Lesson Drawing the Arab World

At first glance, the title of the article may seem strange. However, when paying attention to the lines that you will read a little later, you will be sure that we are talking about a topic that has not yet lost its relevance.

Discussing what is happening nearby, sharing sadness between people who are the leading force in life, society not only brings them spiritual relief, but also expands their opportunities to solve the problems they face. The vast world of words, which we call "Literature", also provides a person with the opportunity to share his own experiences with others, gain spiritual relief, and also solve universal human problems. It is this factor that informs us that literature is that bright "sun" that illuminates the material and spiritual world of man.

In Arabic literature, which has a special authority in world literature, as well as in the literatures of other countries of the world, there are examples that have been overlooked in a certain period of time, deprived of attention and forgotten. They, like tender flowers lost in a dense forest, were waiting for their gardener.

The main theme of our conversation is based on one of the millions of poems written in Arabic literature. It is dedicated to the deep content and the great idea of a small poem by Nizar Qabbani (1923-1998), one of the recognized poets of modern Syrian literature, called "Drawing Lesson", which painted the current Arab world with real colors. About the author of this poem, we can only say that in modern Arabic literature there was no other poet who fought so much on the literary front, armed with rebellious love lyrics and harsh political poetry. He himself expresses his poetry as follows: “... My odes sometimes take the form of a flower, and sometimes an open wound. I want you to tolerate my climate and my changes. For I offer you a collection of explosions in the form of odes. (2)

The relevance of the topic he covers, the inclusion, despite the brevity, of big problems and the desire to solve them, make the analysis of the poem "Drawing Lesson" obvious. For among these lines one can find the attitude of the poet to the history of the Arab world, its literature, the ongoing processes and its point of view arising from the poetic prism. This poem is built in a style that is widespread both in world and Arabic literature - in the style of a dialogue between father and son.

The theme of fathers and sons, covering the elements of edification, the father's communication of different views on society to his son, the illumination of his son's progress along the vicissitudes of time, as well as other ideas of morality and education, was introduced into the literature of Azerbaijan by the works "For the edification of son Muhammad" by Nizami Ganjavi , "For the edification of the son" by Seyid Azim Shirvani and "The edification of the father" by Abdullah Shaig. The narrations about Logman and his son, Ibrahim and Ismail, Yagub and Yusuf, available in the Kurani-Kerim (Quran), are also perfect examples on this topic.

This poem, written in a free style, which begins with a conversation between a father-poet and son, leaves the impression of a cassock decorated with patterns on one side and hard and rough on the other side with its clear, understanding and fresh language, embellishing the content and idea. When we talk about the decorated side, we assume a powerful, worthy period of the Arab world, literature, culture. And the rough and hard side of the cassock is an artistic expression that has forgotten its origins, roots, harmed its own past, exchanged the heritage of the fathers for the alien elements of the new generation and the forgetful society with rotten foundations.

The revolutions, unrest, fratricidal confrontations and reprisals against their own people, dictators who ruled the country for a long time, engulfed the Arab world with the onset of 2011, found their artistic reflection in this poem.

The first lines of the poem begin with the son's appeal to his father with a request to draw an image of a bird:

يضع ابني علبة ألوانھ أمامي ویطلب مني أن أرسم له عصفورا .. أغط الفرشاة باللون الرمادي وأرسم له مربعا عليه قفل .. وقضبان يقول لي إبني, والدهشة تملأ عينيه: ".. ولكن هذا سجن .. ألا تعرف, يا أبي, کیف ترسم عصفورا

؟؟"

أقَولُ لَه:ُ يا وَلَدي

My son puts a box of paints in front of me

And he asks to draw him an image of a bird ...

I'm dipping a brush in gray paint

And draw a square

With bars and a lock on it...

My son looks at me with a look of horror and says:

"Father! This is a prison...

Can't you draw a bird for me??"

I answer him: “Son! Don't judge me...

I have already forgotten the image of the bird ... "(5)

The son, who wished his father to draw a bird for him, at first glance, becomes an eyewitness of his father's inability in this matter and is surprised at this. However, this "inability" of the father is not at all a consequence of his mediocrity. This demand of the son hurts the father's grief, which has been weighing on him for a long time. The image of the father here acts as the spokesman for the whole people. He recalls when the society walking into the abyss will be corrected, what he will say about the tragedies occurring in front of the new generation, he forces both himself, his son, and the reader to think, to find the right answer. The unexpected answers of the father not only make the son sad, but also oppress him, make him suffer internally.

Also in this poem, the poet skillfully used the image of a “bird” as a symbol of freedom, which is considered a symbol of freedom in the literature of all peoples. Having drawn for his son in gray a prison with an iron grate and a lock, he expresses the loss by himself and the Palestinians who have lost their homeland of the “bird” of freedom they so desired.

It is difficult to find an Arab poet of the modern era who has not touched on the Palestinian problem, which has become the biggest problem in the Arab world since the middle of the last century. For as long as any people or intelligent people representing this people do not change, they themselves will not solve their own problems, as long as they feel the need for a “helping hand” extended to them by others, it will be difficult for them to achieve a bright day, that is, a bright future.

