Saving Isaac*
Posted by Kaleidoscope on December 29, 2007
Author: Devil Finch Copyright © 2007
Location: Kuwait
Blog: www.devilfinch.blogspot.com
Confinement:
I heard my complexion for the first time.
Brilliantly simple it seemed: Alif Lam Meem.
Accusation:
A one-winged-bug flew around me while I loved thinking that I fly.
Myself coffined in my own rug knowing that I didn’t: Fie.
Judgment:
“O fantasy, you that at times would snatch us so from outward things
We notice nothing
Although a thousand trumpets sound around us
Who moves you when the senses do not spur you?“
Justification:
I hold my complexion neatly folded in my hands for those who dare: While Ishmael clung on my neck, 16*. I walked murmuring the Spider along the road until it had worked its web all the way to my exiled tongue and farther more, where a question mark grew so deep and large throwing its blue shadow over whoever’s chain-smoking these thoughts at home.
Knocking at my absence,
Abraham waited at my door.
“Does he insist to ever-enter?” I thought.
Looking through one eye,
I asked in Hebrew for the code:
“What’s aboard a bug?”
In Arabic Abraham answered:
“Don’t you people see?”
I ran to dust off my ornamented rug…
The window was all I could see…
Nothing else counted…
Not even the glass-challenged bug…
Through that window, I commanded: Fly oh my, my dirty, decayed, rug. Fly.
Post-confinement:
Riding the same spider that ate the bug’s left wing: Nooun.
Isaac, where’ll we be soon? 34*
*16. Ishmael] Isaac
*34. Isaac] Ishmael
* With lines from Dante’s Divine Comedy, (Purgatorio XXVIII).
hayat said
I have shivered!
harmonie22 said
Devil Finch, I am in awe of your theosophic poetry prose. You’ve earned this writer’s respect.
Tantalize said
The meshing of abstract semantics and a tinge of lucidity through your imagery give the poem a Kafkesque aura. Surreal in self-illusion, lucid in fantasy. The bug, Isaac and the first person narrator all poeticize as well as abstract the reader into your world of the illogical play into another realm of subreality. Thus, it seems to be more of a rhetorical question of who is actually saving Isaac and who is drowning him.
Thank you.
Devil Finch said
Hayat,
Thank you for commenting, but I’d like to know why you shivered.
Harmonie22,
Thank you for your kind words. I hope you enjoyed reading Saving Isaac.
Tantalize,
Kafkesque, marrah wa7da??!
Thanks alot for your close reading. I hope you enjoyed reading and analyzing the style. There are few allusions in there if you like to further your investigation. I just have one question: where did you get the drowning part from?
harmonie22 said
I would love to try my hand at analyzing this, if you and our good hosts don’t mind.
I see this as a modern commentary on the state of Islam in general. Specifically, what the interpretation of the spiritual essence, understanding, and practice of it has degenerated into by us Muslims today. I here both a longing nostalgia for this as well as a criticism of the state of affairs in what practicing Islam has become; so distanced from its spiritual essence as it was initially intended.
I love the way you start it out with “Alif Lam Meem” like in the beginning of Surrat EL-Baqara and the Koran. And is not the Koran the “living word” that we are supposed to bring to life through our words? These three letters have profound mysteries and significance in them; oh the things “we see” in the space of confinement (I’m reading confinement to be self-imposed as well as a commentary on the perception of Islam by the world in these contemporary times). The way you ‘take your neatly folded complexion’ and hold it out ‘for those who dare’ is a small stroke of brilliance, for do we really dare to see but are we seeing with one eye only? And how can the bug fly with one wing only?
You are saying powerful things about the degenerative state of how we have / what we have rendered Islam into. I love the imagery of the ‘ornamented dirty decayed rug’ that coffins you. I’ve interpreted to mean the prayer rug, and how we are supposed to revel in the connection with God when we pray but are now unable to ‘fly’ in this way because we don’t see, as you’ve painted Abraham, the father of monotheistic religions as saying. In reading between the lines, I pose another rhetorical question: why don’t we see and why can’t we fly? What is it that we are missing? That our sight has been bound into a window that we look out from rings of a nostalgic longing as well as a sense of confinement and limitation to a window- as opposed to the sky, for example. It makes me ask why is the one-winged bug glass challenged? What is this small invisible barrier, really? And how have we confined “outward fantasy-“ love the Dante passages and the context you place it in.
Also, the spider plays a big role in Islamic history, in that the spiders wove their webs in front of the cave where the Prophet pbuh and his crew were hiding. The concept of it working its way to your exiled tongue made me ask myself whether it is your expression (or your freedom of expression) that has been stifled or whether it is the larger spiritual essence of Islam in its true sense has been stifled. Or both. Brilliant imagery with the’ blue’ question mark. I also speculated over why the spider ate the wing of the bug. I think you are saying that the way we express Islam prevents us from flying. I see this, for instance, in Abraham who waits at your door in your absence, in “don’t you people see?” vs. “the window was all I could see.”
Of course your ending lines bring us full circle, from ‘confinement’ to ‘post-confinement’, as we ‘ride the spider who ate the bug’s left wing.’ I mean- damn! That is such a powerful statement, given what the spider and bug is meant to represent. I ask myself if we will ever “be there soon,” and wonder whether your choice of ‘left wing’ was intentional. From a metaphysical perspective your choice of left is significant, yet I do not know whether you intended this. Finally, I know that “nooun” represents something like “Alif Lam Meem” but I can’t remember (does anyone know?). I don’t generally like to give limiting labels but to me this poem echoes with Sufism.
This was my limited, albeit long-winded reading of your work. All art is subjective and subject to interpretation by our own individual perceptions and experiences. I’m sure you meant so much more- or so much less. I can see why tantalize would speculate on whether Isaac is being drowned rather than saved.
