The Early Departure: 70 Selected Poems

By Badre Shākir Al-Sayyāb

These are selected poems of the eminent modern Iraqi poet Badre Shākir Al-Sayyāb (1926-1964) who developed a modern style in writing Arabic poetry, which soon became popular in modern Iraqi and, by extension, Arabic poetry. Though a couple of his poems were translated into English and French, this is the first time that such a collection of his poetry has been translated and published.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Oct 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781528969093

Badre Shākir Al-Sayyāb

The author is an Iraqi citizen. He has a BA Hons in English; Master's degree from Harvard; PhD in English Literature from Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. He taught English and comparative literature at seven Arab universities. He has published 62 books on literary topics, 40 of them are translations, English/Arabic/English.

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Author

About the Author

The author is an Iraqi citizen. He has a BA Hons in English; Master’s degree from Harvard; PhD in English Literature from Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. He taught English and comparative literature at seven Arab universities. He has published 62 books on literary topics, 40 of them are translations, English/Arabic/English.

About the Book

These are selected poems of the eminent modern Iraqi poet Badre Shākir Al-Sayyāb (1926–1964) who developed a modern style in writing Arabic poetry, which soon became popular in modern Iraqi and, by extension, Arabic poetry. Though a couple of his poems were translated into English and French, this is the first time that such a collection of his poetry has been translated and published.

Badre Shākir Al-Sayyāb

Dedication

To the memory of a pioneering Arab poet

Copyright Information ©

’Abdulwāḥid Lu’lu’a (2019)

The right of ’Abdulwāḥid Lu’lu’a to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528969093 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2019)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

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Acknowledgements

To Ālā’,

the poet’s daughter,

for the permission to select, translate and publish these poems.

Introduction

The southern parts of Iraq have always been known as the fertile soil for breeding poets in both vernacular and standard Arabic. Like all human beings who inhale and exhale air, those of the south of Iraq seem to inhale air and exhale poetry. The marshes of ‘Imarah’, in the southeast of the country, blessed since the beginning of time by the waters of the Tigris, in its turn before joining the Euphrates in their incessant wasteful pour into the Gulf, have bred innumerable poets, who, for ages, have been singing nostalgically romantic tunes of love and nature. In the vernacular, and also in standard Arabic, we still have Lamī’a ‘Abbās ’Imārah’, who, even in her Californian self-exile has been singing nostalgically of love and Iraq. Her cousin, ’Abdulrazzāq ’Abdulwāḥid, has never stopped writing poetry in standard and colloquial Arabic, on political and mainly romantic topics, for the 70 years I have known him, until the last romantically sad farewell to Iraq, only hours before he passed away in his Parisian Hospital in 2015.

In Baṣrah, in the most southern part of Iraq, almost overlooking the Gulf, we have had so many poets in both colloquial and standard Arabic. We have Sa،di Yousuf, who has published poems extensively in standard Arabic that show various aspects of the ‘modern style’ in Arabic poetry. But the major poet in modern Iraqi poetry is Badre Shākir Al-Sayyāb (1926 – 1964).

Badre was born in a little hamlet, called Jaikoor, on a rivulet called Buwaib, which he considered an image of Stratford-upon-Avon. He never stopped celebrating his village and its rivulet in all he wrote.

Like most of his contemporaries, Badre started writing poetry when he was about 18 years old in the traditional Arabic style of two hemistiches and a mono-rhyme. In his first published collection of poems, Flowers and Myths, there is a poem dated 26-3-1944, which was published in an earlier collection entitled Withered Flowers, when the poet was barely 18 years old. From that date onwards, we find courageous strides in development, both in style and spirit. This was not uncontaminated by the French sentimentalism of the fin de siècle, permeating Egyptian poetry and literature in general, which was the model before the poets and writers of the 1940s, in Iraq and other Arab countries. In 1947, the eminent Iraqi poet, Nāzik Al-Malā’ika, published her second collection of poems entitled Sparks and Ashes, including a poem entitled The Cholera, about an epidemic that raged in Cairo at the time. Nāzik claimed that her poem marked the first example of ‘free verse’ in Arabic. What she did is that she liberated the traditional number of feet in the line of poetry to suit the image or the idea she is dealing with in the line, which may take two or three feet, rather than the four set feet in one traditional metre or the other. However, the lines, short or long, still fall within the traditional metre. That does not make the poem ‘free verse’, which, I am sure, Nāzik knew very well. She must have known that fact, even before she studied for her Master’s degree at Madison, Wisconsin, where she must have learned about Walt Whitman and his free verse proper. But the idea of freedom was highly attractive in the 1940s, in Iraq and the other Arab countries, and the poets did not fall behind in that new course. Nāzik gave the particular date of 27-10-1947 for the birth of her ‘free verse’ in her Cholera poem. This instigated Badre to proclaim that he had published a poem entitled Was It Love? dated 29-11-1946, which later appeared in his collection Flowers and Myths, and was published in Beirut in 1960. This insistence on precedence in publishing ‘free verse’ poems is rather insignificant, because what is more important is who continued and excelled in writing this new type of poetry. It is curious that Nāzik not only slowed down in writing this type of ‘free verse’ poetry, but she actually took a strong stand against it, and even exaggerated in writing in the traditional style of two hemistiches and mono-rhyme, even though divided into smaller sections in the poem. What is more important to note is that this development in the form and spirit of Arabic poetry started with the suspended odes of pre-Islamic times and never stopped since. In the Abbasid period, we have Deek-ul-Jinn of Ḥimṣ (777 – 850) who had experimented earlier with the traditional line of poetry. New forms like Qoma, Kankan and others were developed to make some poems suitable for singing and dancing. In Andalus, we have the muwashshaḥ and zajal, also developed to suit singing and dancing. In all these forms, the metre, rhyme and shape of the poem, in addition to the spirit and language, were a development which encouraged poets of the mid-1940s onwards to liberate themselves from these traditional two hemistiches and mono-rhyme poems.