The reader who has read some of these lines may have an assumption that the attitude of the poet to the society in which he lives is absolutely negative. But it's not. It is the poet himself who talks about it this way: “In my verse there is no malice against society. On the contrary, it is an attempt to change society. A true master cannot retaliate. He will strive to change society at any moment.” (3, p. 691)

Continuing, the poet says:

يضع إبني علبة أقلامه أمامي ويطلب مني أن أرسم له بحرا .. آخذ قلم الرصاص, وأرسم له دائرة سوداء .. يقول لي إبني: "ولكن هذه دائرة سوداء, يا أبي .. ألا تعرف أن ترسم بحرا ثم ألا تعرف أن لون البحر أزرق?

؟.." له: يا وَلَدي. کنت في زماني شاطرا في رسم البحار أما الیوم .. فقدوا مني الصنارة وقارب الصید .. ومنعوني من الحوار مع اللون الأزرق .. واصطیاد سمك الحرية.

My son puts a box of pencils in front of me.

And he wants me to draw him a sea...

I took a pencil in hand

I draw him one black circle ...

And my son says to me:

"Father! It's a black circle...

Can't you draw the sea for me?

And then, don't you know that the blue color of the sea?

I tell him: “Son!

At one time I was adept at drawing the sea,

But today... My network was taken away from me

And a fishing boat...

And they forbade me to speak with the blue color ...

And also forbidden to fish for freedom. (five)

The poet, comparing with the “black circle” the images of the “sea”, “nets and boats”, which are symbols of breadth, independence, emotionality, as well as calmness, thereby points to a merciless regime controlled by state leaders who introduce restrictions and tension into life country, hometown, citizens. Although these lines were written years earlier than the events taking place today, in their content they are entirely in tune with the present era. It is for this reason that most of the Arab leaders, during the life of the poet, showed a negative attitude towards him and kept him under constant political pressure. The poet, who lived far from his homeland for a long time, only after his death managed to reunite with his homeland. In 1998, his body was taken to his homeland by plane from the city of London, where he died, and was buried in his hometown of Damascus. (4, from 90)

The poet, who at one time skillfully painted the sea in blue, now, burning with shame in front of his own son, in front of all the oppressed people, in front of all the refugees and migrants expelled from their native lands, is forced to admit that he is deprived of the opportunity to catch the “fish of freedom”, and that he unable to face them.

The tragedy of the father continues with the fact that the son asks him to read a poem-poem. Strangled by moral torments, the father, reminding his son that in the world of Arabic poetry, the word and tears are brothers, the Arabic poem is compared with a tear seeping through the poet's fingers and his eyes filling with tears. This simile, which may be considered an innovation in the symbol world of modern poetry, actually tells us what the poet's craft is, and also that, as Boileau said, "the gift of poetry is far from poetry and rhyming" (1, p. 27) :

يجلس إبني على طرف سريري

ويطلب مني أني أسمهه قصیده تسقط مني دمةة على الوساده فیلتقطها مذهولا .. ويقول: "ولكن هذهمةة, يا أبي, ولیست قصیده". أقول له: عندما تكبر يا ولدي .. وتقرأ ديوان الششرأ ديوان سوف تعرف أن الكلمة والدمةة شقیقتان وأن القصیدة العربیه .. لیست سوى دمةة تخرج من بین الأصابع ..

Son sits next to the bed

And asks me to read him an ode.

A drop of my tears falls on the pillow.

The son takes it in his hands and says to me: “This is a tear, father, this is not an ode!” Turning to him, I say:

"Son! When you grow up

And you will read a collection of Arabic verse, You learn that a tear and a word are brothers And the Arab ode only and only ...

A tear leaking between the fingers of a poet... (6)

At the end of the poem, a picture appears before our eyes: the image of a son asking his father to describe his homeland to him, and the image of a father bursting into tears before this desire and falling, exhausted, helpless. This picture is a verbal expression not only of inner experiences, the tension of his spiritual world. This is the bitter fate of a large nation suffering from occupation by foreigners, from the oppression of the neighbors and the betrayal of a brother, a cry that he cannot convey to many. With the lines cited above, the poet tries to drive away forgetfulness from his own memory, just as the Palestinian children throw stones at Israeli tanks, he wants to throw stones at the indifference that dominates his own people. The fact that he considers himself guilty before his son, and in a broader sense - before the new rising generation for the lost lands, forgotten values, leads him, as a poet, to express love for his own homeland and, although there is no strength, the suffering of the heart:

يضض بني أقلامه, وعلبة أقلوانه أمامي ويطلب مني أن أرسم له وطنا ..

تهتز الفرشاة في يدي .. و          ی ...

My son lines up his pencils and a box of paints in front of me.

And he demands that I draw a homeland for him ...

The brush trembles in my hands...

And crying, I fall ... (6)

The fact that the poet, just hearing the name of the motherland, falls trembling, is closely connected with the seizure of the Arab world, especially the lands of Palestine, by the Zionist Israeli conquerors and the fact that millions of people became refugees, breaking away from their homes. Here the poet, by his personal example, showed an example of the attitude of each son of the motherland to his own land.

Indeed, just as the problem of Karabakh and the ways to solve it are important and relevant for Azerbaijanis, for every Arab poet or citizen, the problem of Palestine will always be relevant and will never be erased from memory.

One of the distinguishing aspects of Nizar Qabbani's poetry is that he himself is the hero of most of his poems. Many literary critics have criticized him for the position he takes in his poems, both love and political, and did not accept his excessive openness on some issues.