CHAPTER THREE

THE PRESENCE OF KEATS'S ODES IN NAZIK'S POETRY

THE DEFINITION OF THE TERM 'ODE':

Like the term 'Romanticism', the term 'Ode' has been variously defined. It is used in both English and Arabic literature. In English poetry, the Ode is confused with other terms, such as Lyric, Melody, Song, Sonnet and Elegy. In A Dictionary of Literary Terms,⁽¹⁾ J. A. Cuddon defines the ode as:

"(GK 'song') a lyric poem, usually of some length. The main features are an elaborate stanza-structure, a marked formality and stateliness in tone and style (which makes it ceremonious), and lofty sentiments and thoughts. In short, an ode is rather a grand poem; a full-dress poem. However, this said, we can distinguish two basic kinds: the public and private. The public is used for ceremonial occasions, like  funerals, birthdays, state events; the private often celebrates rather intense, personal, and subjective occasions; it is Inclined to be meditative, reflective. Tennyson's Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington is an example of the former; Keats's Ode to a Nightingale, as an example of the latter."

The Ode was differently defined in different literary periods:

"To the Elizabethan, an ode could be a short, light song. In the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, the greater ode established itself in imitation of Pindar, the lesser ode in imitation of Horace. These Classical influences became more diffuse during the Romantic period. Many of our finest odes, both formal and irregular, appeared during the early years of the nineteenth century and imparted an impulse that persisted throughout the Victorian age. But during this age authors began to use the title 'ode' less readily, until in our own century it has been widely abandoned as an enbarrassment …. the finest odes of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats originated in intensely personal impulses. Wordsworth feels that his vision has lost the glory with which it shone when he was young; Coleridge dreads that private unhappiness has cost him his poetic imagination; Shelley longs, despite his weakness and frustration, to preach an optimistic gospel to mankind; and Keats experiences the agonizing discrepancy between his glimpses of an ideal beauty and his actual life of sickness and sorrow. But none of these odes remains merely personal . Each of them develops a complexity such as we should not expect to find, for example, in a song; each of them becomes reflective, even philosophical. Wordsworth discerns grounds for a faith in immortality and finds in his mature outlook a compensation for the loss of his juvenile vision; Coleridge formulates a doctrine of the creative activity of the mind; Shelley makes clear the redemptive nature of the gospel he would preach; and Keats achieves an acceptance of, and a satisfying perception of beauty, in the very process of life itself.⁽²⁾

The word انشودة emerged into modern Arabic poetry as a title for a short lyrical poem, such as Unshūdat al-matar (the ode of rain) of al-Sayyāb and Unshūdat al-salām (the ode of peace) of Nāzik. This word was used by Arab poets, ^CAbdul-Hai believes, after Butrus al-Bustānī's attempt to translate the Bible with Eli Smith in 1848.⁽³⁾

Like 'ode' in English, انشودة is confused with other Arabic terms, such as اغنية (song), ترنيمة (hymn), نغمة، لحن (melody), مرثية (elegy) and نشيد (anthem). These terms are used interchangeably; they commonly share certain qualities; they all mean a poem written in a simple language and style to reflect a personal experience of the author. In Qamūs Ilyās al-^Casrī,⁽⁴⁾ Elias defines the words انشودة and نشيد similarly:

"A song; a hymn; canticle "نشيد .... انشودة ..                       

In A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic,⁽⁵⁾ Hans Wehr treats the two words as the same:

 ….. song; hymn, anthem"انشودة and نشيد "

The word انشودة (ode) is more common in Nāzik's early poems than in her later poems. Words such as اغنية (song), لحن (melody) and مرثية  (elegy) occur in the titles of her early collections, but they do not occur in the later at all, because the western influence decreases.

THE IMPACT OF KEATS'S ODES ON NAZIK'S POETRY:

Keats and Shelley are well known in the Arab literary world. Their poetry, especially the odes, was read by the Arabs, and is still read, admiringly. Generally speaking, Shelley was more admired than Keats, possibly because Arab readers, at the beginning of the 20th century, found him sympathetic to their political stance. His name was associated with his poem Prometheus Unbound (see chapter 1). Keats was known as the poet of truth and beauty (the poet of truth and beauty), a title derived from the final lines of Ode on a Grecian Urn [St. 5]:

      Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all

           Ye know on earth , and all ye need to know,

Keats's odes are more influencial on Nāzik's poetry than Shelley's; Nāzik finds in Keats's odes the themes that suit her personal feelings and poetic purpose; she imitates Keats in a way that does not force her to repress her own poetic personality. Shelley's mythological themes and imagery have a greater impact on Nāzik's poetry than the mythological themes and imagery of Keats (see chapter 4).

COMMON THEMES AND IMAGERY IN NAZIK'S AND KEATS'S POETRY:

Nāzik's and Keats's odes have common aspects; they are as follows:

CONTRASTING THEMES:

The most common contrasting themes in the odes of Nāzik and Keats are: death and life, death and poetry, death and love, death and beauty, pain and pleasure, vision and reality and love and hatred. The theme of death is the core of Nāzik's early poetry. This theme is less common in her later collections. Both Nāzik's and Keats's odes have internal relations; the themes of their odes reveal their spiritual and physical feelings towards natural things in these contrasting themes.

(1) LIFE AND DEATH:

Nāzik's attitude towards life and death changes from one stage of her life to another: in her teenage, she loves life and is horrified by death;⁽⁶⁾ in her young womanhood, she loves life and death equally (see below); in her maturity, she accepts life and death as the natural pattern of human creation (see below).

At the age of 29, Nāzik wrote Ughniyah li-'l-hayāt (1) [st. 2 & 5] (1952), in which she balances life and death in one line; she loves them equally:

فمن سوف يخبرهم أننا            شربنا العذوبة حتى سكرنا

......................

                        *    *    *    *

ومن اجله قد هوينا الحياة          ومن اجله قد عشقنا الغناء

......................

يعشش في تربتينا الجمال          فيا جهل من ظننا اشقياء

(And who will tell them that we drank the sweetness until we become intoxicated? / .... / *  *  *  * / For its sake we have passionately desired life and for its sake we have loved extinction / ...../  Beauty nests in our dust; O how ignorant are those who thought we were destitute!)

This is an imitation of al-Shābbī in Fī zill wādi 'l-mawt (in the shadow of the valley of death) [st. 4]:

واكلنــا التــراب حتــى مللنا           وشربنا الدموع حتى روينا

ونثرنا الاحلام والحب والالام         واليأس والأسى حيث شئنا

(And we have eaten dust until we became bored; we have drunk tears until we quenched our thirst; / and we have scattered dreams, love, pain, despair and grief wherever we wanted.)

Nāzik is clearly fascinated by the Romantic myth of the poet who dies young, the myth that poetic genius is at odds with the world and its possessor is driven almost. inevitably to an early death. It was a myth supported by the historical, coincidence that Byron Shelley and Keats all died young. And it was a myth fostered by the Romantic poets themselves. It is perhaps because of her reading of the myth in Shelley's Adonais, a lament on Keats's death, that she focuses on Keats's premature death.

Both Nāzik and Keats find death loveable. In Ahzān al-shabāb (the sorrows of youth) [st. 28], Nāzik calls deathالموت المحبب (lovable death), because it offers her an escape from melancholy and the pain of life:

سوف القى الموت المحبب روحا          شاعريا يحب صمت التراب

وفــؤادا يرى الممـــات شبــابــا            للمنى والشعور أي شباب

(I shall meet lovable death as a poetic spirit that loves the silence of the dust. / and a heart that thinks death is youth -- what a youth for hopes and feelings!)

In stanza 44, she discribes premature death as blessing:

أفليس الممات في ميعة العمـ         ــر إذن نعمة على الاحياء

(Is not death, then, in the bloom of life a blessing to living beings?)

In this line, Nāzik consciously refers to Keats and other English and Arab Romantics who died young: Byron, Shelley, al-Hamsharī and al-Shābbī. She thinks that she will die young like them. Many of her rapturous contemplations of death seem to look back in their phrasing to the sixth stanza of Keats's Ode to a Nightingale:

        Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

               I have been half in love with easeful Death,

       Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

               To take into the air my quiet breath;

      Now more than ever seems it rich to die ….

Nāzik welcomes death happily because she believes that to die young is a kind of guarantee of her poetic status [st. 29 & 30]:

سوف القاك غير محزونة يا           موت في ميعة الشباب الغريد

وعزائي اني تركت ورائي            لحني السرمدي ملء الوجود

                           *    *    *    *

لست وحدي التي تموت وما زا        لت شبابا لـــم تسقه الانداء

تعست هـــــذه الحياة فكم قـــد          مات في ميعة الصبا شعراء

(I shall meet you without grief in the bloom of warbling youth, O death! / And my solace is that I have left my immortal melody behind me, filling existence. / *  *  * / I am not the only one to die, while still in youth, which the dews have not watered. / This Life has become miserable; how many poets have died in the prime of youth!)

This recalls Keats's 'easeful death' in Ode to a Nightingale [1. 53]; Keats being in love with death and his calling it soft names in 'many a mused rhyme' makes death not an object of terror but something 'easeful' because it delivers human beings from the burden of bitter reality. In stanza 44, death at an early age is represented as a blessing to mortals.

The contrasting themes of life and death in Keats's Ode to Autumn are also found in Nāzik's Ka'ābat al-fusūl al-arba^Cah (the melancholy of the four seasons) [st. 2]:

كل يوم طفل جديد وميت          ودموع تبكي على المأساة

(Every day a new child and a corpse and tears that weep for the tragedy.)

Nāzik's contrasting images of 'a new child' and 'a corpse' suggest that life does not last very long, that the birth of beauty ends in death; this phenomenon is the tragedy of life.

The ideas of life and death are combined in Keats's Ode to Automn through the images of winter and summer which meet in autumn. The ripeness of life and light are associated with summer; decay, death and darkness are associated with winter. Nāzik's and Keats's desires for the permanence of pleasure are not fulfilled. In Ka'ābat al-fusūl al-arba^Cah (the melancholy of the four seasons), happiness and pleasure are naturally terminated by inevitable death. The tragedy of the four seasons is that each of them provokes melancholy because of its peculiar disadvantages; even the beautiful spring has its own tragedy -- the shortness of its duration.

The influence of the theme of death on her is revealed in her version of Gray's Elegy (see chapter 2); her attitude towards death is similar to that of Keats; the passions, sufferings and the vicissitudes of their lives are also similar.

(2) DEATH AND POETRY:

In her article "al-Shi^Cr wa al-mawt" (poetry and death) l954, Nāzik compares al-Shābbī's, al-Hamsharī's, Keats's and Rupert Brook's attitudes towards death; she argues the association of the premature deaths of these poets and their unusual love of death; oversensitivity is a common quality of the three poets. Rupert Brooke's death was different from the others; he died in the Great War. Unlike Keats he does not fall in love with death; he loves it as a friend; he sees death as a natural thing. His relationship with death has no sharp sensitivity, which we find in poets such as al-Shābbī, Keats and al-Hamsharī. Nāzik believes that al-Shābbī wants to experience death because he is not terrtfied by it, as in Fī zill wādī 'l-mawt (in the shadow of the valley of death) I932 [St. 5]:

"جف سحر الحياة, يا قلبي الباكي،

فهيا، نجرب الموت .., هيا ..!"

