Is the last nail stuck in the coffin of the Diwan of the Arabs or is the Arabic poetry still?

Sherif Mohamed Jaber

In an interview with Al-Jazeera's "This Morning" program, writer and journalist Aref Hijjawi said when he was asked about the status of Arabic poetry today, "Arab and non-Arab poetry collapsed many years ago. In the West a few hundred years ago, Shakespeare writes plays poetry, and after that people said: do not want poetry, we want to move, prose. "

He said: "The Arabs used to pour their entire lives into the hair, if the Arab said," My stomach hurts me, "he says," Then why do we wear this world? "The story is taken from the age of three to the age of one hundred and three years, So I lived the story and the novel, and the hair went down a lot, so I saw the Arab poetic heritage of the greatest poetry heritage in the world spread over one thousand and five hundred years has collapsed in the last fifty years.

He agrees with Hijawi to a great extent - and with a less pessimistic view - the late poet Mahmoud Darwish, who said in an old television interview that Arab poetry is no longer the Diwan of the Arabs, has participated in this task other arts such as the story and the novel and others, Darwish did not say that Arab poetry has died, But as a poet who practiced poetry until his death, he acknowledged the limited influence of poetry, in general, and Arabic poetry in particular.

Hair Remaining
"This brings us back to the old and renewed question about the function of poetry and art in general," said Algerian poet Riad Bouhjaila, who published his poetry collection, "Nothing Needs Your Smile" in 2015, in response to a question by Al Jazeera Net about poetry and art in general. Or to wear a nude or liberate a country, I regret to disappoint him. Poetry has another different function that may seem to change over the ages but its essence is human, and poetry remains what is left of man on this earth is a position of life and of the world, whether political or social. Or emotionally or existentially. "

Bouhjaila added that "poetry may be written for poetry or for language or purely aesthetic as some theoreticians claim, but it remains mere decoration and playing in the language so that the poet breathes from his soul and returns to the human to restore the human to him, we can not deny that Arabic poetry It has fallen off the facade and no longer has that old glare, but behind this dark facade there is a small spot of light expanding. "

New challenges
As for the contemporary obstacles facing the continuation of Arabic poetry alive in the conscience of the Arab reader, Bouhjaila told Al Jazeera Net that "the great problem is the separation of the poet, who we said is the nation's conscience about his nation and away from his core cause, which is human and immersed in self, To the hallucination and delirium, as a result of the transformation of poetry from the follower to a follower by poets writing on the basis of the theories of cash canned, they became like a crow who did not mastered the peacock walk and poor walk, and in contrast there are poets who oppose the year of the universe in evolution and are still standing on the ruins reject modernity, N Ri is worse than the first team. "

"But it is encouraging that there are new generations working in silence and out of light," Buhajila said. "I understand that she has to create her own modernity, which is in harmony with the peculiarities of Arabic poetry and language and does not deny his huge literary heritage. So as not to be swept away by the winds of modern canned and do not live out of time. "

As for the Syrian poet Ibrahim Tayyar, who issued his poetry collection "A Thousand and One Nights" in 2010, he said in his answer to my question: "The two questions are interrelated because the standard of life of poetry is its connection with the conscience and the reader's conscience and its expression as a voice. A reader before he is a poet to communicate his voice to his reader expressed, in contrast to the reader to be a poet to some extent to understand poetry as the poet wanted, the process is interactive between the poet and reader, and death is the death of the two together, and life together.

In a meeting with researcher and literary critic Dr. Adel Al-Asta, he said, highlighting the international dimension of poetry, "The question of hair death was introduced in the 1980s in France, since no more than 1,000 copies of the book were printed. A nail in the coffin, but there are new poets have established a prominent position of their hair, twenty years ago wrote a German poet is first Han poems have received interest and welcomed and printed their work and distributed well. "

"We do not think poetry is dying, but it may fade and fade, but there will still be poets who surprise readers. There are beautiful poems and poetic sounds, including Tamim Barghouthi. For example, we do not read it but we listen to it. In France, in spring".

Poetry in social networking sites
Those who follow the social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and others clearly notice the circulation of Arab poetry old and modern by the Arab participants in these sites. In Twitter, for example, the page "Literature" is more than 2 million followers, and publishes old and modern poetry. And their interaction.

In the social networking site, there are pages that are popular among the followers, and they take care of the spread of the various traditional Arabic poetry, which has the interaction of the pioneers of these sites, for example, not limited to the page "Ghazalit" interested in the publication of poetic arts poetry, Poetry Arts.

In another context, it seems that the modern media has played a role in bringing poetry closer to the contemporary Arab reader, which tends to the audio and visual than the read, and here highlights the experience of the poet Tamim Barghouthi on the channel "AJ +", where the channel publishes some of his poems on YouTube and Facebook accompanied by a fee Moving poetry and poetry, which gives the life of life and keep pace with the means of modern social communication that the contemporary public is familiar with.

Awards and contests
In addition, some official and non-official institutions sponsor periodic poetry competitions and awards, such as the annual Katara Award for the Prophet's Prophet, which seeks, as stated in its official website, "to be a pioneer and distinguished in the world, It also seeks to be an outlet for the spread of Nabataean poetry and poetry, and to become a new creative platform in the history of Arabic poetry and a constant incentive to promote Arab creativity and support the literary and cultural movement throughout the Arab world. "

The "Prince of Poets" program, which was also published on its official website, was a "TV program organized by the Committee for the Management of Festivals and Cultural and Heritage Programs in Abu Dhabi." It was also defined as a literary competition in the field of Arabic poetry.

This is in addition to the Prince Abdullah Al Faisal Award for Arabic Poetry. The definition of Wikipedia is "an international prize announced by Prince Khalid Al Faisal in November 2018 under the supervision of the Arab Poetry Academy at the University of Taif in Saudi Arabia and granted to Arab poets to stimulate and develop poetic creativity."