The Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani is a special poetic case in the history of Arab literature, and the owner of a school in poetic modernity, whose title is daring in issues and content, whether it is his celebration of love and women, or his sharp criticism of the Arab political situation.

He began as a passionate poet seeking love, beauty and women, and ended in self-imposed exile frustrated and desperate by the situation of a disjointed Arab world, but he achieved an unprecedented breakthrough in terms of poetry’s relationship with the public.

Nizar Qabbani.. Birth and upbringing

Nizar bin Tawfiq Qabbani was born on March 21, 1923 in the Syrian capital, Damascus, to an ancient Arab Damascene family;

Where his grandfather Abu Khalil al-Qabbani, the pioneer of Arab theater, grew up in an ancient and spacious Damascene house bearing a fragrant heritage, and his father, Tawfiq al-Qabbani, was one of the country’s notables and merchants, and a fan of poetry and literature in general, as well as his support for the Syrian national movement.

Nizar lived his first childhood in a calm atmosphere with the care and hump of his mother, "Fayza" of Turkish origin, and during this stage his artistic inclinations to painting and then music emerged.

Nizar says about his childhood, "From the age of five to 12, I lived in a sea of ​​colors, drawing on the floor and walls and smearing everything I could find in search of new forms. Then I moved to music, but high school problems kept me away from this hobby."

His childhood is an important factor in approaching his poetic production, as the poet himself confirms this when he said, "Childhood is the key to my personality, and to my literature, and every attempt to understand me outside the circle of childhood is a failed attempt."

His relationship with his mother remained a source of constant nostalgia, casting a shadow over the poetic and human condition of Nizar, who lamented his mother, saying, "My mother, my love, Faiza, tell the angels whom I assigned to guard fifty years not to leave me, because I am afraid to sleep alone."

The psychological development of Nizar Qabbani was also affected by the tragedy of his sister "Wisal"'s suicide after refusing to marry her to the one she loved, and the grief of this loss continued to hang over his poems.

Nizar Qabbani..study and training

Nizar Qabbani obtained his baccalaureate from the National Scientific College School in Damascus, then joined the Faculty of Law at the Syrian University and graduated in 1945. In parallel, since his childhood, he showed a passion for learning many arts;

He studied at the hands of a hand calligrapher, then turned to painting, fell in love with music, and learned at the hands of a private teacher how to play and compose on the lute.

After settling on a love of poetry, he began to memorize the poems of Omar Ibn Abi Rabia, Jamil Buthaina, Tarfa Ibn Al-Abd, and Qais Ibn Al-Malouh, who was taught by the poet Khalil Mardam Bey, who taught him the principles of grammar, morphology and Badi`.

Nizar Qabbani.. Jobs and Responsibilities

Nizar Qabbani graduated from the university and was appointed directly to the diplomatic corps, and moved between different capitals, until he submitted his resignation in 1966, as he held the position of attaché at the Syrian Embassy in Cairo, and was not more than 22 years old.

From Cairo, he went to Turkey, London, France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, China and Spain, until later settling in Beirut.

The poetic experience of Nizar Qabbani

Nizar Qabbani's exit to the Poetry Square was loud, by publishing his book "The Brown Said to Me" in 1944, one year before graduating from the university.

It was attacked by conservative segments who considered it destructive pornographic poetry. Nizar Qabbani says, "When it was published, it caused a deep pain in the body of the city, which refuses to recognize its body or its dreams... They attacked me fiercely by a stabbed beast, and my flesh was tender at that time."

The love anthem and the obsession with liberating the heart and the body were the common denominator of Nizar’s poems in his first four volumes, but a qualitative transformation would take Nizar to another poetic horizon affected by the setback of 1967. Without giving up his romantic record, he spent an important part of his instincts in whipping the Arab self and reviling the Arab regimes. Which brought the shame of defeat in his eyes.

As love poems spread, so did his political poems, such as "Margins on the Notebooks of the Setback", "Antarah" and "Diaries of an Arab Swordsman".

Yemeni writer Nasser Yahya said on Al Jazeera Net that the fruit of this trend was the basis of his most famous political book, "Margins on the Setback Book", which "spread like wildfire in the world of a nation that suddenly found itself waking up to the tragedy of its humiliating defeat, and it was she who slept on the songs of victory and Ahmed's roar." Saeed in "Voice of the Arabs" heralds the liberation of Palestine within hours.

And from what was stated in “Margins on the Book of the Setback”: “If we lose the war, it is not surprising / because we enter it with all the oratory talents that the Eastern possesses / with the antlers that did not kill a fly / because we enter it with the logic of the drum and the rebab.”

Nizar's story began with poetry in the skies of love and the runways of love, but he ended his career with rage over the conditions of the Arab world, embodied in famous political poems that were the last of his creations, in his London emigration, such as "When do you announce the death of the Arabs?"

and "joggers".

His poems were also distinguished by their incomparable special appeal to generations of Arab artists who composed and sang them, from Abdel Halim Hafez through Fayza Ahmed and Najat Al Saghira, to Kazem El Saher, Magda El Roumi, Asala Nasri and others.

In a testimony about his poetic legacy, the late Palestinian poet Samih al-Qasim says, "On the technical level of the Arabic poetic language, Qabbani presented what can be said that Omar bin Abi Rabia presented it. In the revolutionary social context, Nizar spent his life trying to take revenge on the rude social structure that deals with The woman is like a piece of furniture in the house, as Nizar's poetic pearl begins with the knife that killed his sister for a social circumstance."

In addition to the tragic suicide of his sister, Wisal, who subconsciously incited him to follow the revolution for what he called “the liberation of love” in the Arab world, Qabbani faced in his life many painful incidents that made him lose the dearest to him;

In 1982, he was devastated by the death of his Iraqi wife, Bilqis, following a suicide bombing in Beirut.

He lamented her saying, "I will say in the investigation... that I have known the killers... Belqis... my beautiful horse... I am shy of all my history... this is a country where they kill horses... I will say in the investigation: how my princess was raped... and how they shared the poetry that is going on." Like rivers of gold... I will say how they drained her blood..."

He was also deeply moved by the death of his son Tawfiq at the age of 17, as he lamented him in his poem "The Legendary Prince Tawfiq Qabbani".

Nizar Qabbani's books

Qabbani left a rich poetic heritage, and among his most important collections are: "The Samra Said to Me" (1944), "Samba" (1949), "You are mine" (1950), "Poems" (1956), and "Habibi" (1961). ), "Painting with Words" (1966), "Diary of a Careless Woman" (1968), "Wild Poems" (1970), "Outlaw Poems" (1972), "Happy New Year, My Love" ( 1978).

He is also the author of “Magnon Poems” (1985), “Poems of Anger” (1986), “The Children of Stones Trilogy” (1988), “Margins on the Margins” (1991), and “Nizari Variations on the Maqam of Love” (1995). , and "The Jasmine Alphabet" (1998).

Death

Nizar Qabbani’s health condition deteriorated in 1997, and he passed away on the 30th of April 1998 at the age of 75, and he was buried in a mass funeral in which the different spectrums of Syrian society participated, along with Syrian and Arab artists and intellectuals, and he was buried in his hometown of Damascus in implementation of his will. His city is "the womb that taught me poetry, that taught me creativity, and that taught me the Jasmine alphabet."