Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: Dirasah fi Hayatihi wa Shi'rihi
- Author died
- 1424 AH
- Editions
- Dar al-Thaqafah
Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: Dirasah fi Hayatihi wa Shi'rihi (Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: A Study of His Life and Poetry) is a critical and biographical monograph by the literary scholar Ihsan Abbas (d. 1424 AH / 2003 CE) examining the life, psychological trajectory, and poetic development of the Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab.
Background and Sources
The author assembled the primary material for the study approximately two years before completing its text, though its final drafting was delayed by external and personal circumstances. In preparing the work, Abbas drew extensively on oral testimonies and primary documents, including personal letters and unpublished poems provided by al-Sayyab's friends and contemporaries, among them Khalid al-Shawwaf, Adonis (Ali Ahmad Sa'id), Suhayl Idris, Muhammad Ali Isma'il, and Najah al-Sayyab. He also consulted existing memorial, critical, and journalistic writings on the poet, finding factual and documentary accounts the most valuable for constructing an accurate narrative.
Methodology and Approach
Abbas structured the book around a method that combines chronological progression, psychological development, and artistic evolution, presenting al-Sayyab's personal life and poetic output simultaneously against their historical background. He regarded historical context as essential to understanding the poetry as part of a broader collective movement, while employing psychological inquiry not to diagnose pathology for its own sake, but to uncover the underlying sources of the poet's creative expression.
The author avoided generalized assertions and loose, excessively poetic critical diction, deliberately refusing to attribute to the poet an intellectual or ideological framework unsupported by his verse. He also refrained from making frequent comparisons with other contemporary poets in order to maintain a strict focus on al-Sayyab, seeking an objective critical assessment unaffected by sympathy for the poet's illness or aversion to his political shifts.
Contents and Themes
The book analyzes al-Sayyab's trajectory across two primary thematic arcs defined by the search for the mother figure and the confrontation with death, separated by a brief phase of ideological and social engagement. It traces his early pastoral verse in Basra, his studies at the Higher Teachers' College in Baghdad, and his engagement with English literature—including the poetry of John Keats, T. S. Eliot, and Edith Sitwell—which contributed to his pioneering use of taf'ilah (free verse) metrics in his early collection Azhar Dhabila (1948).
Subsequent sections evaluate his collection Asatir, his political transitions from communism to Arab nationalism, his affiliation with the Beirut periodical Shi'r, and his employment in the Port Directorate in Basra. Abbas also addresses al-Sayyab's metrical experiments, including transitions between multiple meters within a single poem, and concludes with an account of the severe illness and hospitalization that led to the poet's death on December 24, 1964.
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