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Sudan / All works

Poetry

ديوان الطبيعة

Not translated into English

Hamza al-Malik Tambal · 1931

Synopsis

Pieces devoted to nature, living or inanimate, drawn from the Sudanese landscape, which the poet wants to paint as he sees it and not through the images of ancient Arabic poetry, according to what he demanded of his fellow poets: to write truthfully. Each keeps to a single subject, meaning counts for more than ornament, and the lyricism, personal, is attached to what the land awakens in the one who looks at it.

Context

The collection appeared in Cairo in 1931. Its author, trained in Egypt, gave his verse to Al-Ahram and to the Khartoum newspapers, Al-Hadara and Al-Balagh, and had been nourished by the critical writings of the so-called Diwan school, of which al-Aqqad was one of the figures. He carried the quarrel to Sudan, reproaching the imitators with lying in their verse, and wished to apply to his own poems unity of subject and the primacy of meaning. The book did not reappear until 1972, in Beirut, gathered by Muhammad Ibrahim al-Shush with his critical writings, under the auspices of the Sudanese National Council for Letters and Arts.

Who it is for

In Arabic, with no translation. The poems are illuminated by the articles in which their author attacked the imitation of ancient models and called for a poetry faithful to the country.

Prizes and reception

Critics regard him as the nature poet of Sudanese poetry; the university still devotes studies to him.

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