The Trilogy of Time for Rashed Issa, a Textual Psycho- Linguistic Approach
Suha Na’jeh, Department of Arabic Language and Literature, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan.
Abstract
The research explores through a linguistic psychological approach the whipping voice of time in the Jordanian writer Rashed Issa’s trilogy: (The Grandson of Jinn), (Gabriel), and (Key of the Broken Door); for Issa has clashed psychologically and linguistically with time, shone in it and manifested, and weaved it with a fine sharp needle, using strings of which colors tone with linguistic patterns that transform language from being a textual hierarchical system into a system of art and creativity biased in the consciousness of relationships connecting linguistic indicatives leading to a meaning without meaning. It is demonstrated in the centrality of the tightly close time signifier with the reality of the lexical time signified in: (day), (date), (time), (sun)……. and the metaphorical time signified in: (childhood), (adulthood), (old man), (aged), (forgetfulness)…… along with intensifying the grammatical time presence (present, past, and obligation forms), and the turnover of time conditions in the textual, poetic, and prose sayings in a central relationship through the coupling of multiple time indicatives in the line; poetic text, that alternate between the times of the act and the nominal indicatives that manifest in either of the reality or metaphor of the time significance, and the investment of the indicative lexical time focus of the linguistic functions by substituting times like: (dated), (die), and (live), and bringing the time meaning in compositions by virtue of contextual neighboring and the popular inherited cognitive concepts like the comparison between the rabbit and tortoise rooted in human memory as the first “the rabbit” being a symbol of time moving, and the second “the tortoise” being a symbol of movement almost zero in time. This is all in addition to intensifying the presence of the linguistic indicatives within the semantic field (speed), and the centrality of time significance in the thresholds (the title), and the centrality of lexical meaning of time in the lexical meaning of the circumstance of time, along with the presence of the nominal or actual time signifiers at the beginning of the first poetic line and at the end of the last poetic line, with the centrality of time meanings in opposite pairings, and in intense signatures where he narrated describing his stand of life, time, death, and age illustrated in “death is the master of all ends”, “one’s age is a thief”, “nothing offers respect to time as death”, and “it is no different in the logic of time if one works as coffins maker or rose vendor”, and that “time is the worst enemy that stalks you wherever you may go, and applies in blood like malignant disease”, reaching to the point that the biggest mistake of man in his life is that he only got older.