Do writers and writers take inspiration from the titles of their work from among the folds of lines and texts that they create, or does it not necessarily come literally from within the creative text?
Do they start with the address or seal it?
Does the writer and writer accept that the publisher puts a title for his book?
And since the title is the threshold of the text, can there be a text without a threshold, and a book without a title, or is that not possible?
And in front of book titles and texts completed for others, has it happened that an author wished that this or that title was his creation?
Then what were the first titles that astonished Arab writers, and touched a nerve in their souls?
What is the difference between addressing poetry (for example) and addressing other literary and written genres such as novel, biography, story, diaries, criticism, research, translation, arts, sciences, etc.?
Is the idea of intertextuality in addressing acceptable, or does the title, if placed, become the intellectual property of its writer?
Al-Jazeera Net launches this new angle (My Journey with the Address) in which Arab writers and writers talk about their story with “The Address”, and their journey with him in writing and receiving, which is an attempt to inform the reader of some of the secrets of writing.
The guest of our first episode is the Moroccan poet, critic and academic Salah Boussrif, who enriched the Arab Library with nearly 15 books on poetry and criticism, so he has directly testified.
Titles choose us
I do not think that a writer or poet has absolute certainty in choosing the titles of his books, perhaps the titles will choose us.
There are strange coincidences in many cases that take us to specific addresses, but this does not deny that the title has a great relationship with the work, and it is transmitted in the folds of this work itself, waiting for the moment in which it travels for itself, leaving its silence to become what refers to the book or work Poetic.
Nor does this mean that I do not interfere with my titles, because titles have a great danger to the work. Many are the books whose titles have corrupted their receipt, alienated the reader from them, or did not attract them to them.
The title is the threshold of the work, which can take us into the corridors of this work, even if we have not read it yet.
Personally, the titles of my poetic works are accurate, calculated titles, and have their connotations throughout the work itself.
I did not devise to a title without being convinced of it, and my taste enters it, and it has a relationship to work, but to the essence of the work.
And what I mean by coincidence is that sparkle that floats on the surface at some point, inviting us to its light, to its secret and poetry, especially when it comes to poetry, it is not easy to put titles without awareness of its poetic aesthetic condition, and the signs, symbols and connotations it bears. .
My choice of these titles is a poetic choice with an aesthetic artistic horizon that is taken from my vision of the work, and from my perception of its construction, and the possible functions of it, and of chance in the meaning that I referred to and its role in this choice, but it is not decisive.
In his book "Oh That, Talk To See You" Bosreef traces the process of Sufism through a journey between Afghan Balkh to Konya in Turkey (Al Jazeera)
A reflection of the experience
When you contemplate the titles of my poetic works, you will find them in one frequency, I mean that they reflect the nature of the poetic choice that I work on, and the nature of my experience, which is an experience outside the general and familiar, which is the experience of the modernity of writing that tends to the epic psyche in construction, perception and connotations, as opposed to lyricism and verbalism, They are two of the ancient traditional structures that still dominate contemporary poetry, even among those who claim to belong to or theorize about modernity. The self or the ego is still the one who speaks, and everyone acts on behalf of everyone to speak, and there is no role for anyone else in the work, as if the voice is present. In a closed room in which only echoes resonate.
Titles, then, are the horizon and the path, and they are what takes us to the nature of the experience and the feeling of the poet himself.
There are many titles that reveal the taste and vision of their owner, and when you open the book, you confirm your intuition or your sense of this, because the writing itself is confused and confused, and the absence of the aesthetic poetic sense.
Poetry is not a title, poetry is a text and a work, and it is building and working on this building, so the architect does not begin his architectural drawing from the threshold of the house, but from the general perception of space, how he will invest it and how he will distribute rooms, corridors, balconies, and other spaces and places, and the threshold is generated from within this architecture Itself and does not come from outside.
When we put the title in poetry before the text and work, we are like someone who visualizes the whole from the part, or a judgment on the whole through the part, and this is a projection and a kind of perception that indicates a defective construction.
In studies it is possible to suggest titles that are perceptions, and may be subject to some modification during research and writing. Nothing is fixed and decisive.
In poetry, the matter needs to be traced back to the title in the folds of the work itself, when it will subjugate itself, appear with such astonishment that it carries with it, and takes us to it.
Publisher and Headline Poetry
What does the publisher have with the title ?!
