Stirring words: traditions and subversions in the poetry of Muzaffar al-Nawwab.

• Author: Bardenstein, Carol
• Position: Modern Iraqi Literature in English Translation

The first time I was exposed to the work of Iraqi-born poet Muzaffar al-Nawwab was in Egypt in the early 1980s, at an informal gathering at the home of friends. What was most striking and most piqued my interest in al-Nawwab was seeing the uniquely powerful effect his poetry recitation had on his audience. Much of the evening consisted of watching and listening to a considerable number of recordings of performances of various kinds - a video of the political satirical theater of the Lebanese artist Durayd Lahham, audio cassettes of the Egyptian artist Shaykh Imam singing the poetry of Ahmad Fu'ad Nijm. The listening and watching continued for hours, mixed with food, intermittent conversation, outbursts of laughter. Suddenly, when a new cassette was put on, the atmosphere in the room changed dramatically. The poetry and its haunting recitation seemed to fill the room, leaving no space for any distracting activity. The reciting voice - visceral, musical, sensuous - sobbed and screamed, accused and consoled its listeners, who were riveted, visibly and audibly moved. Although the others present had all seen or heard these recordings before on numerous occasions, the poetry on this particular cassette seemed to have an immediately stultifying effect on small-talk and other trappings of everyday interaction among the listeners, and to stir and agitate at levels not usually accessed in the casual course of the "everyday."

The poet was Muzaffar al-Nawwab, and the poem he recited and performed on this cassette was one of his most famous Jisr al-Mabahij al-Qadima (The Bridge of Old Delights, [1976-77]), more commonly referred to as the "Tal al-Za'tar" poem, since one of the salient threads running through the poem is the 1976 siege and massacre of Palestinians at the Tal al-Zaatar refugee camp in Lebanon. Although I was to become much more closely acquainted with the work of al-Nawwab in years to come, certain salient features of his poetry were apparent even in that first encounter in Cairo.

First, in spite of the fact that some of his works have been published in limited editions in printed form, the primary means by which al-Nawwab's poetry is disseminated is live recitation or performance, and, more importantly, the samizdat cassette network, or the widespread non-commerical reproduction and dissemination of audio-cassette taped recordings of these live performances. The extent of his poetry's circulation through the fluid mode of the samizdat cassette has been astonishing, effectively countering the fact that al-Nawwab and his works have been banned and censored in much of the Arab World, and enabling them to find their way into homes not only throughout the Middle East, but in Europe and elsewhere.

Second, although Muzaffar al-Nawwab may be considered or referred to as an "Iraqi" poet in some sense (insofar as he is Iraqi-born, and perhaps since some of his poetry focuses on events or experiences set in Iraq, sometimes composed in Iraqi colloquial dialect), much of his work is both implicitly and explicitly aimed at a broader Arab audience, and both he and his poetry are, in turn, "claimed" by a much broader Arab public, in a way that seems to defy easy or unproblematic reference to him as an Iraqi poet (in contrast with the unproblematic identification of Mahmud Darwish, for example, as a Palestinian poet).

A third thread running through virtually all of al-Nawwab's poetry is a largely overt political agenda, populist in nature, uncompromisingly and viciously opposed to morally bankrupt "powers that be," be they in the Middle East or in the West. This aspect of his work, and the particular way it is articulated in his poetry, has certainly contributed in part to its appeal among left-leaning intellectual circles in the Middle East (or in exile from the Middle East), although his audience is by no means limited to this milieu.

Finally, and perhaps most central to al-Nawwab's project as a poet, is the very concerted dedication to the composition, orchestration and performance of poetry that is meant to stir and agitate his audience, to provoke and arouse a wide range of emotions - childlike wonderment, nostalgic longing, sensuous arousal, disgust, rage - all in some way meant to be intimately related back to the fate of the contemporary Arab World as a matter of urgent collective concern. This is achieved in al-Nawwab's work through a variety of means, perhaps most notoriously through his employment of what I refer to as a 'transgressive discourse,' by which I mean one which deliberately pushes against and transgresses or violates certain literary and aestethic norms within the Arabic literary tradition.

