The Iraqi critic and academic Dr. Jassim Muhammad Jassam published his new critical book titled "Deliberations of Maps and Shadow", in which he tried to find treatments for the paths of renewal in modern Arabic poetry, by addressing Arabic poetry in a number of countries such as Iraq, Egypt, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain as well as Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria .

The book traces the patterns and paths that appeared in modern Arabic poetry, and it has met with many discussions and questions because it contains a new opinion on the experience of Arabic poetry in its regenerative form. What does the book contain and what is the new characteristic that the author worked on?

The poetic language of the Muhamasheen

Jassam says about his new book that it “represents a turning point in Arabic criticism, as it deals with an important feature in poetry, which is the feature of renewal.” He explains this feature by saying that it “refers to changes taking place at the level of language, as the language in modern poetry has moved from the simple linguistic system to the linguistic system.” The broken or the so-called breaking of the language, which we find clear in the texts of poets from Iraq, the Emirates, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Lebanon, Tunisia and Morocco.

Jassam: The new poem moves from the sky of the spiritual language to the language of the marginalized and the oppressed (Al-Jazeera)

And about the concept of cracking, which he reached and related to the title guide, that it “means to move the language from the lexical or lexical language to transforming the everyday language into the language of poetry,” adding to the interpretation “it means to destroy or break the dictionary language, the language of the poetic lexicon, and the use of the language of the pub, the sidewalk, and the street, and its transformation into the language of poetry.” Which means moving from the sky of the spiritual language to the language of the marginalized and the downtrodden.

Regarding the book’s other treatments, he says that it deals with “the path of cognitive and philosophical disclosure in the poetic text,” which is “a new work by entering a new area to reveal the conditions of the poetic text and giving philosophy a high ability to reveal,” considering the application that took place on the texts of Arab poets as the place where It was "a special application of the transformation of the language and its poetic breaking."

The author believes that the texts he dealt with represent the model he reached in "the renewal that radiates in all its formal, objective and semantic elements through the follower of the paths of renewal in this poetry."

concept of renewal

The book, which was divided into 4 chapters, in the first dealt with linguistic patterns, in the second with forms and concepts, while the third chapter dealt with the cognitive and philosophical revelations in the modern poem, while the fourth dealt with the innovative stylistic phenomena in the poem.

The Iraqi critic Ali Hassan Al-Fawaz says that the book puts us "in front of a critical problem concerned with the paths of renewal, through what it investigates from the representations of this renewal in the Arabic poem, which is inseparable from its relationship with experimentation, and with the procedure that establishes its project through its use of modern approaches."

The Iraqi critic Ali Hassan Al-Fawaz believes that the critical discourse needs to work on the concept of renewal (Al-Jazeera)

Al-Fawaz continues that the critical discourse has become more in need of the scientific methods of these approaches “in delineating the actors and questions of criticism, and in revealing the relationship of those actors to the theoretical lesson, and to his critical theses.”

Al-Fawwaz points out that what distinguishes the book is “working on the concept of renewal as a critical awareness, and a procedure that requires theoretical rooting,” which means that it “is in a way that the paths of renewal are intertwined with what can be called “the intentional reading” that proposed by the French critic Michael Rifater, which makes the transcendent critic/reader more possessive of an awareness of method and theory.

He points out that the author demonstrated his ability by "pointing these poetic maps, by approaching their new transformations, and by choosing poetic models, and from multiple generations, who met at the critic's strategy while he frames his critical project with the effectiveness of renewal." He believes that the book "transcends stereotypes, and opens up to a poetic horizon." An Arab” responds to the questions of existence, and the cultural variables that can “make the poem an indication of the re-characterization of “The Diwan of the Arabs” according to a vision in which the memory of the dead poets is undermined.”

Seek and reveal

The critic and academic Dr. Ali Haddad believes that the book sought "to clarify the institutions of forming the new poetic vision through extensive examination of poetic texts in which he lived diligent investigation and serious follow-up to tens of poetic groups and from various Arab countries," noting that the book focused on the prose poem "in an exploration of stylistic patterns and effectiveness." The language to which it appealed, and the components of visions in their philosophical and social dimensions that occupied the consciousness of the contemporary poet and questioned them in his text.

Critic and academic Ali Haddad: The book aims to reshape the aesthetic in a new view of the paths of Arab poetry (Al-Jazeera)

He believes that what counts for the critical book is that "its author is an academic researcher whose studies have absorbed the tools of sober systematic research that he harmonized and his open restoration to the mechanisms of modern critical study and the developments of his theories that made him his means of interrogating texts and contemplating the depths of their revelation." He added that the book wants to reconfigure contextual and aesthetic informative On a new scene for the paths of Arab poetry...reproducing them in a poetic formation that accommodates contiguous expressive forms."

Dr. Jassim Muhammad Jassam holds a doctorate in literary criticism in 2010 AD and is a member of the General Union of Writers in Iraq. He served as President of the Critics Association and Chairman of the Admission Committee of the General Union of Writers in Iraq. He issued 3 critical books (The Words of Ages, Articles and Studies in the Structure of the Modern Poem). 2009 and (Paths in Modern Literary Criticism from Foundation to Experimentation) in 2013 and (Techniques of Modern Iraqi Novel) in 2017.