Badr Shakir al-Sayyab

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Badr Shakir al-Sayyab
بدر شاكر السياب
Badr Shakir al-Sayyab
Born(1926-12-24)24 December 1926
Jaykur, near Basra, Mandatory Iraq
Died24 December 1964(1964-12-24) (aged 38)
Kuwait
Resting placeIraq
NationalityIraqi
EducationHigher Teacher Training College, Baghdad (1948)
Known forPoet

Badr Shakir al-Sayyab (

Arab poets of all time. His works have been translated into more than 10 languages including English, Persian, Somali and Urdu
.

Early life and career

Basr Shakir al-Sayyab was born in Jaykur, a town south of Basra, the eldest child of a date grower and shepherd.[2] His mother passed away when he was six years old.[3] He graduated from the Higher Teacher Training College of Baghdad in 1948[4] but was later dismissed from his teaching position for being a member of the Iraqi Communist Party.[5]

Banned from teaching because of his political views, he next found employment as a taster, working for the Iraqi Date Company in Basra. However, he soon returned to Baghdad, where he worked as a security guard for a road paving company. He was actively involved in the 1952

Abadan he then sailed to Kuwait in 1953. This journey was the subject of his poem 'An Escape' (Farar).[7]

Al-Sayyab (left) with Iraqi artist Nuri al-Rawi (right), 1956.

He worked for a while at the Kuwait Electricity Company, but in 1954 he returned to Iraq and severed all his links with the Communist Party. He was therefore allowed to work in the Iraqi public service again, and given a job in the General Directorate for Import and Export. However after the

Kirkuk Massacre he became outspokenly anti-Communist and published a series of essays called ‘Kuntu shiyū‘iyyan’ (‘I was a Communist').[9]

In 1957 the Syrian poet

Adunis and the Lebanese poet Yusuf al-Khal began publishing a new magazine, Majallat Shi'r ('Poetry Magazine') in Beirut. Sayyab began writing for it and this brought him into contact with other writers in their circle, including Ounsi el-Hajj, and Khalil Hawi.[10] In 1960 Sayyab visited Beirut to publish a collection of his poetry, and won first prize (1000 Lebanese pounds) in a competition run by Majallat Shi'r for his collection Onshudat al-Matar (The Rain Song) which was later to become among his most widely acclaimed works.[11]

Illness and death

Returning to Iraq, al-Sayyab was given a job at the Iraqi Ports Authority and moved to Basra. However, he was arrested again on 4 February 1961 and held until 20 February. By this time his political stance and rising literary fame had brought him to the attention of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which invited him to attend a conference entitled 'The Arab Writer and the Modern World’ in Rome.[9] In the same year, his health began to deteriorate. In April 1962 he was admitted to the American University Hospital in Beirut, and his literary friends, including Yusuf Al-Khal, paid his fees. On his return to Basra in September 1962 the Congress for Cultural Freedom provided ongoing financial assistance to him and arranged for him to go to London to seek medical advice.[11]

At the end of 1962, al-Sayyab travelled to the United Kingdom. Professor

amyotrophic lateral sclerosis[12] From London he went to Paris for a week in March 1963, where his diagnosis was confirmed.[11][13]

In February 1964 his already poor health took a sudden turn for the worse, and he was taken into the Basra Port Hospital with double pneumonia, heart problems and an ulcer. As his treatment continued beyond what he could afford, the Society of Iraqi Authors and Writers, of which he was a member, secured the agreement of the Ministry of Health to continue caring for him. Eventually the Kuwaiti poet Ali Al-Sabti persuaded the Kuwaiti government to take over his treatment, and he was moved to the Amiri Hospital in Kuwait on 6 July 1964. While being treated there, he published a number of poems in the magazine Al-Ra'ed al-'Arabi ('The Arab Pioneer'). He died in the hospital on 24 December 1964.[11]

Legacy

Statue of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab in Basra

Badr Shakir al-Sayyab's experiments helped to change the course of modern

Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish was greatly impressed and influenced by the poetry of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab.[16]
Al-Sayyab’s rooms, with his poems that are full of longing for the homeland after his exile from it. The poet was very interested in the smallest details of Iraq and its parts. He was in a constant eagerness and longing for everything related to the homeland that he was forced to leave, and this is clear in the poem. This is a brief will in which he wished to find a grave. In his homeland when he died, but when he lived he wanted nothing but a small hut in his fields, pointing to the blessings that he would bestow upon Iraq through a letter addressed to his people, recommending it to his people. In it, he forbade them from denying blessings, and commanded them to adhere to it and not accept anything other than it, regardless of what...

