The politics and the poetics of Sa'di Yusuf: the use of the vernacular.

• Author: Simawe, Saadi A.
• Position: Modern Iraqi Literature in English Translation

When Irish poet seamus Justin Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, the Academy praised him for "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday life and the living past" (Schlessinger 93).(1) Though having no power to grant a Nobel Prize, many critics, students of literature, and general readers have noted with fascination the magical power of Sa'di Yusuf's unassuming, short, and subtle poems that exalt the heroism and the epical perseverance of everyday life in the Arab World, particularly in Iraq where the very act of surviving with some form of dignity becomes in itself heroic. Yusuf's poetry since the early 1950s has become an epic song of survival in the face of both fascism and Western intervention.

A major aspect of Yusuf's poetry that has been touched upon, but not sufficiently explored, by critics is his remarkable blend of standard Arabic (al-Lugha al-Fusha) with the Iraqi vernacular (al-Lahja al-'Ammiyya). In this essay I will argue that Yusuf's talent for "poetization of the familiar and the quotidian," as Ghazoul aptly put it ("The Poetics of the Political Poem," 117), lies largely in his capability of creating a poetic diction of his own - a linguistic synthesis that blends al-Fusha and al-'Ammiyya. Yusuf's new poetic diction reflects on the one hand his Marxist politics and on the other his poetics. Though most of the time a fellow traveler, his esthetics asserts itself with occasional rebellion against the ideological dictates of the Iraqi Communist Party. Yet his loyalty to his esthetics and to the ordinary, vulnerable individual never wavered throughout his long journey.

Born in 1934 (the year the Iraqi Communist Party was founded) in a village near Basra, Iraq, Sa'di Yusuf began writing poetry when he was about fifteen years old. Upon graduating from high school, he went to Dar al-Mu'allimeen al-'Allia in Baghdad (Higher Teachers' Training Institute), where he earned a B.A. in Arabic with a teaching certificate. His life in Iraq, from the early 1950s to 1964 and then from 1973 to 1978, was spent between teaching at various high schools, working with progressive or Communist journalism, and serving political prison terms. Like the majority of Iraqi writers, educators, and intellectuals, Yusuf was forced to leave Iraq in 1978, when Saddam Hussein assumed absolute power. After several years in Algeria, Lebanon, and Yemen, Yusuf settled in Damascus, Syria, where now he works as journalist with the Palestinians and with the Iraqi opposition groups.

Since 1952, Yusuf has published more than twenty volumes of poetry.(2) He has also published fiction, essays, and translated the Nineteenth Century American poet Walt Whitman and contemporary Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa'Thionga, as well as works by European authors. Yusuf learned English and French on his own, taking advantage of the periods of exile he was forced into due to his involvement, like most Iraqi writers, with the Iraqi Communist Party since his college years in Baghdad (probably even before that when he was in Basra). Although he demonstrated remarkable versatility in most literary genres, Yusuf is primarily considered a towering figure in Iraqi modernist poetry, Jama'at al-Ruwwad (The Group of Pioneers) established in the early 1950s.

From the beginning of his career Yusuf was interested not only in registering the poetic glow in the ordinary and the common, but also in portraying the seemingly insignificant. The majority of his characters are below even ordinary people; they are the marginalized and on the fringes of the society: children attempting to survive their vulnerability, women caught in the double plight of sexism and classism, the poorest farmers and menial laborers. Scenes and moments that inspire his best poetry are frequently the invisible and the unnoticed. This vision of the ordinary seems to account for Yusuf's language a language that suggests rather than oppresses or stifles the poetry of the ordinary. As many critics have observed, when we read Yusuf's poetry, we cannot help but notice the closeness of his standard Arabic to the vernacular.

In her Modern Arabic Poetry (1987) poet and critic Salma Khadia Jayyusi characterizes Yusuf's greatness as "his capacity to speak in direct and simple yet highly poetic terms about life's constant routine and day-to-day experiences, subjects which so many Arab poets shun"(480). Other critics point more specifically to Yusuf's talent for capturing the ordinary and the obvious in a kaleidoscopic poetic medium. "It seems to me," al-Saggar states, "that Sa'di is keenly aware of his environment, and he deals with it on the basis that it is a reality that demands his recognition without imposing on it any kind of logic that does not sound at any rate apropos. He is a hunter of the first moment - which is no doubt the essential stuff of poetry. Once it is in his hand, he does not allow it to escape by reflection and much analysis" (143).(3) More specifically, Ghazoul in her essay titled "Saadi Yusuf: Qasa'id Aqalu Samtan" focuses on what she terms Yusuf's "poetization of the familiar and the quotidian"(23).

Textual evidence from Yusuf's poetic work supports the critics' understanding of the crux of his poetic vision and the source of his inspiration. In one of his poems of 1976 titled "How Did al-Akhdhar bin Yusuf Write His New Poem," Yusuf, who had already made al-Akhdhar bin Yusuf his poetic persona or double (Ghazoul, "The Poetics of the Political Poem," 117) or a mask (Abbas,73-74) reflects on his own process of writing:

Well, here is al-Akhdhar bin Yusuf facing a problem more complicated than he initially thought.

It's true that when he writes the poem he rarely thinks of its destiny. But usually writing becomes easier when he can focus on a thing, a moment, a vibration, a leaf of grass.

Whereas now he is in front of Ten Commandments, he does not know which one he should choose. More importantly: How to begin?

Endings are always open. And beginnings are closed (Yusuf, al-'Amal al-Kamila, 62).(4)

The Ten Commandments, arguably a metaphor for ideology, seem to block the poet's vision from focusing on one thing, whether human or natural. Poetry flows naturally, Yusuf seems to suggest, when it is free from rigid thought, when it captures the rhythm within a scene or a moment.

Before the July Revolution of 1958, Yusuf's experiments with the vernacular(5) by incorporating slang words and phrases and even sentences in the standard Arabic were considered audacious, even blasphemous by the mainstream critics. What made Yusuf's experiments possible, it seems to me, is the fact that he was one of a group of young poets working independently to break the traditional poetic styles, what is usually called 'Amud al-Sh'ir (the pillar of poetry). Like Yusuf, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab (1926-1964), Nazik al-Mala'ika (1923-), Buland al-Haydari (1926-1996), and Abdul Wahab al-Bayaati (1926-), among others, were experimenting with new techniques in search of a language that expressed their new vision of reality. Significantly, all of these young poets were more or less progressive in their political views. Despite their nationalism, Marxism, or Communism, they were united in their opposition to the...