Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Part I The Poet Between Two Expatriates
- Part II Single and Collective Hero – Humanization, Animalization and Objectification
- Part III Title Indications, Allusiveness and Symbols
- Part IV Textual Openness and Employment of Myths, Religions, and Holy Books
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Summary in Arabic
2 - Mythical and Religious Symbols, God and Sacred Books
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Part I The Poet Between Two Expatriates
- Part II Single and Collective Hero – Humanization, Animalization and Objectification
- Part III Title Indications, Allusiveness and Symbols
- Part IV Textual Openness and Employment of Myths, Religions, and Holy Books
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Summary in Arabic
Summary
In his invaluable book Faḍā’āt wa aškāl wa afkār muḥtadima fī (Walīmat al-asmāk) li-Hātif Janābī, Adnan Abbas wrote that Janabi:
combined the two religious and mythical symbols, forming out of them scenes of mystical gnostic proportions, swimming in a wandering spirit with its questions and bewilderment, and with the soul of a poet searching for Kalīm Allāh (Moses) in different elements of nature and beings, love and affection, worry and self-misery, and in the human polemics and beyond, between hope and vain, dreams and nightmares, as well as desire and nothingness.
It can be asserted that Abbas’s remark is correct, as it indicates that the Iraqi poet was more concerned with the religious symbol and linked it to his poems of mythical dimension, providing a clear image of God, the symbol of love, hope and safety. At the same time, Janabi draws clear boundaries between the sacred values of religion, which bound humanity with the feelings of brotherhood, and between religious extremism, crime, and terrorism that operates in the name of religion.
In some of his works, the poet opposes religious terrorism, extremism, and the use of religion in conflicting political issues. He managed to present the issues of faith and metaphysical ideas as symbols interacting in spaces closely related to myths, so that human sacredness seems to be intertwined with mythologies from many cultures. It is not strange, then, that Janabi’s poems are full of quotes and interactions with sacred texts, the foremost of which is the Holy Qur’an, some of whose verses are used in various suggestive and semantic contexts. For example, the poet presents in his psalms, characterized by a mythical character that the reader feels since the title “Mazmūr an-nisā’” (The Psalm of Women), a wondrous world lost between winged aspirations and fiery dreams. Psalm is a word that suggests the Bible and Psalms of David and other prophets, while the symbolism of women indicates the continuation of life and the integrity of human society. Perhaps this symbolism also includes a reference to Surah an-Nisā’ (The Women) – one of the surahs of the Holy Qur’an, from which the poet quotes part of the verse “Gardens of Eden underneath which rivers flow.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Poet and ExistenceText Contents and the Interaction of Reality, Myths and Symbols in Hatif Janabi's Poetry, pp. 150 - 172Publisher: Jagiellonian University PressPrint publication year: 2021