''It was as if a stranger sang through my soul,'' wrote Azraqi Hervai, an 11th
century Persian poet. ''But, then, I realized that it was my own lost voice,
coming back to me.''
Maybe because it was originally meant to be recited or sang aloud, poetry has
always been about the voice. As Rilke
noted you don't become a poet until you have found your own voice. After that,
what counts is the song not the singer.
But to find his voice the poet first has to listen to others, an enterprise
that could land him in a confusing cacophony or help him find his own voice.
In the same century as Azraqi, The great Persian poet Manuchehri of Damghan,
spent years ''listening'' to pre-Islamic Arab poets – many of whom are now all
but forgotten. That helped him find his own voice that comes to us in some of
the greatest qasidas ever written in Persian.
Listening to the voice of other poets for inspiration was a common practice
for classical Arab and Persian poets who wove echoes, far and near, into their
own voice. One technique was known as ''welcoming'' or ''istiqbal'' in Arabic
in which the poet takes a line or a whole theme from another poet and creates
a new qasida or ghazal. One of the best loved ghazals of Hafez of Shiraz
starts with a ''welcome'' hemistich borrowed from the Umayyad Caliph Yazid Ibn
Muawyyiah.
Another technique was ''iqtibas'', meaning ''taking the torch in the
darkness'' through which the poet imitates another poet, adding his own
touches to create a slightly different voice.
Western poetry had its own techniques for what one might call ''borrowing
voices.'' After all, though writing in Latin, Virgil and Ovid retained heavy
Greek accents. The Victorian English poets, in turn, relayed echoes of Latin
poetry through deliberate or unconscious imitations.
In modern times and with the emergence of a polyglot world, the aspiring poet
has access to virtually endless voices. The American poet Robert Lowell
learned to listen to poetical voices in a dozen languages, echoing them
through recreations in his'' Imitations'', a delightful collection of verse.
In it he ''welcomes'' poets as diverse as Homer and Leopardi.
In the past century or so the Arab poet has had access to poetic voices from
the outside, mostly Europe and more especially France, England and Germany.
However, in most cases those voices reached episodically and, often, through
the filter of not always perfect translation.
However, from the middle of the last century, a combination of circumstances
has led to more direct contact between Arab poets and poetical voices in other
parts of the world. A large number of Arab poets have found themselves in
exile, cut from their native linguistic roots and plunged into daily diglossia
with its dangers and promises.
In some cases, the avalanche of new voices, exotic and seductive, has buried
the Arab poet's own voice. In some case, the Arab poet in exile even lost
imaginal contact with his own cultural topos, reflecting his enforced abode
often in primary colours. Many Arab poets I have read who write about frozen
forests that remind me of Sweden, and spaghetti-like motorways that recall
California.
Then there are those who are so overwhelmed by the foreign voice that they
post their own voice. At times you feel as if it is Saint John Perse, to cite
just one example, who is speaking through the Arab poet, albeit a Saint John
Perse suffering from a heavy cold.
The beauty of poetry is that, being the key to freedom of imagination, it
recognizes no fences unlike religion that is all about erecting fences and
imposing exclusions. Poetry is the most efficient tool of cultural exchange
because it allows friendly visits, again unlike religion which, even when it
accepts dialogue limits itself to shouting its shibboleths across the fence.
The reason is that it is quite possible to live in several cultures, even if
at times it means as visitors or exiles while it is not possible to have more
than one religion at the same time. One could speak or even think in several
languages while the baroque chiaroscuro of religion permits no diversity.
Thus, at least for me, the first test of a poet's success is whether or not he
or she has found a voice of his or her own. In that sense, I think Fadel
Assultani has succeeded. I have been reading his poems, on and off, for more
than a decade, witnessing the emergence of his voice, initially no more than a
tentative murmur, to how it reached the right pitch and tone.
Without any braggadocio of the kind that Arab poets favour, Assultani simply
ditched most of the anathemas and interdicts designed to keep Arab poetry
frozen at some point in the distant past.
Perhaps without knowing it, Assultani took the advice of the great Sufi master
Roumi to ''grasp the kernel and throw the shell to donkeys.''
Roumi also regarded metres and rhymes as ''trifles not to be bothered about.''
In one poem he cries out: ''mufatilan muftalian (one of the nine principal
Arabic and Persian metres) is suffocating me!'' Poetry isn't concerned about
trifles as the Latin adage has it about law: De minimis non curat praetor!
This collection of Assultani's poems provides the reader with an opportunity
to hear the full tonality of his voice, something that reading a single poem
might not accomplish. Assultani's style is closer to chamber music than to
symphonic exposition. His voice is intimate, often mournful and always
sincerely measured. Like Manuchehri or Lowell he is in a dialogue with many
poets, from T.S. Eliot and Philip Larkin, perhaps his favourite English poet,
to Paul Eluard and Jacques Prevert with many classical Arab poets, not to
mention the poet who wrote Gilgamesh, maintaining a presence.
One of Assultani's favourite themes is that of ''elswehereness'', living in
one reality physically and in another reality spiritually. His is not the
classical case of nostalgia, the opiate of the beaten in history, as expressed
by many poets in exile. For Assultani what matters is to live his ''elsewhereness'',
not lament it.
It is impossible to read Assultani without sharing the immense grief he
expresses in his poems. This is all the more effective because there is no
chest-beating hyperbole about the treachery of destiny, a theme of so much
classical Arabic poetry. Here, the words are certainly Arabic, and rich in
that context, but the sentiment is cold and clinical, very English if you
like, making it all the more devastating.
Assultani has found his voice, and speaks in the universal language of poetry,
albeit with an Iraqi accent, perhaps even an accent from Sidrat al-Hindiyah.
END
Amir Taheri was born in Ahvaz, southwest Iran, and educated in Tehran,
London and Paris. He was Executive Editor-in-Chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran
(1972-79). In 1980-84, he was Middle East Editor for the Sunday Times. In
1984-92, he served as member of the Executive Board of the International Press
Institute (IPI). Between 1980 and 2004, he was a contributor to the
International Herald Tribune. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, the
New York Post, the New York Times, the London Times, the French magazine
Politique Internationale, and the German weekly Focus. Between 1989 and 2005,
he was editorial writer for the German daily Die Welt. Taheri has published 11
books, some of which have been translated into 20 languages. He has been a
columnist for Asharq Alawsat since 1987. Taheri's latest book "The Persian
Night" is published by Encounter Books in London and New York.
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