ARABIC LITERATURE (FACULTY OF LETTERS AND HUMANITIES)
Year:2011 | Volume:3 | Issue:2|Papers Count:13

As a modern solution to portrait poets’ emotions, free verse is essentially important. There is a lot of difference in attitude toward the exact date of its arising and disadvantages and advantages in contrast to classic and traditional verse among critiques. Some of them believe that Arabic free verse is stemmed in Acrostic verse – a type of vernacular verse that was appeared in Andalusia. Other group believes in that free verse is originated from stanza- although history of arising poetic stanza is also not clear-; since in both stanza and free verse, poet has option to reduce and add free verses based on the given concept. Third category of critiques believes in that Immigrant Poets have heralded transformation in Arabic verse in terms of meaning, rhyme, and prosodic meters. Anyway, all the efforts are led to well-known verse called “Al- Kolera (Cholera)” versified by the late Dr. Nazik (Sadegh) Al-Malaika (1923-2007), Iraqi contemporary female poet and or the Ode of “Hal Kana Hobban (Was there any love?)” by other Iraqi poet called Badr Shakir Al Sayyab (1926-1964), and these two poets are purposed as pioneers of Arabic free verse. Some peoples consider Nazik Al- Malaika as the first pioneer while the other ones have believed in Badr as the primary poet of Arabic free verse. One may refer to the following cases as the foremost characteristics of Arabic free verse: Poet’s ability in versifying short and long hemistiches, freedom of imagination, unified and matched structure, and deserving for narration of Arabic works.

The field of comparative analysis on Persian and Arabic grammars and in contrast to number and counted nouns discourses in both languages it is revealed that there is a numerical composition in either double-bases (simple) or triple- bases (it has counting conjunction or counting unit in Persian and quantifier in Arabic). This categorization may itself open some other new classes and lead to purposing of new topics and amendment of some grammatical functions in both languages where these subjects have been discussed in the present paper.

Quintet novel “Cities of Salt” is considered as a turning point in Arabic story-writing literature. In this novel under the influence by story- writing modern stream, Munif (1933-2004) has tried to create neology and innovation in some story artistic elements by being committed to some of Arab story- writing principles. He tries in this novel to follow Russian structuralists, particularly Mikhail Bakhtin, by benefiting from polyphony in a narrative. And also, even in dialogue of his story characters, by a new initiative and effort for creation of a middle language between eloquent and vernacular speech, he has used Arabic different dialects. In this novel, he tries to remove linear and classic time dominance from face of his work, which governs over classic stories as well as predominance of single hero and instead of place (desert), to play role of story hero. Accordingly, or may be expressed explicitly that this 2500 page novel is assumed as a start point for revival of modern story- writing in Arabic literature. In this essay, it has been tried to discuss and analyze the most important aesthetic aspects of novel “Cities of Salt” by taking an analytical- descriptive approach.

At present, arising of blank verse is assumed as a turning point in Arabic language and literature. By birth of poetic modern phenomenon, verse total meaning and especially its poetic music were transformed. As a result, in the course of the given process, musical structure of contemporary Arabic verse exited from its traditional and ancient texture and reached to a completely different architecture. The aforesaid architecture, in which qualitative parameters have been adopted in its formation rather than quantitative ones, has been realized in verse internal space. This was, in turn, overshadowed musical performance of Arabic contemporary verse as well. Hence, musical verse was deemed not only as a Phonetic Phenomenon, but a broad- based and comprehensive element under its light the Discursive and Dialectical Relations have been established among intellectual, emotional actions and lingual structures in poetical text; the fact that was an evident for musical richness and depth in Blank Verse.

In the earliest centuries of Islamic period, Arabic language was spread in Iran by accelerated rate and over time it has been converted into Iranian political, scientific, and literary language in the field of Islamic civilization. Amidst, many of Iranian intellectual and literate people created some literary works in Arabic so that an all-out Arabic verse market was highly boosting in Iran, particularly at 4th and 5th Hegira centuries (11th and 16th AD). Mongol invasion to Iranian homeland and arising some sociopolitical developments and failures crucially influenced on different aspects of Iranian community, culture, and literature. The fact that what consequences were resulted from Mongol invasion and social failures and developments for Arabic language and literature in Iran is a subject that will be discussed in this essay and the present paper has tried to interpret it by reliance on experts’ views and studies by contemporary researchers. The conducted survey demonstrated this fact that to the same extent the culture, science and literature market, including Arabic literature had been prosper in Iran, after Mongol invasion it was vanished; but, Arabic literature tree was not totally withered, instead, by revival of Persian literature, Arabic language also resumed its life necessarily and a lot of works in Arabic were left from Iranian poets, who were mainly Persian versifiers, of course.