(The magic of life has dried up, O my weeping heart! / So come on, let us experience death, come on!)

In this article, she focusses on al-Shābbī's association of youth, hope, pessimism, grief and death in That al-qhusūn (under the branches) [1. 10 & 22]:

فلمن كنت تنشدين؟ فقالت:                للضياء البنفسجي الحزين"

"للشباب السكران, للامل المعبود,     لليأس، للأسى، للمنون"

(So to whom used you to sing? She said: To the sad violet light, / to intoxicated youth, to worshipped hope, despair, sorrow and death.)

She also concentrates on Keats's attitude towards death, quoting piecemeal from his poetry:

(1) from Ode to the Nightingale, she quotes lines 52-3:

            I have been half in love with easeful death,

 Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

كنت نصف عاشق للموت المريح فناديته بأسماء عذبة في اناشيد عديدة

(I was half in love with restful death, so I called it with sweet names in many odes.)

and line 55:

      Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

الآن اكثر من أي وقت آخر، يبدو ان من الخصوبة ان اموت

(It is now rather than at any other time that it seems fertile for me to die.)

(2) from Ode on Indolence, stanza 1, lines 3-5:

     And one behind the other stepped serene,

          In placid sandals, and in white robes graced;

  They passed, like figures on a marble urn,

قال هذا وخطا بخفة، في لون من المرح المملوء بالموت

(He said this and stepped lightly with a kind of joy laden with death.)

(3) from Ode on Melancholy, stanza 3:

        She dwells with beauty - beauty that must die;

إنها تعيش مع الجمال، الجمال الذي يجب ان يموت

(She lives with beauty, beauty that must die.)

(4) from Endymion, lines 234-5 of Book i:

        Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death

       of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness;

مولد ازهار غير منظورة، وحياتها, وموتها في سكينة عميقة

(The birth of unseen flowers, their lives and deaths in deep tranquillity.)

and lines 364-466 of book ii:

       O did he ever live, that lonely man,

    Who loved -- and music slew not?  ....

أو اه، هل وجد قط ذلك الانسان

المنفرد الذي احب ولم تقتله الموسيقى

(Oh, Did that solitary man exist who loved and whom Music did not kill?)

(5) from Hyperion, lines 28l-283 of Book ii:

     A living death was in each gush of sounds,

      Each family of rapturous hurried notes ….

كان هناك موت حي في كل انبجاسة من النغم

(There was a living death in every overflowing of melody.)

(6) from Sleep and Poetry, lines 218-19:

         To some lone spirits who could proudly sing

         Their youth away, and die?  ...............

إلى بعض الارواح المنفردة التي استطاعت ان تبعثر شبابها

في الغناء وتموت

(To some of the single souls which were able to squander their youth in singing, and then die.)

(7) from Why did I laugh to-night, lines 13-14:

     Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed,

        But Death intenser -- Death is life's high meed.

    الشعر والمجد والجمال اشياء عميقة حقا ولكن الموت اعمق. الموت مكافأة الحياة الكبرى.

(Poetry, glory and beauty are truly profound things, but death is more profound. Death is the great reward of life.)

The rest seems to be an attempt to summarize Keats's attitude towards death. Nāzik conceives of Keats's sense of Beauty in terms of glory and poetry; both are significant in the lives of the two poets, but death is much more significant to them than anything else because it is the most powerful thing in the world, and it is the end of everything, especially sorrows.

Al-Hamsharī, like Keats, loves death; he wrote a long poem called Shāti' al-a^Crāf (the shore of conventions) – a song to death in which death is loved at every moment. Then she argues for Rupert Brooke's friendship with death in his poems Dead Men's Love, Ambarvalia and Sonnet: Oh death will find me, long before I tire; his attitude towards death is different from the others in that he regards death as a beginning, not an end. This reminds her of Keats's Hyperion:

وهذا يعيد الى ذاكرتنا قصيدة كيتس الغذة هايبيرون (Hyperion) وفيها نجد (ابولو) الاله الجديد لا يبلغ مرتبة الالوهية الا بعد ان يموت (die into life) وبهذا يكون الموت خطوة نحو الحياة الكبرى.

(This recalls Keats's unique poem Hyperion, in which we find that Apollo, the new deity, does not achieve his full godhead until he dies (die [sic] into life). In this way death becomes a step towards greater life.)⁽⁸⁾

Nāzik believes in the passionate love which is implied in solitude, love and music; she refers to Keats's heroes, such as Porphyro and Madeline in The Eve of St. Agnes, Lamia and Lycius in Lamia, Endymion and Cynthia in Endymion and Saturn in Hyperion:⁽⁹⁾

وهكذا نجد ان (بورفيرو) و (مادلين) و (لاميا) و (ليسيوس) و (اندميون) و (سينثيا) و (ساترن) وغيرهم كاناو كلهم متوحشون في حبهم وكرههم وسخطهم ورضاهم, وقلما كانوا يعرفون الوسط. إنهم أناس يعيشون بعواطفهم ويأكلون قلوبهم.

(And that is why we find that Porphyro, Madeline, Lamia, Lycius, Endymion, Cynthia, Saturn, and the like are wild in their love, hatred, anger, and satisfaction. Seldom do they know moderation. They are persons that live on their passions and eat their hearts.)

(3) PAIN AND PLEASURE:

Nāzik and Keats are fascinated by the opposites of joy and sorrow. Pain and pleasure are the parallel themes of Nāzik's life; they affected her attitude toward life at an early age. She suffered from many problems, personal, social and political, which, ultimately, made her very pessimistic; she retreated from painful reality into the poetry of lonely communion with nature. Nāzik encountered two personal problems in her life: the death of her relatives, especially her mother, and her frustration in love. In "al-Shi^Cr fī hayātī",⁽¹⁰⁾ she lists four reasons for the sorrowful tone that veils Ma'sāt al-hayāt (the tragedy of life) and ^CAshiqat al-layl:

(1) her rejection of the idea of death,

(2) her protest against the British colonization of Iraq and her hatred of the Government of Nūrī al-Sa^Cīd and ^CAbd al-Ilāh

(3) her sorrow at the negative position of woman in Arab society,

(4) her hatred of sex and marriage.

As an idealistic person she was looking for perfection in vain. Frustrated in her quest, she so1ated herself from other people. Her isolation took a very romantic form: Nature was her best friend. She trusted the rivers, the night (see chapter 1) and the birds rather than human beings. For her pleasure and pain seem to be mutually inclusive; she cannot experience one without the necessity of involving the other. This is markedly similar to Keats, who seemed almost to feel pain and pleasure as entities in themselves rather than aspects of feeling. He accepted sorrow and pain as equal intensities with joy. Keats encountered many problems that made him grieve:

(1) the reviewers' mauling of Endymion,

(2) the removal of his brother George and his wife,

(3) the fatal decline of his brother Tom.

In Ode on Melancholy [st. iii], we find the combination of pain and sorrow:

         Ay in the very temple of Delight

            Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine,

       Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue

     Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine ….

Pleasure makes Nāzik and Keats ebullient, pain leaves them despondent. The positive response of Nāzik is expressed when she displays her physical pleasure in certain beverages, such as: رحيق (nectar) as In Ughniyat layālī 'l-sayf (the song of the summer nights) [st. 1. & 5]; كروم (vines = Wine) as in Ughniyah li-'l-hayāt (the song of life) [St. 4] شهد; (honey) as in Ughniyah li-'l-qamar (a song to the moon) [st. 1]. The effects of these liquids are symbolic in the poems of Nāzik and Keats.

Nāzik's physical pleasure is displayed in Ughniyat layālī 'l-sayf (1952) [st. 1]:

      يا هدوءا مطمئنا

 يا فضاءا مرحا لدن البريق

يشرب الانجم كأسا من رحيق

      يا رؤى تقطر لونا

(O restful quietude! / O cheerful space, that lightly flickers, imbibing the stars like a cup of nectar! / O visions which drip with colour!)

In Endymion [Book ii, 1. 756-161], Keats uses similar symbols --nectar and wine-- to suggest the intensity of Endymion's feelings towards the moon:

        Enchantress! tell me by this soft embrace,

        By the most soft completion of thy face,

     Those lips, O slippery blisses, twinkling eyes

    And by these tenderest, milky sovereignties --

    These tenderest -- and by the nectar-wine,

     The passion –''O doved Ida the divine!

     …………………………………….

Nāzik developed in her poetry a cult of melancholy; there are English Romantic influences at work in her development of this cult. In Lahn al-nisyān (the melody of oblivion)[st. 3], pain creates pleasure which is, to her, dearer than music:

ولم الالم

يبقى رحيقي المذاق، أعز حتى من نغم؟

(Why does pain / remain my tasted nectar, dearer even than melody?)

Pain for Nāzik is parallel to Keats's melancholy; the words are interchangeable because pain creates melancholy and melancholy creates pain. In Ode on Melancholy [st. iii], Keats's Melancholy has a 'sovran shrine' in 'the temple of delight'. In Ode to Psyche [1. 50-4], pleasure and pain are mingled together:

       Yes. I will be thy priest, and build a fane

             In some untrodden region of my mind,

  Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,

           Instead of pines shall murmur in wind  ….

(4) VISION AND REALITY:

In her youth, as a Romantic poet, Nāzik prefers the world of dreams to that of rea1iy. In al-Khayāl wa 'l-wāqi^C (1945) she is bored with her bitter reality, and decides to live in the world of imagination (see chapter 1). In Ilā 'l-shā^Cir Kīts (to the poet Keats) (1947), which is a version of Keats's Ode to a Nightingale, she remains throughout the poem half within and half without the world of dreams. In this poem, her realistic attitude is stronger than Keats's because, from the beginning to the end of the poem, we are told that she is aware of her vision and reality. She knows herself as a 'dreaming girl' and at the same time created from 'water and clay' [st. 2]:

حياتي، يا شاعري، كلها

حياة فتاة من الحالمين

إلهية الروح لكنها

على الارض حفنة ماء وطين

(The whole of my lIfe, O my Poet, / is the life of a dreaming girl, / whose soul is divine, but / on earth she is a handful of water and clay.)

The 'dreamy soul' and 'a dreaming girl' recall Keats's ideal world of imagination and the visionary song of the nightingale The main themes in the final stanzas of the two poems are different. At the end of the poem, Keats awakes from his dream after bidding farewell to the nightingale [st. viii]:

         Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

             As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.

In stanza 8, although Nāzik knows that she is deceived by her dream, she keeps searching for it:

أفتش عن حلمي المتعب

تخادعني كل قمرية

(I search for my wearied dream, / deceived by every turtle dove.)

