"Sea in the Desert, Desert in the Sea": An Exploration of an Inflected Spatial Image in English / Arabic Verse

The turn of the twentieth century in Egypt witnessed an introspective romantic veneer, replacing the vociferous "public voice" of the Arab poet in ancient Arabia. Reading through the rich body of Arabic verse, one is struck by the ubiquity of wasteland image clusters of which barren land (desert) and water (sea or river) come at the forefront and assume overlapping features. It is this combination of the modernist and the romantic that gives modern Arabic poetry its distinct flavor.

Samples are explored of contemporary Egyptian poets, focusing primarily on the often-overlapping desert/sea imagery. This particular image is assimilative, on the one hand of the dual geographical locations, existing mostly side by side, that influence the daily perception of the common Arab dweller - the sea and desert existing in such expansive proximity as seldom occurs in other parts of the world. On the other hand, the image is resonant, with obvious inflected nuances, of Romantic English poetry: the image often overlaps; the desert often assuming the features of the sea in Arabic verse and vice versa in its English counterpart. Drawing on classical Arab poets, and on English Romantic pioneers, this paper investigates this inflected legacy on contemporary Egyptian poetry.

Key Words: Sea, Desert, Arabic Verse, Romantic Poetry, Overlapping Features, Geographical Location