Poetry
ديوان مصطفى المعداوي
Not translated into English
Mustafa Maadawi · 1963
Synopsis
The collection, assembled after its author's death, brings together committed poems and intimate poems. The former speak in the name of the insurgents: “Fidâ'”, spoken in the voice of a fighter, sings of the country to which he gives his life; others are titled “Letter to Eisenhower”, “Glory to the Heroes” or “Hymns for My Insurgent People”. The latter, “To a Woman Poet”, “Words of a Woman in Despair”, let the inner life show through. The classical single-rhyme verse alternates there with free verse, sometimes fed by narrative.
Context
The volume was published in 1963 in Casablanca, by Dar al-Kitab, under the banner of the Ittihad kuttab al-Maghrib al-Arabi; it was edited and introduced by Ahmed El Majjati, Mohamed Adib Slaoui and Mohamed Ibrahim El Jamal, and runs to 148 pages. The Al-Babtain directory reads in it a poetry divided between commitment to national and Arab causes and a personal vein, in which political thought prevails. Mîloudi Belmir links this poet, with El Majjati, Abdallah Rajiî and Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine, to the project of a modern, committed poetry.
Who it is for
A collection of 148 pages in Arabic, in accessible language; the poem “Fidâ'” is studied in middle school in Morocco.
Prizes and reception
Read in Moroccan schools for its patriotic poems; Mîloudi Belmir sees in its author a pioneer of poetic renewal.
Sources for this page 3
The pages consulted to check this page.