Light and the game

My internal worlds are open plains, public gardens, allowed to enter at all hours of day and night... The keys to my poetry are my poetry itself, and my poems are the only photographic image that resembles me, and the books I published are my true passport. So were the keys to Nizar's poetry his own poetry?!! That is what the critic tries to discover between the light that critics cast on the cities of Nizar's poetry and the poetic play in Nizar's organization, where critical visions are distributed, contained within these pages, with the aim of understanding what the poet has and what he is responsible for. Therefore, the critic had to study the great poet through his era, and study a significant era of Arab history through the great poet. This study was detailed to fully comprehend the artistic work. The study included a lengthy explanation of the conditions of the Arab world in the second quarter of the twentieth century (the quarter in which Nizar Qabbani was born), as well as extensive explanations of the political, economic, social, and intellectual conditions in which the Arab world was enveloped in the second half of this century. These explanations were intentionally presented in this manner to encompass the importance of the human testimony that the poet provided about his era through his creative act, and also to respond to an important and major question: Was Nizar Qabbani a "true witness" to this era... the era he lived and experienced or not? This revelation was presented by the critic through a heroic critical approach, a critical approach that examines the creative act and its creator from all angles, without neglecting artistic values, and without drowning in historical and psychological research. The study of light and play was somewhat subjected to this approach and its standards, as the reader will notice when reaching the last line of this book...