Cooperative Interpretation and the Poetics of Modernist Poem: The Case of Mahmoud Darwish’s “Ayyam al-hub al-sab'ah”
Sami Mohammed Ababneh, Department of Arabic Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan.
Abstract
This paper tackles the issue of poetic competencies necessary for reading a modernist poem and its interpretation. For this purpose, the concept of “cooperative interpretation” is adopted, as it represents a description of procedures in which poetic communication occurs between the poet and the reader.
The paper aims to provide a critical understanding of the process of reading an Arabic modernist poem through the use of a number of critical concepts, including: cooperative interpretation, text isotope, and linking both of these concepts to interpretation in light of “literary conventions.” Accordingly, the paper scrutinizes Darwish’s poem “Ayyam al-hub al-sab'ah”, to practically clarify necessary competencies in reading modernist poems.
The paper provides a theoretical framework based on the aforementioned concepts, linking them to the context of modernist experiences in Arabic poetry. This is followed by an analysis of Mahmoud Darwish’s “Ayyam al-hub al-sab'ah” according to the theoretical framework.
The paper concludes that achieving the poetics of a poem in modernist Arabic poetry relies on the cooperation of the reader with the poet’s intention and vision. It also highlights that the poetics of a poem is built on textual isotopes through the act of referral established by the language of the poem and its textual formation. Additionally, the paper illustrates that Darwish’s “Ayyam al-hub al-sab'ah” depicts the transformations of his poetic experience in its final stages by being based on an individual contemplation of the nature of being and existence. The poem does so by employing several textual isotopes that allow the poem to be interpreted in this way, and that methodological awareness of this contributes to building the necessary competencies for interpreting a modernist poem.
Keywords: Cooperative interpretation, Text isotope, Modernist poem, Mahmoud Darwish, “Ayyam al-hub al-sab'ah”.