Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Part I The Poet Between Two Expatriates
- Part II Single and Collective Hero – Humanization, Animalization and Objectification
- Part III Title Indications, Allusiveness and Symbols
- Part IV Textual Openness and Employment of Myths, Religions, and Holy Books
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Summary in Arabic
2 - Humanization, Animalization and Objectification
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Part I The Poet Between Two Expatriates
- Part II Single and Collective Hero – Humanization, Animalization and Objectification
- Part III Title Indications, Allusiveness and Symbols
- Part IV Textual Openness and Employment of Myths, Religions, and Holy Books
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Summary in Arabic
Summary
In his book, Ḥaywanat al-insān (The Animalization of Man), the Syrian writer and poet Mamdūḥ ‘Adwān says that the best aspect of human history is the process of human evolution, that is:
The history of human attempts to move away from the beast deeply embedded in him, or not to allow it to grow, hoping to get rid of it definitively. This beast, which has become entrenched in the depths, is a fundamental problem that the men of thought and literature tried to tackle […]. We will suffice in saying now that, as a result of all these conditions, a “thing” was born in the depths of man; or that, due to the same conditions, this man could not completely get rid of the “thing” that was inside him, which we will now accept by calling it “the beast.”
If we relate the ideas of Mamdūḥ ‘Adwān to the work of Janabi’s poetry, we find that his poems are fighting the beast existing inside the poetic hero, striving to make him a being who aspires to coexist with surroundings despite the feelings of alienation in his isolation.
Hatif Janabi is well aware of the importance of his poetic address to the human being suffering from loss, isolation, and self-alienation. He realized the concepts that relate to life and beings and understood the close dialectical relationship between man and creatures. The concept of humanization was not alien to his thinking, so we always find it present in his poetry in all its manifestations. In one of Janabi’s early poems, “Ṣūra” (Picture), written in Kirkuk in 1975, we find an explicit mention of the word ansana (humanization): “Humanization of the past and humanization of stone”. This quest to emphasize humanization is the product of a sense of exoticism and the weirdness of place and time, as well as the dying of real people:
In the specified time and place
In our endless cruise behind the humanization of the past
And the humanization of the stone
People were dying almost
The whirlwind was
Moving towards its sinful sons
Then stopped between worry and life.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Poet and ExistenceText Contents and the Interaction of Reality, Myths and Symbols in Hatif Janabi's Poetry, pp. 57 - 80Publisher: Jagiellonian University PressPrint publication year: 2021