Adonis: The Pages of Day and Night
12. January 2009 17:10
I write in a language that exiles me.
1.
I write in a language that exiles me. The relationship of anArab poet to his language is like that of a mother who gives away herson after the first stirrings in her body. If we accept the biblicalstory of Hagar and Ishmael, as repeated in the Koran, we realize thatmaternity, paternity and even language itself were all born in exilefor the Arab poet. Exile is his mother-country, according to thisstory. For him it can be said: in the beginning was the exile, not theword. In his struggle against the hell of daily life, the Arab poet'sonly shelter is the hell of exile.
2.
What I have just said returns us to origins—to myth and tolanguage. Based on these origins, Islam offered a new beginning. Itdislodged language from its worldly exile and oriented it to thecountry of Revelation—to heaven. Through language Revelation revealsthe metaphysical while work organizes the. physical. This organizationhas been entrusted to man as the new caliph—the successor of theProphet. Revelation was instituted at the moment man accepted thecharge of putting it into practice. Then it became a law, a system.
Yet in every system there exists another form of exile becauseevery system is both a limitation and a route planned in advance. Everysystem forces man out of his being and identifies him with hisappearance.
Thus, Arab life from its inception has been an exile fromlanguage and the religious system. In the past as well as in thepresent, the Arab poet has known many other forms of exile as well:censorship, interdiction, expulsion, imprisonment and murder.
In this scenario the Other seems to be the salvation of the I.The Other is neither past nor future, nor is it a mirror that iscapable of returning the I to childhood. Rather it helps to set thepoet in motion toward the unknown, toward everything strange.
3.
From such a perspective, poetry is certainly not a "paradiselost" nor is it a "golden age." On the contrary it is a question thatbegets another question. Considered as a question, the Other concurswith the I who is actually living the exile of the answer. Therefore,the Other is a constitutive part of the answer—the element of knowledgeand Revelation. It is as if the Other is the impulse of the questionwithin the I.
The Other has been omnipresent in the creative experience ofArabic poetry. Because the language the Arab poet uses contains manylanguages, old and new, Arabic, poetically speaking, is plural but insingular form.
But whether in practice or in its contacts with theaforementioned system, the Arabic language has nothing more to tell us.Rather it has become a language of silence, or rather it tends toreduce expression to silence. Its orbit is muteness, not diction. TheOther, the Western persona in this instance, is transformed in hisrelationship to the Arab poet into a limitation and a chain, at leastin reference to the system. He may be content with his own freedomwithin his own limits. Perhaps he may see nothing in the Arabic pastbut the answer to a question he knows in advance since he devised thequestion out of his own imagination, need and interest.
This may explain why the Arab poet embodies a double absence—anabsence from himself as well as an absence from the Other. He livesbetween these two exiles: the internal one and the external one. Toparaphrase Sartre, he lives between two hells: the I and the Other.
The I is not I, nor is it the Other.
Absence and exile constitute the only presence.
4.
Being a poet means that I have already written but that I haveactually written nothing. Poetry is an act without a beginning or anend. It is really a promise of a beginning, a perpetual beginning.
To be means to mean something. Meanings are only apprehendedthrough words. I speak; therefore, I am. My existence thus and thenassumes meaning. It is through this distance and hope that the Arabpoet attempts to speak, i.e., to write, to begin.
But, between the two exiles I have mentioned, is a beginning really possible?
And, before all else, what is such a beginning?
I ask this question so I can answer it indirectly by saying thatthe Arabic language was and is a constant attempt to establish abeginning which cannot be established because its establishment seemsimpossible.
And since poetry by definition is on the side of presence, theArab poet cannot live nor can he write within the illusion of apossible foundation. In his life and language, the Arab poet thusspeaks ever of freedom and democracy as illusions.
I say illusion because life itself comes before freedom anddemocracy. How can I possibly talk about life when I am prevented frombeing myself, when I am not living, neither within myself nor formyself, when I am not even living for the Other?
The problem of freedom for the Arab poet (unlike his Other, hiswestern counterpart) does not reside in the awakening of individualityor in the partial or total absence of democracy and human rights.Rather the problem resides in what is deeper, more remote and complexbecause, ironically, it is simpler. It resides in the primitive andprimordial. It resides in man's original exile, in what constitutes andis constituted, in the No of what orders and prohibits. This is the Nothat not only creates culture but also creates man and life itself.
5.
Institutionalized language overflows the I and the Other andshakes the very foundations of freedom and democracy. It is thelanguage of death and massacre where both the I and the Other discovertheir deaths.
Death sees nothing but death. The I that is already dead cannotaccept the Other but will only see him in his own image, which is theimage of death. Our poetry at present seems to be moving within thiskind of death.
Paris, 9/3/92
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