Dr. Emad Al-Khatib 

The way in which the discourse builds its perception of the state of its personal utterance is what is meant by scenography / scenic representation. In Saudi female poetry, the scenography discourse is built on resurrecting the shattered spirit of the female poet with scenographic messages that return her to authenticity, and derives its strength from a set of characteristics that distinguish her on the general human level, and distinguish her with her female feature that distinguishes her from the male poet. This is what the Saudi female poet seeks to achieve as she generalizes her experience to reach both sides of poetry (feminine and masculine) on a scenographic discursive limit that creates meeting with the other.

Our discussion in the article will mix between the poetic scenographic discourse that tells about authenticity, in addition to the scenographic discourse indicating comprehensiveness and meeting with the other. The expected result – and this is one of the features of scenographic discourse – is that the recipient assumes a result and searches for it – which is the Saudi female poet's rejection of tradition and her desire for renewal, and this will be embodied in our discussion of the scenographic discourse about (love) and comparing (love and pain). 

The Saudi female poet Etidal Al-Thikrallah informs us in her collection (Hymns of the Soul in the Time of Alienation) of her feeling through her depiction saying:

Concern, sadness and sighs know me 

And distress, hardship, moans and pain

It starts from her difficult present, compared to her more beautiful past, and in the scene there is a frustrated feeling and indicators hidden behind scenography that the recipient can point to its endless meanings as an answer to the cause of her concern, sadness and sighs. The poet compares in an advanced scenic depiction scenography between her youth and her gray hair, saying:

My youth I see no joy in it

With my gray hair perhaps my desires flourish 

By scenic depiction we mean: "that depiction that comes as a reflection of what the poet feels and is unlike non-scenic depiction and named according to its cause from motor or visual depiction or otherwise, as the poet depicts what she wants the recipient to see in her text".

In the previous verse, the poet's scenography does not stop at just depicting her feeling but es beyond that to rejecting a noble human trait which is the trait of (love), so she rejects it in its traditional form, saying:

I warned my heart in a time that has passed

Beware of loving, for that is my commandment 

And likewise, the poet (Fatima Al-Qarni) in her poem (A Lesson in Love) rejects love for the sake of benefit, saying:

Stretch out your hands 

And prepare your arms for the drought that 

Invades my chest 

Then her scenography discourse continues offering messages in love and this is some of it, as she says:

Silence

And the tremor of a confused bitter reproacher

Silence

And how does it last

Is there odness in love

Yes, utilitarian love is not love, and it is not the long-awaited od love.  

While the scenographic discourse of the poet (Etidal) continues sequentially in her collection, and at the time when the poet rejects love, she enjoys the pain, so is this the enjoyable pain alternative to the overbearing love?  

We are in front of the scenography of not a few verses that confirm (the poet Etidal's) feeling of enjoyable pain, because she does not complain about it and does not find it sweet, but rather describes it as the coming one that changed her life and replaced her days.

The poet Etidal mixed in her scenographic discourse between her pain and nature with a romantic feeling that reaches the level of mythologizing, and the poet characterized her pain and made it the companion that causes pleasure and comfort, directing her discourse to her heart saying:

O my heart, do bleed blood

And O my eye, do cry and wail 

Then the poet listed the reason for her request saying:

• On my injustice

• On my misery

• On my helplessness

Then she confirmed her request from her eye, asking it to cry, saying:  

And warm tears do pour and wail 

And the poet personified the nightingale and made it in her scenographic discourse sad, sharing everything she feels, asking it to sing, but how could it do that, as she says that:

The soul is sad

And she explained the reason for depicting her soul as sad, telling the nightingale to repeat the melody of her buried days. The poet continued mentioning depression, pain, anxiety, insomnia, screaming, confusion, calamities, loneliness, and other indicators that point to a pained discourse building a (painful, dark scenic) scenography for most of her poetic meanings.

And so did the poet (Fatima Al-Qarni) as the desert shared with her and the sand shared with her the exchange of love, so her message in her scenic / scenographic discourse towards seeking love was completed and her message reached the recipient through her image:

And you knew me

A drought that exchanges love with you infatuatedly

Bending down seeking in the lips of sand

The coolness of love

In the heart of noon

It is a romance of another type, and perhaps the al of our article on scenography is to reveal that non-traditional typicality in the scenic discourse of the Saudi female poet.

It is a repeated scenic discourse for more than one Saudi female poet, and by it we mean that scenic discourse that sends scenographic messages rejecting traditional love, and finds alternative non-traditional love sweet that may reach the level of pain, and one of its conditions is that it awakens every new sensation in her.  

And that scenographic message that the recipient understood in the poet Fatima's saying:

And how does the one who loves limit his feeling?

The poet concludes her poem by saying:

My sweet 

Destroy the cells of memories and shatter

The frames of captive images

And for them.. yes

Stretch out your hands

And besiege them as you besieged me, embrace the dove, teach her

That the war of passion

Is an exciting epic

In a sequential discourse (of the poet Etidal) in a scenic scenography that relies on biography as an entry point, her saying comes sequentially as we read to her:  

The flower of my heart faded in my youth

So woe to me 

It faded like fog

Oh

From nights that have quenched me 

Worries that troubled my sweetest drink

Likewise came the discourse of the poet (Fatima Al-Qarni) as she sends us messages from her bright past and her childhood that she wants us to remember, and with it the recipient's question about the reason for her titling her poem (A Lesson in Love) may dissipate, so she used a feminine discursive scenography as she depicts:

The warmth of childhood days

The lisp of the melodic letter

And the stumble of the small foot

And a mischief that pulled a braid

The play of youth

The aim of her depiction by returning to the scenography of the childhood past is to return to the real sincere love in the past and reject the fake love existing in the present, as she made everything she remembered a wound, a bleeding source, so she says:  

The wound of youth pouring out bleeding 

That is what is meant by scenographic discourse "the discourse of sequence / scenic succession intended for its own sake" and (the poet Etidal) succeeded in luring the recipient into the square of her subjectivity, and her psyche, and those are the scenographic messages that the poet succeeded in conveying and the recipient is supposed to succeed in understanding them.

From the scenographic discourse, the poet invokes (Imru' al-Qais) an indirect intertextual invocation in which she renews our understanding of her pained self, saying:

Stop, let us tell of the calamity of a heavy sick person

With the love of passion between emaciation and a pickaxe

Just as the poet invoked Imru' al-Qais, (the poet Fatima) invokes Layla, the beloved of poets, and says in a discursive scenography indicating the love she wants, not ordinary love, but rather distinguished love:

"Layla" 

And you knew me as a melody 

That melts you the full length of the ears of time

And shakes the world with longing

Finally, we stand with the questions of the poet Etidal in her scenographic interrogative discourse as she sends to the recipient a meaningful and direct scenic representation as if you are following an acted or theatrical scene, so she says:

O my heart, when will you heal?

For my wound has begun to spread

And O my time, when will you clear up

For you have confused my matter for me

And it is the same wound of love that (the poet Fatima) depicted as she says:

The wound of youth pouring out bleeding .