The Esthetic of Similarities between a Line of Poetry (Bayt – esh – shi’r) and the Tent (Bayt – esh – sha’r)
Khalaf Al-Khreisheh, Dept. of Arabic lang & Lit.,Faculty of Arts, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan.
Abstract
The researcher attempts to clarify the relationship between the geometry of making a line of poerty and that of building a tent. The nature of this relationship becomes clear when place is changed into time, and design into picture, and when images are caught by senses to turn then into cognitive units which are then turned again into auditory images of poetry.
Al-Khalil b. Ahmad Al-Farahidi (100-170 A.H) in his attempt to analyze Arabic prosody, didn’t fail to mention that the form of Bayt – esh – shi’r (composing a line of poetry) was derived from Bayt-esh-sha’r (structuring a tent). This comparison reveals a great awareness of the space and time occupied by a line of poetry in Arabic criticism in general and Arabic prosody in particular.
Due to great similarities between a line of poetry and that of a tent as for as cords, pegs, feet, hemistiches, meters, rhymes and circles are concerned, the Arabs tried to build a line of poetry as a line of a tent. Their goal was to go back to nature as far as place and time are concerned, and to introduce the poetic text into the tent through the mechanics of operation of both structures. Accordingly, both structures operate in the same manner in tow consecutive stages: thinking and constructing