In what follows, I will elaborate on each of these features of Muzaffar al-Nawwab's poetry, drawing primarily on two compositions that are his most well-known and widely disseminated - Watariyyat Layliyya (Night Strings, 1970-75) and Jisr al-Mabahij al-Qadima.

SITUATING THE "GUERRILLA POET" AND OUTLAWED POETRY: THE "PRODUCTIVE" EFFECT OF CENSORSHIP

Any student or scholar of contemporary Arabic literature today must in some way contend with the fact of censorship as a salient and active force in the production of that literature. Some of the most vital and influential literature in Arabic today leads its life outside of and is far removed from the sanctioned canons and formal channels of publication and dissemination, in large part due to the extensive censorship throughout much of the Arab World. We most commonly tend to think of the "prohibiting" effect of state-regulated censorship, such as the barring of a written work from publication and circulation. Certain words, phrases or sections may be censored and expunged from a work before publication, or an entire body of work by a given author may be banned. Over a sustained period of time, the regulatory effect of censorship may become so entrenched or internalized, that it gives rise to a form of pre-emptive self-censorship, which prevents certain issues from being written about in certain ways, or from even being conceived of or defined as issues. The effects of censorship, in its prohibiting or preventative mode, on contemporary Arabic literature, are too obvious and far-reaching to require documentation here.(1)

Perhaps less obvious than this aspect of censorship is the sometimes "productive" effect of censorship on the life of a literature. Codes of censorship have at times led authors to create new ways of writing about issues they are supposed to avoid, for example, writing in a manner that is veiled from detection by censoring institutions, but which is "coded" for an intended audience. Censorship can also act as a factor that actively contributes to the production of alternative, counter-hegemonic modes, in which a writer or a poet, for example, does not need to get past a censor, or to have his or her works published or distributed through formally sanctioned channels. In this context, the Arabic literary tradition has the additional resource of a thriving tradition of oral literary expression that can be drawn on in the creation of such alternative modes, one pertinent feature of this tradition being the oral recitation or public declamation of poetry.(2) The utility of this mode, in the context of institutionalized censorship, is its fluidity, which makes it more difficult for works to be monitored and controlled, since such works may be composed, performed (clandestinely if necessary), distributed and consumed by an audience without requiring any kind of official sanction or formal channels of distribution. These enabling features of the mode of oral recitation, when combined together with the eminently accessible technology and "subversive mobility"(3) of the audio-cassette, create a formidable literary and political weapon capable of outmaneuvering some of the most entrenched and extensive forms of state censorship.(4)

Censorship clearly had a "productive" effect on the development of Muzaffar al-Nawwab's poetry and poetic practice. The fact that much of his poetry was banned and censored not only in Iraq but throughout much of the Arab World for decades, together with the resources of the Arabic oral tradition, his own early predilection for dramatic oral performance, and the technical aid of the samizdat cassette, gave rise to a form of poetic practice and dissemination that would not have developed under normal circumstances. To be sure, the sobering fact is that even in such "productive" instances in which poetry successfully evades the instruments of censorship, the less ephemeral body of the flesh-and-blood poet does not necessarily fare as well. Al-Nawwab was repeatedly imprisoned and physically tortured in punishment for poems he wrote, even as his poems continued to circulate. Indeed, in one of the only book-length studies of the work of Muzaffar al-Nawwab,(5) Baqir Yasin calls al-Nawwab "a suicidal guerrilla-fighter in his poetry,"(6) when he describes the fearlessness with which al-Nawwab launches his daring attacks on Arab rulers and governments in his poetry, regardless of the heavy price he has had to pay for doing so. The term "fida'i fi shi'rihi" or "guerrilla poet" is a particularly fitting one for al-Nawwab, since it embodies the notion of self-sacrifice (for al-Nawwab, this has taken not only the form of imprisonment and torture, but also the ongoing state of exile and homelessness, spanning nearly three decades), while simultaneously alluding to the marginalized status and mode of the guerrilla fighter, who stands apart from mainstream instruments of warfare such as state armies, much in the way that a poet such as al-Nawwab stands apart from mainstream channels of literary and political authority.

Yasin has also called al-Nawwab "the poet of the smuggled and outlawed Arabic poem."(7) While some of his poetry has been published, as mentioned above, much of it has not, and both his published and non-published works...