In studies, the publisher often interfered in works that he saw commercial titles would not appeal to the reader. Scholars and writers have reported this interference, some of whom reject it and some of whom are subject to it.
Personally, this did not happen to me. Rather, my titles are based, even in my theoretical writings, on my poetic and theoretical project, and I do not place them by chance.
Bosreef won the "Morocco Book Prize" in the category of poetry for the year 2018 for his book "The Relics of Gilgamesh" (Al Jazeera)
In this poetry it is absolutely impossible for the publisher to interfere with the poetic title, I consider this as an assault on my territorial boundaries, because firstly most publishers do not accept publishing poetry, and secondly, they do not have any knowledge of poetry, nor its aesthetic and cognitive contexts, so how do I allow the publisher to place I have the title of a book that I worked on for years, and with a horizon that he has no knowledge of, and an experience that concerns me, and has nothing to do with it, especially the publisher who is angry about poetry and poets ?!
Influential titles are indicative and expressive ones, and they are the titles issued by poets who have experience, and it is a distinct and special experience, and a paradox of what is prevalent and circulating.
Perhaps among the most important of these titles are, by way of representation but not limited to, “The Rain Song” by Badr Shaker Al-Sayyab, “Changing its Colors by the Sea” by Nazik Al-Malaika, “Singular in the Plural” by Adonis, and “Black Mattresses” by Abdullah Zorika, and some titles by Salim Barakat And other titles that were actually derived from the work itself, and not a fabrication, especially the departing and disturbing titles, which create confusion for the reader.
As I mentioned earlier, headings in poetry in particular come from within the work itself, without precedent, and they are titles that are related to the work itself.
The title may come out of the text with the letter, and it may be related to the meaning, or perception, so headlines are not easy to place outside the work, because in this case they will be a kind of arbitrary pasting only, and they are titles that will not survive in the memory and the aesthetic poetic awareness.
Imagine a book without a title
Imagine an untitled book with me, that will definitely be interesting.
I thought many times about doing this, and the idea still exists, and he has accomplished it at any time, but the problem is in the publisher and in the media, and in the reader himself, how he will receive work without a title.
The origin of Arabic poetry is that the poet did not put titles for his poems, the titles that you see on the collections of the ancients, and they were placed by those who achieved their works and not the poets.
Notice how the absence of the address confuses the reader, and it may be like a house without an address. Messages will not reach it, and it will remain unknown as if there is no inhabitant in it.
I may like some of the titles, and I wish I had suggested them, but I did not think that they would be titles for my works, because when I read the poet’s experience, I find it running outside of what I write, so the title remains an amazing moment of representation for me, but it is the title of that poetic work, not what I'm thinking about writing it, or what I've written and I'm going to write it.
Although I fundamentally disagree with the experience and perception of Nazik the angels, with its title "Changing Its Colors The Sea", it was among the titles that struck me in particular astonishment, because when the sea became a part of my residence and my daily life, I saw it in this sense as I contemplated it in the various seasons, not in one Summer only.
The element of becoming and transformation is in the depth of the title, and in its connotations, and this is reflected in the experience of this divan in the poetic path of Nazik al-Malaika themselves, compared to what I wrote before, and this is what I will realize later, not at the moment when the title provoked me and drew me to its richness and poetry.
A collection of "After a Sky" by the Moroccan poet Salah Boussrif published in 1997 (Al-Jazeera)
The fields and soils also differ, so the flowers, roses and fruits that sprout in them differ, and the same thing applies to different races and types of writing, as they are fields, and each field has what distinguishes it from others.
Titles of poetry are in their nature ambiguous, like poetry, because of the intensity and depth of poetry, unlike the novel, biography and study, for example.
I mentioned a little while ago that the titles in studies and research are part of the work plan that is prioritized, and this may be found in the novel, and the title of the novel may be formed later.
I do not know how the novelist deals with his titles, because I do not write the novel, but Umberto Eco's novel "The Name of the Rose", the title of which has created many discussions, in the search for the relationship between the title and the content of the novel, or the topic you go to, a topic related to the loss and disappearance of the second part From Aristotle's book Poetics, the part he said he would devote to comedy, but it did not appear nor trace it.
Where is the rose here? How can the title be justified in relation to the text?
This is what makes headlines dangerous, and has a major role in the success or failure of the work itself, because whoever fails in a headline from a word or sentence, how can he be infected with a text of tens of pages ?!