ARABIC LITERATURE (FACULTY OF LETTERS AND HUMANITIES)
Year:2011 | Volume:3 | Issue:1 (3)|Papers Count:9

No doubt, one way of getting acquainted with different nations and ethnic groups and knowing their sciences, thought patterns and cultures is to translate their works.Jame’a al‐Shawahed, a literary work of Qajar period, by Mohammad Baqer Sharif, is a translation of an anthology of poems. The present article investigates the translation method used in this book. First, literal translation which is the method used by the translator is being dealt with. Then, after discussing the deficiencies of this method, suggested translations are provided.

Abu al-Ala’ al-Ma’arri has presented his specific thought and viewpoint in Arabic classical literature. He lived at the time when Arabic literature was at its zenith of richness and maturity. This literary and thinking figure has affected the literary men after him in differing ways. Contemporary poets, relying on his literature, have promoted their own literary innovations, and thereby have enriched their poetic imagination. Poets like Ahmad Shawqi, Mahmoud Sami al-Baroudi, Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati, Adonis, etc. have followed Abu al-Ala’ al-Ma’arri in distinct ways; moreover, to enrich their own poetry, they have sometimes placed him on pedestal, highlighting the profound aspects of his character or have challenged him.Thus, referring to Abu al-Ala’ in their poetry is an innovative step towards using the rich poetry of the past and contributes to the variety of imagination. Contemporary Arabic poets, therefore, to present their poetic experiences, have used Abu al-Ala’s characteristic aspects in their poems and have been influenced by him.

Human history has been witness to the emergence of great men and women who illustrated the sufferings and wishes of mankind. They have bravely put in hard effort to resist long-standing and reactionary traditions of their own society and to fight oppressors, and at the same time, the comfort-seeking opportunists have endeavored to derail their efforts and to project a tarnished image of these characters. There may be numerous corrupt and oppressive men who have been admired and respected in history and there may also be many great people for whom history has created a false, hated image; one such great man is Abu Nu’as, the accomplished Iranian poet who lived in the second century (AH), during the first Abbasid era; with his genius, he managed to present his lofty views and thoughts within the frame of wine poetry and thereby rebelled against age-old and inadmissible traditions. To attain his goal, he tolerated lots of imputations and was imprisoned several times.Through a re-reading of the life of Abu Nu’as and his scientific and literary character, and relying on significant historical sources, the present paper attempts to present his true character and resolve the ambiguities about him and pave the way for a better understanding of his wine poetry, which belongs to the most important and timeless Arabic poems.

After finishing the collection of language elements which they wanted to restrict to the Arabian Peninsula, after organizing and categorizing them under deliberate subjects which include all the language aspects and finally after fulfilling all those scholastic stages, the syntax scholars found another scholastic stage which they felt obliged to deal with and this stage is ‘cause finding’. They observed that for each form of language and for each issue of the syntax and morphology, there is a cause which facilitates the process of understanding, learning and teaching. They do not insist on the certainty of causes but believed in their probability and uncertainty. It is assumed that the causes mentioned in Sibawayh’s Kitab come from emotions resulting from different speech usages due to diverse meanings and speech conditions. This article intends to explain examples selected from Sibawayh’s Kitab for cause finding of connotations.

The tendency to say things indirectly rather than being explicit is one of the most evident qualities of contemporary Arabic poetry. To achieve this indirectness, the contemporary poets make use of numerous devices including innuendo. The “Jesus after Crucifixion” ode by Sayyab is one the primary examples of this novel literary technique. Since the technique of innuendo is based on the elements of drama and story and the two elements of conflict and dynamism – as two fundamental principles of drama – play the greatest part in the dramatic structure of the story, the success of the poet in utilizing innuendo depends on to what extent the elements of the ode match the said elements as well as to what degree the voice of the poet corresponds to the voice of the favorite protagonist of the story. Sayyab, by selecting the most agonizing part of Jesus’ life and attempting to illustrate the expectation of mankind following that much suffering and pain, he has matched the experience of the contemporary man or his own with the story of Jesus crucifixion – which is always fresh in people’s minds – and relying on the overlap between these two characters, he has managed to promote his personal experience to a universal mankind level.

