Poetics of Temporal Structure in Pre-Islamic Narrative Poetry: An Analytical Reading of a Text by ʿAmr ibn Qanʿās al-Murādī: شِعرية البنية الزَّمنية في النصّ الشّعري السّردي الجاهليّ: قراءة تحليلية في نصٍّ لِعَمْرِو بن قَنْعاس المرادي

Marym Hadidi

doi:10.61856/wng49598

Authors

Marym Hadidi Department of General Courses, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia https://orcid.org/0009-0002-1709-0308

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.61856/wng49598

Keywords:

Temporal Structure; Poetic Narrative; Rhythmic Time; Anticipation Within Retrospection; Temporal Relaxation

Abstract

This study examines the poetics of temporal structure in the text of ʿAmr ibn Qaʿʿās al-Murādī as presented by Adūnīs in the first volume of *Dīwān al-Shiʿr al-ʿArabī* under the title “Anticipating Death.” It adopts an analytical reading that approaches the text as a condensed poetic narrative shaped within a symmetrical rhythmic system. The study proceeds from the distinction between story time and discourse time, while extending this distinction by introducing rhythmic time as a level specific to poetic discourse, manifested in syllabic movement, the distribution of hemistichs, and the resulting patterns of speed, contraction, balance, and extension. It focuses on the opening threshold, “Whenever I saw a sick wineskin / being mourned at its funeral, I wept,” in order to reveal a temporal twist based on two intertwined narratives: the narrative of the self between “I used to” and “I wept,” and the narrative of the object between seeing the sick wineskin and mourning its funeral. From this overlap emerges what the study terms, procedurally, anticipation within retrospection. The study also proposes the concept of temporal relaxation to describe the balanced and extended closing moment, where the psychological time of the poetic narrative appears in the confrontation with death through fullness and recovery. Moving from rhythmic and narrative time to the formative structure of vision, the study examines textual perceptions of water, fire, and human presence. It concludes that time in the text represents a structural system that directs rhythm, forms narrative, and reveals the philosophy of vision.

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