A study of the Artistic Device of Hybridization in the Poems of Shamlou and Adunis

As a literary technique, hybridization seeks to break the tradition of marriage within the family of words and the creation of new networks of companionship. It has a significant role in the beauty and structural coherence of literary texts. Since words lose their effectiveness due to constant association with each other, by deviating from the norms governing the standard language, words can be selected from one family and placed next to other families to highlight literature, open a new horizon, and affect the audience. This literary device became popular in literature via Saint-John Perse, the eminent French poet (1887-1975), in the works of other contemporary Iranian and Arab poets. Before him, however, the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin had laid the foundations of hybridization by proposing polyphony and monophony theory in fiction. Among the poets who are influenced by this literary technique; Shāmloo and Adūnīs can be mentioned. The two poets have a relatively similar worldview due to their almost common social and political conditions.

Conducted via a descriptive-analytical research method, the present study aims to examine the aesthetic dimension of this literary technique and its implications and effectiveness by examining the use of hybridization in Adūnīs’s and Shāmloo’s poetry, which has led to the departure of the language of their poems from the standards of natural language. This article is an attempt to comparatively study Adūnīs’ and Shāmloo’s poetry for introducing them to the reader, and to answer the following questions: 1- What is the use of hybridization in the two poets’ poetry? 2- What are the implications of this literary device in the two poets’ poetry?