Nāzik begins and ends Ilā 'l-shā^Cir Kīts by imitating the ideas in the opening and the final stanza of Keats's Ode to a Nightingale. In this poem, Keats describes himself sitting under a tree, listening to the melodious songs of a nightingale. He does not envy the happiness of the nightingale, but is rather happy in the nightingale's happiness. But to feel the bird's joy makes him intensely conscious of his own sorrows. Keats is not the only poet to whom Nāzik dedicates her life. In Unshūdat al-abadiyyah (the ode of immortality), she dedicates her life to the Russian composer, Tchaikovsky, on the occasion of the forty-fifth anniversary of his death. in Ilā 'l-shā^Cir Kīts [st. 1], she dedicates her life and dreams to Keats:

حياتي يا شاعري وآلام روحي الحزين

واحلامي المرة الذاويه

وموكب ايامي الذاهبات

واطياف ايامي الآتيه

(My life, O my poet!, and the pains of my sorrowful soul, / and my bitter and faded dreams, / and the procession of my passing days, / and the phantoms of my coming days.)

In Unshūdat al-abadiyyah (the ode of eternity) [st. 1], she loves her life for the sake of Tchaikovsky's melodies, whose music is as eternal as the songs of the bulbul:

سأحب الحياة من اجل الحا           نك يا بلبلي الحزين وأحيـا

سأرى في النجوم من نور أحلا         مك ظـــــلا مخلــدا أبديا

(I will love life for the sake of your melodies, O my sad bulbul, and I will live. / I will see in the stars an eternal shadow from the light of your dreams.)

IMAGERY:

The most common natural images in Nāzik's odes are: the birds, the winds, the river, the sun and the moon. These images, like those in English Romantic poetry, stand as symbols for art in general and poetry in particular.

(A) THE BIRDS AND THE WIND:

(1) THE BIRDS IN ARABIC POETRY:

Birds are the creatures that most compel the Arab poets' attention; wild birds, such as: صقر (falcon), عقاب (eagle), نسر (vulture), قطاة (sand grouse), هدهد (hoopoe) ,باز  (hawk),  نعامة (ostrich), غراب (crow), بوم (owl), dominate traditional Arabic poetry; and cage birds, such as حمامة (pigeon), عصفور (sparrow), كنار (canary), قمرية (turtle dove), شحرور (thrush, blackbird), بلبل (bulbul) and عندليب, هزار (nightingale), dominate modern poetry. The names of some of these birds appear to be used without strict scientific regard for taxonomy. The image of the bird is dominant in Arabic Romantic poetry; it is often associated with freedom, especially political freedom. Like the English Romantics, the Arab Romantics display their wish to fly like birds to escape bitter reality. Their references to birds derive from Wordsworth's Cuckoo, Shelley's Skylark, and Keats's Nightingale. al-^CAqqād borrows for his curlew's features Wordsworth's green linnet and cuckoo, and Keats's nightingale. In Tradition and English and American Influence in Arabic Poetry,^{(11) C}Abdul-Hai compares al-^CAqqād's curlew to Shelley's skylark and Keats's nightingale. Like Shelley's skylark, al-^CAqqād, in al-Karawān al-mujaddid (the repetitious curlew) [st. 6], describes the bird as a teacher:

     علمتني في الامس سرك كله:           سر السعادة في الوجود الفاني

(You taught me all your secret yesterday -- the secret of happiness in mortal existence.)

Al-^CAqqād's bird Is also parallel to Keat's bird as an "immortal Bird, which sings in a summer night in ‘full-throated ease":

حادي الظلام على جنح صاعد        يا ارض اصغي, يا كواكب شاهدي!

..............................

لهجت طيور بالضحى وتكفلت           بالليل حنجرة المغني الخالد!

..................................

عاهدت هذا الصيف لست بواهب         سمعي سواك، فهل تراك معاهدي؟

(Urging the darkness on rising wing. O earth, listen! O stars, see! /…. / Birds are devoted to the morning, but the throat of the immortal singer takes on the duty of the night. / .... / I made a compact this summer that I would not give ear to any but you, so do you think that you can make a compact with me?)

The most dominant birds that appear in modern Iraqi poetry are: the turtle dove (al-Qumriyyah), the pigeon, the nightingale, the bulbul, the sparrow and the owl. Very often the Iraqi poets do not specify the kinds of birds in their poems; they refer to them in general, associating them with freedom and poetry. In Shā^Cir fī sijn (a poet in a prison) (1910), ^CAlī al-Sharqī focusses on the strong relationship between the poet and the bird. He wishes to be as free as the birds:

لو كان ربي يعطي       الحياة بالتخيير

لما اردت حياة          إلا حياة الطيور

بين البلابل اشدو        ازف بين الصقور

كم من مليك تمنى       حرية العصفور

(If my lord were to allow (us) to choose our lives, / I should not wish for any life but that of the birds, / singing among the bulbuls and being wed (? -- hastening -- opening my wing?) among hawks. / How many slaves have wished for the freedom of the sparrow!)

In al-Sāfī 'l-Najafī's al-Shi^Cr wa 'l-yuyūr (Poetry and birds) [1. 4 & 5], the bird is associated with the night, and poetry:

ولو لم اننا لم نسهر الليل ضلة         افقنا جميعا والطيور تغرد

وتغريد هذا الطير شعر ملحن          وليس يعيه فكرنا المتبلد

(And even if we do not stay awake all night through anxiety, we shall wake together with the birds singing. / The warbling of this bird is melodious poetry, and is not perceived by our dull thought.)

In ^CUsfūrat al-wādī (the sparrow of the valley) [1. 3-4], al-Zahāwī's bird suggests the poet; the song of the bird is sad and pleasurable at the same time:

تردد في خير لحن سمعته                وتنشد شعرا على خير انشاد

فيا حسن شعر محزن مطرب معا       ويا حسن لحن ثم يا حسن ترداد 

(You repeat the best melody that I have ever heard, and recite poetry in the best possible way; / O the beauty of poetry that brings both grief and joy! O the beauty of melody! Finally, O the beauty of recitation!)

The nightingale (العندليب) is one of the most loveable birds in Arabic poetry because of the sweetness of its voice. Al-Zahāwī crowns it the king of the birds:

إنما العندليب والصوت منه           حين يشدو كلاهما لي حبيب

ملك الطير كلها في الاغاني          فله التاج وحده والقضيب

(The nightingale and the sound coming from it when it sings are both dear to me. / The king of all the birds in songs; the crown and the sceptre are his alone.)

The association of the nightingale with the poet derives from Shelley's A Defence of Poetry: ⁽¹²⁾

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why."

(2) THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BIRDS IN NAZIK'S POETRY:

Nāzik refers to many kinds of birds in her poetry; the turtle-dove, the nightingale and the bulbul appear frequently in her poetry; the hawk, the owl, and the eagle appear occasionally. They are seen in many places, such as brooks, houses, rocks, and the branches of the trees; In Fī dhikrā mawlidī (on my birthday) [st. 4], they are seen at home:

كالعصافير أملأ الدار لهوا         وغناء واستحب جنوني

(Like the sparrows I fill the house with sport and song, and I love my madness.)

In Fī 'l-rīf (in the countryside) of Ughniyah li-'l-insān (2) [st. 27], al-qumrī (the turtle-dove) is seen beside the brooks:

ويغني القمري تجري السواقي       ويلاقي الضياء تلة زنبق

(The turtle dove sings, the watercouses run and the light meets a mass of lilies.)

Nāzik's feeling is united with the melody of the birds' songs. When she is happy she finds happiness in everything, when al-qumrī sings, everything in nature, such as watercourses, lilies and light, looks fine: when she is depressed, the happy melody of the bird does not catch her attention; she hears only the sad tunes of the songs of the birds, which remind her of her sorrowful life. In Ma'sāt al-hayāt [st. 42], the songs of the birds are no longer a palliative for her despair:

أين شدو الطيور ما عدت القى         في صفاه من يأس قلبي خلاصا

(Where is the singing of the birds? I no longer find in its purity release from my heart's despair.)

In Ughniyah li-'l-insān (1) [st. 47], too, the song of the bird is no longer the healer of her wound:

وغناء الطيور لم يعد الا             ن شفاء لأدمعي وخلاصا

(The singing of the birds is now no more a cure and release for my tears.)

Many kinds of birds are referred to in Keats's poetry, but four occur with considerable frequency; the nightingale, the swan, the dove and the eagle. Each one of these represents a special quality:

"In the majority of Keatsian contexts, the swan represents gracefulness, the dove sweet innocence, the eagle fierce and purposeful strength, and the nightingale song."⁽¹³⁾

(3) AL-QUMRIYYAH (THE TURTLE DOVE) AND THE NIGHTINGALE AS SYMBOLS Of POETRY:

Throughout the history of Arabic poetry, classical and modern, the image of the dove has always been used to denote nostalgia and parting with one's beloved and one's home.⁽¹⁴⁾ The birds, especially the turtle-dove, have a significant role in Nāzik's poetry; in general, they suggest freedom and happiness. al-Qumriyyah (the turtle-dove) appears frequently in Nāzik's poetry; it even replaces many other birds, such as the nightingale in her version of Keats's ode to a Nightingale and the owl in her version of Gray's Elegy. She prefers it to other birds, probably because she is more familiar with it; the song of Nāzik's turtle-dove reminds her of the happy song of Keats's nightingale on the one hand, and the sorrow of her life on the other hand.

Nāzik's qumriyyah is comparable to Keats's nightingale; the similarity between them is that Nāzik's and Keats's birds stand as symbols for poetry. Nāzik compares the song of the nightingale with Keats's ode; the song and Keats's ode are both immortal. The difference is that al-Qumriyyah, in Nāzik's version of Ode to a Nightingale, is aware of the sorrow of human existence, whereas Keats's nightingale is unaware of sorrows. In the fifth stanza, she asks the nightingale to describe Keats's sighs and self-destructive grief, his sorrow when he sat keeping vigil, his dreariness and utter hopelessness, and what he said on his death-bed. She continues to ask the bird to describe that night for the remainder of the poem.

In Fī 'l-rīf (in the countryside) of Ma'sāt al-hayāt [st. 40], the turtle-dove does not know anything about the misery of life:

ويعود القمري يصدح جذلا          ن كأن ليس في الحياة شقاء

(And the turtle-dove returns singing joyfully, as if there were no misery in life.)

Whereas Nāzik tends to represent the song of the turtle-dove as happy, in al-Zahāwī's al-Rabī^C wa 'l-tuyūr (Spring and birds) [st. 19], the turtle-doves are sorrowful:

والقماري حاضنات فروعا         مبديات بسجعهن خشوعا

يتشاكين بينهن الولوعا             وانا صامت اصب دموعا

                  هن مني على الخدود جواري

(And the turtle doves are embracing branches, and voicing humility in their rhymed prose. / They complain to each other of their desire, while I am silent, shedding tears; / they are running on my cheeks.)

In Ode to a Nightingale [1. 21-4], Keats wishes to be as happy as the nightingale:

     Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

                What thou among the leaves hast never known,

In To a Skylark [1. 71-76], Shelley is surprised at the happiness of the skylark:

     What objects are the fountains

            Of thy happy strain?

     What fields, or waves, or mountains?

           What shapes of sky or plain?

         What love of thine own kind? what

              ignorance of pain?

