Ecological Aspects in the Poem of Exile: Saadi Yusuf’s Poetry as a Model

Abstract

The ecological aspects in Yusuf’s poetry are important because they reveal how the poet establishes a perception of exile through his relationship with nature. This study aims to explore these aspects as presented in the poetry of this Iraqi poet through: Detecting the most important mechanisms embodied in environmental imagination. Illustrating how the incorporated symbols reflect the nature of the relationship that links the poet to his surroundings as manifested in the experience of exile. Unfolding the poet’s concern with ecological issues to create an awareness of nature, which helps protect it from damage. The study poses the following crucial question: How does the poetry of exile harness the environmental imagination to express an exile experience that has existential and ecological dimensions? To explore how the environment in the selected texts was used to reflect the poet’s experience of exile, the researcher adopted a descriptive-analytical approach. She also made use of some eco-critical essays that helped reveal how important the environment is. Study results unveiled that Yusuf’s exile poetry has ecological qualities that convey awareness, values, and concerns of nature. Yusuf could achieve environmental imagination by using symbols from nature, combining reality with imagination, poetic artistry with the philosophy of vision, and the profound meaning of the environment’s message. The study concludes that the exile poetry of Yusuf can serve as a model for ecological reading, as it relates human suffering to nature’s concerns. It emphasizes that ecocriticism has to be employed in analyzing contemporary Arabic texts.