One of the techniques of "pretending to be familiar with familiar things" (Shafi'i Kadkani, 2013, p. 308) is hybridization via which words from a family are combined with a new language family, creating a kind of new poetic language. Among the poets who have been influenced by the Perse and who tried this literary technique are Shāmloo and Adūnīs. Part of hybridization in Shāmloo’s and Adūnīs’ poetry arises from the fusion of words from the family of music with the family of nature. Shāmloo takes the word "symphony" from the world of music and the word "night" from nature, and by combining them in “the sunset of the Siahrud River”, he creates the following combination: Symphony of the night drips / quiet / over the evening’ sadness (Shāmloo, 2004, p. 326). In this poem, Shāmloo highlights the composition (symphony of the night) by quoting the verb dripping and has also become unfamiliar with the verb dripping. The combination of the word “symphony” with “night” evokes the pleasant feeling of being in unison with the calm of the night. Since the word night alone is devoid of such a meaning, the poet gives it a new meaning by using the technique of hybridization. This has also led to lexical and semantic aberrations in the form of similes. In an atmosphere of emotional resemblance to Shāmloo, Adūnīs also combines the word “bell” from the family of music with the word “night” from the network of nature in the poem “the Divine Wolf”: The morning is burning and displaced / And I am the death of the moon / Under my face the bell (song) of the night breaks / And I am the new wolf of inspiration (Adūnīs, 1996, Vol. 1, p. 227). In the hybridization of night and bell, it is a kind of lexical aberration in the companionship axis, which creates a new combination of clichéd words in the form of simile and has led to semantic aberration, indicating signs of darkness and sorrow. The linguistic-grammatical network and the nature network are other networks that promote the poems of these two poets. Concerning this network, Shāmloo chooses the word syllable from the system of language and the wave from the network of nature in his poem “the anthem of the one who left and the one who remained” and uses hybridization as follows: In the darkness of the salty beach / We listened to the repeated syllables of the wave (Shāmloo, 2004: 550). The metaphorical hybridization of repeated syllable of the wave prepares the ground for lexical and semantic aberrations. Using repeated adjectives, the poet emphasizes the fluidity and movement of the waves, and by adding a wave to the syllable, he de-familiarizes the verb to listen. The wave alone has no meaning, but it is meaningful in terms of the poet's intention when it is put in a hybridization. In the surrealist atmosphere of the poem “limbo”, Adūnīs combines the word abjadiyyat (alphabets) with the word stars and creates a metaphorical combination of the merging of these two different linguistic families as follows: I was returned/My body is a gentle book/ The alphabet of stars and clouds wrote it/ My body moves towards the light at night and the bodies are galaxies (Adūnīs, 1996, Vol. 2, p. 370). The attribution of the word abjadiyyat (alphabet) to stars is because the body of the poet in limbo is a hybridization of the book of deeds and a galaxy of the results of those deeds. So the alphabet of the stars must be its writer. Because the poet considers his body to be a combination of books and galaxies, the hybridization of the alphabet of the stars, which are in complete harmony with these two, is necessary. This hybridization leads to the formation of such repetitive words in the form of similes, lexical, and semantic aberrations, as well as de-familiarization with the act of writing and highlighting this practice. The network of the supernatural and the network of nature are other networks that promote their poems. To express his feelings towards the beloved, Shāmloo in the poem (the sixth hymn) takes the tree from the family of nature and the miracle from the other side, and by mixing the two, the garments of the following are covered on it: I am not a miracle tree / only one of my trees (Shāmloo, 2004: 1036) Shāmloo is a tree like other ones and that tree is not the expected miracle. The hybridization of a miracle tree is a composition in the form of the past tense. Although the word tree and the concept of miracle go back to different language families, since the tree has long had a special and sacred place in mythology; therefore, the choice of these two families with obvious differences in networks is defensible in terms of communication. It has the poet’s intention of rejecting the expectation of something extraordinary from him. Adūnīs, like Shāmloo in his poem The Land of Magic, chooses the words earth and magic from different families, preparing such a capacity to express his feelings: And my land is constantly a land of magic / I confuse the air / I injure the face of the water / I go out of my house to the sea. (Adūnīs, 1996, vol. 1, p. 188). In this poem, Adūnīs wears the mask of an adventurous Sinbad and goes to war only with the unhealthy social conditions, to achieve his utopia. The poet is not disappointed; because his land, like the land of magic, announces unexpected events. The use of this eloquent combination in the noun phrase, which implies continuity, and the use of the verb (لم تزل: continuous) is a double emphasis on the expectation of being extraordinary from the poet's land. The network of religion and the network of nature is also one of the networks considered by the two poets. As Shāmloo chooses the word Sajjadeh (prayer rug) from the family of religion and soil from the words of nature in the poem "Rainy Design" and by combining them, he creates such works of art: Then / the holy silence of the sun setting on the soil prayer rug, / and the heavy hesitation of the bloody knife (Shāmloo, 2004, p. 1003). The poet believes in the sanctity of the sun and the earth; therefore, the composition of the soil prayer rug, which is a favorably compound in the form of simile, has created lexical and semantic aberrations. Despite the apparent distance of these two words in terms of lexical family and semantic infrastructure, since "in many languages, it is called the human being of the earth" (Eliade, 1996, p. 168). Accordingly, in terms of the concept of sacredness between the prayer rug and the soil is remarkable. In his poem “dream”, Adūnīs mentions the glorious past of the Arab countries with longing, remembering the past. Hybridization in this section, by combining the words of Surah and verse from religion and the words of cloud and stone from the family of nature, expresses the concepts intended by the poet. I entered the religious ceremonies of the Caliph / The womb of the waters and the sedition of the tree / I saw the trees that want me / And I saw rooms between its branches / And the boards and the windows are hostile to me / And I saw children for whom I recited / I heard, I recited for them / verses of the cloud and the verse of the stone (Adūnīs, 1996, Vol. 1, pp. 262-263). At this time, referring to the customs of the caliphate, Adonis called the seditions of that period the sedition of the tree. The trees of sedition, amid their foliage, are terrifying rooms. But inside these horrible rooms, there are clean and good children who are ready to receive the truth; Therefore, the poet recites for them verses of the cloud and verses of stone. Hybridization of verses of cloud and verse of stone indicate the sacredness of the elements of nature that the poet in the form of similes of two different language families to better convey their intended concepts, and thus he uses repetitive words for lexical and semantic aberrations.

Part of the literary value of the poetry of these two poets, from the point of view of novel verbal knowledge, depends on the use of hybridization networks. The same tendency towards hybridization-like combinations has increased the frequency of use of metaphorical arrays in their poetry. Accordingly, in addition to lexical anomalies, it has also caused semantic anomalies. Sometimes the second word in these combinations, due to being in the compound, de-familiarizes the verb of that sentence. These favorably combinations serve the other components of the text. The similarity of lexical families in the poetry of the two poets, which is sometimes expressed in complete similarity in words, is due to the similar intellectual realms of the two poets. The creative minds of the two poets, by adhering to nature, often choose one of their favored combinations from nature. Therefore, in this study, the hybridization of music, vocabulary, religion, and transcendental networks with the network of nature in the poetry of two poets was studied as one of the commonalities.