6 - Existentialism: The Frightened Mouse

Summary

Oh Lord! Oh Lord!

You have given me drink so that whenever

Your wine penetrates into my spot of intoxication

You force me to keep silent, and so I am

Choked with my secrets.

– Ṣalāḥ ‘Abd al-Ṣabūr

1. INTRODUCTION

Twentieth-century literatures of different nations share an outstanding concern with individual human existence. A common thread is the existen-tialist doctrine derived from the writings of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), such as Fear and Trembling (1843), The Concept of Dread (1844), and Sickness Unto Death (1848). In a violent reaction against absolute Hegelian idealism, Kierkegaard insisted on the utter distinctness of God and human beings and on the inexplicability, or even the absurdity, of their actions and the relations between them.

As we saw above, the neo-Ṣūfī trend in Arabic poetry has incorporated contemporary poets who, like early ascetics (zuhhād) and Ṣūfī mystics (called also al-ghurabā’—“the strangers”), reject materialist reality and express their existentialist alienation from it. However, as secular poets, they rarely concern themselves with the precise original meanings of the ancient terms, concentrating rather on the expression of their experiences and feelings as well as their social views. Unlike the early Ṣūfī poets, they are not solely committed to Ṣūfī themes, and Sufism is not a practical way of life for them. However, as previously indicated, like the classical Ṣūfī authors, the modernist poets of this trend are also united in their sensitivity to the dialectical tension between language and silence, and are occupying themselves with the alchemical metamorphoses and transformation of the despised body into the pure divine essence. That is why most of them adopt the metaphor of the poet as a mystic constantly advancing on the path toward the divine essence. Poetry for them is a safar (journey) that only takes you into a new safar. They wonder about the meaning and purpose of life, taking imaginary trips to reveal the secret of existence and frequently becoming immersed in a deep depression over the nature of human existence, from which there is no escape. In order to concretize these ideas, they use Ṣūfī, folkloristic, and various mythological images.