Amman — The book Poetic Prose and Prose Poetry: A Reading of the Works of Gibran Khalil Gibran and Ameen Rihani, by researcher Sarah Mahmoud Al-Sararah, examines the transformations that shaped modern Arabic poetry, tracing the beginnings of literary experimentation in the works of Gibran and Al-Rihani and their role in moving beyond traditional poetic forms.
اضافة اعلان
Published with support from the Ministry of Culture by Nashirun Now and Distributors, the study explores the two poets’ poetic vision, language, rhythm, imagery, and nationalist, humanist and philosophical orientations. It argues that their work was an important precursor to new poetic forms and helped pave the way for Arabic prose poetry.
Dr. Abdulrahim Azzam Murashdeh, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Languages at Jadara University, wrote the book’s foreword. He explains that Al-Sararah undertook a challenging critical journey by examining the boundary between poetry and non-poetry. Rather than aligning himself with what is commonly known as the prose poem or with classical poetry, the researcher pursued a different approach, seeking to develop his own perspective and demonstrate the seriousness of his work and his critical reading skills. His starting point was a fundamental intellectual question: “What makes words poetry?”
Murashdeh notes that this question recalls Jean-Paul Sartre’s question, “What is literature?” and the conclusion that literariness is what makes writing literature. From this perspective, the components of a text, their relationship with language, and the selection of vocabulary and stylistic devices all contribute to producing a distinct text that may constitute a new literary genre or form. Explicitly or implicitly, the researcher raises a corresponding question: “What makes words poetry?” This also echoes Ansi Al-Hajj’s question in the introduction to his collection Lan: “Can a poem emerge from prose?”
Murashdeh emphasizes that Al-Sararah neither imitated nor merely reproduced earlier approaches. Instead, he critically examined the elements that make language poetic, drawing on the history of transformations in Arabic poetry.
Since Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad Al-Farahidi’s attempt to systematize Arabic poetic meters, poetry has continued to evolve beyond established forms. Al-Khalil could not encompass every rhythmic pattern, and Al-Akhfash later introduced the mutadārik meter. Further experiments followed in the works of Bashar ibn Burd and others, eventually leading to the emergence of muwashshahat in Andalusia. This history demonstrates that poetry cannot be confined to a ready-made structure and that, by its very nature, it continually transcends formal boundaries.
He also points to the transformations in modern Arabic poetry associated with Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, Nazik al-Malaika, Thurayya Malhas and others, as well as the work of Mahjar poets. These developments helped free poetry from rigid formal constraints, moving beyond the breaking of external meter toward reshaping internal structure, themes and rhythms. Such transformations, together with accumulated critical and intellectual knowledge, prompted the researcher to propose new ways of describing poetry and understanding its nature.
According to Murashdeh, the researcher’s philosophical and intellectual framework helped shape a distinct critical awareness, enabling him to deconstruct and examine texts and discourses without being bound by ready-made assumptions, while drawing on existing ideas when useful to his inquiry.
This approach informs his arguments concerning “prose poetry” and “poetic prose,” alongside other unsettled terms used to describe contemporary Arabic poetic forms. He moves beyond some prevailing critical assumptions and proposes the possibility of an open-ended poetics that does not impose a final definition on the poetic text.
In this context, Murashdeh invokes ideas by Hegel and Fénelon concerning poetry, rhythm and rhyme to illustrate how poetry has continually been a field for experimentation and reconsideration of its forms and methods. The author’s proposals concerning “the poetics of poetry,” he argues, go beyond the poetics of the prose poem and earlier, unsettled conceptions. They seek to bring together fragmented critical perspectives in a way that reflects poetry’s changing nature across time, place and civilizational and intellectual developments.
Murashdeh concludes that the book represents a distinctive scholarly contribution, offering conceptual frameworks suited to poetry, poetic discourse and the contemporary Arabic poem without closing the door to future transformations. He cites the statement by Mohammed Lotfi Al-Yousifi: “Poetry is known by what it is not.” Murashdeh describes Al-Sararah as one of the serious Arab researchers who point toward a promising future for literary criticism, adding that the book provides an important contribution for anyone following developments in poetry and poetics in modern critical studies.
