Dr. Walid Qassab

Nazik al-Malaika is considered one of the great pioneers of modern poetry, and she is the only one – as far as we know – who tried to discipline the music of this poetry, and to set the rules for it, in a precise, organized way similar to the work of the great Khalil bin Ahmed, the founder of the science of Arabic prosody, and the editor of its laws and origins.

Nazik al-Malaika was prepared for this important and distinguished work by a group of positive cultural components: she was well-versed in Khalil's prosody, deeply knowledgeable about it, and she was well-informed about modern Western poetry, reading and translating it, supported by the fact that she was a distinguished poet, of sensitive feelings and delicate taste, which means that she combined the talents of creativity and theorizing. If we overlook that futile dispute between her and al-Sayyab to record a precedence – in what we see neither precedence nor pride – about who first wrote a free verse poem, was it Nazik's "Cholera" or al-Sayyab's "Was it Love?" and we endorsed what many scholars have ne to that the true pioneer was Ali Ahmed Bakathir, I say if we refrain from delving into the issue of assuming the leadership of this new poetry, then what Nazik al-Malaika is undisputed in is her pioneering theoretical attempt at the music of this poetry, which began to spread since the middle of the twentieth century, and spread in the literary scene like wildfire, surrounded by drums and flutes of promotion, propaganda and claims that no artistic movement in the long history of Arabic literature has ever received.

There is no doubt that one of the most important factors that solidifies the feet of any new literary school is to present - along with its practical models - a statement of the theoretical origins it rests upon. If the free verse movement began to spread since the forties, and crystallize in the fifties, its significance was determined or almost determined when Nazik al-Malaika set the rhythmic principles for free verse and restricted them to the unit of the foot (taf'ila), because this term did not have a single significance at first..

Music of Free Verse:

Nazik al-Malaika adopted from among the many terms given to the new poetry a specific critical term, which is "Free Verse" (al-shi'r al-hurr), and it is one of the most established names that spread and found favor with the majority of critics, even if it did not completely eliminate the confusion and chaos of terms that accompanied this movement.

Nazik al-Malaika made the music of free verse based on the foot (taf'ila) and a varied, non-unified rhyme, and she called for this – first of all – in the introduction to her collection "Shards and Ashes" in 1947 as she cited passages from a poem of hers based on the foot "fa'ulun":

Your hands are for touching the stars

«fa'ulun – fa'ulun – fa'ulun»

And weaving the clouds

«fa'ulun – fa'ulun»

Your hands are for gathering shadows

«fa'ulun – fa'ulun – fa'ulun»

And constructing a Utopia in the sands

«fa'ulun – fa'ulun – fa'ulun – fa'ulun»

Then she said: "The verses belong to the meter that Khalil called Al-Mutaqarib, and it rests on one foot which is "fa'ulun" ... Do you think if I had used Khalil's style I would have been able to express the meaning with this brevity and this ease? A thousand noes, for I then would have been forced to complete a verse with two hemistichs, so I would have to invent other meanings than these to fill the place, and perhaps the first verse would have come after that as follows:

Your hands are for touching the bright stars

And weaving clouds filling the sky

Which is an image that the two-hemistich system did a great injustice to. Didn't we attach the word "bright" to the stars without a need dictated by the meaning just to complete the hemistich with its four feet...

Regardless now of Nazik's opinion on the inability of "Khalil's style" to express what she wants, which is an inaccurate opinion we do not agree with; what concerns us in this regard is that Nazik proceeded in this theoretical attempt until it was fully established in her famous book "Issues of Contemporary Poetry" which was first published in 1962 and in which she restricted the feet that free verse can be written in to eight, derived from: Al-Kamil, Al-Hazaj, Al-Ramal, Al-Rajaz, Al-Mutadarik, Al-Mutaqarib, Al-Wafir, and Al-Sari', and she called these meters pure meters, because each meter consists of one foot repeated without being shared by another foot, and she excluded – in this attempt – the permissibility of composing free verse from mixed meters, which are those in which more than one foot participates in their formation, such as: Al-Basit, Al-Madid, Al-Khafif, Al-Mujtath, Al-Munsarih, and others...

Nazik also had – in this edition of the book – other views related to combining non-homogeneous formations and rhyme, and types of acceptable endings, and so on.

We are not concerned in this regard with studying these musical foundations that the poet-critic wants to establish free verse upon, for this is a subject of extensive research for which the situation does not allow now, but it is important to point out here what she mentioned in the introduction to the fifth edition of her book published in 1978 where she said:

"I previously in this book of mine made the meters that are suitable for composing free verse eight, which are Al-Kamil, Al-Hazaj, Al-Ramal, Al-Rajaz, Al-Mutadarik, Al-Mutaqarib, Al-Wafir, and Al-Sari', and my judgment was based on considering the single foot repeated in the hemistich as a basis, so if the foot was not repeated in the hemistich in an adjacent repetition, it was not correct for me to compose free verse from the weight it belongs to, such as the meters of Al-Basit, Al-Madid, Al-Khafif, Al-Mujtath, Al-Munsarih, and others.

However, the poets, first among them بدر شاكر السياب – may d have mercy on him – tried composing free verse from other meters than those I mentioned, such as Al-Tawil, Al-Basit, and Al-Khafif. I studied what they did, and found that it is based on considering the unit in the free poem as two feet instead of one, like their saying from Al-Tawil:

fa'ulun mafa'ilun, fa'ulun mafa'ilun

fa'ulun mafa'ilun

fa'ulun mafa'ilun, fa'ulun mafa'ilun, fa'ulun mafa'ilun

And it is not permissible to repeat one chosen foot because we thereby either out to Al-Mutaqarib "fa'ulun fa'ulun fa'ulun" or to Al-Hazaj "mafa'ilun mafa'ilun".

Nazik supported this other orientation, and introduced some proposals into it, as she introduced other proposals related to combining non-homogeneous formations.

She had called in her last collection "The Moon Tree" published in 1967 for new poets to pay more attention to rhyme, and she expressed regret that she herself fell short in this care, so she said: "What I like to announce my regret for is that in my free verse I did not pay greater attention to rhyme, so I used to change the rhyme quickly, and take up another, and this weakens the free verse, because it is based on verses whose hemistichs vary, and thus their ringing and music decrease, so if the poet added richness to the rhyme and did not change it quickly he would have imparted on the weight a music that holds it and prevents it from slipping away".

Thus we are before a critic who is not fanatical about the judgments she has reached, and she is ready to introduce minor or major adjustments that she can induce from convincing applied models, because this free verse for whose prosody she tries to theorize is still in its infancy, so its prosody – therefore – cannot mature "all at once without gradualness, especially since this poetry was in 1962 still growing. And prosody must be an induction of what poets compose on the one hand, and based on the laws of prosody on the other hand.."

Sources and Footnotes

1. See for example Musical Innovation in Arabic Poetry, Raja Eid p. 237.