Praising of Holy Prophet is of those topics, which have drawn the poets’ attention since early Islamic period and they have versified a lot of poems in this regard. This started with odes from some poets like Kaab Ibn Zohayr, Kaab Ibn Malek, Hassan (Ibn Sabet), and other versifiers of Islamic period. Despite of its dormancy which governed during Omayyad and Abbasid dynasties, it resumed moving toward climax away from age decadence. For instance one may refer to “Ode of Bordeh (robe of honor)” versified by Mohammad Ibn Saeed Boosiri or Kitsch (rhetoric) verses, which were appeared for the first time at this period.

After occupation of Palestine by Zionists in 1948, some of Palestinians became refugees to adjacent Arabic countries and some of other people were inhabited inside the occupied land, particularly in West Bank (of Jordan River) and Gaza Strip. Thence, Palestinians never saw political tranquility, stability, and equilibrium. Consequently, contemporary poetry was also affected by such chaotic circumstances. Vagrancy, exile, murder, pillage, confiscation of properties and lands, destruction and ruining and other political adverse events in this country caused Palestinian female poets to witness pain, passion and endless grief of their compatriots after “occupation” and to portrait incessantly their pains in their works. As a result, their verse was full of honest feelings and emotions and established infrangible link with mass of people; it inspired campaign- and freedom- seeking spirit for homeland into the body of sacrificed devotees and made their steps stronger in furtherance of the goals of Palestine National Movement.

One may daresay that the foremost issue and problem in translation is to observe “Translation Equivalence Principle” so that the translated text to be the equivalent and all-out mirror against the original text. To obtain this goal, it is perfectly necessary to pay attention to semantic different layers, ranged from referential meaning to empirical, interactive, implicit, meanings, semantic units (sememe), conventional, stylistic, syntactic, and phonetic concepts of lexicons in equivalent- finding process. Although, it is very difficult and sometimes impossible to create equilibrium and equality at all the given semantic levels and layers, but in order to purpose an equivalent, loyal, exact and correspondent translation to the source text, translator should make his/ her every effort in finding equivalents.  Review of purposed translations from Holy Quran denotes lack of the required and sufficient attention by the respected translators to Translation Equivalence Principle so that among types of lexicons meaning based on which kinds of equivalents may form, translators have generally transferred their referential meaning i.e. meaning in dictionary and lexical denotation while they have usually neglected other semantic layers and categories of lexicons.

Subject of Palestine is neither a local nor an Arabic issue but it is an Islamic subject and all Muslims in the world assume themselves responsible for it. Disasters in Palestine have caused pain in heart of all Muslims throughout the world. This is a land that has been usurped from its owners and became a homeland for those ones who have come there from different points of the world and unlike the interest of proprietors of that land and other Muslims; they have established a government there. Amidst, it may be said that Algerians have comprehended this further and deeper than others, since they had exercised taste of occupation, transgression, pillage and plundering by foreigners. They have been under colonization hegemony for several years that was intended to eliminate their identity and ethnicity. Thus, they may comprehend better than others the Britain and Jewish plots for usurpation of Palestine land. They were victims of colonization as well while they may saw hidden hand of Britain to patronage for establishment of a Jewish government in this land. This may be well tangible in works of Algerian literati. A lot of verses may be found in literary collections and books, which have deal with this subject from different points of view and this reflects their deep comprehension and severe interest toward this part of Islamic land and Holy Qods.

Several attitudes have been always purposed about death in human community. Some people have disliked it while some others typically accepted it. However, what is noticeable is the relation of such views with subject of life. Human often escapes from death and sometime he may tend to it. One of the main motives for acceptance of death is resumption of life. Adoption of such principle that is deeply related to social issues has left widely reflection in Arabic and Persian contemporary verse itself. Verses of “Badr Shakir Al Sayyab” and “Nima Yushij” are some of literary achievements in our time in which manifestation of such concepts may be remarkably seen. They never tolerate life along with abasement and they praise a kind of death which leads to continuity of life while representing a new image of death that will be discussed in this exploration as “Reviving Death”.

Palestinian contemporary writer, Dr. Samira Azzam is one of the pioneers in short story- writing at Arabic and Palestinian literature. The present article deals with a survey on attitude of this writer toward human-by content analysis- and to achieve this objective, rather than documentation and criticism of Arab expert critiques’ comments about works of Samira Azzam, writer’s approach toward human and in stories will be investigated by pondering on characters’ actions in order to represent some of basic aspects of such attitude including belief in dignity and serenity of human’s essence, confrontation of moral good and evil and role of effort and work in realization of human personality. Writer’s sharp-edged precision in life details and portraying human’s correlation are some of noticeable characteristics in her story works.