Poetic experience between the classic and the vernacular

In the time of high technologies and the fascinating means of communication, the modern mass media can create a poet with no talent, popularize him and take people’s attention to him, but only for the time being. The talent is a foundation of the art of poetry, without which poetry is never poetry. This divine gift is bestowed by God exclusively to those he wants and distributed among some of his creatures unequally and to a certain extent.

No good seed can flourish, grow and donate if it is not planted in a fruitful soil which can nurture it and a suitable environment which surrounds it, being in reliable and observing hands caring for its continuous watering and protection till it grows and fructifies. The same is applicable for the talent. It needs an arduous formation and establishment and a climate which can help its blossoming and prospering. This climate can provide the incentives of inspiration and inducement of creation and innovation.

The nature of this talent cannot be inferred since the beginning. It is like an inherent secret which requires the effort of perception and uncovering through the earliest data of that talent which feels its way to light through the sentiment of its holder or the knowledge of his expert surrounding people who should assist its holder to stand and move on foot so that he starts his first steps. It is evident that the feeble talents vanish and evanesce in the environment of inattention and non assiduity or recurring frustration because only the strong and unusual talents resist.

At present, I can realize something from the stations I passed by through my whole life which have had a great impact on the course of my beautiful association with this magnificent art. I lived these stations and naturally I was not aware by that time what did they mean for me or for my relationship with poetry. However, whenever I come back now and check the memory, I find remaining particulars and details of them which are luminous and apparent. Nothing is more beneficial for the poet or the innovator in general than the supply of memory, this weighty factor which pours and flows with most of the sensational experiences so that it encloses the innovation at the instant of creation, providing him with scenes, vivid pictures, visions, faces, places and many things which the innovator himself does not recall.

I have witnessed that period of poetry writing for more than forty years, as I published my first attempt in Beirut 1963 and issued my first collection ( Anin A-sawary) in 1969, and here is my seventh collection (La Yatachabeh A-shajar) about to be published. So that, the total of my published collections is seven, two of which in vernacular and I shall publish a third one this year. This experience has taken a large part of my life as I practiced poetry in its vernacular and classic form. I have faced severe attacks from my Bahraini intellectual colleagues who censured my retraction to vernacular Arabic after having issued a collection in modern standard Arabic at that time. And I forgave them because they did not realize that I was writing both in Modern Standard Arabic and vernacular since my early stages. The main questions that my colleagues asked at that time were: how could an educated poet write poetry in vernacular? In the Arab world there is several numbers of dialects and the mother language is constantly challenged. And why does this poet write his poetry in vernacular while he is able to write in modern standard Arabic? During those days the talk was about the writer’s commitment and about his relationship with people and about his role in society. At first, I was tormented by these questions especially when I saw people’s acceptance of the folk songs (mawawil) that were included in my collection of poem entitled the thirst of palms issued on 1970, in addition to the Bahraini and gulf’s people enthusiasm for more. But, when I came back to my senses, I put people’s acceptance aside and I asked myself those questions again. Then, I realized that I have no control on the choice of language but honestly I can only respond to my feelings and to the images that it chooses.

In the early seventies, when I published ( Atash A-nakhil), I declared that writing poetry in vernacular was transitional and without future, because a dialect is on daily continuous evolution as consequence of the development society and the spread of education. And I also predicted the narrowing of the gap between modern standard Arabic and vernacular, and little by little the raising of the vernacular to become more even closer to Modern standard Arabic. This vision was clear for me, and today after thirty five years it is realized in the great works of Omani poets and in the writings of some poets from the Gulf. In fact, the language that they are writing today is not the same vernacular that I used in writing my poems during the early seventies. That language was not of course the one of the street but it is an extension of what popular poetry brought with its most sophisticated and enjoyable texts. In fact, I am still writing poetry in vernacular but my writings in classical Arabic dominated the later during these last years. As an example, my writings in vernacular have nothing to do with what I wrote thirty years ago. As a matter of fact, there is a difference in dealing with the word, in drawing pictures and in the formulation of expressions and even in the way of drawing the word on the paper. Moreover, in Arab countries, Arabic dialects are no longer an obstacle, at a time when the whole world has become a small village.

How and why I write my poetry in both vernacular and classical forms?

I would like to admit sincerely that this fact is totally out of my control. and from real experience, I don’t really have choice of the poem’s language, but it is the poem at its creation that chooses the language. These facts is ignored by all intellectuals and even by some skilled critics as they far from understanding the nature of the poetic experience and what is being written in vernacular, either because of their fanaticism or because of their submissiveness to the predominant mainstream of the popular poetry movement since its creation. I am not saying this because I want to defend the vernacular or tacking its side. In fact, modern standard Arabic is the mother and the vernacular is just a small branch of its branches that should not be denied . and I am declaring this from a real experience which I see today as the product of the circumstances of my growing, education and my initial cultural formation.