(4) DISEMBODIED VOICE:

Following the English, the Arab Romantic Poets very often describe the bird's voice as disembodied. In A Defence of Poetry, Shelley describes the poet as a nightingale who sings in darkness; "his auditors are men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician," (see above).⁽¹⁵⁾ In al-Layl yā karawān (the night, O curlew!) [st. 2], al-^CAqqād's bird, like Shelley's, is an 'unbodied' voice:

صوت ولا جثمان         لحن ولا عيدان

(A voice and no body, a melody and no lutes.)

Nāzik's imagery of birds is visual rather than auditory. In Ughniyah li-'l-insān (1) [st. 168], she sees birds as malevolent:

وطيورا شوهاء حاقدة الانـ             ــغام مملوءة الصدى بغضاء

(And birds which are ugly and spiteful-tuned, their echo filled with hatred.)

In al-Bahth ^Can al-sa^Cādah (looking for happiness) of Ma'sāt al-hayāt (2) [st. 23], the birds are to be found either in their nests, on a large tree, or among the rocks:

حيث يحيا الغراب، والبلبل المو           هوب يهوي في عشه المضفور

ويغني البوم البغيض على الدو            ح ويثوي القمري بين الصخور

(Where the crow lives and the gifted bulbul drops into its nest of twisted twigs; / And the hateful owl sings on the large tree and the turtle-dove nests among the rocks.)

An example of an auditory image of the birds is in Dhikrayāt al-tufūlah [the memories of childhood], of Ughniyah li-'l-insān ⁽²⁾ [st. 14]:

أين لحن الطيور؟ لم يعد الآ         ن اشتياقا وحرقة في فؤادي

(Where is the melody of the birds? it is no longer longing and burning in my heart.)

In Khawātir masā'iyyah (evening thoughts) [st. 4], Nāzik's turtle-dove, like Keats's nightingale, is unseen; she listens to the song of the turtle-dove from a distance:

أصيخ الى همسات اليمام

وأسمع في الليل وقع المطر

وأنات قمرية في الظلام

تغني على البعد بين الشجر

(I listen to the whispers of the pigeons; / And I hear the failing of the rain at night. / And the moans of a turtle dove in darkness, singing at a distance among the trees.)

Nāzik's turtle-dove in the above poems and in Ilā 'l-shā^Cir Kīts [st. 4], and Keats's nightingale in Ode to a Nightingale [st. iv] are associated with the night:

    Already with thee! tender is the night,

           And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

In English Romantic poetry, birds tend to be invisible; Keats's, Wordsworth's and Shelley's birds are unseen, so that what the poet hears is a disembodied voice, a song which has no connection with physical or material realities.

Examples of this are Wordsworth's To a cuckoo [1. 21-24], in which the bird is unseen:

     To seek thee did I often rove

     Through woods and on the green;

     And thou wert still a hope, a love;

     Still long'd for, never seen!

In Shelley's To a Skylark [1. 19-20], the bird is also unseen:

        In the broad daylight

  Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy

            shrill delight,

In Ode to a Nightingale [st. v & vi], Keats cannot see what surrounds him, nor can he see the nightingale; he can only listen to her songs:

         I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

               Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

               …………………………………….

                                  *  *  *  *

         Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

              I have in love with easeful Death,

The relation between the singer and the listener in Endymion [Book 3, 1. 470-474] is expressed in the bird song which comes from 'coverts innermost' of the forest:

          And birds from coverts innermost and drear

         Warbling for very Joy mellifluous sorrow -

          To me new born delights!

(5) THE WIND AS A SYMBOL OF_POETRY:

The paradoxical reconciliation of life and death in Shelley's Ode to the West Wind is admired by the Arabs. Some Arab poets modify Shelley's poem because it is difficult to reconcile it with the meteorological conditions of their own countries. When they imitate or translate it, they very often refer to the wind without specifying which kind of wind it is. Sometimes they refer to Rīh al-shimāl (the north wind) as in al-Sayyāb's Ri'ah tatamazzaq (a lung splitting) [st. 4] (see below) and al-Bayyātī's al-Hadīqah al-mahjūrah (the desserted village) [st. 1] (see below). The north wind in classical Arabic is always cold and dry, the source of hardship, and even death.⁽¹⁶⁾

Nāzik, in her version of Ode to a Nightingale [st. 3], refers to Rīh al-shimāl, which is a winter wind, whereas Shelley's is an autumnal wind. She intermingles the winter wind with the songs of the nightingale:

أناشيدك الخالدات العذاب

نشيدي واغنيتي الهاتفه

فكم ليلة من ليالي الشتاء

دفعت بها ضجة العاصفه

(Your immortal and sweet odes, / my ode and my calling song -- / how many nights in winter / have I driven off the noise of the storm by means of them!)

In Unshūdat al-abadiyyah, (the ode of immortality), she combines the wind with the poet and night [st. 3]:

وإذا ثارت العواصف في الليـ        ـل وراء الحقل الرهيب الدجي

لمست روحي المشوقة فيها          ذكريات من روحك الناري

(And if the storms rise at night beyond the fearful dark field, / memories of your fiery soul then touch my soul that is filled with longing.)

In Sawt al-tashā'um (the sound of pessimism) [st. 1], she listens to the sound of the wind:

وقفت عند شاطئ النهر تصغي         لأنين الرياح والامواج

(She stood by the band of the river listening to the moans of the winds and the waves.)

instead of listening to the sound of the nightingale as in Ilā-shā^Cir Kīts [st. 4]:

وقفت احدق عند النهر

أصيخ الى صوت قمرية

(I stood gazing by the river and listening to the voice of a turtle-dove.)

In Qays wa Laylā (Qays and Layla) [st. 10], Nāzik associates poetry with the wind and the bird, and Qays b. al-Mulawwah with 'the sigh of the wind' and 'the melancholy voice of the owl':

ليس تبكيه غير تنهيدة الريـ          ـح وصوت البوم الكئيب دموع

(Tears are not shed for him except the sigh of the wind and the melancholy voice of the owl.)

In Naghamāt murta^Cishah (tremulous tunes) (1946) [st. 3], we find references to Keats, and again a bird's song is associated with the wind:

ذهب النهار بشاعري، بنشيده

وبقيت في غسق الظلام القاتم

أرنو ولا شيء يروق لناظري

وأصيخ، أين ملاحني وملاحمي؟

          *    *    *    *

.............................

لا شيء غير الريح تعصف في الدجى

لا شيء غير تنهدي وبكائيا

(The day took away my poet and his ode, / and I remained in the pitch-black darkness. / I look intently, but nothing pleases my eye; / I listen, (to discover) where my melodies and epics are. / * * * / .... / There is nothing but the wind blowing in the darkness, nothing but my sighing and weeping.)

In this poem, she associates Ode to a Nightingale with the wind without specifying which sort of wind it is; she associates the wind with life, whereas al-Sayyāb associates it with death. To Shelley, the wind is a preserver and a destroyer at the same time; the destructive power of the wind silences the songs of the palaces, as in lines 13 & 14 in the fifth stanza of the first part of Ode to the West Wind:

         Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

          Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

The main theme in Ode to the West Wind is that the west wind is both destroyer and preserver; it scatters the withered leaves to hasten a new birth.

The association of the song of the nightingale with the storm in the above two examples suggests that Nāzik contrasts two opposing forces -- the power of art which is presented in the song of the turtle-dove, and the power of her manic depression, represented by the noisy storm. Sometimes the power of art is stronger than the wind, therefore Nāzik's and Keats's poems are stronger than the storm. Sometimes Nāzik is horrified by the Wind, as in Ughniyah li-'l-insān (1) [st. 3]:

صرخات الاعصار ايقظت الرعــ          ـب بقلب الطبيعة المدلهم

(The cries of the tornado awoke horror in the gloomy heart of nature)

Although she loves. Nature and trusts many natural things such as rivers, birds, and flowers, she never trusts the winds, despite the delicacy of the wind on some occasions, as when it passes over the sea; the wind is soft but remains deceitful. In Kalimāt (words) (1952) [st. 1], she demonstrates her negative feelings towards the wind. She personifies the wind because it reminds her of her cunning lover, who does not fulfil his promise to her:

شكوت الى الريح وحدة قلبي وطول انفرادي

فجاءت معطرة بأريج ليالي الحصاد

..................................

وقالت: لأجلك كان العبير ولون الوهاد

.................................

       وصدقتها ثم جاء المساء الطويل

        ................................

       فساءلت ليلي: أحق حديث الرياح؟

       فرد الدجى ساخر القسمات

       (أصدقتها؟ إنها كلمات.)

(I complained to the wind of the loneliness of my heart and the length of my isolation, / and it came wafting the perfumed scent of the harvest nights / …. / and said: "For your sake was the perfume and the colour of the abysses" / …. / and I believed it, then the long evening came / …. / and I asked my night: "is the winds' story true?" / and the gloominess answered with sarcastic features / "Do you believe it? It is only words.")

In Laylah mumtirah (a rainy night) (1946) [st. 8], the role of

the wind is that of a betrayer and destroyer:

قد كان في قلبي امان يا رياح فخنتها

                             قد كان في هذا المساء مفاتن فمحوتها

(There were longings in my heart, but you have betrayed them, O winds! / There were charms in this evening but you have effaced them.)

In Sawsanah ismuhā 'l-Quds (A lily called al-Quds) (1973) [st. 3], the role of the wind is again that of a destroyer:

وتأتي الرياح وتمسح جنتنا الضائعه

وتخبو امانينا، وامتداداتها الشاسعه

(And the winds come and wipe out our lost paradise, / and our longings and their wide extensions die away.)

In Fī ^Cālam al-shu^Carā' (in the world of poets) [st. 16], the wind is of benefit to the poet and not detrimental; it is a preserver more than a destroyer; it inspires the poet to write his poetry:

إنه الشاعر الطليق الذي يغــ          ــزل همس الرياح لحنا ثريا

(He is the free poet who spins the whisper of the winds into a rich melody.)

The wind and the birds in Nāzik's poetry have a common quality, in that they are both ignorant of human misery. In Lahn al-nisyān is (the melody of oblivion) [st. 5], the wind is ignorant of the poetess's sorrows:

ولم الرياح

لم تدري حتى الآن أن لنا جراح؟

(And why have the winds / not known, until now, that we have wounds?)

In Fī 'l-rīf of Ughniyah li-'l-insān (2) [st. 33 & 36], the turtle-dove is unaware of the misery of the poor:

ليس يدري القمري ما يفعل الجو           ع بأهل الأكواخ كل شتاء

..................................

                                     *    *    *

ليس يدري القمري لا ليس يدري           ما وراء الاكواخ من حرمان

(The turtle-dove does not know what hunger does to the people of the cottages every winter / …. / *  *  * / The turtle-dove does not know, no, it does not know what deprivation is behind the cottages.)

KEATS'S "ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE", AND  SHELLEY'S
"ODE TO THE WEST WIND" IN NAZIK'S POETRY:

Very often we find modern Arab poets combining birds and the winds in the same poem; naturally the birds are associated with the winds; however, the combination of these two natural elements seems, I think, to be deliberate. Ode to the West Wind and Ode to a Nightingale are the best known of English Romantic poems in Arabic; Keats's Ode to a Nightingale and Shelley's Ode to the West Wind were translated several times into Arabic. ^CAbdul-Hai, in "A Bibliography of Arabic Translations of English and American Poetry (l830-l970)"⁽¹⁷⁾ gives a list of Arabic versions of Keats's odes: 3 versions of Ode to a Nightingale, 2 versions of Ode on a Grecian Urn, and single versions of:

(1) Ode: Bards of Passion and of Mirth,

(2) Ode to Psyche,

(3) Ode on Indolence,

(4) Ode on Melancholy, and

(5) Ode to Autumn.

