Nizar Qabbani's poetic legacy garners greater appreciation in an increasingly superficial world

The aura

In today's world, our fascination with poets seems to have dimmed.

Like many cultural phenomena in the Arab world, statistics on this are scarce, though there is widespread agreement that poetry no longer holds the prominent position it once did.

But, the art form isn't dead – it's just popping up in different avenues. A fresh era and resurgence of poetry could soon be upon us.

Read more: Why poetry is essential to life

However, the world Qabbani depicted with his words is steadily being chipped away. Instead of odes and stanzas, global markets now shape and control our emotions, with technology and social media taking the lead.

The woman who was so central to Qabbani's world – shaping his image as much as he shaped hers – no longer belongs to herself. Poets, once the "teachers of life" and creators of meaning, now share space with "life coaches." The poetic image has been overshadowed by product promotions from social media "influencers."

As we revisit pivotal moments that defined Qabbani's career and life, we find that the world that he was building – and defending – is now glaringly distant, if not impossible to fathom.

The poet and "life coach"

Like an enamoured lover, Qabbani viewed a woman's world – and all it encompasses – with awe. To him, women were symbols of sweetness, fluidity and femininity. His poetry was rich with fertile details that his readers lost themselves in.

Like many poets, he was a teacher of life.

Of late, it seems that role has been replaced by "life coaches" who peddle quick fixes for happiness, power and growth, all based on a notion that people are identical, defined beings who need one-size-fits-all formulas to succeed. 

The stardom that once surrounded Qabbani – evident in his record-breaking book sales and countless editions of his works – is now reserved for a new breed of "cultural influencers," who dominate book fairs and bestseller lists.

But Qabbani alone was the poet-star, much like filmstars and popstars.

In a past interview, Qabbani is in conversation with legendary Egyptian performer Abdul Halim Hafez, discussing his poem "Qarat al-Funjan" (Coffee Cup Reader), which marked the end of Hafez's singing career. Together, they discussed the challenge of adapting it into a song.

Hafez appeared more like a student basking in the presence of a master; his own stardom — usually the biggest thing in any room — could not eclipse Qabbani.

Indeed, it felt as though Hafez was merely an observer. Qabbani spoke with a quiet confidence that bordered on arrogance. Asked about whether some of the verses of his poem might be broken, he chalked it up to "you all are playing/messing around with the poem."

Qabbani was able to drive and control entire songs with his words, shaping a generation of music. His influence extended to the vocals, composition, songwriting and beyond, making the work seem distinctly and wholly his own.

Breathing new life into words

Language, at the time, still had the power to shape public and private opinion. In Qabbani's case, he was able to breathe new life into words. His approach to writing was fresh and fluid.

Even his packaging was novel. His physical collections were small, often encased in eye-catching covers, so that they resembled gifts; they didn't subscribe to the seriousness and somberness of other cultural products of the time.

Many writers took issue with this unusual presentation, comparing his books to boxes of chocolates.

Qabbani was labelled "az'ar," a slang term implying degeneracy and lack of moral restraint – a fact indicative of how many in the industry perceived him.

The label wasn't born out of a rigid official culture or fanatic institutions, but rather of well-known poets and writers who had previously called for freedom, breaking boundaries, and other similar causes.

Liberation of women's voices...and bodies

Their tune changed, however, when faced with Nizar's success in constructing poetry that placed women in the public sphere; they recoiled and became fundamentalists and reactionaries.

Nizar's portrayals of a woman's body turned it into a full-fledged world in and of itself; it became a way of life and a desired fantasy.

The woman he wrote of, described and gave a voice to in many of his poems, owned her body. He wanted to express his point of view clearly and openly, allowing her to occupy her rightful place in public thought and emotion.

In the realm of Qabbani's poetry, details of women transcend ordinary descriptions tied to geography, scent, or desire. The women become multi-dimensional, fleshed-out characters, owning their narratives and seeking their voices. In turn, they inspired a new generation of poets.

For Qabbani, this approach began with his earliest collections, "The Brunette Told Me" (1944) and "The Childhood of a Breast" (1947), which stirred controversy and underwent title revisions before publication, with the term 'breast' replaced by 'river.'

Unfazed by backlash

Unfazed by backlash, he carried on like this throughout his career.

The liberation of women's voices and bodies in Qabbani's poetry marked a profound breakthrough, driven by keen observation, unwavering attention, and frequent contemplation.

He infused familiar expressions and linguistic structures with novel meanings, despite the prevailing classical and traditional poetic styles of his time.

