The commitment problem in the critical and poetic discourses of the contemporary Arbic literature

'commitment problem' is one of the most important problems for the contemporary literary critics and poets of Arab world. Surprisingly, literary researcher by deep study finds that the commitment has different senses for Arab literary critics and Arab poets. literary critics see it as an obligation to social affairs, whereas Arab poets put it in the vital sphere of the freedom of speech. The study of this problem of criticism is important because it shows the difference between literary criticism and poem and that the contemporary literary critic tries to criticize poems in terms of his/her critical desires not in terms of the poetic demands and needs of the poet. Why such a deep difference emerged between critical discourse and poetic one in Arab world? This article by use of a descriptive and analytic method and by reference to critics and poets ideas tries to answer the question. The results of the research shows that the contemporary Arab critic who relies on the ideas of western critics and their literary schools, specially literary socialism, proposes principles to evaluate Arabic poems, instead of speculating specifically Arabic poems and exploitimg critical rules from them. Thus, from his/her view point poet must be committed to social problems, specially social justice, whereas the Arab poet who is influenced from Sartrian ontological thought believes that he/she must be committed to freedom of speech and nothing more. This difference in the interpretation of a critical and literary notion as 'commitment' is speculative and deserves study to be clear why literary criticism is imitative and is not derived from the poems of Arab world, and why Arab critic imposes thoughts outside the literary text on the Arabic poems.