^CAbdul-Hai, in this bibliography, and Jīhān Ra'ūf, in Shīlī fī 'l-adab al-^CArabī fī Misr,⁽¹⁸⁾ presents lists of Arabic versions of Shelley's odes. ^CAbdul-Hai presents 9 versions of To a skylark, Jīhān presents 26 versions of this poem, ^CAbdul-Hai gives 4 versions of Ode to the West wind, Jīhān gives 12 versions, ^CAbdul-Hai gives 4 versions of To the Moon, Jīhān Ra'ūf gives 14, ^CAbdul-Hai gives 2 versions of To Night, Jīhān gives 3.

NAZIK'S "ILA 'L-SHA^CIR KITS" AND AL-SAYYAB'S "RI'AH TATAMAZZAQ":

Nāzik's Ilā 'l-shā^Cir Kīts, and al-Sayyāb's Ri'ah Tatamazzaq (a lung collapses) are imitations of Keats's Ode to a Nightingale. Nāzik's version is a confessed imitation, whereas al-Sayyāb's version is much freer. Nāzik tells the reader in the introduction to the poem that she derives her poem from Keats's Ode to a Nightingale, whereas al-Sayyāb writes his poem idependently, using a different technique and style; he finds a particularly personal relationship with Keats by recalling his own experience of tuberculosis.

In the first stanza of Ri'ah tatamazzaq, al-Sayyāb combines elements from Keats's Ode to a Nightingale and Shelley's Ode to the West Wind in a manner which was to prove very influential for the Arab Romantics:

الداء يثلج راحتي، ويطفئ الغد .. في خيالي

ويشل أنفاسي، ويطلقها كأنفاس الذبال

تهتز في رئتين يرقص فيهما شبح الزوال

مشدودتين الى ظلام القبر بالدم والسعال ..

(The disease freezes my palm and extinguishes tomorrow .. in my imagination; / It dries up my breaths and releases them like the breaths of wicks. / They tremble in two lungs where the ghost of extinction dances, / (lungs) tied to the darkness of the grave by blood and coughing ..)

This recalls the atmosphere of Keats's lines 1 & 23 & 26:

        My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains ….

                                    [1.1]

         The weariness, the fever, and the fret ….

                                  [1. 23]

       Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin, and dies ….

                                  [1. 26]

Like Nāzik and Keats, al-Sayyāb begins his poem with the fact of his suffering. The difference in the attitudes of Nāzik and al-Sayyāb is that the former concentrates on the opposition between vision and reality, whereas the latter concentrates on his illness. Al-Sayyāb's poem explains the relation between himself and death, whereas Nāzik's poem explains the triangular relationship between herself, Keats, and death. In stanza 4, Nāzik spends the night standing by the river and listening to the voice of the turtle-dove, asking it about Keats and his brother:

أفتش في صوتها عن شجاك

وشكواك بين الاسى والفكر

وأسألها عن شباب ذوى

وظل صبا راقد في الحفر

(I search in her voice for your sorrow / and complaint between distress and thought, / and ask her about a youth that withered / and the shadow of a girlhood lying in the grave.)

She asks the turtle dove to describe Keats nursing his dying brother:

أقول لها: صوري من جديد

ظلام المساء الكئيب البعيد

وما كان من شاعري في دجاه

وآهاته وأساه المبيد

صفي حزنه عند رأس المريض

( I tell her; portray anew / the darkness of the remote melancholy evening / and what happened to my poet in his gloom, / his sighs and his destructive grief. / Describe his sorrow sitting at the head of the sick man.)

al-Sayyāb spends the night talking to death in a very pessimistic tone; he asks death to take him in the darkness to a cave in which Rīh al-shimāl (the north wind) blows:

كم ليلة ناديت بأسمك ايها الموت الرهيب

وود(د)ت لا طلع الشروق علي إن مال الغروب

بالأمس كنت ارى دجاك احب من خفقات آل

راقصن آمال الظماء .. فبلها الدم واللهيب!

                 *   *   *   *

بالامس كنت اصيح: خذني في الظلام إلى ذراعك

واعبر بي الاحقاب يطويهن ظل من شراعك

خذني الى كهف تهوم حوله ريح الشمال ..

نام الزمان على الزمان، به، وذابا في شعاعك.

(How many nights have I called your name, O fearful death! / and wished that the sun might not rise upon me once it had set. / Yesterday I thought your darkness dearer than the tremblings of a mirage, / which danced with the hopes of thirst .. and were drenched with blood and flame! / * * * * / Yesterday I was crying out: "Take me in the darkness to your arms, and take me across the ages, which are enfolded in a shadow of your sail. / Take me to a cave round which the north wind blows .. / in which time has slept upon time, and both have dissolved in your rays.)

Al-Sayyāb's wind is destructive, whereas Shelley's wind is both a destroyer and preserver.

Nāzik and al-Sayyāb use the word كم (how many) in their poems associating it with ليلة (a night); they count their nights thinking of death and the miseries of their lives. This is common in classical Arabic poetry, when poets cannot sleep because of sadness or their memories. In stanzas 3 & 4, Nāzik repeats كم ليلة (how many nights) twice:

فكم ليلة من ليالي الشتاء

...........................

   *  *  *  *

وكم في ليالي الخريف الكئيب

وقفت احدق عند النهر

(How many winter nights, / …. / * * * / and how many times in the nights of melancholy autumn! / have I stood by the river gazing.)

The image of Nāzik's Listening to the turtle-dove is frequently used throughout her poetry; in Ka'ābat al-fusūl al-arba^Cah (the melancholy of the four seasons) [st. 51], she listens to the sad voice of the bird:

طالما مر بي الخريف فأصغـ          ـيت لصوت القمرية المحزون

(Autumn has often come upon me and I have listened to the sad voice of the turtle-dove.)

Keats's sitting under the tree in the darkness listening to the voice of the nightingale in Ode to a Nightingale [st. vi] evokes for Nāzik a particular personal occasion, which lingers on in her mind and disturbs her to a great extent:

         Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

                  I have been half in love with easeful Death,

         …………………………………………….

            While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

           In such an ecastasy!

        Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain-

             To thy high requiem become a sod.

The repetition of the word 'away, away' in stanza 4, line 31:

          Away, away for I will fly to thee.

influences Nāzik; she repeats it occasionally throughout her poetry. An example of this is her use of هاربا، هاربا (running away, running away) in Unshūdat al-abadiyyah [st. 12], recalling the image in stanza 4 of Ilā 'l-shā^Cir Kīts (see above) and stanza 5 of Ka'ābat al-fusūl al-arba^Cah (see above):

هاربا هاربا تحدق في النهـ                 ـروما فوق مائه من جليد

(Running away, running away, gazing upon the river and the ice on its water.)

These words seem to provide her with a spiritual escape from her sad reality. The echo of these words is also found in Fī 'l-rīf of Unshūdat al-rīh (4) [st. 41], which is a version of Shelley's Ode to the West Wind. In this poem, Nāzik asks the wind to sail away with her because she is driven to despair by the sorrows of the starving people:

أقلعي أقلعي بنا سئمنا           صرخات الجياع في كل شعب

(Sail away, sail away with us; we are sick of the cries of the starving in every path.)

The repetition of the words 'sail away, sail away' is parallel that of 'running away, running away' in Unshūdat al-abadiyyah [st. 12] (see above).

This reminds us ^CAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayyātī in al-Hadīqah al-mahjūrah [st. 1]:

كوريقة صفراء، ياريح الشمال!

عبر البحيرات العميقة، والبساتين احمليني،

(Like a yellow leaf, O north wind, / carry me across the deep lakes and the gardens!)

and Shelley in Ode to the West Wind [st iv]:

         Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

         I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

The three poets wish to be lifted up by the wind above human sorrow.

In Ughniyah li-'l-insān (a song to mankind) (1965), Nāzik's main theme is the quest for happiness. She refers to these things in Unshūdat al-rīh (the ode of the wind) (1965), which follows al-Bahth ^Can al-sa^Cādah (the search for happiness) (1965). It recalls the atmosphere of Ilā 'l-shā^Cir Kīts and concepts of the version of Gray's Elegy. Unshūdat al-rīh is divided into five parts which are parallel to the five stanzas of Shelley's Ode. Each part in Nāzik's poem includes an introductory passage followed by a poem which tells the reader about each place in which Nāzik seeks for happiness: in the first poem, she seeks happiness Bayn al-qusūr (among the palaces), in the second, she seeks it Fī dunyā 'l-ruhbān (in the world of the monks), in the third Fī dunyā 'l-ashrār (in the world of the evil), in the fourth Fī 'l-rīf (in the countryside), and in the fifth, Fī ^Cālam al-shu^Carā' (In the world of the poets).

In the first part, she addresses people in different periods of time who sought for happiness in vain; in this part, she describes how she wandered through the palaces and among the rich without the help of the wind; she does not tell the reader anything about the wind except in [l. 9], where she refers to the strength of the poems which silence the storms.

This is similar to the Mediterranean wind in Shelley's ode which witnesses the passing of many generations and many events in history [st. iii]:

          Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

           The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

           Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

          Beside a pumice isle in Balae's bay,

          And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

         Quivering within the wave's intenser day ….

In Unshūdat al-riyāh (the ode of the winds) (2), the wind has witnessed the birth and the death of many generations:

وشهدت هنا      الف جيل وجيل

ولدوا وانطووا       في التراب المهيل

(And here I witnessed a thousand and one generations, / born and concealed in the heaped up soil.)

In the second part, she describes the beginning of her journey with the the wind. She travels with the wind to the monastery looking for happiness among the priests. She thinks that the purity of the priests may create happiness, but she is frustrated when she finds in them a conflict between heart and mind (see chapter 1 & 4). The power of evil which is presented in Thais's Image is parallel to the role of Shelley's destructive wind. Both Thais and the wind are destructive. Thais is similar to the wind because the two have common associations: wildness, destruction, and magic (see chapter 4).

In the beginning of the third part, she speaks about the wind in the third person; she shifts the address to the second person in the third stanza in which the wind is called الرؤى  (the girl of visions):

يا فتاة الرؤى         ما أحب الوصول

(O girl of visions! How dear is my arrival!)

In Fī dunyā 'l-ashrār [st. 15], she goes with the wind to the shore of the wicked and, of course, she is frustrated in finding happiness. In this poem she asks to be taken to a better life:

يا نشيد الرياح خذنا مع اللحــ         ــن إلى عالم أرق واغلى

(O song of the winds! take us with the melody to a more delicate and precious world.)

In Unshūdat al-riyāh (the ode of the winds) [st. 3], she addresses the wind in the second person:

يا فتاة الرؤى         والفؤاد الرهيف

خاطبتك الدنى        في الظلام الكثيف

(O girl of visions and sensitive heart! / the worlds spoke to you in the gloomy darkness.)

