Arabian Love Poems

by Bassam K. Frangieh and Nizar Qabbani

Book Overview

This translation of Nizar Kabbani's poetry is accompanied by the striking Arabic texts of the poems, penned by Kabbani especially for this collection. Kabbani was a poet of great simplicity - direct, spontaneous, musical, using the language of everyday life. He was a ceasless campaigner for women's rights, and his verses praise the beauty of the female body, and of love. He was an Arab nationalist, yet he criticized Arab dictators and the lack of...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0894108816
• ISBN13: 9780894108815
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
• Length: 225 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Love is Beautiful!

If you are in love read the poems in this book. The words are musical, the emotions are strong, and the fire is really hot!

Direct, spontaneous, musical poetry

Collaboratively translated into English by Bassam K. Frangieh and Clementina R. Brown, Arabian Love Poems showcases the poetry and verse of Syrian born Nizar Kabbani (1923-1998). Kabbani's poetry is direct, spontaneous, musical, and drew upon the language of everyday life. Each poem is presented in a bilingual text of Arabic and English in this superbly presented edition which will well serve to introduce an American readership to one of the finest 20th Century poets of the Middle East. When I wrote your name/On the notebook of roses/I knew/All the illiterate,/All the sick and impotent men/Would stand against me./When I decided to kill the last Caliph,/To announce/The establishment of a state of love/Crowning you as its queen,/I knew/Only the birds/Would sing of the revolution with me.

Translating the Impossible

Nizar Kabbani is very difficult to translate. He is a poet of great simplicity, very direct and extremely spontaneous. Kabbani uses the language of everyday life with peculiar musicality. Therefore, many translators have failed, others could not take such difficult task. Frangieh's translation is the first book to represent Kabbani's poetry in English. He has done a great service to Arabic poetry and to the English speaking world. Congratulations!

An outstanding poet

Qabbani was revered by generations of Arabs for his sensual andromantic verse. His work was featured not only in his two dozenvolumes of poetry and in regular contributions to the Arabic-language newspaper Al Hayat, but in lyrics sung by Lebanese and Syrian vocalists who helped popularize his work. The Syrian poet Youssef Karkoutly said in Damascus today that Qabbani had been "as necessary to our lives as air." Through a lifetime of writing, Qabbani made women his main theme and inspiration. He earned a reputation for daring with the publication in 1954 of his first volume of verse, "Childhood of a Breast," which broke with the conservative traditions of Arabic literature. But it was not until he resigned from the Syrian diplomatic service in 1966 that Qabbani reached full flower. After the Arab defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, he founded the Nizar Qabbani publishing house in London, and his became a powerful and eloquent voice of lament for Arab causes. Qabbani was a committed Arab nationalist and in recent years his poetry and other writings, including essays and journalism, had become more political. But his writing also often fused themes of romantic and political despair, and it sometimes treated the oppression of women as a metaphor for what he saw as the Arabs' cursed fate. In his poem "Drawing with Words" he wrote: When a man wishes a woman he blows a horn, But when a woman wishes a man she eats the cotton of her pillow. The Egyptian novelist Mona Helmi said of Qabbani today, "His greatness came from his ability to put into beautiful words not only the ordinary actions between men and women, but also between the ruler and ruled and the oppressor and the oppressed." Gamal el-Ghitanti, the Egyptian novelist and editor of the weekly News of Literature, praised Qabbani as having been "by any measure a great Arab poet who made a big effort to make his poetry understandable to all people and not only to the elite." Qabbani published his first poem, "The Brunette had Told Me," in 1944, a year before he graduated with a law degree from the University of Damascus. He held diplomatic posts in Cairo, Ankara, London, Madrid, Beijing and Beirut before resigning, and had lived in London since 1967. But the Syrian capital remained a powerful presence in his poems, most notably in "The Jasmine Scent of Damascus." In his later years, Qabbani's poems included a strong strain of anti-authoritarianism. One couplet in particular -- "O Sultan, my master, if my clothes are ripped and torn it is because your dogs with claws are allowed to tear me" -- is sometimes quoted by Arabs as a kind of wry shorthand for their frustration with life under dictatorship. Still, Qabbani never explicitly criticized his native country or its long-reigning leader, President Hafez al-Assad, and that allowed him to be hailed across Syria as a national hero.

A great poet

Qabbani was revered by generations of Arabs for his sensual andromantic verse. His work was featured not only in his two dozenvolumes of poetry and in regular contributions to the Arabic-language newspaper Al Hayat, but in lyrics sung by Lebanese and Syrian vocalists who helped popularize his work. The Syrian poet Youssef Karkoutly said in Damascus today that Qabbani had been "as necessary to our lives as air." Through a lifetime of writing, Qabbani made women his main theme and inspiration. He earned a reputation for daring with the publication in 1954 of his first volume of verse, "Childhood of a Breast," which broke with the conservative traditions of Arabic literature. But it was not until he resigned from the Syrian diplomatic service in 1966 that Qabbani reached full flower. After the Arab defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, he founded the Nizar Qabbani publishing house in London, and his became a powerful and eloquent voice of lament for Arab causes. Qabbani was a committed Arab nationalist and in recent years his poetry and other writings, including essays and journalism, had become more political. But his writing also often fused themes of romantic and political despair, and it sometimes treated the oppression of women as a metaphor for what he saw as the Arabs' cursed fate. In his poem "Drawing with Words" he wrote: When a man wishes a woman he blows a horn, But when a woman wishes a man she eats the cotton of her pillow. The Egyptian novelist Mona Helmi said of Qabbani today, "His greatness came from his ability to put into beautiful words not only the ordinary actions between men and women, but also between the ruler and ruled and the oppressor and the oppressed." Gamal el-Ghitanti, the Egyptian novelist and editor of the weekly News of Literature, praised Qabbani as having been "by any measure a great Arab poet who made a big effort to make his poetry understandable to all people and not only to the elite." Qabbani published his first poem, "The Brunette had Told Me," in 1944, a year before he graduated with a law degree from the University of Damascus. He held diplomatic posts in Cairo, Ankara, London, Madrid, Beijing and Beirut before resigning, and had lived in London since 1967. But the Syrian capital remained a powerful presence in his poems, most notably in "The Jasmine Scent of Damascus." In his later years, Qabbani's poems included a strong strain of anti-authoritarianism. One couplet in particular -- "O Sultan, my master, if my clothes are ripped and torn it is because your dogs with claws are allowed to tear me" -- is sometimes quoted by Arabs as a kind of wry shorthand for their frustration with life under dictatorship. Still, Qabbani never explicitly criticized his native country or its long-reigning leader, President Hafez al-Assad, and that allowed him to be hailed across Syria as a national hero. Assad, who recently named a main street in Damascus after the poet, was reported today to be planning to dispatch a