Influenced by the rich cultures of the 19th and 20th centuries, a world steeped in classicism, Qabbani sought to forge new ripples within a familiar river. He struck a delicate balance between adhering to classic forms and challenging popular word usage and imagery.

In a story from his first collection titled "Symphony on the Pavement," Qabbani portrays music as emanating from the feminine body:

Walk… you have a river of songs in your legs

softer than Hijaz and Asfahani

A symphony weeping, so enchanting,

Spun there by a violin's bow

I am here, an eager listener to a tune,

Coming from the elder forest

I am here, holding a treasure in my hand,

Your eyes, the night, and the sound of music.

The wandering diplomat

Qabbani was born on 21 March 1923 in the Mi'thnat Al-Shahm neighbourhood of Damascus. After studying law at the University of Syria, he obtained his degree in 1945, enabling him to join the diplomatic sector.

He travelled extensively, visiting different corners of the world, moving between Egypt, Turkey, the United Kingdom, China, and Spain. Each country left a mark on him, and, by extension, his poetry. (In 1966, he gave up his diplomatic career and moved to Lebanon, where he founded a publishing house that bore his name.)

In Cairo, the bustling city on the Nile, Qabbani lived for three transformative years (1945-1948). It was an era of liberal cultural fervour, and his poetic spirit found solace within it. There, he penned his controversial sophomore collection, "Childhood of a Breast."

In his 1970 book "Qissati ma'a Ashi'r" ("My Story with Poetry"), he wrote: "I owe to Cairo what the trees owe to spring, and its fingerprints are clearly visible in my second collection."

He added: "Cairo refined my feelings, my vision and my poetic language, and liberated me from the desert dust that had accumulated on my skin. In the 1940s, Cairo was the flower of cities and the capital of the Arab capitals, an incomparable garden of thought and art."

There, he also found an ally in the critic Anwar El-Maadawi, who defended Qabbani's writing as "words we have never heard before."

Enchanted by Cairo's aura, and prepared to embrace something new, Nizar wrote the poem "If Not For You", saying:

Behold, O beautiful... If not for you,

Would a trail abound with roses?

If not for the green in your eyes, rich encounters, welcoming

Would the East swim in light?

Would the West be bathed in colour?

Would meteors dispel the grey sparkle, if not for you?

Would thousands of butterflies lap up the scent?

If I don't love you...

Then what do I love?

This poem, with its rhythm, vocabulary, and semantic construction, places woman at the centre of radiating colour, life and light; it also represents the start of a young Qabbani's exploration of such a style, which he then injected into the heart of the Arabic poetry scene.

Other cultural influences

After Cairo, there were two other fundamental cultural experiences that impacted Qabbani's output – namely the English and Spanish experiences.

During his three years in London (1952-1955), Qabbani's work was significantly influenced by the logic and structure of the English language. He was particularly taken by the straightforward, explicit expressions found in the language, as well as the balanced technical constructions and clear contextual meanings.

Of his English experiences, he said: "It placed me in a civilised and humane frame that I desperately needed," noting that "in this school of freedom, I wrote my best and most human-centred poetic work – the 'Poems' collection."

In this collection, Qabbani turned to more scenic poetry. "With a Newspaper," composed by Jamal Salama and released by Majida El Roumi in 1994, is a prime example.

The poem reads:

He took the newspaper from his coat

and a pack of matches

Then, without noticing my nervousness

and without concern

He took the sugar that was in front of me

He melted two pieces in the cup

He dissolved me as the two pieces.

There's a theatrical element to the poem. It presents its central idea through sequential scenes, using movement and visual details.

Another famous, and contentious poem – "Khobz, Wa Hashish, Wa Qamar" ("Bread, Grass and Moon") – can be found in the same collection.

It caused a huge uproar, reaching the walls of the Syrian Parliament, where voices called for Qabbani's dismissal from his post at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Entire campaigns were launched to denounce the poem.

One of its passages reads:

What weakness and decay

Lay hold of us, when the light streams forth

Rugs, thousands of baskets,

Glasses of tea and children swarm over the hills.

In my land,

Where the naive weep,

And live on a light they cannot perceive.

Though clearly engaging with critical discourse related to his homeland, Qabbani's structural composition embodied the English technique, characterised by brevity and clarity.

Scattered history and tales of ancestors

Later, Qabbani spent four years in Spain (1962-1964). He described it as a time of "national and historical excitement."

There, he confronted his own scattered history and tales of his people and ancestors. Life in the country was marked by intense and extreme passion that scorched everyone in its path.

