Hoblos in search of a lost woman!

Mohammad Ahmad Hoblos was born in 1964, in Akkar, northern Lebanon. Hoblos is a professor at the Lebanese University in general and comparative literature. Among his research writings: Comparative literature and color symbolism in modern Arabic poetry. Among his poetic writings: Roar of the storm (2001) – Psalmody of the heart (2004) – Rebellious poems (2005) – And my green letters bloom as a palm tree (2012) – Laya (2016).

After seeing a little insight on the poet Hoblos, let’s move on to his collection titled Love Poems published in 2020. In this book, the themes seem seemingly polyphonic from love to hate, from life to death. death, from the angelic image of the woman to the satanic image. And the enchanted woman theme reigns over all of the above. So how could the poet unveil his Venus as a woman with controversial faces behind the bars of a blurred divine image?

At first glance, we will begin with the presence of an inspiring God of the poet in his letters for feminine beauty. He takes the breaths of the Puritans with his Koranic verses on feminine beauty. Then he shares with us a few short lines from the story of the Prophet Joseph. This prophet who was the most handsome man in the world according to the Ibrahimic religions and who was able to attract all the pretty girls in the world. Hoblos, through this foreword, unveils a warning to those types of people who refuse the joy, beauty and sensuality of women. He states on page 8: “My poems in my collection express my vision of women: the woman/soul and the woman/body; God created women in two forms: spiritual and physical. To the incarnation of the divine image of woman in the eyes of a beautiful and good God, Hoblos appeals to us to love this gentle and pensive being through her beautiful and bad characters, through her ups and downs. He is a poet who has no place for hatred despite his attempts to humiliate the timidity of the lover; take as an illustration his poem entitled Sloth. He says, “Lazy till I hate your love, and I never look forward to seeing you again” (p. 69). For him, shyness seems inexplicable between a couple, especially in the most intimate moments. If he hates, he hates the flight of his lover “Why the disappearance and the flight? (p. 89). He is a poet with the wings of a Baudelaire moved by the waves of passion.

Secondly, polyphony occupies a primordial place in his poems, from names to places, from one woman to another. The image of the “passerby” of Hoblos is that of a woman whose identity we cannot detect, nor her name, nor her age, nor anything. Love, beauty, spirit are the significant and distinctive features of the aesthetic figure of the Hoblosian woman. Hence the choice of the title: “In search of a lost woman” because the poet fills us with polyphony with regard to this woman. He is a Proust next to his lovers. He is an Adonis, a Backhos, a Joseph in his own way. He connotes his research in his pleasures of dreaming “Searching for the woman who dwelt in my daydreams” (p. 88). He sings about the lover in his own words, sometimes saying “Malak” the proper name of his wife, sometimes saying angel, sometimes specifying that she is a queen (p. 9). In Arabic, a single word could have more than one meaning depending on the context. Hence, the eloquent poet is a king in his kingdom of words. He plays with words as he plays with the image and the curves of women. No one can read his writings without having gone on a distant journey. For him too, women acquire a spatial dimension: “And you, you are my universe! (p. 9)

Finally, comes a universal corner to see the beauties hidden behind the Hoblosian cigarettes by describing the curves of the woman in the manner of the great poets. Comparative literature encompasses the surroundings of Hoblosian writings. The poet cannot escape comparison, intertextuality and aesthetics. His academic background participates in one way or another in the act of writing. While reading Hoblos, snippets and sparks of the great Arab and Western poets burst into the minds of readers. In the poem Give me more desertion (p. 14), it is the paradoxical image of a Nizar Kabbani who refuses the fact of being distant from his passion. It’s not “give me more love” anymore. Hoblos shares with Nazik al-Malaika the hatred of coldness in love by proclaiming the shaken love “Break out an infernal rage” (p. 32). The poet affirms and justifies that he will continue to enchant love in his poem “Incessant” (p. 33). He is an “Albatross” with great arrogance. It is a Baudelaire who sees only hope in the ascent. “The point of the eagle is to fly to the summits” (p.33).

In conclusion, we have seen together how the poet merges the most opposite images of women in his passionate adventure. He is an Akkarian knight who sees in woman an incarnation of all that is sublime. It is the poet who writes the most beautiful verses while burning his love cigarettes. His intense outlook is unfinished with regard to his plural woman. Although the poet is universal in his writings, we noticed that he has a zeal towards Lebanese beauty “I see Lebanon in its costumes” (p. 62). How could the poet satisfy other women of different nationalities by admitting that the incarnation of feminine and divine beauty is basically Lebanese?

University professor at al-Jinan, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Translation

The texts published under the “mail” section engage only their authors and do not necessarily reflect the point of view of L’Orient-Le Jour. Please limit your texts to a thousand words or approximately 6,000 characters, including spaces.