Syrian diplomat, poet, essayist and playwright, one of the most popular love poets in the Arab world. Qabbani wrote over 50 books of poetry. His central theme in his early erotic works was the physical attractiveness of women. He also revealed chauvinist attitudes of men towards women and urged women to rebel against their status in society. Later he portrayed the complex relationships between men. In the 1950s, Qabbani was with 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayyati among the pioneers, who started to use the simple language of everyday speech in verse.
Who are you
woman entering my life like a dagger
mild as the eyes of a rabbit
soft as the skin of a plum
pure as strings of jasmine
innocent as children's bibs
and devouring like words?
(from 'Poems')
Nizar Qabbani was born in Damascus as the son of a rich merchant. He studied law at the University of Damascus, graduating in 1945, and then started his career as a diplomat. He served in the Syrian embassies in Egypt (1945-48), Turkey (1948), Lebanon, Britain, China, and Spain. In 1954, the Syrian parliament considered demoting him from his diplomatic post due to his poem, 'Bread, Hashish, and the Moon'. In 1966 Qabbani retired and moved to Beirut, Lebanon, where he worked in literary journalism and eventually founded Manshurat Nizar Qabbani publishing house.
Qabbani's first collection of poems appeared in 1942, when he was nineteen years old. Qasa'id min Nizar Qabbani (1956) is his most outstanding early collection, in which he assumed a female persona in three poems, 'Pregnant,' 'A Letter from a Spiteful Lady,' and 'The Vessels of Pus'. In the following collections Qabbani also wrote from a woman's viewpoint and urged women to fight against discrimination and defend their social freedoms. This theme his readers generally paralleled with the fate of the Arab people. Among his most famous poems is 'Bread, Hashish and Moon,' in which he castigated Arab societies for their weakness, drug-induced fantasies, and stagnation. "In the night of the East and when / the moon grows full / the East is stripped of all dignity / and initiative to struggle."
In the Palestine Liberation Movement Qabbani saw new hope for wider political and social transformation. Ala hamish daftar al-naksa (1967) was born under the devastating shock of the Six Day War. Qabbani criticized Arab leadership during the war. "The stage is burned / down to the pit / but the actors have not died yet." (from 'The Actors') After the war, the poet moved from love themes to political ones. In a poem written immediately the June defeat Qabbani used the image Harun al-Rashid in a negative sense, as a symbol of tyranny, although in popular memory this famous caliph was the archetype of a great ruler. In 'Marginal Notes on the Book of Defeat' from 1967 he wrote: "My master Sultan, / You have lost the war twice / / because half of our people have no tongues. / And what is the worth of a voiceless people?"
However, when many other poets found their main subjects from the world politics and the fight for human dignity, Qabbani still revisited his love poems. Oabbani's political verse from this period were mostly collected in Al-A 'mal al-styasiyya (1974). His stand against dictatorship is seen in the bitter lines: "O Sultan, my master, if my clothes / are ripped and torn / it is because your dogs with claws / are allowed to tear me. And your informers every day are those / who dog my heels, each step / unavoidable as fate." Qabbani was married twice. With his first wife he had two children, one of whom died in a car accident. His second wife was Balqus al-Rawi, an Iraqi schoolteacher, who much inspired his love poems. Qabbani's poem 'Choose' has been read as his marriage proposal. Balqus was killed in 1981 at her Beirut office in a bomb attack by pro-Iranian guerrillas. In the 1980s, Qabbani wrote poems, which celebrated the teenage rebels of the Palestinian intifadah. 'I Am a Terrorist' was directed against Western media for labelling Arab men terrorist when they defend their homes and their people's dignity.
After Balqus's death, Qabbani wrote several poems dealing with his grief and loss. He left the Arab world, and lived during the subsequent years in Geneva, Paris, and London. Qabbani died of a heart attack in London on May 1, 1998. His body was flown to Damascus for burial. Qabbani's works has been translated into English, French, Spanish, Italian, Persian and Russian. Many of his lyrics have been popularized by Lebanese and Syrian vocalists. The Iraqi born the top-selling singer Kazem al-Saher acquired the rights to many of Qabbani's lyrical works, such as 'The Impossible Love,' Qabbani's last poem.