In his introduction, Al-Sararah discusses the displacement of Arabic literature in the modern era and the renewal of some of its forms outside its homeland, particularly following the migration of Arab writers especially from the Levant to the Americas. These writers carried with them the concerns and aspirations of their nations, along with the psychological pain and longing for home that accompanied their migration. They also faced the challenges of adapting to new societies whose cultural and social structures differed from those of their Arab communities.
Al-Sararah argues that the pain of exile and longing for home helped unleash the creative energies of these émigré writers. A number of poets flourished and their literary experiences matured, producing new poetic forms that influenced later generations of Arab writers despite facing critical opposition.
He maintains that the efforts of Gibran Khalil Gibran and Ameen Rihani to renew Arabic poetry were not passing experiments but marked the beginning of a new phase that led to the emergence of unfamiliar forms of prose poetry in the literary scene. Their poetry expressed their emotional and intellectual experiences and explored questions of existence and life, drawing on the creative potential of language as the foundation of the artistic process.
Al-Sararah sees “rebellion and renewal” as a gateway to modernist horizons that helped transform texts through new linguistic and rhythmic structures. These developments made it possible to move beyond traditional boundaries between literary genres and establish a connection between poetry and prose through hybrid texts that contributed to the emergence of “poetic prose” and “prose poetry.”
The study, titled Poetic Prose and Prose Poetry: A Reading of the Works of Gibran Khalil Gibran and Ameen Rihani, therefore seeks to identify manifestations of modernist change in Arabic poetry and examine the new forms, characteristics and ideas that emerged from it.
The study consists of an introduction and four chapters. The introduction provides brief biographies of Gibran and Al-Rihani. The first chapter, “Prose Poetry and Poetic Prose: Concepts and Origins,” examines the linguistic and technical meanings of the terms, the challenges of literary classification, the factors behind their emergence and their leading figures. The second chapter, “Formative Influences on Prose Poetry and Poetic Prose,” explores Arab and Western influences. The third chapter, “Intellectual Expressions in the Works of Gibran Khalil Gibran and Ameen Rihani,” addresses nationalist, contemplative, humanist and philosophical themes. The fourth chapter, “Artistic Issues,” examines poetic language, imagery, stylistic features and typographical structure.
The research employs a descriptive-analytical approach to trace the phenomenon under study and identify its dimensions and characteristics. Its findings include the conclusion that Arabic poetry showed early signs of experimentation and a growing desire for renewal, while cultural and social conditions were conducive to this transformation. Contact with other civilizations, particularly among émigré poets such as Gibran and Al-Rihani, helped establish new visions for modernizing Arabic poetry and moving beyond some of the forms associated with the Nahda, or Arab Renaissance.
The study also finds that the experiences of Gibran and Al-Rihani represented an important stage in the transformation of poetic texts and helped prepare the ground for new poetic forms. The researcher hopes these findings will encourage further studies of that period and a fresh critical reading of Arabic poetry and literary criticism.
The study ultimately concludes that the experiences of Gibran Khalil Gibran and Ameen Rihani represent an important stage in the renewal of Arabic poetry. By challenging traditional forms and embracing a poetic language responsive to life, human emotions and human concerns, they helped establish prose poetry and poetic prose as forms that combine characteristics of poetry and prose and paved the way for the Arabic prose poem.
It identifies repetition, parallelism, contrast, internal rhythm and poetic imagery as among the most prominent artistic devices in the two poets’ works, enriching meaning, aesthetic value and impact on readers. Their contemplative orientation also emerges through the blending of natural imagery with their emotions and ideas.
The study further highlights the clear presence of nationalist, humanist and philosophical themes in their writing, particularly calls for Arab unity and expressions of concerns surrounding humanity, freedom, injustice, life and existence. Their language is distinguished by emotional sincerity and depth, helping their literary influence endure beyond the limits of time and place.
Overall, the study argues that Gibran and Al-Rihani did more than introduce formal changes to poetry. They helped transform poetic vision, language, rhythm and artistic structure, paving the way for the development of modern Arabic poetry and its new forms.
Resource: Al-Ghad. Reporting: Aziza Ali
