Poetry
الأخضر بن يوسف ومشاغله
Not translated into English
Saadi Youssef · 1972
Synopsis
The collection brings on stage a character, al-Akhdar ben Youssef, the poet's double and mask. Through him, the poem leaves revolutionary lyricism and ideological eloquence for the details of the day and ordinary preoccupations, and meditates on personal and collective defeats. The language is the most common there is, the one spoken every day, serving a voice that prefers intimate observation to declaration.
Context
The collection was published in Baghdad in 1972, by the al-Adib presses. Sinan Antoon links the character who gives it its title to the years the poet had just spent in Algeria, where he had taught from 1964 to 1971, and sees in this book the abandonment of revolutionary song. The double then returned in other books, including a 1977 collection devoted to how he wrote his new poem.
Who it is for
In Arabic, in a deliberately ordinary language; no translation of the collection, but selections of the author's poems in French (1999) and in English.
Prizes and reception
A book of rupture: in it the author's poetry abandons eloquence for the everyday, and his character becomes the poet's most memorable double.
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