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Throughout the better part of his brief life (1926-1964), Sayyab
was haunted with the idea of death, the afterlife, mortality and
immortality. At the end of his earthly journey, Badr made peace
with himself, and thereby reconciled the two seemingly
contradictory aspects of "Life" and "Death." He conquered death by
humanizing it, mastering his fear of it, and by surrendering to his
fate as the ultimate rest for an ailing and constantly
deteriorating body. Although never an existentialist, Sayyab, at
one point, entertained the idea of embracing "Existentialism,"
surmising that it might have the philosophical answer to his
existential problem: how far and how high will he be able to carry
the rock of Sisyphus? How long will his battle with destiny last
and who will prevail? Sayyab was immensely in love with life, yet
his poetry and personal letters ironically convey a different
message and are colored with the dark clouds of dejection,
frustration, loneliness, exile and poverty. These selected letters
in English translation shed new light on the catastrophic life of
this tragic hero and highlight important aspects of his otherwise,
private moments and inner thoughts that he shared with a few elite
friends that he had in Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and England such
as Adunis, Khalil Hawi, Youssef al-Khal, Suhail Idris, Albert
Adeeb, and Ali al-Sabti. This is the story of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab
in his own words without embellishment. In translating these
letters, I tried to be as faithful as possible to the original
Arabic text and to the meaning that I believe the poet intended.
These letters are organized in chronological order and provide us
with a clear image of the development and maturity of Badr both as
a human being and a poet. I sincerely hope that the translation of
these selected letters into English will present new material
useful for Sayyab's students and scholars.
These hymns and poems were written between January 1975 and August
1976, mostly during the first year and a half of what has
ironically been called the "Lebanese Civil War." The poetry and
hymns in this book are an emotionally-charged document that
reflects the state of mind of a young Lebanese poet madly in love
with Beirut and Lebanon during the seventies when Lebanon was an
oasis of fun and was bursting with creativity and positive energy
on all fronts: literary, social, economic and political. Beirut was
the major capital of literary production in the Middle East. The
poetry in this book is a song for Lebanon. It is a celebration of
its glory and endurance and a call for the Lebanese to unite. It is
a cry in the desert of discontent against those who thought that
destroying the previous society would bring about a new age of
contentment, only to prove that their vision was wrong and that
they were but a "false alarm" that simply caused unimaginable
death, destruction, disappointment and sorrow. These hymns are both
a praise for what Beirut stood for and represented in the minds and
consciousness of the generation of Arab intellectuals and at the
same time, they are a eulogy for the city that the Lebanese were
unable to protect and preserve because of the many who took it for
granted and others who allowed their jealousy and bitter ideologies
to put the first nail in its coffin.
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