In the same stanza, she asks the wind to listen and hear the rustle of the leaves:

(أنصتي تسمعي           في السكون حفيف

وانظري تبصري         أن جدبي وريف)

("Listen and you will hear a rustle in the tranquility, / Look and you will see that my barrenness is verdant.")

This reminds us of Shelley's repeated request in his ode that the wind should listen to him: 'O hear!' (see above).

In the fourth stanza of the poem, she changes the pronoun from first to second person calling the wind Fatāt al-nashīd (the girl of the ode) recalling Shelley's 'azure sister of the spring, In Ode to the West Wind [1. 9]. In this part, she narrates her journey with the wind through the countryside in her quest for happiness.

In the fifth part ot Unshūdat al-riyāh [st. 1], although she is frustrated in finding happiness, she is still hopeful of finding it somewhere else [st. 1]:

كلما اخفقت        في رجاء فريد

شيدت في الذرى       حلمها من جديد

(Whenever she failed in a solitary hope, / she built on the peaks her dream anew.)

The last stop in Nāzik's journey is the world of the poets. The wind is now called فتاة القصيد (the girl of poetry) [st. 4]:

حدقي هاهنا        يا فتاة القصيد

(Turn your gaze here, O girl of poetry!)

Similarly, Shelley identifies the power of the wind with the power of his verse [1. 63-9]:

      

          Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

          Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

          And, by the incantation of this verse,

         Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

         Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

         Be through my lips to unawakened earth

         The trumpet of a prophecy ……………..

THE SUN AND THE MOON AS SYMBOLS OF POETRY:

The sun and the moon are very important images in Nāzik's and Keats's poetry; they both love and worship the sun and the moon, as they do poetry.

(1) THE SUN (=APOLLO):

Apollo is the god of the sun and of poetry in Greek mythology; in Nāzik's poetry, as in Romantic poetry, Apollo stands as a symbol of poetry. In Ma'sāt al-shā^Cir (the tragedy of the poet) [st. 13 & 47], Nāzik relates the poet to Apollo; the poet sacrifices his soul for the sake of Apollo:

محرقا روحه بخورا على حب         (أبولو) ووحيه المنشود

                               *   *   *

.................................

راضيا بالشحوب والسقم حبا           لأبولو مستسهلا ما كانا

(Burning his soul as incense for the love of Apollo and his longed for inspiration. / * * * / .... / Satisfied with paleness and sickness in love for Apollo, taking everything in his stride.)

In Fī 'l-rīf of Ma'sāt al-hayāt [st. 14], Apollo functions as the god of the sun -- driving the sun towards the evening:

هاهنا إن يسر أبولو بضوء الشــ             ــمس نحو المغيب كل مساء

(Here if Apollo takes the light of the sun towards the sunset every evening ….)

In Ughniyah li-shams al-shitā' (a song to the winter sun) (1952) [st. 7], the sun and 'the ode of the meadows' have a strong relationship; the sun is treated as the creator of the ode:

ولولاك يا شمس مات النشيد نشيد المروج

وجف رحيق الشذى تحت برد الشتاء اللجوج

(But for you, O sun, the ode, the ode of the meadows, would die, / and the nectar of the perfume would dry up under the coldness of relentless winter.)

The gender of the sun in Arabic is feminine, whereas in English, it is more often thought of as masculine.

The title of Thawrah ^Calā 'l-shams (a revolution against the sun) (1946) recalls the plot of Keats's Hyperion. In this poem, Nāzik treats the sun as a goddess [st. 3]:

أنت التي قدستها وتخذتها

صنما الوذ به من الآلام

(You are the one whom I worshipped and considered / an idol in whom I sought refuge from pain.)

In Ughniyah li-shams al-shitā' [st. 1], the sun is described as a golden-haired woman:

أشيعي الحرارة والرفق في لمسات الرياح

ولفي جدائلك الشقر حول الفجاج الفساح

(Spread heat and gentleness in the touch of the winds, / and wrap your reddish tresses round the wide mountain passes!)

Thawrah ^Calā 'l-shams [st. 9], poetry is as powerful as the sun:

وجنون نارك لن يمزق نغمتي

ما دام قيثاري المغرد في يدي

(And the madness of your fire will never tear my tune apart, / as long as my tuneful lyre is in my hand.)

This reminds us of Keats's employment of Apollo to represent poetry in Ode to Apollo [st. 1]:

           In thy western halls of gold

                When thou sittest in thy state,

           Bards, that erst sublimely told

                 Heroic deeds, and sung of fate,

          With fervour seize their adamantine lyres,

Whose chords are solid rays, and twinkle radiant fires.

Apollo in Shelley's Hymn of Apollo [st. iv], is also associated with power:

        I feel the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers

          With their aethereal colours; the moons's globe

       And the pure stars in their eternal bowers

          Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;

     Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine

           Are portions of one power, which is mine.

In Shjarat al-qamar (the moon tree) [part 5, st. 5], Nāzik employs Abūlūn to refer to Apollo; in this poem, he has a strong relation with the moon: the face of the lover of the moon, like the sun is 'imbued with cleanliness, purity and innocence':

ووجه كأن أبولون شربه بالوضاءه

وإغفاءة هي سر الصفاء ومعنى البراءه

(A face that seemed as though Apollo had imbued it with cleanliness / and a drowsiness that is the secret of purity and the meaning of innocence.)

(2) THE MOON:

The moon is the predominant image in Nāzik's poetry, as it is in Keats's Endymion; like Keats's moon, Nāzik's moon is personified; they both symbolize Nāzik's and Keats's lovers. In English, the moon is generally thought of as feminine, whereas in Arabic it is masculine.

In Ughniyah li-'l-insān (1) [st. 179], the colour of Nāzik's moon is white, whereas one would expect 'silvery', the more common colour association in Arabic:

في ارتشاف الظلام للقمر الأبـ             ـيض في الصيف في سكون السماء

(In the darkness's drinking the white moon in summer in the tranquility of evening ….)

She describes the colour of the moon as white, not silvery because, I think, she has in mind Diana, the goddess of the moon; in Endymion [Book i, 1. 615-616 & Book ii, 1. 324-5], Keats emphasizes the softness and whiteness of Diana:

         Leaving, in naked comeliness, unshaded,     

         Her pearl-round ears, white neck, and orbed brow ….

                                          [Book i, 1. 615-616]

         O let me 'noint them with the heaven's light!

         Dost thou now lave thy feet and ankles white?

                                          [Book ii, 1. 324-5]

Shelley's moon in Prometheus Unbound [Act iv, 1. 219-225] is white too:

    Within it sits a winged infant, white

     Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow,

     Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost,

     Its limbs gleam white, through the wind-flowing folds

     Of its white robe, woof of ethereal pearl.

     Its hair is white, the brightness of white light

     Scattered in strings …………………………….

In Mashghūl fī Adhār (he is busy in March) [st. 2], the moon is associated with longing:

حبيبي فافتح الابواب

انا والقمر المشتاق جئنا نطرق الشباك

(So open the doors, O my lover! / The longing moon and I have come knocking on the window.)

In Da^Cwah ilā 'l-ahlām (a call to dreams) [st. 3], she associates the moon with dreams and sublimity:

سنحلم انا صعدنا نرود جبال القمر

ونمرح في عزلة اللانهاية واللابشر

(We will dream that we have ascended, prowling the mountains of the moon; / and exulting in the isolation of infinity and absence of human beings.)

In Shajarat al-qamar [st. 3], the boys imagination is occupied with his love of the moon:

هنالك كان يعيش غلام بعيد الخيال

إذا جاع يأكل ضوء النجوم ولون الجبال

(There used to live a boy of vivid imagination; / when hungry he would eat the light of the stars and the colour of the mountains)

The boy recalls Endymion, who dreams of catching the moon. The moon does not only provide Nāzik with spiritual pleasure. but also with physical p1easure, as in Ughniyat layālī 'l-sayf (the song of the summer nights) [st. 4 & 5]:

     أي برد وليونة

يا شفاها قمريات القبل

تنثر الانداء أقداح عسل

  فوق اشجار المدينة

        *  *  *

  أي نهر من عطور

في شذاه مسبح للقمر

وغذاء للرؤى والسمر

    ورحيق للشعور

(What coldness, what softness, / O lips with kisses like the moon's, / scattering the dews, as cups of honey / over the trees of the city! / * * * / what a river of perfumes, / in the scent of which there is a pool for the moon, / food for visions and night conversation, / and nectar for feelings.)

The conceptual and mythological elements in Nāzik's Shajarat al-qamar recall those of Keats's Endymion; although, in her introduction to the poem, she admits that she derived her Shajarat al-qamar from a stanza in an English poetic collection for children:⁽¹⁹⁾

واما اصل الحكاية فيرجع الى مقطوعة انكليزية كنت قرأتها سنة 1949 ...في مجموعة شعرية للاطفال... فما كدت اقرأها حتى احببت الحكاية فيها واختزنتها في ذاكرتي الى ان بعثتها ميسون بعد ذلك بثلاث سنوات. وعلى ذلك فهذه القصيدة ليست ترجمة واصلها الانكليزي قصير قرأته مرة واحدة ثم لم اره ثانية حتى اليوم. ما اخذته عنها هو هيكل الحكايةالعاري لا غير. اما الصور والتفاصيل فكلها لي .... ويرجع سبب اختياري للحكاية انني وجدت فيها بذرة شعرية تصلح ان تكون حكاية لطفلة ويمكن في الوقت نفسه ان احملها رموزا شعرية عالية بحيث يقرأها الكبار والصغار فيجد فيها كل ما يفهمه.

(The origin of the story goes back to an excerpt from an English poem, which I read in 1949 .... in a collection of poetry for children .... As soon as I read it I fell in love with it, and I kept it in my memory until Maysūn [her niece] reminded me of it three years later. However, the poem is not a translation. The English original is short. I read it once and I have never seen it again until now. All I took from it was the bare framework of its story, nothing else; the imagery and the details are all my own …. The reason that made me choose the story is that I found in it a poetic seed, which is both suitable as a story for a child, and which, at the same times I can endow with elevated poetic symbols, so that it may be read by adults as well as children, and each may find there what he can understand.)

She goes on in her comment to interpret the symbols of the poem: the boy symbolizes the poet or the artist, who loves nature more than he does people. He wants to be united with nature to compose his melodies and poems spontaneously. The boy dreams of stealing the moon and taking it home. When his dream comes true, he finds all people love the moon and do not allow anyone to monopolize it. The shepherds and the fishermen protest against him. So the boy plants the moon in the ground, and a giant tree springs up with silver moons hanging from its branches; this reminds us of the golden branches [1. 908] in Keats's Endymion [Book ii, 1. 904-909]:

     Now I have tasted her sweet soul to the core

    All other depths are shallow: essences,

    Once spiritual, are like muddy lees,

    Meant but to fertilize my earthly root,

    And make my branches lift a golden fruit

    Into the bloom of heaven ….

The boy, in his role as an artist, deals with the moon, hence nature, as he would poetry: the act of planting the moon-tree is a symbol of the creation of poetry. The artist-poet attempts to recreate nature in his poetry, to recreate many instances of nature, as represented in the tree whose fruit consists of a multitude of moons.

