Adonis's Impression of Neffary's Mavaqef in the Poetic Ideas

Adonis in Arabic literature is one of the most remarkable poets who created a new poetic style with the special features in poetry in terms of form and conception. His thoughts about poetry have been affected by a strong background of mystical views and also surrealistic thoughts. That is why he defines the origin of true poetry as mystical or surreal believes. His poetic ideas can be seen in his poems clearly. In addition, Adonis's impression of mysticism texts is an important topic which correlates his opinions to Surrealism school in the contemporary century. However, Mavaqef and Mokhatebat’s effect, written by Mohammad M. Abdol Jabbar Neffary, on Adonis’s critical ideas about the poem makes close his poetic approach to Neffary’s mystical attitudes. Mavaqef va Mokhatebat has been effective on his ideas generally and his points of view on poetry and position of poets specifically more than every other text.

The researches that has been done so far about Adonis has been mainly focused on the study of his views and poems, either in the context of research books on Arabic poetry or in independent work such as “Poetic Development of Adonis” (Ahmad Yusuf Davud); In addition to his poetic thoughts and views, Adonis has been the subject of researches that compare him with other poets which attempt to express his ideas by establishing similarities or differences between their views. For example: "Adaptation of Sohrab and Adonis Sufis" by Mohammad Sadiq Sepehrinia, "Myth in Adonis and Shamlou's Poetry" by Sayed Babak Farzaneh, and "Comparative Study of Myths in Shamlou and Adonis's Poetry" by Seyed Fazlullah Mirqaderi. Also "Adonis in the Field of Contemporary Arab Poetry and Criticism" by Abbas Arab is one of the works written about his position in poetry. But a reviewing all the researches done so far on Adonis, shows no independent research has yet been published on the impact of the "Mavaqef" on Adonis's language, thought and method.

By scrutinizing and carefully reviewing Adonis' views and his attitude towards the poetry and poets, not only is it possible to explain his poetry in depth and doctrine, but also his poetic views can be generalized to contemporary poetry and, in general, to true poetry and be a poetic criterion for poems. This paper has tried to show Adonis's impression of “Mavaqef” in his poetic ideas by using a descriptive- analytic method. Some of the indications of Adonis’s impression of Neffary are establishing “magazine of Mavaqef” by him and citations taken from Mavaqef in his works. But that is not all; we can see more important influences from Neffary’s thoughts on Adonis’s view about poetry, regarding closeness between poetry and mysticisms in some basic aspects. Language, theme, and method are the basic aspects which based on, Adonis’s impression of Neffary in mystical views will be examined. Since interpretation and explanation of poetry is based on not only its conception but also poet’s ideas about poetry, understanding the Adonis’s poetry themes somehow is possible through understanding his points of view about the poetry.

This is a descriptive-analytical research. First, the related ideas of Adonis are descripted and then, their roots in Mavaqef va Mokhatebat, followed by the analysis of the examples, will be analyzed.

This paper shows that there are three items (language, theme, and method) which correlate Neffary and Adonis’s opinions together. Adonis has been influenced by Neffary's attitude towards language and what we call Shat’h in Neffary’s language can be called Ebda’a in Adonis’s language. Adonis has been influenced by Mavaqef in some important mystical themes such as unification, dynamism and cognition. His own poetry was influenced by powerful effect from both Neffary's Mavaqef and western schools views.

For Adonis, Mavaqef is the most significant representation of true mysticism and mysticism is the most important presentation of tradition. Adonis combines the tradition of mysticism with his modern ideas about poem and creates a new poetic style in his poetries. For language, he follows a kind of ambiguity which has already been used in Mavaqef. Regarding theme, Adonis tends to link poetry to universe with a mystical view in the way Abdol Jabbar Naferri particularly had done in Mavaqef. Regarding method, he tries to follow Abdol Jabbar Neffary as a mystic has already gone with the special individual experiences during the composing a new poem. Adonis, by establishing a strong link between tradition and modernity, places particular attention on the approach of the traditional mysticism to the universe, and places Mavaqef as the main representative of his tradition in connection with modernism. Adonis's poetic view can be a blend of tradition and modernity.