Qabbani's poems continue the sixteen centuries old tradition of Arabic love poetry, but they are updated with modern experience and echo the rhythms, intonations, and idioms of everyday language. His early works Qabbani wrote in classical forms. Love is for Qabbani something that is mystical, but at the same time very sensual. "Strip naked... disrobe. / I am mute - / Your body knows all languages." (from 'The Book of Love') Qabbani could also use Christian images: "... I bleed in your love / Like Christ." ('Book of Love') Influenced by the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce, he saw a poem as a painting- one collection was even entitled 'Drawing with Words' (Al-rasm bi-al-kalimat, 1966). Parvin Loloi has considered in Contemporary World Writers (1993), that Qabbani's "artistic achievement lies, in a manner familiar from classical Arabic poetry, in the creation of variations on the same theme-through its musicality, and in its variety of tone. Above all he has trodden ground where no Arab poet had dared to step before - seeking to revolutionize women's attitude towards their own sexuality." Salma Khadra Jayyusi wrote in her introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry: "His abundant love poetry is the major source of hope that the human heart can finally transcend pain and fear and dare to assert its capacity to summon joy and engage passion. His poetry brings freedom from tension, liberation from gloom, a refreshing release of laughter and gaiety. Above all, it proudly proclaims a new reverence for the body; it washes away the traditional embarrassment, now many centuries old, which was linked to woman's physical passion."
For further reading: Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 3, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999); Contemporary World Authors, ed. by Tracy Chevalier (1993); Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry by S.K. Jayyusi (1977); A Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry by M.M. Badawi (1975); 'Poetry as a Social Document' by A. Loya, in Muslim World 63:1 (1973); 'Nizar Quabbani, the Poet and His Poetry' by Z. Gabay, in Middle Eastern Studies 9:2 (1973)
Selected bibliography:
- Qalat li al-samra, 1944
- Tufulat nahd, 1948
- Samba, 1949
- Anti li, 1950
- Qasa'id min Nizar Qabbani, 1956
- Habibati, 1961
- Al-Shi'r qindil akhdar, 1964
- Al-rasm bi-al-kalimat, 1966
- 'Ala hamish daftar al-naksa, 1967
- Yawmiyyat imra'a la mubaliya, 1968
- Al-Mumaththilun, al istijwab, 1969
- Kitab al-hubb, 1970
- Qasa'id mutawahhisha, 1970
- La, 1970
- Qasa'id mutawahhisha, 1970
- Ash'ar kharija'ala al-qanun, 1972
- Al-a' mal al-siyasiyya, 1974
- Al-kitaba 'amal inqilabi, 1978
- Shay' min al-nathr, 1979
- Qamus al-ashiqin, 1981
- Qasidat Balqis, 1982
- Ash'ar majnunah, 1983
- Al-hubb la yaqif 'ala al-daw' al-ahmar, 1983
- Al-Sirah al-zatiyah li-sayf, 1987
- Jumhuriyyat Jununstan (Lubnan sabiqan): masrahiyya, 1988
- On Entering the Sea: The Erotic and Other Poetry of Nizar Qabbani, 1996 (trans. by Lena Jayyusi, Sharif Elmusa, Jack Collum, Diana Der Hovanessian, W. S. Merwin, Christopher Middleton, Naomi Shihab Nye, Jeremy Reed)
- Arabian Love Poems, 1998 (by Nizar Qabbani, et al.)
Would You Permit Me?
في بلاد يغتال فيها المفكرون، ويكفر الكاتب
وتحرق الكتب، في مجتمعات ترفض الآخر، وتفرض الصمت على الافواه والحجر على الافكار،
وتكفر اي سؤال، كان لابد ان استأذنكم ان تسمحوا لي..