My cultural training, which is the paraphernalia of my poetic experience, passed by daily stations; each of them engraved in my memory what it wanted and delivered me to another station. We are here concerned with two stations which occurred in the very beginning of my life when I was a child under the age of six. These two initial stations are interpenetrating as I don’t know actually which one precedes the other, as if I was putting one foot here and the other there at the same time, i.e. the stations of the modern standard Arabic and the vernacular. I grew up in a house fond all day long of narrating and repeating the public poetry such as parts of poems, fragments of scattered verses, Mawals, Buddhists, Zajal and texts of public songs. The inhabitants of this house compete and vie in boasting with one another with the number and fineness of what they learn by heart. The participation in learning, memorizing and repeating was therefore evident. By night, my little imagination was being filled with public stories, tales and mournfulness of women replete by passion. I suckled the popular poetry exactly with the first drop at the breast of that modest mother who was for me till her last moment in life an inexhaustible arsenal of that substance. She decided when I was six, that I learn in the elementary school the principles of reading and that remain there till I memorize the Holy Koran and recite it. There I arrived at my other station and my first meeting with classical Arabic in its most charming, richest, noblest, highest and most wondrous meanings took place. The Chapter of Miriam and the Chapter of Rahman with their art of saying, harmony of tone, splendour of rhythm and inimitability of meanings are still committed to my memory as I learnt them from that source. I was not aware at that time of the purpose of memorising and reciting the Koran with the help of that severe woman instructor, who does not accept any deviation in language, shaking in pronunciation or carelessness in punctuation, that each letter in any word has its precise due in pronouncing, intoning, mellowing and complete performance of the particular word. Only now I realize the importance of that first establishment and that blessing which I obtained early and which aided me so much in the art of poetry composition and reciting and in the learning of Arabic language according to its official rules in the schools thereafter and requesting more by reading and cognizance later.

The fragmented texts of popular poetry encouraged me to ask for more, and I yearned to know more about the sources of those poems and in the writings of great novelists. So I read Abdullah Alfarej collection of poems, Mohamed bin Laaboon, Mohsen Alhajani, Fahd Boursi and Mohamed Alfijani in addition to the poems that I found by Alnoubti, a great poet. And little by little this passion for popular poetry, made more concerned with collecting and documenting popular literary texts in the whole region in general. All this drove me to the old and modern Iraqi poetry, so I read the writings of Ibn Alkhalfa, Aboud Alkoukhi, Abou Dhari, Abou sarhan and Modhfar Alnouwab, and whatever I found about the vernacular Iraqi modern poetry. In fact, my only concern was to know more about the Najdia and Basra school of popular poetry with all its characteristics.

Many people were surprised by how poetry written in vernacular and modern standard Arabic could be combined at the same time? And in what condition is the poet while choosing the language for his poem? And why a poet who is writing in modern standard Arabic cannot write in vernacular and vice versa. And why a poet like Alabnoudi is not writing in modern standard Arabic while he masters the vernacular? These are the questions that I was confronted to in my poetical journey.

The point is, after contemplating thoroughly and after a practical experience, I found that writing poetry is an independent talent on its own as well as writing poetry in vernacular and the same for the art of recitation which is also a talent independent form the other two. As evidence some people have the talent of recitation and are not poets while good poets may fail in reading their poetry. And god bestowed on people whatever grace. There is no doubt that each of those talents has its own characteristics and its distinctive heritage along with the various techniques and the necessary tools. I have faced literary criticism in Bahrain as I was responding to my feelings, leaving each talent for self expression either in vernacular or modern standard Arabic until it exhausts its stored energy until depletion or death. And there is no doubt that each talent has its techniques.

When I have published my poems in vernacular, there were some of those who misunderstood and were not familiar with the nature of my poetry and thought wrongly that my poetry was divided in two halves, And that my writings in modern standard Arabic will lead me to a dead end. And none of them knew that I have been writing in modern standard Arabic and vernacular since my early stages, and that I posses the two talents as a grace from God.

In fact, the poet is the product of his environment and the circumstances of his upbringing and basic formation.Every emotional experience stems from the heart of the poet and chooses its language, blood and flesh to take its final shape between the hands of the poet.

I was convinced that vernacular will evolve with the development of communities, the evolution of education and the individuals’ awareness. This means that what is written in a given dialect at a given time may not fit in, in the future. And writing poetry in vernacular does not have the same future as the one written in modern standard Arabic, only if it develops to become even closer to the latter and this is what is going to happen for the dialect of the Arabian Gulf.