ملامح الاغتراب في شعر احمد الصافي النجفي

Alienation in Ahmad al-Safi al-Najafiʹʹs Poetry

Alienation is a phenomenon as ancient as human history, represented in Arabic poetry since long ago. Many past critics have dealt with the issue, but this has especially been considered in recent Arabic literature due to its direct relation with socio-political events. Alienation has a lot of different causes and has made contemporary poets resort to complicated and ambiguous styles of expression so that they could transmit their suffering from those causes secretly. This, however, does not exclude the mentioning of such themes in more explicit poetic styles. Among plain language, poetry of contemporary Arabic literature that deals with the alienation theme is that of Ahmad Safi Najafi. This prolific poet has produced many books covering a variety of themes, his works being considered as encyclopedic. He has taken advantage of humor and satire in his social and ethical criticism, but traces of sorrow are manifest all throughout his work. This article tries to depict the amount and the kind of alienation affecting the poet by reviewing his poetry. The results show that he was the one who suffered from all forms of alienation, a fact that could be traced in almost all his poems.