Nazik al-Malaika
Google’s doodle today celebrates Nazik al-Malaika, on the occasion of the 88th anniversary of her birthday. The famous Iraqi poet is known as one of the first Arabic poets to use free verse. As Salih J. Altoma puts it:
Nazik al-Mala’ika occupies a prominent position in modern Arabic literature not only because of her innovative, experimental poetry, but also because of her well-known systematic critical efforts and her views toward important artistic, linguistic, and intellectual issues in modern Arabic literature. Since the publication of her first collection, The Lover of Night (Ashiqat al-Layl, 1947), al-Mala’ika has contributed toward transforming Arabic poetry in terms of its orientation and structure. This is reflected equally in her own poetry and in her critical theorization of the new poetic form known as free verse.
Adab has a collection of some of her poems in Arabic. Her poems in English can be found in anthologies including The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology, edited by Nathalie Handal and Modern Arabic Poetry: An Anthology edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, as well as Iraqi Poetry Today edited by Weissbort, Daniel and Saadi Simawe, where she is represented here by five poems.
In her review of the Iraqi Poetry Today anthology, Adrienne Rich quoted the ending of ”The Hijrah to God” which “begins as an ecstatic praise-song” and ends:
O my king, the journey has lengthened, lengthened,
and ages have passed,
and between locked worlds I have sailed, asking at doors.
I carried with me the wounds of fedayeen,
and the taste of death in September, and of mud.
I carried with me the sorrows of Jerusalem, O my king,
and the wound of Jenin,
and a night of high walls that cannot be scaled.
So where is the door? Where is the door?
My sacrifices are heaped at the altar,
my Quran is hidden in the mist,
and the agony of my Al-Aqsa mosque
cuts me like a knife….
How can we spend the night in captivity?
And how can we sleep, expelled from our homes?…
And you stay with the slain, o my king, and with the wounded,
you stay at your post, vigilant.
And here we have lost the religion, and fought our beloved fedayeen.
We spilled blood in Beirut,
we poured blood in Amman,
and with our hands, we made our land a guillotine for our people.
Rich commented that Malaika’s “longer poems here suggest an impressive authority of voice which in the English doesn’t quite carry over; the invocative “To Poetry” is marred by phrases like “raving fragrance,” “heaving with yearning.” She continues:
One reads, guessing: is this or that poem actually more remarkable than translation can suggest? is it, in translation, bound, like Prometheus, on the rock of its its language and cultural references? Has the translation been timid, binding itself within the literal, or within an idea of Anglophone poetic language (e.g. “wondrous”) which, to an American eye and ear, seem artificial? How have twentieth century movements in Arabic poetry, from traditional to modernist poetics, with blendings of both, found correspondence in English?
This seems to me to often be the case with translation, it can be difficult to convey lyricism without falling into a type of sentimentality which sounds cloying, and when it is translated more concisely than a literal translation would allow, the effect can be better conveyed.
There is a bibliography of Nazik al-Malaika’s works and critical reception to it here, including this reading of “Cholera” in translation, and a bibliography of her poems translated into English is available here. One of her poems, Lament of a Worthless Woman, can be found in English on this Jehat page.
For further reading:
The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology, edited by Nathalie Handal (2000);
‘Nazik al-Mala’ika’s poetry and its critical reception in the West’ by Salih J. Altoma, in Arab Studies Quarterly (09/22/1997);
Suleiman, Yasir. “Nationalist Concerns In The Poetry Of Nazik Al-Mala’ika.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 54 (1995) : 93-114.
Moreh, Shmuel. “Nazik Al-Mala’ika And Al-Shi’r Al-Hurr In Modern Arabic Literature.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 32 (1968) : 345-356.
Hussein, Ronak, and Suleiman, Yasir. “Death In The Early Poetry Of Nazik Al-Mala’ika.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 24 (1993) : 214-225.
2 comments