Poetry
من عمر أبو ريشة
Not translated into English
Umar Abu Risha · 1947
Synopsis
Poems chosen by their author: a large collection that opens with a question to the poet, to whom he gives his soul, to love, to play, to glory or to eternity. There follow songs of love wounded or victorious, calls to youth not to yield to cowardice, an oath addressed to Khalid ibn al-Walid, elegies, narrative poems in which Joan of Arc and the poet Dik al-Jinn speak, and the famous “Nasr”, in which an old eagle descends among the birds of the slope. A verse play closes the volume.
Context
The collection appears in Beirut in 1947 and replaces the author's first volume, published in Aleppo in 1936, which, according to the press of the time, he disowned. The Dar al-Adib publishing house issues it adorned with symbolic drawings. Critics have praised in it a music close to that of al-Buhturi, often short metres, changes of rhyme within a single poem and an art of psychological portraiture in the narrative poems, while noting a few improprieties of language and rhyme.
Who it is for
A large volume of classical Arabic verse, with no French edition; the poems can be read separately, and a few assume knowledge of the figures of Arab history they invoke.
Prizes and reception
Maroun Abboud, hailing the book, regarded its author as the greatest poet of his generation; “Nasr” has remained one of the most recited poems of the Levant.