Poetry
ديوان الرصافي
Not translated into English
Maruf al-Rusafi · 1910
Synopsis
Poems classical in metre and rhyme, put at the service of the causes of the day: school and learning, work, the emancipation of women, the lot of the poor and of widows, freedom of thought, then independence against British domination. They include a call to build schools, the portrait of a widow wandering in misery with her little girl, a meditation on God before the tree, the sun and the rain, and the question of when the days will give thought back its freedom.
Context
The first edition of the collection appeared in Beirut in 1910. Some of the poems, written in Istanbul, comment on the Ottoman period; others, after 1920, attack the British occupation of Iraq and call for independence, and the work reads as that of a moralist of resistance. The social pieces, on school, women and poverty, have led him to be regarded as one of the founders of social poetry in Iraq.
Who it is for
In classical Arabic, on the metres and rhymes of the tradition; no complete French translation. The poems can be read separately.
Prizes and reception
Collection by one of the leading figures of Iraqi neoclassical poetry, counted with al-Zahawi and al-Jawahiri among the three great poets of this movement.
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