In a country where thinkers are assassinated, and writers are considered infidels and books are burnt, in societies that refuse the other, and force silence on mouths and thoughts forbidden, and to question is a sin, I must beg your pardon, would you permit me?فهل تسمحون لي
ان اربي اطفالي كما اريد، وألا تملوا علي
اهواءكم واوامركم؟
Would you permit me to bring up my children as I want, and not to dictate on me your whims and orders.هل تسمحون لي
ان اعلم اطفالي ان الدين لله اولا، وليس
للمشايخ والفقهاء والناس؟
Would you permit me to teach my children that the religion is first to God, and not for religious leaders or scholars or people?هل تسمحون لي
ان اعلم صغيرتي ان الدين هو اخلاق وأدب وتهذيب
وامانة وصدق، قبل ان اعلمها بأي قدم تدخل الحمام وبأي يد تأ3ل؟
Would you permit me to teach my little one that religion is about good manners, good behavior, good conduct, honesty and truthfulness, before I teach her with which foot to enter the bathroom or with which hand she should eat?هل تسمحون لي
ان اعلم ابنتي ان الله محبة، وانها تستطيع ان
تحاوره وتسأله ما تشاء، بعيدا عن تعاليم أي أحد؟
Would you permit me to teach my daughter that God is about love, and she can dialogue with Him and ask Him anything she wants, far away from the teachings of anyone?هل تسمحون لي الا اذكر عذاب القبر لاولادي،
الذين لم يعرفوا ما هو الموت بعد؟
Would you permit me not to mention the torture of the grave to my children, who do not know about death yet?هل تسمحون لي
ان اعلم ابنتي اصول الدين وادبه واخلاقه، قبل
ان افرض عليها الحجاب؟
Would you permit me to teach my daughter the tenets of the religion and its culture and manners, before I force on her the 'Hijab' (the veil)?هل تسمحون لي
ان اقول لابني الشاب ان ايذاء الناس وتحقيرهم
لجنسيتهم ولونهم ودينهم، هو ذنب كبير عند الله؟
Would you permit me to tell my young son that hurting people and degrading them because of their nationality, color or religion, is considered a big sin by God?هل تسمحون لي
ان اقول لابنتي ان مراجعة دروسها والاهتمام بتعليمها
انفع واهم عند الله من حفظ آيات القرآن عن ظهر قلب دون تدبر معانيها؟
Would you permit me to tell my daughter that revising her homework and paying attention to her learning is considered by God as more useful and important than learning by heart Ayats from the Quran without knowing their meaning?هل تسمحون لي
ان اعلم ابني ان الاقتداء بالرسول الكريم يبدأ
بنزاهته وامانته وصدقه، قبل لحيته وقصر ثوبه؟
Would you permit me to teach my son that following the footsteps of the Honorable Prophet begins with his honesty, loyalty and truthfulness, before his beard or how short his robe (long shirt/dress) is?هل تسمحون لي
ان اقول ل7بنتي ان صديقتها المسيحية ليست
كافرة، والا تبكي خوفا عليها من دخول النار؟
Would you permit me to tell my daughter that her Christian friend is not an infidel, and ask her not to cry fearing her friend will go to Hell?هل تسمحون لي
ان اجاهر، ان الله لم يوكل احدا في الارض بعد الرسول لان يتحدث باسمه
ولم يخول احدا بمنح 'صكوك الغفران' للناس؟
Would you permit me to argue, that God did not authorize anyone on earth after the Prophet to speak in his name nor did he vest any powers in anyone to issue 'deeds of forgiveness' to people?هل تسمحون لي
ان اقول، ان الله حرم قتل النفس البشرية، وان
من قتل نفسا بغير حق كأ نما قتل الناس جميعا، وانه لا يحق لمسلم ان يروع مسلما؟
Would you permit me to say, that God has forbidden killing the human spirit, and who kills wrongly a human being is as if he killed all human kind, and no Moslem has the right to frighten another Moslem?هل تسمحون لي
ان اعلم اولادي ان الله اكبر واعدل وارحم من
كل فقهاء الارض مجتمعين؟ وان مقاييسه تختلف عن مقاييس المتاجرين بالدين، وان
حساباته أحن وارحم؟
Would you permit me to teach my children that God is greater, more just, and more merciful than all the (religious) scholars on earth combined? And that his standards are different from the standards of those trading the religion, and that his accountability is kinder and more merciful?هل تسمحون لي
Would you permit me?
نزار قباني
Nizar Kabbani
A Syrian Poet, Diplomat, Writer & Publisher
1923=1998
--
Mubashir
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