Nazik Al-Malaika By Eman Khaleel Al-Houty (2202113831) Tuesday December 5,2006

1. Nazik Al-MalaikaBy Eman Khaleel Al-Houty (2202113831)Tuesday December 5,2006

2. Iraqi poet & critic, born in Baghdad on 23rd , August, 1923. • Her first poem in Arabic, when she was 10 years old. • Her father was a skilled grammar teacher; he composed an encyclopedia entitled: “The Knowledge of The Common People”; 20 vol. • He took upon himself teaching her Arabic grammar; which enriched her language. • He wrote some poems, including an epic of three thousand lines( a journey to Iran 1955). • Her mother was a poet as well ( Um Nizar Al-Malaika). • She was excused from any household responsibilities completely. • Modern poets: Mahmoud Hassan Ismail, Omar Abu-Risha, Al-Zahawy. • She used to discuss her poetry with her family, mainly her parents.

3. Arabic department, the Higher Teachers' Training College in Baghdad, earning her B.A. in 1944. • Participating in social events; (reciting her poems, and publishing them in college journals. • As a student she registered in the musical instrument department (the Middle-Eastern lute) of the Fine Arts Institution. • Attended acting classes in the drama department. • Studying French at home with her brother Nizar, English student, who was more than a friend to her. • Modernism, English and French works. • She got a scholarship to study literary criticism at Princeton University, New Jersey. • In 1954 continued her studies at the University of Wisconsin, where she obtained an M.A. in Comp. literature.

4. Poetic style • characteristics: • terseness of language • eloquence • original use of imagery • the music of the verse. • 1947 “The Lover of The Night”; romantic symbol of poetry, imagination & dreams, beauty of stars & the moon, and flickering of the lights on the river water. • “Cholera” is her well-known poem that made her the major advocate of the new poetry movement in the late 1940’s with Al-Sayyab.

5. Cholera It is night. Listen to the echoing wails rising above the silence in the dark, to the mystifying cries over the dead, The agonized, overflowing grief clashing with the wails. In every heart there is fire, in every silent hut, sorrow, and everywhere, a soul crying in the dark. A voice cries in every place: this is what death has destroyed, Death, death, death. O lament of the Nile this is what death has done. It is dawn. Listen to the footsteps of the passerby, in the silence of dawn. Listen, look at the mourning processions, ten, twenty, no… countless. Listen to the mourners, To the pitiful child. They are dead, dead, dead, without number, without future. Everywhere lies a corpse, mourned without a eulogy or moment or silence. This is what the hand of death has done, Death, death, death. Humanity protests against the crimes of death.

6. Cholera, in the cave of corpses and terror,in the cruel silence of eternity,in which death is a cure,cholera has raised its head,vengeance, descendingon the radiant, cheerful valley,screaming in madness,deaf to those who cry.Its claws have left their traces everywhere;in the hut of the peasant womanecho only the cries of death,Death, death, death.Cholera is the vengeance of death. The silence is bitter,except for echoes glorifying God.Even the gravedigger has succumbed,the muezzin is dead,and who will eulogize the dead?There are only laments and sighs,and children without fathers or motherscrying with anguished hearts,certain to be plucked by the evil disease.~~~O cholera, death’s phantom,You have left nothing but the sorrow of death,Death, death, death.O Egypt, my heart is torn by the ravages of death.

7. On Friday, 27,Oct. 1947, I awoke, and heard that the number of the dead has risen to a thousand a day. I became depressed and agitated. I carried a note book & a pen and left our crowded house to a place where a huge building was being built next to ours. I sat and started writing my poem " Cholera." I have heard in the radio that the dead were being carried on top of one another in carriages driven By horses. So I tried following the rhythm of the horses' trot “ : It is night. Listen to the echoing wails rising above the silence in the dark, to the mystifying cries over the dead, سكَن الليلُ أصغِ إلى وَقْع صَدَى الأنَّاتْ في عُمْق الظلمةِ, تحتَ الصمتِ, على الأمواتْ صَرخَاتٌ تعلو, تضطربُ حزنٌ يتدفقُ, يلتهبُ يتعثَّر فيه صَدى الآهاتْ

8. In those lines of unequal length, I was able to express my feelings. The classic form could not express the tragedy of Cholera. I found myself successfully expressing my emotions with the new form: Death, Death, Death. Humanity laments the crimes of death. الموتُ الموتُ الموتْ تشكو البشريّةُ تشكو ما يرتكبُ الموتْ since that day she wroteblank verse.

9. After her return from USA, 1951, she started writing prose; especially in the field of literary criticism, and feminism, in addition to other poetic & literary works: • Sparks and Ashes/Shaazaya wa Ramaad, 1949: (a preface of a theory of new poetry metrics). • 1953, (Women between the extremes of : Passivity and Ethical choice.) 'Al-Mar'a Baina 'ltarafain, al-Salbiyya wa 'l-akh-laq', • The Poem " Lament of a Worthless Woman; Picture in Baghdadi Avenue / Martheyat Emra’a la Quimata laha; Surah min Zuqaq Bagdadi.

10. She left, no cheek turned pale, no lip trembled. The doors did not hear the story of her death. No window’s curtain over flew with sorrow and gloom To follow the tomb until it disappeared The news tumbled down the avenue its echo not finding a shelter So it stayed forgotten in some hole, its depression the moon lamenting. ~~~ The night surrendered itself, without worry, to the morning The light brought the voice of the milk girl, and the fasting With the moaning of a starved cat of which nothing remained save bones. The fussing of salesmen, and the struggle of life Kids threw stones at one another in the middle of the road While dirty water flooded the avenue, and the wind Toyed with the gates at roof tops, alone In a state of semi-oblivion.

11. The Bottom of the Wave/Qarárat al-Mawja, 1957 : the July 14, 1958 revolution was a great source of inspiration. • Issues of Contemporary Poetry/ Qadaya 'l-Shi'r al-Mu'asir, 1962 • Al-Sawma'a wal-Shurfa Al-Hamraa, 1965 • Tree of the Moon/Shaýarat al-qamar, 1968 • The Tragedy of Life & and a Song for Human/Ma'sát al-hayát wa Augniya li-l-insán, epic 1970 • Al-Taýzi'iyya fi-l-Mujtama' al-‘Arabi, 1974 • The Sea Changes its Colors/Yugayyir alwána-hu l-bahr, 1974 • For Prayer and Revulotion/Li-l-Salat wa-l-thawra, 1973 • Sykolojia Al-Shi'r, 1979 • Al-Aamal Al-Nathriya Al-Kamila, 2002 (2 vols.)

12. Short story writer. • One of her earliest Stories,Jasmine , describes a woman's effort to establish a friendship with her young sister. • The Sun Beyond the Mountain Top , describes an Arab Woman's emotions and thoughts while she is giving birth.

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