The poem ends with the artist returning the moon to its place where it can be enjoyed by all, because he becomes satisfied instead with the moons that grow from the tree of poetry. Naturally this tree becomes spiritual food for all the people in the village. A direct example of Nāzik's association of the moon with poetry is stanza 4 of the third part of Shajarat al-qamar. In Ughniyah li-'l-qamar (the song for the moon) (1958) [st. 6], the moon has the function of composing poetry:

يا ناسج الشعر يا بقيته        في عالم أظلمت مراياه

أي نشيد لم ينبجس عسلا        وأنت تفتر في ثناياه

أنت منحت الغناء لذته         يا نبضة الوزن في حناياه

فابق وراء الحياة اخيلة       الشعر فيها والحب والله

(O weaver of poetry! O remains of it in a world whose mirrors have become dark! / What ode has not flowed with honey, with you shining within it? you have given singing its sweetness, O pulse of metre deep inside it! / So remain behind the life in which are the imaginings of poetry, love and God.)

Keats's Endymion similarly reveals the relation of the artist to his art and to the world. Nāzik argues this relation in her introduction to Shajarat al-qamar (see above). The fusion of the two natural elements of moon and earth in Nāzik's poem recalls Keats's fusion of Diana and the Indian maid. The symbiosis of the moon with the earth in Shajarat al-qamar is parallel to the symbiosis of the the sun with the earth-goddess in the opening stanza of Ode to Autumn. The sun impregnates the earth so that it may bear fruit.

The landscape of Endymion is different from that of Shajarat al-qamar: Endymion is set within the mythological landscape of ancient Greece, whereas Nāzik's poem is situated in the mountains of the North of Iraq. Some of the imagery in Shajarat al-qamar recalls certain images in Endymion; for instance, she links the lover with the butterfly, and so does Keats in Endymion [Book ii, 1. 60-8]. Both Nāzik and Keats associate the moon with the butterflies. In his description of Endymion's awakening, Keats juxtaposes 'careless butterflies' and 'his pains' as two distinct steps in his revivification [Endymion, Book i, 1. 763-8]:

         …. as when Zephyr bids

         A little breeze to creep between the fans

         Of careless butterflies. Amid his pains

         He seemed to taste a drop of manna-dew,

          Full palatable; and a colour grew

          Upon his cheek, while thus he lifeful spake.

In the second book, lines 60-68, a golden butterfly guides Endymion through the evening to the mouth of the cave, which he must enter in his quest for the moon. Upon touching the water the butterfly is suddenly transformed into a nymph:

     And, in the middle, there is softly pight

     A golden butterfly, upon whose wings

     There must be surely charactered strange things,

     For with wide eye he wonders, and smiles oft.

     Lightly this little herald flew aloft,

      Followed by glad Endymion's clasped hands:

     Onward it flies. From languor's sullen bands

     His limbs are loosed, and eager, on he hies

      Dazzled to trace it in the sunny skies.

The image of Endymion and the butterfly may have been recalled by Nāzik when she wrote line 1 of stanza 2 of Shajarat al-qamar:

وترسو الفراشات عند ذراها لتقضي المساء

(And the butterflies land on its peaks to pass the evening.)

In ^CInda 'l-^Cushshāq (among the lovers) [st. 5], the lover, the moon and the butterflies have close relationships; the lover is compared to a butterfly; they both dance to the moon:

راقصا كالفراش للقمر الحلــ         ــو خليا من يأسه وأساه

(Dancing like the butterfly to the sweet moon, free from his despair and grief.)

The most important theme in Nāzik's poetry especially at the beginning of her career is that of searching for happiness; this is also an important theme in Keats's Endymion. She associates happiness with beauty and love, and so does Keats; in her chapter "al-Shi^Cr wa 'l-mawt" (poetry and death),⁽²⁰⁾ she comments on the extreme passion of Endymion and Cynthia:

وهكذا نجد أندميون --في القصيدة الوحشية الجمال التي تحمل اسمه—يغرم بسينثيا غراما عاصفا لا مثيل له ويترك قلبه نهبا لكل جمال يحيط به مهما صغر، حتى يكاد يتعذب بحبه لاشياء مثل الفراشات وزنابق الماء وضربات قاطع الاخشاب في غابات (لاتموس)

(In this way we see Endymion --in the poem of wild beauty that bears his name. He loves Cynthia very deeply and uniquely, so that his heart is left a prey to every beauty that surrounds it, no matter how small it is; he is almost tormented by his love for things such as butterflies, water-lilies, and the strokes of the woodcutter in the woods of Latmus.)

Endymion's love of Cynthia, the moon goddess, in Keats's poem, is parallel to the boy's love of the moon in Nāzik's. The hero of Nāzik's poem is a boy dreaming of catching the moon; this echoes Endymion's love relationship with the moon from childhood. In the opening of the third book in Endymion [1. 160-169], the moon moved Keat's heart with strange potency; in this poem Keats confirms Endymion's love and respect for the moon since his childhood:

      Yes, in my boyhood, every joy and pain

    By thee were fashioned to the self-same end,

    And as I grew in years. still didst thou blend

    With all my ardours: thou wast the deep glen --

     Thou wast the mountain-top -- the sage's pen --

     The poet's harp -- the voice of friends -- the sun.

     Thou wast the river -- thou wast glory won.

     Thou wast my clarion's blast -- thou wast my steed --

     My goblet full of wine -- my topmost deed.

     Thou wast the charm of women, lovely Moon!

Nāzik's Shajarat al-qamar (1952) is much more influenced by Keats's than Shelley's Alastor, because the conflict of Keats's and Nāzik's heroes are solved, whereas Shelley's hero dies in frustration. Endymion reflects the value of human love, Alastor, on the other hand, reveals a self-centred poet who finds solitude and death.⁽²¹⁾

(C) THE RIVER AS A LOVER AND AS A GOD:

(1) AS A LOVER:

Nāzik loves the river more than she does the sea; she is not frightened by the river because its power, unlike that of the sea, is not dreadful; in her early poems there are many references to the river, specifically the Tigris. She refers to it more frequently than the sea.

The river, as a gentle lover in al-Nahr al-^Cāshiq (the river, the lover), and as a destructive power in al-Madīnah allatī gharaqat, reminds us of Shelley's wind, at once a destroyer and preserver.

Although Nāzik is aware of the destructive power of the river, yet she appreciates the benefit it offers. She is excited by the movement of the river when it floods, but when the flood has ended she is shocked by its destruction.

In al-Nahr al-^Cāshiq (the river, the lover) (1954) [st. 3 & 4], she describes the terrible flood of the Tigris in Baghdad in 1954. She describes the river as a lover running happily to embrace the city with its gentle arms. The destructive power of the river is parallel to the destructive quality of love. Like the river, love is powerful, devastating and inevitable; man’s efforts to stop its flood are in vain. She imagines the river as a lover coming to embrace her and bring prosperity to her country:

أين نعدو وهو قد لف يديه

حول اكتاف المدينه؟

إنه يعمل في بطء وحزم وسكينه

ساكبا من شفتيه

قبلا طينيه غطت مراعينا الحزينه

     *   *   *

ذلك العاشق، إنا قد عرفناه قديما

أنه لا ينتهي من زحفه نحو ربانا

وله نحن بنينا، وله شدنا قرانا

إنه زائرنا المألوف ما زال كريما

كل عام ينزل الوادي ويأتي للقانا

(Where shall we run to, now that he [the river] has wrapped his hands / round the shoulders of the city? / He works slowly, determinedly and quietly, / pouring forth from his lips / muddy kisses, which have covered our sad meadows. / * * * / We have long known that that lover / will not cease creeping towards our hills. / For him we have built and for him we have constructed our villages. / He is our familiar visitor, who is still generous. / Every year he visits the valley and comes to see us.)

In 1977, she published a collection entitled Yughayyir alwānah al-bahr (the sea changes its colours). In Wa yabqā lanā 'l-bahr (and the sea remains for us) [st. 3 & 4], she compares the changes in her moods to the changing colours in the sea:

وقلت، نعم، يا حبيبي

يغير الوانه البحر

تعبر فيه سفائن خضر

وتطلع منه مدائن شقر

ويشرب حينا دماء الغروب

ويصبح حينا بلون الفضاء

...........................

    *   *   *

..........................

نعم يا حبيبي

وبحر يلاطم وديان نفسي

ويرحل عبر موانئ لون وشمس

(I said: Yes, O my beloved! / The sea changes its colours; / green ships sail on it, / and fair-haired cities emerge from it; / sometimes it drinks the blood of sunset; / and sometimes it is radiant with the colour of space. / …. * * * …. / Yes, O my beloved! / And a sea beats against the valleys of my soul, / and travels past harbours of colour and sun.)

In al-Madīnah allatī gharaqat (the city that sank) (1954) [st. 9 & 10 & 11], Nāzik's attitude has changed; she no longer regards the river as a lover because its effects are so bad; it is now nothing but a 'black skeleton'. In this poem she describes the flood of the Tigris as a ghost; she knows that man is too weak to fight the power of the flood:

وجاء الخراب وسار بهيكله الاسود

ذراعاه تطوي وتمسح حتى وعود الغد

                  *  *  *

وأسنانه الصفر تقضم بابا وتمضغ شرفه

وأقدامه تطأ الورد والعشب من دون رأفه

                 *  *  *

وسار يرش الردى والتآكل ملء المدينه

يخرب حيث يحل وينشر فيه العفونه

(Destruction has come and brought his black skeleton; / his arms enfold and blot out even the promises of tomorrow-- / * * */ his yellow teeth gnaw a door and chew a balcony, / and his feet trample the roses and the grass mercilessly-- / * * */ he has walked spraying destruction and corrosion throughout the city / destroying and spreading putrefaction wherever he stops.)

(2) AS A GOD:

Like any natural element, such as the moon and the sun, river is worshipped in Nāzik's poetry. In al-Nahr al-^Cāshiq [st. 6] she reveals a kind of relationship with the river -- the relationship of a man to his god:

وله نحن نصلي

وله نفرغ شكوانا من العيش الممل

    *  *  *

انه الآن إله

أولم تغسل مبانينا عليه قدميها

انه يعلو ويلقي كنزه بين يديها

إنه يمنحنا الطين وموتا لانراه

من لنا الآن سواه؟

(To him we pray / and to him we pour out our complaints about our dreary life. / Now he is a god. / Have our buildings not washed their feet in him? / He rises and throws his treasure before them. / He bestows on us his mud and unseen death. / Whom have we now except him?)

In Keats's poetry, the sea occurs more frequently than the river. They both are treated like gods. In Hyperion [Book 2, 1. 167]:

       So ended Saturn; and the God of the Sea,

       Sophist and Sage from no Athenian grove,

       But Cogitation in his watery shades,

       Arose, with locks not oozy, and began ….

So, too, in Endymion [Book 3, 1. 876-8]:

                                  Far there did spring

     From natural west and east, and south, and north,

     A light as of four sunsets, blazing forth

     A gold-green zenith 'bove the Sea-God's head.

In the fourth book, line 707-9, Keats treats the river as a god:

                              To the River gods,

     And they shall bring thee taper fishing-rods

    Of gold, and lines of naiad's lonq bright tress.

