The impact of heritage on the poetry of Badr Shaker Al-Sayyab

Abstract

The impact of the Holy Qur’an is considered prominent in al-Sayyab’s poetry, in style, content, and composition, but he was not quoting in the old way of quoting. Likewise, he memorized and digested a lot of ancient poetry and inlaid with it the preamble of his poetry directly and indirectly, from language and vocabulary to methods and structures and to poetic inclusions and quotation. The legendary tale, the religious tale, and the tale of folklore, then he reconstructed them in proportion to his experience, because he expresses his era, not previous ages, and this tale is only an expressive means and not an end in itself. Al-Sayyab's poem is an expression of the heritage of the contemporary and the past of the present, and that the poet's relationship with his heritage is a dialectical relationship, in which the poet and the heritage exchange influence and influence. Al-Sayyab started from the heritage in order to employ it and express contemporary experiences with it, and he chose from it what is appropriate to his experience, so he did not take it altogether, but rather chose from the event the illumination or the appropriate situation, and altered it so that the poet could illuminate his experience. It can be said that al-Sayyab, in his renewal movement, was a modernist and well-educated with the culture of his time, and at the same time he was the closest to the heritage of his generation. He did not separate from him and did not announce the estrangement, but rather the opposite, as he communicated with him and thus communicated with the souls of the recipients in which the heritage is rooted, and thus poetry approached life, and heritage - with this use - became a viable dramatic material and to restore the link between poetry and people.