One of the most common and appealing issues grabbing the attention of the critics of contemporary Arabic literature is innuendo and its applications which are not much attended to by Persian speakers. In this paper we have focused on innuendo and its applications. The questions we have raised and have attempted to respond to include: what is niqab (innuendo) and where do its roots lie? What is the relationship between classical figures and the technique of innuendo? When using innuendo, what principles the poet should consider? How can we illustrate the process of using a classical figure and putting innuendo on his face? When did Arabs get to know this technique and with what mechanism did they turn to this technique? And most importantly, what is the function of this technique in contemporary Arabic poetry? The researcher found out that solely referring to a figure does not mean using innuendo, but it is only the first stage, the second being placing the innuendo on the figure’s face. Innuendo generally concerns classical figures rather than imaginary characters or natural elements. Using the technique of innuendo makes an enormous contribution to indirectly stating ideas and results in a work with a mysterious quality.

Sorrow is one of the poetic subjects which is frequent since the ignorance period through elegiac poems which are full of kindness and sad motions. But since the recent & new era in particular since he romanticism era it gains progress in such a way that it does not only appear through the poetic couplets which illustrate an experience of poetic elegical sense, but also it becomes of potential nature which sheds light on most of the poetic subjects accompanied with sad issue. Though the famous Iraqi poets belong to free verse poetry such as Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, Nazok al-Malaekah and Abdul-Wahhab al-Bayati have been in the beginning of their poetic way toward romanticism, sorrow has become a shinning characteristic in their poetic subjects such as love, nostalgia, death and the like. This article is going to restrict: first, the factors which strengthen the flourishing of romantic sorrow in the poetry of famous poets. Second, the harmony of technical illustrations with the romantic sad expressions and finally tries to show that whether these poets in spite of their diverse attitudes through the poetic passage follow the great romantic poets or not.

This paper examines paradox in the symbols of the poemunsh) dat al-Matar (‘song of rain’), composed by Shakir al-Sayyab. It also investigates how meaning is developed in these symbols. In the symbols in this poetry, paradoxical themes like happiness and grief, rain and drought, and life and death emerge. The onomatopoeia ‘rain’, which forms the central image of this poetry, has the same paradox. The constant tension between these paradoxes, with the steady drop of rain, culminates in life and joy.

Since the beginning of the presence of the holy Qur’an, criticism and rhetoric have received attention in the areas of culture and thought, too. In this respect we can name some literary and rhetorical works like Majaz al-Qur’an by Abu Ubaydah Ma’mar Ibn Muthanna, Ketab al-Fasahah by Abu Hatam Sajestani, E’jaz al-Qur’an by Jahez Basri, Naqd al-Nathr wa Naqd al-She’r by Abu al-Faraj Qudamah ibn Ja’far, al-She’r wa al-Shu’ara by Ibn Qutaybah Dinvari and al-Kamel by Mubarrad.Furthermore, in the fourth century AH, Abdullah Ibn Mu’tazz studied Quranic figures of speech and wrote on the science of rhetoric, Zmedi authored Movazeneh and Abu Helal ‘Askari, in the middle of the fourth century, wrote al-Sana’atain.The role of the Qur’an in criticism and rhetoric has also influenced the focus of writers on issues like rhetoric and balance from Aristotle’s perspective, the mysteries of language, aesthetic skills, syntax and its functions, Quranic sciences as well as the relation between rhetoric and the miraculous inimitability of the Qur’an.This paper studies the role of the Qur’an in criticism, rhetoric, lexis, collocations, form, content, music, imagery, the harmony of form and content, and the features of storytelling and stylistics.