"الزيت في المصباح لن يجف" جدلية "البرج العاجي"/ "المنارة" في مراة الشعر الملتزم

In the article "The oil in the lamp will never dry up: The dialectic of ivory Tower/lighthouse in the mirror of committed poetry", Reuven Snir examines the issue of iltizam (commitment) in Arabic poetry in the 1960s, as reflected in the poetry of Iraqi poet 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayyati (born 1926), and especially in his long poem "Adhab al-Hallaj (The suffering of al-Hallaj), which appeared in Sifr al-Faqr wa'l-Tharwa (The book of poverty and revolution, 1965). Concentrating on its allusions to the Sufi doctrine and kiekegaard's Existenatioalism, Snir offers a detailed study of the poem, in which the poet uses the mask of the famous mystic martyr crucified in 309/922. Based on analogies between the committed poet and the committed mystic al-Hallaj, as well as Abraham, 'the father of faith' (Kiekegaard), Snir presents al-Bayyati's conviction in the sixties that commitment is not only beneficial for society but also indispensable for poetry. The changes that occurred in al-Bayyati's views in 1970s, and their metapoetic reflection in his poetry, will by studied in a second article in our next volume.