The Daily Beast website has an article about poetry that is being chanted in the streets of Tunisia and Egypt. (Thanks to the Daily Dish for 
alerting me to it.) It shows once again that language well used has the power to move mountains—or at any rate, to give historical players a firm place upon which to stand.
Often the poetry is that of Tunisia’s Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi, who died at 25 (of heart disease) in 1934. His target was French colonialism, but protesters have been chanting his poems in response to contemporary oppression. Here is the one heard most often:
Imperious despot, insolent in strife,
Lover of ruin, enemy of life!
You mock the anguish of an impotent land
Whose people’s blood has stained your tyrant hand,
And desecrate the magic of this earth,
sowing your thorns, to bring despair to birth
According to the Daily Beast, the use of poetry as political protest is not new in this part of the world:
The readings and poetic chants in Tunisia and Egypt are only the latest instance in a long history of political poetry in the Middle East, going back all the way to pre-Islamic times, when the sa-alik (roughly translated as “vagabond”) wrote about living outside the tribal system. In modern times, poetry has been a tool for creating a sense of political unity, giving voice to political aspirations, and excoriating governments and leaders. Maybe most surprising to an American used to poetry’s increasing confinement to college campuses, poetry is a tool for galvanizing people to political action.
“Outside the West poetry is still very powerful,” says Muhsin Jassim al-Musawi, professor of Arabic literature at Columbia University. “It might not be very conspicuous, but it is there, an undercurrent, and whenever there is a need for it you will be surprised that people have something to say.” Postcolonial literary criticism has neglected the political power of poetry, says Musawi, focusing instead on the way narrative defines cultural and national identities. But when those identities are first being formed, he says, when people are taking to the streets in protest or trying to establish a new government, it’s poetry people turn to. It’s easier to rally around a verse than a novel.
The article goes on to note that the Tunisian national anthem is taken from the last stanza of Al-Shabbi’s poem “The Will to Live.” I went looking for that poem, which has also been making the rounds. One website offered up three translations. Not knowing Arabic I cannot vouch for accuracy, but here’s my favorite:
If, one day, a people desires to live, then fate will answer their call.
And their night will then begin to fade, and their chains break and fall.
For he who is not embraced by a passion for life will dissipate into thin air,
At least that is what all creation has told me, and what its hidden spirits declare…
Translated by Elliott Colla.
Perhaps I should say something on the subject of using poetry for political purposes. When I was a grad student at Emory University, I heard noted poet Howard Nemerov speak disparagingly of those poets who held readings to protest the Vietnam War. I remember being startled by the remark because my father included Nemerov’s “Boom” (which I write about here) in his anthology Poems of War Resistance, which he edited at the time. I’ve always been sorry that I didn’t ask Nemerov about that, but it sounded that he thought the poets were filled with delusions of grandeur, including the delusion that poetry could stop the war. Or maybe he thought that they wrote poetry that was politics first and poetry second. In other words, bad poetry
Al-Shabbi is not around to make grandiose claims, but if such claims were made, they would be wrong. His poetry itself didn’t topple the Tunisian dictator and, whatever happens in Egypt, it won’t topple Mubarak. Rather, people desiring freedom drew support from his work as they mustered up the courage to put their lives on the line.
And if his poetry had been written specifically to accomplish that goal, I would agree with what I imagine Nemerov to have been thinking. Poetry’s first obligation is to truth, not to a political platform. If a poet like al-Shabbi had written only to advance a particular agenda, his poetry wouldn’t resonate today. The reason it does, the reason his words are transcendent and speak to oppressed people everywhere, is because Al-Shabbi taps into the fundamental human desire for freedom.
Now, it may well be that some of those chanting his poetry today will be tyrants themselves tomorrow. That, however, would not be a black mark on the poetry. It would just mean that they will have betrayed the vision that once moved them–in which case, they might some day hear the same verses chanted against them some day. Tyranny shuts down human potential whereas poetry opens it up, and it this openness that the marchers are responding to.
After all, he who is not embraced by a passion for life will dissipate into thin air.
Other versions – Here are the two other versions of “Will to Live.” Let me know which one you like the best. First this one:
When people choose
To live by life’s will,
Fate can do nothing but give in;
The night discards its veil,
All shackles are undone.
Whoever never felt
Life celebrating him
Must vanish like the mist;
Whoever never felt
Sweeping through him
The glow of life
Succumbs to nothingness.
This I was told by the secret
Voice of All-Being
Wind roared in the mountains,
Roared through valleys, under trees:
“My goal, once I have set it,
And put aside all caution
I must pursue to the end.
Whoever shrinks from scaling the mountain
Lives out his life in potholes.
Translated by Sargon Boulus and Christopher Middleton
And finally this one:
If the people will to live
Providence is destined to favorably respond
And night is destined to fold
And the chains are certain to be broken
And he who has not embraced the love of life
Will evaporate in its atmosphere and disappear
Translated by As’ad Abu Khalil
