Creative Personalities … Nizar Qabbani, the poet who learned the Jasmine alphabet from Damascus

Nizar Qabbani is the Syrian and Arab creator of the modern era who deserves to be called “the concerned about the world and the interest of people”, as the storms of criticism he suffered from in his life and after his death as well as the people’s interest in reading, listening and singing his poems made him deserve this title.

Evaluating the experience of the poet Qabbani, Dr. Saeed Al-Afghani, one of the great professors of the Arabic language, said, “If a paper containing a poem had fallen from Nizar Qabbani in the bus, the first passenger would have carried it to his home.”This is because the poetry that he created carried a specificity and uniqueness that no Arab poet had mastered before, in addition to its elegance and simplicity – that made him one of the top poets whose poems were sung, as great Arab singers sang about 77 of his poems .

The biography of the poet Qabbani, which the poet narrated himself in his attractive style, as he said in his book “My Story with Poetry” , “When  I was born on March 21, 1923 in one of the old houses of Damascus, the land was also in a state of birth and the spring was preparing to open its green bags.”

Nizar was the second son of a family consisting of four sons and a daughter. His father, Tawfiq Qabbani, was a hard-working man, as described by the poet, working in the confectionery industry. But he was strongly involved in the struggle against the French occupation, turning his home into a place for meetings demanding the evacuation of the colonizer, and he was arrested more than once, which made Nizar wonder “of his father’s duplicity in making sweets and revolution, and his combination of sweetness and ferocity.”

The Damascene house in which Nizar grew up and described it as a bottle of perfume, its jasmine, pepper and Dalia, captured his feelings and “gave him a homeotic feeling  that accompanied him throughout his life. The “Levantine language” penetrated into his words, and his Damascene alphabet forever stuck to his personality. His affiliation with a creative Damascene personality, Abu Khalil al-Qabbani, the uncle of his father, bequeathed to him that tendency to defy traditions and reject outdated customs and everything that limits freedom of thought and creativity.

Nizar studied at the National Scientific College School in Damascus, which played a major role in his cultural evolution. He read Arabic poetry alongside  French. He was influenced by his teacher, the poet Khalil Mardam Bek, the author of the Syrian anthem “Homat al-Diar” (Guardians of the Home).

After he obtained his first baccalaureate degree, the literary section of the National Scientific College, he moved to the Preparation School, where he obtained his second baccalaureate degree, the philosophy department.

At the University of Damascus, he completed his studies at the Faculty of Law, graduating there in 1945. Although he was ascetic in studying law, he sought this option because it is the key to his work in the future. He did not practice law and did not defend a single case. The only case he pleaded for was the cause of beauty and the only innocence he defended was poetry.”

 (The Brunette told me), Nizar’s first collection of poems, published in 1944, met with negative reactions from many. The boldness and sensual description contained in the collection’s poems  made him, since that time, in the crossfire of fanatics, but that did not stop him sailing against the current.

Nizar worked in the diplomatic corps in 1945. He was appointed as an attaché at the Syrian embassy in Cairo in 1945. He married his cousin Zahra Akbik; together they had a daughter, Hadba, and a son, Tawfiq.

During his stay in Egypt, he developed friendships with great writers and artists, and published his second book, “Childhood of a Breast,” in 1948.

During Nizar’s work in the Syrian embassies, which lasted until 1966, he toured the capitals of the world in Asia, Africa, and Europe. On his continuous diplomatic travel and its impact on the development of his intellectual and poetic faculties, Nizar said, “With every step I took, my heart grew bigger, the retina of my eyes widened, the wells of my soul filled up, and the Bedouin inside me grew kinder, healed, and civilized.”

Nizar chose to devote himself to his poetry, so he resigned from his diplomatic career in 1966. He established a publishing house in Beirut and began to publish his poetry collections, which amounted to 36 collections in addition to 12 prose books, as stated in the book “The Woman in Nizar Qabbani’s Poetry” by Tunisian researcher Tawoos Haji Beltayeb.

Some critics give his critical books the same importance as his poems, especially his book “Words That Don’t Know Anger”, as well as one poetic play called “The Republic of Junistan”, which deals with the Lebanese civil war.

In 1969, Nizar married the Iraqi Balqis Al-Rawi, after a love story that lasted seven years. Together they had a son, Omar, and a daughter, Zainab.

The poetry of women and love that marked Nizar’s poetry for twenty years took another turn after the setback of June 1967. He wrote his famous poem “Marginal Notes on the Book of Defeat”, which was banned and fought in several Arab countries, nevertheless it made him one of the most prominent Arab political poets.

The stage of emotional stability that Nizar experienced in the seventies resonated with his poetry. So he excelled in employing his artistic achievements and highlighting his ability to employ words in suggesting and broadcasting music, according to the book ”Women and crafts in the poetry of Nizar Qabbani” by the Tunisian researcher Wafiqa al-Buhouri.

The tragedies that Nizar experienced, starting with the death of his young son Tawfiq in 1973 and his wife who  was killed in the 1981 Iraqi embassy bombing in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, made the impulsive sense in his poems  recede towards depicting his sadness and regret over the Arab reality and his aspiration to beautiful memories and a distant past.

Nizar lived the last quarter of his life in the city of London, but he kept visiting Damascus constantly, holding literary evenings there, and organizing poems for it, as Damascus was the love of his life. When the founding leader Hafez al-Assad issued a decree naming one of the capital’s streets in the name of Nizar Qabbani, he wrote, “Damascus grants me a street.”

This great poet suffered from poor health, while his grief over the state of the nation exhausted him, so he wrote before his departure “When will they announce the death of the Arabs”, in which he bitterly attacked the Arab reality.

Nizar Qabbani died in London on 30 April 1998 of a heart attack. He left one will in which he wrote that he wished to be buried in Damascus, because it is as he described, “the womb that taught me poetry, taught me creativity and granted me the alphabet of Jasmine.”

Amal Farhat