Cultural references in the collection “The Story of the Palestinian Boy” by the poet Ahmed Dahbour

Abstract

Ancient texts, created by poets, constitute important cultural references and fertile inspiration for many poets who write modern texts.

Therefore, we can say: These cultural references are everything that Arab societies created in the movement of their historical development since the pre-Islamic era through successive historical eras, and they also form part of the heritage, which is the soul of the nation, its components and its history.

Connecting to heritage means restoring it, but not with its literalism and restricted mechanism, but rather taking value from it and projecting it onto reality so that the character remains ever-living and the creative movement continues in our time.

These traditional cultural references were the ever-flowing spring, the origin of values, the brightest and most enduring, the solid ground on which he stood to build his new poetic present on the firmest and most solid foundations, and the impregnable fortress to which he resorted whenever emotions stormed him, giving him security and tranquility.

The characters that formed the basis of these traditional references were these voices through which he was able to express all his sorrows and joys, to cry his defeat the most fervently, and to overcome it at the same time.

Employing heritage means using its data in an artistic, suggestive way, and employing it symbolically to carry the contemporary dimensions of the poet’s poetic vision, so that the poet projects onto the heritage data the features of his own suffering, so these data become contemporary heritage, expressing the contemporary poet’s most private concerns at the same time as they carry the antiquity of the heritage.

Accordingly, the poet Ahmed Dahbour worked to recall these texts and carry out cross-fertilization processes between them and the new texts that he produced, thus forming a new fruit that carried within it new meanings and images, through which he expressed his concerns, which had burdened him since he was a child.