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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
1 - Hatif Janabi: Life and Works
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
Before starting to study the works of Hatif Janabi, it is necessary to consider the biography of this Iraqi creator because it greatly influenced his writings, which formed a mirror that reflects the stages of his rich and interesting life. To fully understand the details of the poet’s world, to reveal more of the secrets of his mysterious texts, and to explore the spaces of his thoughts objectively and fairly, it is crucial to look at his life paths that weave across countries and continents, peoples and cultures. It seems that Janabi’s journey in the world of creativity, which has approached fifty years and passed through not a few stations “reflects the astonishment, ramifications, and throes related to the process of creativity, its abundance and its quality” – as professor Adnan Abbas wrote.
Hatif Janabi (Hātif Maǧīd Karkūr al-Ǧanābī) – is an academic researcher, writer, poet, and well-known translator. He was born in 1952 (as a result of a mistake in some documents, it was supposed that he was born in 1951) in the town Ġammās, Al-Qādisiyya (Ad-Dīwāniyya) Governorate, Iraq. He moved with his family to Najaf at the age of eleven and settled there until the start of his studies at the Faculty of Arts in Baghdad, where he graduated in 1972.
Before beginning his work as a teacher in Kirkuk in the mid-seventies, he had to serve compulsory military service, which he spent in terrible desert conditions, his first exile in his country. Perhaps the best person to present a picture of that harsh period in Hatif’s life is his friend Kahtan Mandee (Qaḥṭān Mandawī), an Iraqi poet and academic living in America, who wrote in the introduction to his translation of Hatif Janabi’s poetry into English, remembering those hard times:
We were aware of the causes of our exile to this foreboding desert. The horrible months of winter passed painfully but peacefully. At the end of July, with two months to end our service, the Sixth Battalion relocated in tents’ camp for war exercises, much deeper in the forlorn, brutal heart of the desert, infested with snakes, scorpions, and one foot of sand, closer to Kuwait. The Battalion never thought of our well-being.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Poet and ExistenceText Contents and the Interaction of Reality, Myths and Symbols in Hatif Janabi's Poetry, pp. 13 - 16Publisher: Jagiellonian University PressPrint publication year: 2021