Having studied Nāzik's imagery, we conclude that Nāzik treats the natural forces, such as: the sea, the wind, the sun and moon as gods, on some occasions, and as human beings on others. The wind and the river, and the sun are treated as if they were her lovers; the wind is a destroyer in Sawsanah ismuhā 'l-Quds [st. 3], and gentle and betrayer at the same time in La^Cnat al-zaman [st. 7], the river is a lover in al-Nahr al-^Cāshiq [st. 3 & 4]; and a god [st. 5 & 6] and a ghoul in al-Madīnah allatī gharaqat [st. 10]; the sun is treated as a god in Thawrah ^Calā 'l-shams [st. 3], and as an antagonist [st. 9].

These natural forces have relations with each other. They all suggest the power of Art; all are seen; all, except the moon and the nightingale, have both bad and good effects on her. The moon and the nightingale are treated differently; they both have good effects only. The moon is associated with dreams and sublimity in Da^Cwah ilā 'l-ahlām (a call to the dreams) [st. 3]. It supplies her with spiritual and physical pleasures in Ughniyat layālī 'l-sayf [st. 4 & 5]. The nightingale shares her happy feelings in Fī dhikrā mawlidī [st. 4]. It does not share her sorrows in Ma'sāt al-hayāt [st. 42]; it is unaware of human sorrows in Fī 'l-rīf [st. 33 & 36]. In Keats's poetry, these natural elements have similarities and differences:

"When it is considered cumulatively that, unlike the wind and sea, the bird is a living creature and therefore a conscious and purposeful singer and that, again unlike the wind and sea, its song is naturally heard as musical, and that, unlike the other birds in Keats's poetry but like Apollo, it is never seen but has its presence attested by the effect of its song. the nightingale is readily conceived, as what in fact it seems to have become for Keats, a local manifestation of the god himself – not merely a medium for his voice, but an earthly surrogate."⁽²²⁾

COMMON LITERARY DEVICES IN NAZIK'S AND KEATS'S POETRY:

Personification, synaesthesia and compound adjectives are common in Nāzik's and Keats's poetry.

(1) PERSONIFICATION:

Personification is the commonest figure in English poetry. It is dominant in Nāzik's and Keats's poetry. Pain in Nāzik's poem is personified as a boy, whereas in Keats's it is more a girl, because Keats feels for pain what he would for a loved one.

In Thalāth marāthin li-ummī (three elegies for my mother) (1953) -- Ughniyah li-'l-huzn (a song for sorrow) [st. 1], Nāzik sees pain as a delicate young boy whose feelings are pure and white:

أفسحوا الدرب له، للقادم الصافي الشعور

للغلام المرهف السابح في بحر أريج،

ذي الجبين الابيض السارق أسرار الثلوج

(Clear the way for him, for the one who comes, with pure feelings, / for the delicate boy swimming in a scented sea, / with a white forehead, thief of the secrets of the snows.)

In Khams aghānin li-'l-alam (five songs for pain) (1957), Nāzik addresses pain as a little child or a spoiled boy [st. 3]:

        'Come then, sorrow!

        Sweetest sorrow!

Like an own babe I nurse thee on my breast:

        I thought to leave thee

       And deceive thee,

But now of all the world I love thee best.

'There is not one,

         No, no, not one

But thee to comfort a poor lonely maid:

        Thou art her mother,

        And her brother,

Her playmate, and her wooer in the shade.'

In lines 173-181, he treats pain as a woman:

       'To sorrow,

       I bade good-morrow,

And thought to leave her far away behind.

       But cheerly, cheerly,

       She loves me dearly;

She is so constant to me, and so kind:

       I would deceive her

       And so leave her,

But ah! she is so constant and so kind.

PAIN AS A GOD:

In the fifth part of Khams aghānin li-'l-alam [part 5, st. 2], pain is a God to Nāzik; she builds a temple for it, and she builds scented walls for the temple and covers its ground with oil, pure wine and hot tears to reveal her homage to pain:

نحن شيدنا لك المعبد جدرانا شذيه

ورششنا ارضه بالزيت والخمر النقيه

         والدموع المحرقه

(We have built for you the temple with scented walls / and sprinkled its floor with oil, pure wine / and burning tears.)

In part 5, stanza 2, the ritual atmosphere is Babylonian:

نحن اشعلنا النيران من سعف النخيل

وأسانا وهشيم القمح في ليل طويل

بشفاه مطبقه

(We have kindled fires of palm-fronds, / of our grief and the chaff of wheat in a long night / with closed lips.)

In Nāzik's poetry, the image of the temple is concrete, although as a Muslim woman, she does not go to a temple to worship God.

This reminds us of Keats's temple, which is built in 'some untrodden region' of his mind, in Ode to Psyche [1. 50—1]:

         Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

            In some untrodden region of my mind ….

and 'the temple of Delight' in Ode on Melancholy [1. 25-6]:

         Ay, in the very temple of Delight

                     Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine ….

(2) SYNAESTHESIA:

Synaesthesia is a dominant literary device in Nāzik's and Keats's poetry. Nāzik presents the best samples of the fusion of multiple sensations. In the second stanza of Ughniyah li-shams al-shitā' (a song to the sun of winter) (1952), a third synaesthetic image is presented in the fusion of the sense of taste with the sense of smell:

ومن دفء عينيك من ضوء هذا الجبين السعيد

أريقي عصير البنفسج فوق الفضاء المديد

ومن لون هذي الجدائل رشي ازرقاق الاثير

وصبي البريق الملون فوق مرايا الغدير

ومن عطر هذا الضياء المذاب

أريقي على صفحات الضباب

             ربيعا اخضر

يحيل البرودة الى دفء حب جديد

(And from the warmth of your eyes, from the light of this happy forehead / pour the juice of the violet over wide space, / and from the colour of these plaits, sprinkle the blueness of the ether, / and pour the coloured flash over the mirrors of the brook, / and from the perfume of this dissolved light, / pour a green spring on pages of the fog / a verdant spring / that will transform the coldness into the warmth of a new love.)

The olfactory sensation is represented in عطر (perfume); الضياء (the light) of the sun becomes a perfumed flower.

A second example of Nāzik's synaesthesia is a fusion of the sense of taste with that of sight in Ughniyah li-shams al-shitā' [st. 4]:

دعيه يعانقك سكران من وهج هذا البريق

ويشرب يشرب هذا الضياء ولا يستفيق

يفيض عليه سناك الحنون

(Let it embrace you, intoxicated by the blazing of this flash, / and it will drink, drink this light and not become sober, / with your compassionate splendour pouring upon it.)

Light cannot be drunk, yet Nāzik's ecstatic feelings drink the light of the sun and never awake. The warmth of the light, to her, is equal to the warmth of wine.

In this stanza, Nāzik's style seems to originate in Keats's Endymion, in the passage where he portrays Endymion as feverishly declaring his passion to Diana in the second book, line 317-324):

        Within my breast there lives a choking flame -

        O let me cool’t the zephyr-boughs among!

       A homeward fever parches up my tongue -

       O let me slake it at the running springs!

       Upon my ear a noisy nothing rings -

       O let me once more hear the linnet's note!

       Before mine eyes thick films and shadows float –

       O let me 'noint them with the heaven's light!

In Ode to Psyche [1. 10-14], Keats fuses the auditory, tactual, olfactory and visual sensations in one line:

             In deepest grass, beneath the whispering roof

        Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran

               A brooklet, scarce espied:

        'Mid hushed, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,

               Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,

(3) COMPOUND ADJECTIVES:

Nāzik and Keats use compound adjectives frequently. Nāzik's frequent use of compound adjectives, such as قاتم الجدران (dark-walled) and مبرق الغدران (flashing-streamed) as in Unshūdat al-riyāh (3) [st. 4], بارد الانداء (cold-moistured) as in Fī 'l-rīf of Ughniyah li-'l-insān (2) [st. 5], شاحب الوجه (pale-faced) as in Dhikrā mawlidī [st, 1], recalls Keats's use of compound adjectives such as 'dark-cluster'd' in Ode to Psyche [1. 54], 'cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed' in [1. 13], and 'side-faced' in Ode on Indolence [1. 2].

From the preceding comparative examples, we conclude that Nāzik admired Keats's odes very much. She imitates the titles of the odes and fills her early poems with the contradictory themes that are used in these odes. She recalls frequently Keats's favourite imagery, most obviously the nightingale, which becomes al-Qumriyyah in her poetry: She also uses the same literary devices, such as personification, synaesthesia and compound adjectives.

In the following volume, we will study Nāzik's mythology, comparing it to that of Keats, Shelley and Byron and Anatole France.

NOTES:

(1)   Cuddon, J. A. A Dictionary of Literary Terms (Revised edition), p. 460-463.

(2)   Jump, J. The Ode, p. 59.

(3)   ^CAbdul-Hai, M. Tradition and English ...., p. 85.

(4)   Ilyās, F. Qāmūs Ilyās al-^Casrī, p. 45.

(5)   Wehr, H. A Dictionary of Modern written Arabic (4th ed.), edited by Cowan, J. Milton, p. 1132.

(6)   Al-Malā'ikah, N. "al-Shi^Cr fī hayātī", al-Majallah al-^CArabiyyah li-'l-thaqāfah, vol. 4, March, 1983, pp. 188.

(7)   ead. "al-Shi^Cr wa 'l-mawt', al-Adāb, Beirut, vol. 7, July, 1952, p. 5-7.

(8)   ibid., p. 6.

(9)   ibid., p. 7.

(10)  ead. "al-Shi^Cr fī hayātī", al-Majallah al-^CArabiyyah li-'l-thaqāfah, vol. 4, March, 1983, pp. 189.

(11)  ^CAbdul-Hai, M. Tradition and English…., p. 104-5.

(12)  Shelley, P. B. A Defence of Poetry, p. 13.

(13)  Evert, W. H. Aesthetic and Myth in the Poetry of Keats, p. 58.

(14)  al-Qaysī, N, al-Tabī^Cah fī_'l-shi^Cr al-jāhilī, p. 200-4.

(15)  Shelley, P. B. A Defence of Poetry, p. 41.

(16)  al-Qaysī, N. al-Tabī^Cah fī_'l-shi^Cr al-jāhilī, p. 55-60.

(17)  ^CAbdul-Hai, M. "A Bibliography of Arabic Translations of English and American Poetry (1830-1970)", Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. vii 1976, P. 134.

(18)  Ra'ūf, J. Shīlī fī 'l-adab al-^CArabī fī Misr, p. 403-421.

(19)  Al-Malā'ikah, N. "An introduction to Shajarat al-qamar", Dīwān (2), pp. 410-411.

(20)  Al-Malā'ikah, N. "al-Shi^Cr wa 'l-mawt", al-Adāb, Beirut, vol. 7, July, 1952, p. 7.

(21)  Bush, D. John Keats; his life and Writings, p. 57.

(22)  Evert, W. H. Aesthetic and Myth in the_Poetry of John Keats, pp. 61-2, quoting from H. W. Garrod. "The Nightingale in Poetry", The Profession of Poetry and Other Lectures, pp. 136-137.