Renewal of Modern Arabic Poetry: The Culture-Creativity Controversy

The present research raises critical issues regarding modern Arabic poetry, wondering about the limits of creativity starting from awareness about poetry writing to its reading prospects. It observes how the Arab poet is torn between focusing on the depth of culture (with what it imposes in terms of conforming to the prevailing poetic model) and between the temptations of creativity, which requires a level audacity and aspiration to different and renewed written models. The research disassembles the structure of poetry as a cultural system rooted in the Arab memory and discusses the question of identity in its relationship to creativity. It stresses the centrality of the traditional Arab poetic model while pointing to attempts at transcending such model. The most prominent of these attempts was that accomplished by the Arab poetic modernity movement in the forties and fifties of the last century (free poetry and prose poem). The research explores the rationale behind this decisive shift in the history of Arabic poetry at the levels of its creative and cultural foundations. In this regard, the research raised the question of leadership, the call for renewal, and defense of the pioneering poets of their innovative achievement against the successive creative booms. The research also discussed the controversy over tradition versus creativity, the question of dialogue in texts, the prospects for critical poetry reading with its scientific and cultural transformations, and the distribution of its theoretical and methodological references between Arab heritage and Western culture.