Poetry analysis is something I love to do, and I especially enjoy spiritual poems. Again, I seriously enjoyed this, thanks for letting me share my thoughts, I must have read it 10 times at least. It is modern and refreshing in form and content and it pulls our religio-ethno-socio collective Arab/Muslim issues into contemporary art and I truly applaud you on your creative expression. I would love to know how far off / right on I was in my analysis.
Devil Finch said
Harminie22,
The whole World Wide Web cannot emphasize the gratitude I felt while reading your comment. Thank you. Your conviction shows. I don’t usually talk about what I write, especially poetry, but the fine thought you put into this makes me obliged to salute you with more than a thank you:
Confinement:
“I see this as a modern commentary on the state of Islam in general…,” you wrote and I applause your approach to understand the text; it is a valid access that obviously let you in. Yet, quite frankly, I did not write it as a commentary to the state of Islam. I rather wrote it as a presentation of my personal postmodern dilemma with religion and spirituality. My dilemma is my complexion, which I attempt to explore by writing. The resulted text is the “neatly folded” presentation to the readers, which aims to make them share the experience with me. Does the reader care about my complexion enough to share the experience? I think he/she would if they can identify with the dilemma and your case is a great example.
You’re right about Alif Lam Meem and Nooun. These are statements that don’t posses agreed upon meaning. “Alif Lam Meem” in this context is an invitation to explore new solutions through interpretation. In the Confinement, “Alif Lam Meem” is the keyword that opens wide interpretive process marking the end of the confinement. That’s why I decided in the editing phase to start with it. As Jacques Derrida once said: “I never give in to the temptation to be difficult just for the sake of being difficult. That would be too ridiculous.”
Accusation:
Usually accusations are made by the authorities (political, social, religious…ect), the guardians of the status quo, who strive to repress any interpretive attempt to breakout and succeed in exploring spiritual alternatives (fly). So they brand such an attempt as illogical, unsound, unethical…ect and accuse whoever makes this attempt of doom (Fie).
I’d like to note that these repressive forces are not always external, but could also be within us, deep-rooted in our psych.
The Judgment:
Can you have a question as a judgment? What does that mean?
Justification:
It’s the climax of the poem. You know, an unfairly accused person tend to react vehemently and if brave enough, he/she would do it with a confident attitude. Therefore, “I hold my complexion in my hand for those who dare,” to understand and make a judgment.
You’re right. The spider here is a reference but not to the one that saved the messenger. The exiled tongue is Arabic, the narrator’s mother tongue, the question mark is the radical question causing this complexion and “whoever’s chain-smoking these thoughts at home” is me outside the poem.
I think it was obvious who Abraham was. His role in the poem could be better interpreted by referring to his story with Isaac/Ishmael who was clinging to the narrator’s neck.
One eye (narrower point of view), one-winged bug (an incomplete idea) are both disabilities challenging the narrator’s ability to understand Abraham and trust his intentions.
As for the “dirty, ornamented rug,” it’s amazing how you associated a symbol with another (which proves Jacques Derrida right). It is the prayer rug which is, in turn, a symbol of the spiritual emptiness of the rituals we practice in a mechanical manner.
The window, at least for me, is escape; that is escaping from my uncertainties by residing to the “dirty, ornamented rug,” and ordering it to fly
Post-confinement:
Here the same spider reappears in a more proactive manner. It’s evolved after the complexion was simplified by “Alif Lam Meem” in the “confinement.”
“Nooun” here is not an invitation to explore like the “Alif Lam Meem” in the “confinement.” It is rather a statement of determination to explore.
As I said, I usually don’t explain. In fact, it was hard writing this thing because I never tried to think it this way. I should also note that I left some things out and that there is no such thing as a meta-interpretation. Each reader, including the author, is entitled to explore and come up with his/her valid interpretation (could that be the point of the poem?). Once the text is published the ownership of its “meaning” does not exclusively belong to the author. Meaning simply becomes the result of the interaction between the text and the reader.
So I really cannot answer your question being off or right with your interpretation. Yet, our interpretations don’t seem to be conflicting. And yours shows the genuine intellectual abilities you possess.
DV
PS: Yes, I chose “left” intentionally, just like all the other words in all of my poems. In fact, left is a theme that appears in other poems I wrote (ie Visions and Windows)
intlxpatr said
I am so thankful for Harmonie’s uncontainable enthusiasm for reading your work and asking questions. So totally out of my cultural context, other than Abraham, I didn’t even know where to start. Her analysis, her questions, your clarifications – thank you. *sigh of relief*
Don’t you find, when you write, that you sometimes use a symbol thinking you are using it in one context, and that later, you realize it was a deeper part of your mind writing, it had deeper significance, other associations? while your conscious mind was oblivious to the deeper – sometimes darker – levels of meaning?
Devil Finch said
Thanks for showing so much interest in my writing?
For me, writing poetry is composing abstract images without thinking about their significance. I do not define the messages and then work backword to convey them to my read; in fact, that’s what I do at my work (advertising), but not when I’m writing poetry.
When writing poetry, I let the (intuitive/irrational/imagery) right side of my brain speak. It’s like dreaming, but I trained myself to do it while holding a pen. Then comes the part where the (rational/logical) left side of my brain refines the grammar, and shape the form.
My writing is not meant to produce meaning. Somtimes I, myself, don’t know what my writing means(eg a dream that you remember but cannot figure out its meaning). I was able to come up with a somewhat satisfying interpretation for “Saving Isaac” few months after I wrote it.
To answer you question, when I write I make sure that my conscious mind is as “absent” as possible. Sometimes I actually see my concious mind while I write as a sifferent identity (whoever’s chain-smoking these thoughts at home.)