It is difficult to pick one as representative of his extensive oeuvre. He often wrote from a woman’s point of view as well. Many of them portrayed women as strong and powerful, not just as objects of beauty.
the womb that taught me poetry, taught me creativity and granted me the alphabet of Jasmine…. This is the way a bird returns home and a baby to his mother’s bosom.īack to his love poems. I want my body to be transported after my death to Damascus to be buried there with my folks…. When he was dying in London at age 75, he asked to be buried in Damascus, writing:
And, finally, he lost his second wife, Iraqi, Balqis al-Rawi, in a 1981 bomb attack on the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. He then lost his oldest son, Tawfiq Qabbani, who suffered a heart attack at the age of 22. When he was 15, his 25-year-old sister killed herself to avoid a loveless marriage, causing him to speak out, for the rest of his life and rather controversially, against repressive and regressive societies. In addition to English, his works have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Persian and Russian.īesides the literary and political influences, certain key life events also shaped his personal worldview. He also wrote prose, a play and the lyrics of many famous songs rendered by Arab singers. Over time, his poems turned to social, national and political themes (several heart-breaking poems about war, resistance, Damascus, Jerusalem, Beirut), but he is most-respected in the Arab-speaking world for his love poems – in fact, likened to Kahlil Gibran and Rumi. But, he was, and continues to be, also well-respected as a poet of over 50 collections of poetry, starting with a self-published and critically-acclaimed romantic / erotic collection at the school-boy age of sixteen. Born in 1923 in Damascus, Qabbani was well-known as a Syrian diplomat.
Let’s start with a little background about today’s poet, Nizar Qabbani. But, there is also something about the unabashed extravagance of metaphor and imagery that is employed to this day, even after free verse and contemporary Western influences have prevailed. In fact, there’s only been one other before this.Īnd, some of the best love verses are found in the Arabic languages, don’t you think? Partly, this has to do with ancient lyrical verse traditions that make Arabic love poems almost song-like. We haven’t done a love poem in quite some time since this column began.
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