Saudi Poetry in Francophone Culture: Reception and Translation Issues

By Saudi poetry, we mean a volume of four poetry collections by four contemporary Saudi poets, namely "Clouds in the Clouds" by the poet Ghassan Al-Khunaizi, "Anxiety of the Dune" by the poet Ahmed Al-Mulla, "A Brief Mythology of Panic" by the poet Saleh Zamanan, and "A Kernel for the Seasons of Absence" by the poet Muhammed Al-Hers. The poems of these collections, which we consider constitute a unified body of poems, are classified as what is known as "prose poems", which represents the first interface for the reception of this poetry in the Francophone culture in terms of genre, form and themes, considering its referential and characteristics in this same culture. This research is not an analysis of the poetry collections separately, nor is it a study of their individual characteristics. It is rather an investigation into the issues of their reception in the Francophone culture, and its probable "effects" that can be manifest in various aspects such as poetic interaction, critical studies, and what they may entail in terms of interpretative translation concerns. Also, this research is not mere opinions and impressions; it is rather a critical study, in which the theoretical and applied aspects are harmonized into a poetic "archeology" with verbal clues, contextual textualities, specific poetic evidence, and translation phenomena. Such digs evolve around the extrapolation of the collections of poetry and the interrogation of the poems, including their diverse poetic characteristics within the limits of interpretation based on evidence and signs. This research is a groundbreaking critical investigation of the proposed volumes for specific purposes, highlighting their salient reception "effects", as such research is almost non-existent, a fact that has triggered our interest to achieve a purpose behind this study, relying on a specific methodological approach. One of this approach’s features is the investigation of "poetic universals" embodied in the steady signs, and the common constants shared by the poetry collections, and how to employ them in a way that helps shed light on the reception of Saudi poetry in the Francophone culture. Based on the above, this study consists of investigations, governed by the logic of gradualism and continuation. We propose to begin with the question of reception and its relationship to this body of poetry, then explore the relationship between the form of these collections’ poems and their reception, then address the "poetic universals" of all forms that affect the reception before ending with an investigation of the translation issues that produces interpretation and decide on reception.