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3 - Symbolic Connotations of Blindness and Vision

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2023

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Summary

What demands attention in Janabi’s poetry, especially in the collection Raġba bayna ġaymatayn, are the frequently recurring concepts of blindness and vision. They do not come in a crude and superficial manner, but are accompanied by reflective symbolic connotations that constitute multi-thought contexts. For example, in the “Qaṣīdat al-bayāḍ fī ṭawr annaqāha,” we find that blindness has characteristics that may be strange, but it carries indicative signs, which should be carefully considered to comprehend it, and to demystify it. In the poet’s words, al-‘amā yastabsil (blindness defies boldly), symbolic content can be understood by looking at blindness as being enhanced by the presence of darkness and blackness. These are the words that are repeated in this poem, and it can be said that they reflect the state of reality that the poet observes. Among the notions that are close to blindness are the mistiness of vision and ambiguity, which accompanies the dramatic hero in difficult times. This can be noted when he says: “There is no mistiness that does not become my drinking companion.” In his words, he confirms that when sight reaches the point of satiation, the insight goes away, so it might be supposed that the poet wanted to say that the real blindness is the lack of insight. Thus, it can be said that he glorifies insight, not eyesight:

When eyesight is replete

Insight dies.

When the poetic hero of Janabi expresses what he sees on the frontiers of what he calls “infinite,” it goes beyond the familiar worldly vision. Moreover, sight loses its meaning so that it becomes equal to the lack of sight. Then, is this metaphysical vision an expression of the ultimate insight that surpasses human perception? It is the whiteness’s existence that presents the desired upper world, the opposite of the rejected earth world of blackness:

I see from the infinite boundaries

There, where what you see and what you don’t see are equal

Where the familiar vision ends

And that what follows on the other side

Is a white page

There is no limit to the patience of eternal salvation.

This “white page” refers to the title of the poem, which gives the impression that the work is coherent in terms of the expression “whiteness” and its connotations, which is a part of the equation of vision and blindness.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Poet and Existence
Text Contents and the Interaction of Reality, Myths and Symbols in Hatif Janabi's Poetry
, pp. 116 - 130
Publisher: Jagiellonian University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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