Nazik al-Mala'ika's poetry and its critical reception in the West - Modern Iraqi Literature in English Translation

Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), Fall, 1997 by Salih J. Altoma

Al-Mala'ika's theoretical writings on the free verse movement in modern Arabic poetry was also discussed and analyzed by Mounah Khouri in his "Lewis Awad: A Forgotten Pioneer of the Free Verse Movement" (1970). Khouri considers Lewis Awad's collection Plutoland and Other Poems from the Poetry of the Elite (1947) as the pioneering experiment in free verse which crystallized, according to him, "the basic poetic norms and patterns which characterized the free verse movement" (39:138). He nevertheless acknowledges that al-Mala'ika was the first poet to lay out in her "Introduction" to Splinters and Ashes and her Problems of Contemporary Poetry the theoretical foundations for the development of the new poetic form (41:132).

All this academic debate on who was the first to use free verse or advocate it is justifiable. For modern Arabic literature has witnessed, since the mid-Nineteenth Century, many innovative movements due to its interaction with Western literatures which resulted in, or was accompanied by, extensive literary translation movement and attempts at adopting and appropriating some Western literary styles and forms such as blank verse, prose poetry and free verse. Most probably, a comprehensive survey of Arabic poetry and criticism published in newspapers and journals since the mid-Nineteenth Century would unearth some new names and literary works associated with such innovations. But the debate or the survey will not change the historical fact that free verse as a literary movement started first in Iraq, nor will it diminish the pioneering role which al-Mala'ika played in its development. Al-Mala'ika's place is firmly established by virtue of her dual role as a poet and a critic. On the one hand she has, as a poet, assimilated Arabic poetic heritage, mastered its traditional forms, experimented with new forms and continued to this day her innovative efforts in the structure of the Arabic poem. And on the other hand, as a literary theorist, she is noted for her original vision, knowledge and experience that all qualified her to lay out the initial theoretical foundations for free verse, and to reflect on its later development with unprecedented critical details in modern Arabic letters.

Those who have studied al-Mala'ika generally agree on the importance of her role as a literary critic with distinct views and attitudes in different areas. Some of her critical writings were translated into several Western languages. "The Social Roots of the Free Verse Movements" was translated, in a condensed form, into French by Anour Abdel-Malek in 1955. The same essay was translated into Spanish by Pedro Martinez Montavez in 1965. Her article "The Beginning of Free Verse" was translated into English by Elizabeth Fernea and Basima Q. Bezirgan in 1977. Nissim Rejwan summarized and translated in part her study "Literature and the Cultural Invasion" (1965) under the title "Rejecting Europe's Cultural Influence: Protest of an Iraqi Poetess" in 1966.

Foremost among the topics which critics discussed is al-Mala'ika's concept of meter in free verse and her insistence on adhering to the unity of metrical foot without violating the prosodic rules, as she illustrates in her study of metrical patterns in free verse. This concept, according to French Orientalist Jacques Berque in his Cultural Expression in Arab Society Today (1978), represents a restriction, if not a reversal, in the artistic revolution that characterized the free verse movement. Berque goes on to suggest that al-Mala'ika's work Problems in Contemporary Poetry seems to be inflexible concerning the prosodic rules she proposes (32:272). Like Berque, M.M. Badawi underlines, though in passing, al-Mala'ika's conservative approach in the work cited above, most probably referring to her attitude toward poets who differ with her in their poetic experiments.(29:203;30:228). Salma Khadra Jayyusi addressed the same issue and rejected al-Mala'ika's insistence on the use of the same beat(28:615) as well as her insistence on the meter as the sole criterion by which distinction is made between verse and prose (38:638). According to al-Mala'ika "A poem is a poem only when it has meter, otherwise it is prose, not poetry"(10:132). On the other hand Jayyusi commends highly al-Mala'ika's concern with the proper use of Arabic, highlighting the great service she has rendered to Arabic poetry by identifying the errors which poets commit in their works. Jayyusi refers in particular to al-Mala'ika's treatment of the language aspect in two chapters of her book [Problems of Contemporary Arabic] which focused on the use of repetition in poetry and the poet's linguistic responsibility (10:230-240; 289-300).