"Everything in Spain is hot and burning, like Indian spices," wrote Qabbani. "Spanish love bleeds, wine bleeds, singing bleeds, poetry bleeds, dancing bleeds and the red roses planted in the hair of Spanish women bleed. Spain is a country of emotion and tension, and no one can pass through or dwell there and remain neutral."

Spain's impact on Qabbani manifested in his collection "Al-Rasm Bil Kalimat" ("Drawing with Words"), which depicts various emotional and national extremes.

An excerpt from the poem "Spanish Papers" reads:

Flamenco, Flamenco,

And the sleeping tavern awakens

with the laughter of wooden castanets,

and the melancholic tone

flows like a fountain of gold.

I sit in a corner,

I collect my tears

Collect the remains of Arabs.

In another poem, bearing the same name as the collection, Qabbani employs hyperbole and a sense of arrogance:

Don't ask me about my life,

That's a long tale, my lady.

I exist in all ages as if

my life spans millions of years.

My bags are weary of long journeys,

and I am weary of my horses and conquests.

Political Satire

One of Qabbani's major missteps, perhaps, was writing what became commonly known as "political poetry" after major setbacks in the region in 1967.

Qabbani rode the wave of shock, astonishment, and anger that swept through society. He channelled these critical thoughts through biting satire, aligning his composition, logic, and style with the popular poetic writings of that time.

His work became as famous as he was, particularly his collection "Hawamish Ala Daftar Al-Naksa" ("Footnotes to the Book of the Setback"). However, he lost the thread that distinguished his poetry, including themes of women and love.

Later in life, Qabbani seemed to revert to his early achievements; he repeated tried-and-true formulas and patterns, frequently revisiting the "newness" that once defined him. However, by then, the novelty had begun to wear off.

A distant world

Qabbani's world – once filled with women, language, cities, and idiosyncrasies – seems impossibly distant today. Our perception of seduction has fallen to the wayside.

The woman to whom Qabbani devoted his poetry had created a circle of desire, as described by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Essentially, when someone desires a woman, he longs for an entire existence that is realised through the myriad meanings connected to her, radiating from her, and permeating through her presence.

But today, seduction has transformed into a function of the picture-perfect image projected by "influencers" – the new media stars shaping aesthetic, cultural, and lifestyle trends.

An alarming side-effect of this is the desire to create a woman who is separate from her own self and beauty. Seduction has become a by-product of the products that she uses, rather than an innate quality she possesses.

This new perspective reduces men and women to consumers. The circular exchange of seduction, glances, and a desire to immerse oneself in a world of tempting encounters, marked by an attentive gaze, has been lost.

Plagued by tragedy

After moving to Lebanon, personal and public tragedies plagued the poet. He was surrounded by profound loss, fragments of which can still be seen in the current state of his homeland.

In 1973, he lost his 23-year-old son, Tawfiq. In 1981, tragedy struck again as his wife, Bilqis, died in the bombing of the Iraqi embassy in Beirut.

The urban world that was once a source of inspiration for the poet had steadily eroded. It was replaced by a landscape of rurality, crises, and wars. Militarisation had spread through discourse, culture and behaviour.

Through his elegies, mourning both personal losses and the decline of cities, the poet might as well have been witness to our present-day conditions.

His fate took a turn when he was exiled from his homeland and banned from most Arab countries, seeking refuge in London, where he lived until he died in 1998.

From his collection "I Love You, I Love You, and the Rest Will Follow," Qabbani presented a poignant elegy dedicated to his late son, titled "To the Damascus Prince, Tawfiq Qabbani".

In it, we witness him proclaim in anguish:

I'll carry you, my son, on my back

Like a minaret broken into two

And your hair is a field of wheat in the rain

And your head in my palms like a Damascene rose...and the remains of a moon.

The poet's world shattered as he felt Damascene's voice, place, and time crumble between his fingers. The weight of his son's lifeless body burdened his soul, which he carried on his back as if it were his own world that he had lost forever.

His once transparent vulnerability transformed into raw, seething grief when his wife, Bilqis, was assassinated. He poured his emotions into a lengthy poem bearing her name, considered a prominent satirical elegy in modern Arabic poetry.

The poem opens with:

Thank you all,

Thank you all.

My beloved was slain, and you can now

drink a cup on the martyr's grave,

and my poem was assassinated;

is there any nation on this earth

- other than us - that assassinates a poem?"

