Morris
Farhi's Tomorrow
from
Lebanon
,
Lebanon
, ed. Anna Wilson (London
: Saqi Books, 2006)
By Duraid Jalili
January 2006
Yesterday
the poet al-Ma’arri told us
there were two kinds of leader
those with brains and no religion
and those with religion and no brains
yet many people somehow survived
there were still
the skies
the sun
the sea
mountains and forests
love for life and wisdom to create
and myths and prophecies
that promised clement times
Today
unquiet souls warn us
leaders have congealed into one kind
those with no religion and no brains
yet the people strive to survive
and
the skies
the sun
the sea
mountains and forests
love for life and wisdom to create
are still here
defiant
and myths and prophecies
of clement times
are still remembered
Tomorrow
the unborn will say
there are
no skies
no sun
no sea
no mountains and forests
no love for life and no wisdom to create
and myths and prophecies
of clement times
will have been effaced
because
there are no people left
by
Moris Farhi
from
Lebanon
,
Lebanon
, ed. Anna Wilson (
London
: Saqi Books, 2006)
On
the 27th September 2006 Moris Farhi read out his poem in honour
of the event
Lebanon
,
Lebanon
; a night of poetry, music and dance to coincide with the release of
the book of the same title. Farhi’s poem was well received, perhaps the
best of the night. It is a testament to a great poet and writer that an
audience that should have immediately burst into applause was for a brief
few moments hushed, unable to make even that most simple reaction to a
poem that struck a point so clear and yet so deep.
Farhi’s poem is one of contrast and paradox. It is a poem showing such
dark and yet beautifully subtle ironies, a poem that’s simple form
belies its message. It is due to this that we must look at the two sides
of Farhi’s ‘Tomorrow’, this paradox of simultaneous presence and
absence, this contrast of structure, time, religion, politics and hope.
The
poem originates with the simple and immediate contrast of the title to the
first word. In a straightforward time shift we move from ‘Tomorrow’ to
‘Yesterday’. Yet the poem’s three-sectioned structure and apparently
continuous time-shift forward is misleading. Farhi’s technique defies
the normal structures that one would assume it to possess. It does not
conform to the Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
Instead it shows thesis and antithesis but no synthesis; a view of the
Palestine-Israel conflict that is at the same time hopeful and yet
forlorn. Like such a structure, peace within the
Middle East
seems ever one step away, and yet it is such a major step.
Even
the early structure of the poem shows a dark irony, a form with anti-form.
It is a poem that is structural and yet defies the common techniques of
structure. It has no punctuation and no apparent continuous syllabic
pattern. Yet the repetitive form is one which asserts a structure. Each
line in each stanza is comparable to the same line in the stanza before.
The central repetition of ‘the skies/the sun/the sea’ leads to the
inevitable ‘no skies/no sun/no sea’ and is a repetition which centres
the whole poem. Farhi may well be commenting on the current structure of
Lebanon
. With the present strife over the election and classification of Hamas as
a legally official political party, this idea of structure and
anti-structure is a pertinent one.
Whether
Farhi intends it or not, the inherent structure of ‘Tomorrow’ is the
same as today’s political structure. It may be a harsh critique but many
commentators have stated that
Palestine
is in a state of being ruled by political parties and structures that are
internally haemorrhaging. Hegelian dialectic would seem to have no place
within Farhi’s poem just as it seems to have no place within current
Middle Eastern politics. Unlike Hegel’s Logic1
the crises in the
Middle East
so far do not seem to have followed the theoretical paradox that Existence
and Nothing join to create Becoming; in ‘Tomorrow’ they merely become
‘Nothing’ once more.
Farhi’s
poem also takes a slanted twist on the common start of epic poetry in
medias res. Although in length ‘Tomorrow’ is not epic, its subject
matter encompasses some of the most epic subjects throughout time. It
comments on existence itself, civilization, religion, politics, war and
time throughout mankind’s existence. Yet Farhi distorts epic form and
begins with the future; with ‘Tomorrow’.
However,
the first aspect is of the title is not only a title but a conclusion, it
is fate stated simply and unavoidably. Just as tomorrow will come, so will
a time when ‘there are/no skies/no sun/no sea’. The simplicity of
Farhi’s listing of skies and sun and sea shows us the simplicity of the
future that he points out to us. The poem becomes an unopposable
statement. As society has been trained to implicitly trust a list as a
statement of fact, so we inherently believe this one. Farhi plays on
man’s willingness to believe. No one can disbelieve a list and no one
can avoid time, so tomorrow must come, and with it we must disappear.
There
is an irony within the similarity of this itemised structure to the
currently prevalent, politicised speech methodology of reiterating a point
over and over again. However, this list is not only a collection of
objects present throughout time, it is also the objects by which we can
measure time and a chronology of time itself. These trees and skies and
sea seem not to have changed in their detail. In Farhi’s world these
objects do not age; they are either there or not. Time no longer has
control over nature; it is man that has usurped this power of life or
death. The overall result of this however, is not man’s control over
time but his loss of it. Farhi shows us that the more civilization tries
to control the world around it, the more it paradoxically loses that
control.