They enjoy blessings from which he was deprived, and he spent his life seeking them. Then he concludes his poem by pointing out the rights of the homeland over its children. It is sufficient that he was created from his own soil and manna; So that this would be a sufficient reason for gratitude for the blessings, and eternal nostalgia and burning longing for Him.

In the realm of literary controversy, Sayyab stated that Nazik al-Malaikah's claim to have discovered free verse herself was false, and drew attention to the earlier work of Ali Ahmad Bakathir (1910–69) who had developed the two-hemistich format in the mid 1930s. It was Bakathir in fact who had written fractured (caesura) poetry for the first time in Arabic poetry. Bakathir (1910–69), in the second edition of his book "Akhnatun wa Nefertiti", acknowledged the recognition Sayyab had brought him.[17]

In 2014, some of Sayyab's works were banned from the Riyadh International Book Fair by the Saudi authorities.[18]

Just like many well-known and modern Iraqi figures, one of the tables in the Dar al-Atraqchi Café in Baghdad was named after him in his honor.[19]

Poetry

  • Christ After Crucifixion (المسيح بعد الصلب)[20]
  • Wilting Flowers (أزهار ذابلة, 1947)
  • Hurricanes (أعاصير, 1948)
  • Flowers and myths (أزهار وأساطير, 1950)
  • Dawn of Peace (فجر السلام, 1951)
  • The Grave Digger (Long Poem) (حفار القبور, 1952)
  • The Blind Prostitute (المومس العمياء, 1954)
  • Weapons and Children (الأسلحة والأطفال, 1955)
  • Rain Song (انشودة المطر, 1960)
  • The Drowned Temple (1962, المعبد الغريق)
  • Alaguenan? Home (1963)
  • The Balcony of the Nobleman's Daughter (1964, شناشيل ابنة الجلبي)

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ "Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab: A Profile from the Archives". www.jadaliyya.com. Retrieved 6 May 2017.
  2. ^ "Biography". Humboldt. Archived from the original on 2008-07-09.
  3. ^ Abbas, Ihsan "Badr Shaker Al-Sayyab: A Study of His Life and Poetry" 2014 p. 19
  4. ISBN 0-415-18572-6
    p 696
  5. ^
    ISBN 0-19-509351-8
    p 177
  6. ^ Jones, Kevin M. "The Poetics of Revolution: Cultures, Practices, and Politics of Anti-Colonialism in Iraq, 1932-1960" (PDF). p. 254. Retrieved 7 May 2017.
  7. ^ "Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab: A Profile from the Archives". www.jadaliyya.com. Retrieved 7 May 2017.
  8. ^ Edmund A. Ghareeb, Beth Dougherty, Historical Dictionary of Iraq The Scarecrow Press Inc. 2004 p.212
  9. ^ a b Colla, Elliott. "Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb, Cold War Poet" (PDF). static1.squarespace.com. Retrieved 8 May 2017.
  10. ^ Terri DeYoung, Placing the Poet: Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and Postcolonial Iraq, SUNY Press, 1998 p.255
  11. ^ a b c d "Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab: A Profile from the Archives". www.jadaliyya.com. Retrieved 8 May 2017.
  12. ^ Terri DeYoung, Placing the Poet: Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and Postcolonial Iraq, SUNY Press, 1998 p.286
  13. ^ "Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab and Salah Abd Al-Sabur: Pioneers of Arabic Modernism" (PDF). shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in. Retrieved 8 May 2017.
  14. ^ Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and the Free Verse Movement, by Issa J. Boullata 1970 Cambridge University Press.
  15. ISBN 0-7486-1290-4
    p 80
  16. ^ Guardian 11 August 2008 Mahmoud Darwish by Peter Clark
  17. ^ Qisar M.M. Badawai modern Arabic Literature Cambridge University Press 2006 p.155
  18. ^ Sharp, Robert (17 June 2015). "No, Ambassador: It's Not 'Meddling' to Call for Free Speech in Saudi Arabia". HuffPost UK.
  19. ^ "Dar al-Atraqchi Café is a simulation of Iraq’s heritage with a distinctive modern flavor" alaraby.com
  20. ^ "Good Friday Poem: The Messiah After the Crucifixion". Archived from the original on May 7, 2021. Retrieved September 3, 2022.

Suggested reading

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