With Nazik al-Malaika

In one of the suburbs of Baghdad, in an atmosphere of deep, dreaming stillness, stands a small house, shaded by the boughs of oleander and eucalyptus trees, drooping here and there like the wings of angels, hovering over that quiet spot of the city of al-Rashid...

In this enchanting atmosphere lives the Iraqi poetess Nazik al-Malaika, and with her in this green house lives a family of poets, every one — there is the mother, an excellent poetess; there is the second sister, who composes verse; there is the youngest sister, for whom they foretell a brilliant poetic future; and there is the brother, whom you always see in the shade of the garden trees, reading or writing.

In Iraq today there is a phenomenon worthy of study and reflection: in this country you find a women's poetic renaissance that has no parallel in the other Arab lands. Nazik al-Malaika is not the only Iraqi poetess; there is a fresh bouquet of poetesses which has begun to scatter its fragrance in every corner of Mesopotamia. The cause of this may lie in the violent social repression which the educated woman suffers there, finding no outlet but poetry. Poetry is the one window through which the soul breaks free, expressing its feelings, its sensations, and its natural emotions.

I said that Nazik al-Malaika is not the only Iraqi poetess; rather, she stands at the head of this bouquet of poetesses. Two collections of hers have appeared so far: the first, the diwan "Lover of the Night," and the second, "Splinters and Ashes," which is the one I shall discuss.

In the introduction the poetess attacks the meters of al-Khalil, and calls for liberation from these heavy fetters which, through all these generations, have kept Arabic poetry from taking a lofty place in the literatures of the world..

And as she sets forth her theories, she springs with enthusiasm to their defense, pointing gently, through the poems of the collection, to the plain differences between the fettered old and the free-moving new... And as she raises the problems of poetry and plunges, in treating them, into the depths of feeling and the tremors of the human soul, she makes you feel that she speaks from knowledge and from wide reading in Western literatures and their new directions in psychological analysis, and in the developments that have come over meaning and over the word... She leads you by the hand to the far-stretching shores of poetry, and applies herself to the arts of poetry as the true artist applies himself to his canvases and his colors..

Nazik al-Malaika has her own views on language and her own conception of poetry. She holds that the Arabic language has not yet acquired the power of suggestion, because its writers and poets did not, until recently, accustom themselves to exploiting to the full the powers latent behind words. Perhaps that — says Nazik al-Malaika — is the reason for the Arab public's strong inclination to condemn the poetic schools that rely on the suggestive power of words, such as symbolism and surrealism, on the ground that these schools load the language with burdens of symbols, hidden dreams, obscure stirrings, and the tendencies of the unconscious — and the like of that can be borne only by a language that has reached the summit of its maturity.

And obscurity is an essential part of the life of the human soul, the poetess says, for this soul is not clear; it is closed behind a thousand veils, and it may happen that the self expresses itself in obscure and winding ways, suggested by the inner self while the conscious mind is unaware.

In the poem "The Thread Tied to the Cypress Tree" the poetess shows a surpassing power in drawing poetic pictures of the emotions and thoughts that seized a young man surprised by the news of his beloved's death. It will be noticed that the love story in this poem is of secondary importance beside the thread tied to the tree, and its close connection with the distraction of the stunned young man and the state of inner delirium that came over him: — the lover knocks at his beloved's door after a long absence, and her little sister tells him that she has died:

And two moments pass!
You, still, as though you had not heard the stirring voice,
Frozen, eyeing the corners of the place,
Distracted, your gaze fastened to a little thread
Tied to the cypress — you do not know when?

And why? For it was not there two months ago.. And your lips almost asked the sister about the little thread, and why they hung it? And when? And the voice rings in your ears: "She died.."

"She has died..." And you gaze on coldly
And see the thread as ropes of ice
Knotted by arms that have vanished, that death has hidden away
Thousands of centuries ago, and you see the sorrowful face
Swollen by clouds of terror before your eyes
"Died..."

In the collection "Splinters and Ashes" there are thirty-four poems, bound together by an all-embracing unity, and the feeling that takes hold of the reader may be summed up thus: the poetess is trying in these poems to dispel this anxiety and this pain. And we feel, too, that the soul within the poetess, for all its richness, its culture, and its freedom of movement, still lies under a bitter repression that wants to burst out in the face of everything; and this soul finds no field but words and phrases, which it sends forth in strength and burning and longing.. So she says in the poem "Pride": —

And lips that die athirst, and do not ask: where is the nectar? Where is the cup?

And souls that feel the deepest feeling, and seem as though they did not feel

Do not question me, do not wound the secret in my soul, and do not spurn the pride of my stillness

If I spoke, in every word there would be the grave of a dream and the dawn of a dead wound

This sorrowful melody accompanies our poetess in most of the poems of the collection, and whoever reads "Splinters and Ashes" becomes certain that its author is a poetess in truth — in her deep, bursting pain, in her new and sorrowful horizons, in her burning anxiety, and in her mysticism, which wells up from her very self. And for all her being touched by Western poetry, and the breadth of her reading, her personality shows itself to you through her poems; this personality is not lost behind a thick veil of many personalities. That is because the poetess draws her inspiration from herself and makes her own self speak, and finds in her self and in her being an echo of all the poetic selves and souls that these human souls have known — souls that are all prey to anxiety and perplexity, to love and tenderness. So she says in the poem "Faces and Mirrors":

They called me "I," and they did not understand me — what am I, what is my sullen existence?

What am I? A burning that finds no rest, and a shadow that soon will pass

In the clearness of the mirror I stared long at my phantom, doubt in my eyes

As though some pale one were staring into my face, like me, bewildered, folded away

This, this is "I." There is no doubt — so why do I not touch her with my hands?

Why can I not touch the self? And erase my eternal burning?

And though Nazik al-Malaika is a poetess of the idea, the idea in her is neither intellect nor logic that comes to you hard and dry; it comes to you in a procession of beautiful words, pulsing and alive, and in meters that move within the poems and surge according to the meanings and the states the poetess is living. Most of her poetry is states of the soul, passing through it in brief moments of time, so that you feel, as you read, that you are being drawn with her toward the unknown, not knowing when the poetess will bring you back from her enchanted world. Let us listen to her in the poem "Utopia": —

I shall remain, drawn by longings toward the everlasting, distant horizon

And I dream, I dream, and do not wake except to dream a new dream

I kiss its walls in imagination and ask the vast space about it

And ask about it the outpouring of perfumes, the drops of dew, the drifts of ice

And ask until the question dies on my lips and the song fades away

And when I die... I die with my heart keeping a tryst with Utopia

And Nazik al-Malaika, in her poetry, does not attempt easy things; she bends over the folds of the soul and attempts the rugged paths, and so most of her poems come in subjects strange through and through — strange even in their titles and their atmospheres... She says in the poem "The Funeral of Mirth":

I shall close my window, for the light muddies my cold darkness

I shall let down this heavy curtain over the page of the vanished story

And drive away the dull voice of the winds and the radiance of the spiteful stars

And lean my head upon memories, and dip my eyes in two tears

And send my love to wrap the slain one and warm his lifeless brow

Perhaps I may give him back his life, and wipe the blueness from his lips

★

Nazik al-Malaika is a poetess worthy of study. She is a poetess who lives for poetry, and for poetry alone; and she is, beyond that, a new phenomenon of woman's possibilities in an art in which people have reproached her for never having excelled..