Al-Bayyātī’s Oscillation Between Western Tradition and Individual Talent

This article presents a thematic and stylistic comparative study of Abd al-Wahhāb Al-Bayyātī’s poem, (Al-Ṭufūla)[i] Childhood, vis-á-vis T.S. Eliot’s seminal work The Wasteland, and other canonical texts from the Western modernist tradition. The purpose of this study is threefold. First, it investigates the formative factors of Al-Bayyātī’s poetic sensibility as a modernist poet who shifted from romanticism to realism as a reaction against colonization, despotism, and decadence. Second, it underscores Al-Bayyātī’s indebtedness to Eliot’s Avant-Garde poetics, which revolutionized Western poetry in the aftermath of World War I and inspired Al-Bayyātī and his contemporaries to substitute the conventional form of the Arabic qasida with free verse. Finally, the study traces the unmistakable analogies between Childhood and other works to shed light on Al-Bayyātī’s proficient emulation of Western tradition. The significance of this study lies in its focused analysis of a single poem, which reflects Al-Bayyātī’s adept and nuanced engagement with Western literary conventions, rather than presenting a generalized overview of his oeuvre. To achieve its purposes, the study draws on the comparative principles of influence and originality by Claudio Guillén and J. T. Shaw, respectively. It also uses Eliot’s article, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” to clarify the relationship between tradition and the author’s contribution. The study concludes that this distinct influence on Al-Bayyātī does not diminish his achievement in Childhood; instead, it asserts his ability to retain a certain degree of individual talent in his successful appropriation of Western tradition, whereby he doubly abstracts national and artistic concerns.