The
immediate introduction of ‘the poet Al-Ma’arri’ within
‘Tomorrow’ also strikes a most welcome note of religious tolerance. By
originating a poem with the testament of a notably atheist poet, Farhi
shows us a fate for
Lebanon
that is ignorant of religion. Farhi’s own Judaic beliefs are not forced
upon the reader as a theme, as a parallel aspect to Islam. In no way is
there a placing of religious right or wrong. As Farhi once said, a
writer’s duty is to show:
that
the destruction of lives and cultures and the pursuit of power are evil,
that religion and the Sacred Books have lost their meaning because they
invariably exclude "the other". The basic commandment of loving
our fellow-beings, especially of loving the strangers in our midst,
irrespective of their race, creed or religion, has been discarded out of
sanctimonious expediency.2
In
‘Tomorrow’ Farhi is commenting upon the physical world and the
physical world only. He highlights a fate for the
Middle East
that is ignorant of religion or creed, Sunni or Shia, Israeli or
Palestinian. We are shown the brutal reality of the future that the
current warring in the
Middle East
will create. It is a future that will be catastrophic for all peoples and
religions. It is a future that is ignored due to a past filled with the
squabbles of those very leaders with ‘brains and no religion’ versus
those ‘with religion and no brains’. It is a future that is ignored by
all but ‘unquiet souls’.
‘Today’
is a time filled with irony. The ‘unquiet souls’ that are the voice of
dissent are oxymoronic within themselves. They are un-quiet in the sense
that they are loud voices of dissent. They are un-quiet in the sense of
being uncomfortable, in their realization of the current state of the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Yet importantly they are also unquiet in the
sense of being uncomforted, in having no external support. Farhi
shows us that however loud a soul may warn us of present day conditions,
it is widely ignored, unheard in the tumult of war. Thus an ‘unquiet
voice’ becomes quietened and another aspect of ‘clement days’ is
lost to us. No longer can a single voice make itself heard like al-Ma-arri
did.
It
is at this point that Farhi’s paradox of Time’s absence and presence
appears; for ‘Tomorrow’ this will be even truer, as there will be no
voices left. Nothing to be unquiet about as there is no one to be unquiet.
Farhi builds upon this negation of a word through a prefix (un-quiet) and
repeats it only once more, but to such effect as is astonishing:
‘Tomorrow the unborn will say’. Such a singular stress on a compound
adjective is breathtaking. Farhi brings us even deeper into the irony of
our situation. We are given a poem in which we look to the past and
present to analyse the future; we are made historian poets.
As Farhi once commented:
We
are so privileged to be able to look back on history, subsume it as an
integral part of our lives. And, alas, more often than not, we study it in
the wrong spirit, unreflectively.2
In
his poem Farhi shows us that ‘Tomorrow’ there will be no more of this.
There will be no one to look at the history of the Arab conflict and
culture. There will be no one able to learn from history and poetry.
no love for life and no wisdom to create
and myths and prophecies
of clement times
will have been effaced
because
there are no people left
And
so we are left with the knowledge that history will be futile if the
current crises in the
Middle East
are to continue. In Farhi’s eyes all that we do, this very poem, the
publication of Lebanon, Lebanon, his reading on the night and the
audience’s applause: all are pointless because, although we can look
upon the past now, who will there be to look upon us? Our actions of
construction are null and void while our actions of destruction continue.
In
‘Tomorrow’ this path of destruction leads us to nothing and
nothingness; not only a nothingness of the future but of all time. Farhi
is showing us how the current situation in Lebanon (and elsewhere in the
Middle East) does not only affect ‘Tomorrow’ as the poem so simply
seems to state, but affects all time. As said previously we are given a
poem with no punctuation between time frames, in fact no punctuation at
all. This is a poem in which the past, present and future are not divided
and mutually exclusive but linked and mutually dependant. The title
‘Tomorrow’ now adapts from being a title and conclusion to being part
of the poem as well. It is part of the poem’s circular nature. We
originate with tomorrow, because without a tomorrow there can be no
yesterday or today.
On
leaving
Lebanon
,
Lebanon
I chanced to walk past Moris Farhi and tried to pluck up the courage to
shake his hand and ask him to sign his autograph on his poem within my
copy of
Lebanon
,
Lebanon
. I was rather hoping to ask him if the paradoxes of ‘Tomorrow’
were based on those inherent in ‘Unnecessary Necessity’ (Luzum
ma la yalzam; لزوم ما
لا يلزم أو
اللزوميات),
a poetry collection belonging to his self-proclaimed authority on
‘Yesterday’, ‘the poet Al-Ma’arri’. Unfortunately I was unable
to gain the courage enough to greet him, but as he passed I saw a man who
appeared cheerful and content. Perhaps it was the success of the event,
perhaps of his reading, yet somehow I think that Moris Farhi has a hope
for tomorrow and, as such, a hope for today and for yesterday. A man that
was (as he puts it himself, yet so much more eloquently) “something like an ever-hopeful Tiresias.”2 Hopefully
this poem will be read by many, for many years to come. And hopefully we
will never reach a time when no one can enjoy the beautiful simplicity of
Moris Farhi’s words because there is no one left.
Lebanon,
Lebanon is published by Saqi Books (www.saqibooks.com),
it is only £10 and all proceeds from the sale of the book go to
children’s charities in
Lebanon
. It includes writings from such figures as Harold Pinter, Doris Lessing,
Adonis, Mahmoud Darwish, John le Carré, Jung Chang, Margaret Drabble,
Robert Fisk, V. S. Naipaul, Orhan Pamuk, George Szirtes and many more.
Duraid Jalili
University College
London
1
Hegel, G. W. F., Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (New
York: Prometheus Books, 1989)
2
Moris Farhi, interview with Mark Thwaite on www.readysteadybook.com
(10/08/05)
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