In another passage, he observes the death of speech:

Bilqis,

O fragrance in my memory,

O grave that travels in the clouds,

They killed you in Beirut, like any gazelle,

after they killed the words.

He reaches the climax of his enlightened anger, through which he can now reveal everything, saying:

I will declare in the investigation

that I know the names and the things and the prisoners

and the martyrs and the poor and the downtrodden,

and I will say that I know the swordsman who killed my wife.

The significance of this poem as part of Qabbani's legacy lies in the fact that it reflects more than just a personal tragedy. It chronicles a time when words and their meanings seemed lost.

The worlds that once inspired Qabbani's writings about women splintered alongside the body of his beloved, right in the heart of a city that had always given life to his work.

Pain erupted like one final conversation, as Bilqis was more than his wife and lover; she embodied the world and voice of women he revered, intertwined with the essence of urban life.

In that moment, death's grasp seemed absolute. It took Bilqis and everything she represented, along with Beirut, a place he mourned in his 1978 collection "To Beirut the Female with My Love."

This collection included the powerful poem "Lady of the World, O Beirut," sung by Majida al-Roumi and composed by Jamal Salameh. It also featured the poem "To Beirut the Female," sung by Nancy Ajram after the 2020 port explosion – a testament to his enduring words.

These earlier poems gave hints of the tragedy that later emerged in Bilqis' poem. They served as an early conclusion to Qabbani's poetic exploration, a heartfelt lament for women and the Arab city. He faithfully witnessed their meanings dissolve and their essence burn away.

Expression repositories

Qabbani's poetry belongs to a world where relationships are rooted in a deep knowledge of one another. Seduction was an invitation to read between the lines – to build upon layers and layers of mutual understanding.

In contrast, today's world of contemporary influencers features constant, fleeting browsing that builds upon nothing. The consumer is in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction. Relationships are startlingly superficial.

Qabbani's world, and by extension of the world of poetry, no longer exists – at least not in its once glorious form.

Back in the day, beauty was considered inherent to women. It overflowed from them and into their shawls and perfumes, material extensions of a woman's appeal that had no hand in shaping her desirability.

But today, women no longer own their beauty; they are told to buy it. Men and women no longer gaze at each other to form a bond; they are told to consume. Relationships are formed on screens, where there is no room for attention, contemplation, or emotion.

In one of his famous poems (composed by Muhammad Abdel Wahhab and sung by Najat Al Saghira), Qabbani says, in the words of a woman:

Even my neglected dresses,

rejoiced at his arrival... and danced.

Dresses that rejoice and dance are now an artefact of the past. Today's outfits are emotionless commodities. So, too, are relationships, which more closely resemble the predatory concept of hunting.

In this world, the need for language as a means of expression diminishes, and its poetic and symbolic use weakens.

Emoticons (or "emojis") and their numerous variations are the new modes of communication, becoming unbearably specific and precise, destroying the need for linguistic analysis. Anger, sadness, and joy are now clearly defined and contained within these minuscule symbols, leaving little room for personal interpretation.

In short, people now have pre-defined emotional repositories to use as alternatives to language. Qabbani's expressive world dwindles as more of these icons pop up, claiming to have the power to capture human emotion in all its immensity and vastness.

Emotional state

The poet was once the sculptor of feelings; the disruptor of thoughts. They observed and researched. They built structures to express what they had learned. Today, they no longer represent an essential need. Feelings, like everything else, are a product independent of people.

"Existence is nothing but what we feel."

That is the conclusion that Qabbani arrived at after more than 40 collections and books.

He revealed his perception of the world in a passage from a poem titled "Mukhattatun nazari li-taghyirr al-ʿalam" ('Nizar's Plan to Change the World") published in the collection "Hal Tasmaina Ṣahila Aḥẓānī" ("Do You Hear the Neighing of My Sorrows"), released in 1991, where he says:

I want to seize power, my lady,

even for one day,

to establish

The Republic of Sensation.

The Republic of Sensation – what a novel thought.

Perhaps the frenzy that surrounds us today has made Qabbani's imaginative concepts age quickly, incapable of making a lasting impact.

But exhaustion might catch up to us soon. Fatigue could push us to return to forgotten sources of tranquillity and leisure – to the sweet, languid linguistic view of our senses, existence and life itself.

A hundred years since his birth, and 25 years since we bid him farewell, the world of Qabbani awaits us. We can read and rediscover it anew. At some point, we may even come to fully understand it.

For now, it may be difficult to cast judgement on such a poetic experience in a world that has forgotten the true value of poetry, feeling and human emotion.