When Badre joined the École Normale Supérieure in 1944, it was the only college that taught literature in Baghdad, and, for that matter, in Iraq, at the time. The college was swarming with poets, whose works encouraged development and innovation in the use of language and structure of the poem. There was Sulaiman Al-’Ῑssa, the Syrian from Antioch, whose poetry was on every tongue. His development of Arabic poetry was by no means a violation of the tradition, but rather an emulation of what was going on in Andalus in introducing sections in a long poem while varying the order of the rhyme, but remaining faithful to the number of feet in the traditional line of poetry. This encouraged Badre and other young poets to follow suit and introduce various kinds of alteration in the length of the line and in the order of the metre.

It is here that Badre produced his best early poetry, which he continued throughout the rest of his life, not forgetting the style of two hemistiches and mono-rhyme, sticking to the number of feet in the line, and often mixing the traditional style with the new liberated style, especially in the long poems.

It was fortunate for the literary intelligentsia in Baghdad, and in Iraq in general, to witness the arrival of a man of outstanding culture and knowledge of literature and the arts, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, the Palestinian graduate of Cambridge University, who started to teach at the École in 1948. Poets, artists, and men of letters of every sort gathered around this literary newcomer, listening to his explanation of British and European poets and artists, and following his public lectures in the College. They revelled in his company in the afternoons at the Swiss Café on Rasheed Street, the main thoroughfare of a capital hungry for culture, especially that coming from ‘foreign countries’ most of the intelligentsia had heard of but had never experienced studying in, as most of them had very little, or no knowledge of a European language.

Now, Badre had the golden opportunity to learn about poetry and literature in general, an opportunity he could not have gained from his two years at the English department in the College. Badre followed Jabra to his afternoon café sessions, listening very carefully to what he said about poetry and literature, in addition to frequent visits to Jabra’s house, where he could ask specific questions about Shakespeare and Eliot in particular. For some curious reason, Badre was interested in the poetry of Edith Sitwell, since she was the poet most talked about after TS Eliot. I do not think Sitwell’s poetry was everybody’s cup of tea in those days, and probably not at present, but Badre insisted and wanted to understand how a particular poem, Still Falls the Rain, can attract the literary intelligentsia of the late 1940s. Not quite satisfied with the explanation of The Master, he borrowed the book of Sitwell’s collected poems (which I believe was the only copy in Baghdad) promising to study this and other poems by Sitwell, and return the book as soon as possible, but the book was never returned to its owner!

The fall of the German bombshells in the Blitz over London suggested to Sitwell’s mind the blood dripping from Christ on the cross. I do not know whether Badre could stomach that image, but he found in the refrain-like Still Falls the Rain an image which he turned into And falls the rain: a totally different atmosphere in a totally different poem, which tends to be the hallmark of the eminent pioneer of modern Iraqi poetry.

TS Eliot’s poetry was much more helpful, and probably more appealing, to Badre. We find that in the excessive use of images throughout his poetry, as the Iraqi poet found in Eliot’s use of imagery the objective correlative he needed to express the idea and feelings rather than the excessive use of adjectives so popular in traditional Arabic poetry. That17 in itself was an innovation in style and spirit of modern Iraqi, and, by extension, modern Arabic poetry. The excessive use of mythology, depending mainly on Eastern and local figures and myths, in addition to European mythology, give modern Iraqi poetry a new flavour, which was probably exaggerated beyond limits, after Badre took the first and earliest steps in this approach.

The poet was born in a rustic atmosphere of poverty and deprivation. He lost his mother as a child, and his boyhood revolved around the yearning to love. In his early poetry, he refers to his romantic infatuation with a girl in the neighbourhood, seven years his senior. This was a futile substitute for the motherly love that he missed. Then there is a reference to another rustic girl, who lived in a house lower than the line of sight, with a window painted blue, as it was not high enough to allow for peeping through. With this kind of unattainable love and the scarcity of possibilities, the poet found himself in the capital of the country, so very different from his village, in the midst of a college, full of attractive girls, mostly from well-to-do families, who seemed quite in tune with culture and poetry. His early impressions are described in his early poem, A Book of Poems, which he dates as 26-3-1944, and is subtitled as To the Borrowers of my Book of Poetry. Whether imaginary or real, those borrowers were all young damsels! And they were all infatuated with him just as much as he was infatuated with