American ‘Song’ of Iraqi Exile: Whitman and Saadi Youssef
American ‘Song’ of Iraqi Exile: Whitman and Saadi Youssef
Concluding the study is the book’s second treatment of Whitman in Middle Eastern language, reading Leaves of Grass as translated by a pioneer of modern Arabic poetry, Saadi Youssef. Published amid successive exiles from Iraq, Chapter 6 explores Youssef’s 1976 Awrāq al-‘Ushb, situating this selected Leaves rendition within a broader genealogy of Arabic appeal, reaching to Whitman as a precedent for aesthetic and political liberation. Mirroring the translator’s own physical displacements, Whitman’s verse is displaced from its American specificity within Youssef’s Awrāq, voicing an exilic critique of homelands and home cultures through his refashioned Arabic. Concluding with consideration of Leaves‘ Arabic afterlives in more recent poetry, the study itself ends with a circular inversion, discovering Whitman speaking Arabic in urban America with the 2008 appearance of Youssef’s New York Qaṣīdas.
Keywords: Walt Whitman, Saadi Youssef, Leaves of Grass, Arabic
Edinburgh Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
