The aesthetics of metapoetics in al-Mutanabbī’s panegyric “qaṣīda” to Abū al-Faḍl Aḥmad ibn ‘Abd Allāh

Abstract

This article presents first, a translation into Spanish of a poem by the 10th century Arabic poet Abū Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Mutanabbī al-Kindī (better known as al-Mutanabbī). The core of the analysis is the identification of the metapoetic elements used by the poet in order to establish a dialogue with the poetic tradition that precedes him and to solidify his position as one of the most important Arabic poets. How does the author negotiate what the North American critic Harold Bloom called the “anxiety of influence? Al-Mutanabbī manipulates the lexicon as well as the most recurring imagery in classical Arabic poetry so as to resolve the existing tension between inscribing himself within that tradition and producing a poem original enough to stand out from it. The result is a poem that relies on the ideal reader’s knowledge of classical Arabic poetry which allows the poet to evoke an entire poetic situation instead of repeating it.

Keywords

• poesía clásica árabe, al-mutanabbī, metapoesía, qaṣīda, panegírico