souls – Poetry has been a beautiful imperialism: polite, delicate and cultural in every sense of the word. Or before the International Court of Justice. Never complained against it at the Security Council, Undoubtedly Qabbani’s call was one of the seeds that grew into the uprising in the Arab countries over the past two years: Poetry – The Beautiful ImperialismĪrabs have been subjugated to the imperialism of poetry for over fifteen centuries.
NIZAR QABBANI IN THE SUMMER FREE
Although he has been dead for 14 years, Nizar Qabbani‘s intellectual legacy is of greater relevance than ever today, as we witness a cruel Arab leader, Bashar Assad, killing his own people day after day,while the Arab world looks passively on.īelow is my translation of Qabbani’s controversial poem: Poetry – The Beautiful Imperialism – in which he calls on the Arabs to free themselves from the “imperialism” of poetry for the sake of making the desert bloom. Surely this war brought about a drastic change in the peoples of the Middle East. If those who acted…photographed…and directed…learned fighting at the Ministry of Propaganda? The Gulf War of 1990 brought Qabbani back to the spotlight, when he published his famous poem, Notes on the Book of Defeat, in which he attacked the Iraqi leader Sadam Hussein: In his poem, The Actors, published in April 1969, he criticized the Arab leaders for exploiting “Palestine” as an excuse to rule their peoples ruthlessly. He criticized Arab leaders who denied the people the possibility of expressing their opinion freely. He attacked Arab leaders and intellectuals and blamed them for the Arab defeat. He treats her in his poems with sensitivity, sincerity and moral courage, by assailing the inequity dealt her in Arab society.įollowing the Six Day War, national poetry became more popular in the Arab world and Qabbani turned to angry nationalistic poetry. Among his best-known themes is that of the Arab woman and her plight. But in spite of that, Qabbani courageously continued to write verse in which he brought the social ills of the Arab world to the fore. Qabbani’s poetry sparked vehement reactions in almost every corner of Arab society.
For almost half a century, he criticized the manifestations of injustice, corruption and apathy in Arab society. Nizar Qabbani, an Arab poet of Syrian origin, undoubtedly deserves the title of “very courageous poet.” Qabbani, who died in London in 1998 at the age of 76, remains a most distinguished poet.
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