Sherko Bekas: A Kurdish Voice under the Lens of Critical Stylistics [1 ed.] 3031306015, 9783031306013

Citation preview

Sherko Bekas A Kurdish Voice under the Lens of Critical Stylistics

Ulrike Tabbert Mahmood K. Ibrahim

Sherko Bekas

Ulrike Tabbert • Mahmood K. Ibrahim

Sherko Bekas A Kurdish Voice under the Lens of Critical Stylistics

Ulrike Tabbert University of Huddersfield Huddersfield, UK

Mahmood K. Ibrahim Imam Ja’afar Al-Sadiq University Baghdad, Iraq English Department College of Arts Baghdad, Iraq

ISBN 978-3-031-30601-3    ISBN 978-3-031-30602-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30602-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover pattern © Harvey Loake This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

‫كارەكەتان بەرز دەنرخێنم‬ …‫ئومێدەكەم كار و كتێبێكی ناوازەی لێدەرچێت‬ ‫ئەم نووسینەم بە شیاو دەزانم بۆ ئەو بەشەی باستان كرد‬ ‫ڕێزوساڵوی دووبارە و هەر بژین‬ I appreciate your work. I hope it will produce a wonderful work and a book... I think this writing is appropriate for the part you discussed Greetings again and long live you Halo Sheko Bekas

v

Contents

1 Introduction 1 2 Sherko Bekas13 3 Introduction  to Critical Stylistics and Analysis of The Martyrs’ Wedding25 4 Critical Stylistic Analysis of Bloody Crown by Sherko Bekas45 5 A Critical Stylistic Analysis of Both Poems in Sorani55 Appendix I71 Appendix II75 Appendix III87 Index91

vii

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 5.3 Table 5.4

A synopsis of the tools of Critical Stylistics and Textual Stylistics and their conceptual categories 29 Enclitic pronouns in Kurdish 58 izâfa construction in the opening lines 1–12 of Bloody Crown59 Nouns in the opening lines 1–14 of The Martyrs’ Wedding62 Parallel structure in Bloody Crown66

ix

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  This chapter introduces the reader to the topic of the book and provides a definition of political poetry as written by Bekas. In the second section, this introductory chapter presents an overview of the content of this book. Keywords  Political poetry • Aesthetics • Rhetoric • Ideology • Kurds

This book explores poetry by Sherko Bekas, a Kurdish writer and Swedish Tucholsky Award winner, through the lens of Critical/Textual Stylistics1 (Jeffries 2010, 2022) and in context with biographical and cultural information. To our knowledge, there is only a limited number of English (or German) translations of Bekas’ poems2 and no book so far that offers a linguistic or even (critical) stylistic analysis of his work. Furthermore, we found very little scientific literature on the life of Sherko Bekas and none that combines biographical details with a linguistic analysis of his texts. In

 Jeffries recently renamed the framework ‘Textual Stylistics’ (2022).  Except, for example, translations of Bekas’ poems into German by Reingard and Shirwan Mirza and Renate Saljoghi (Bekas 2019). 1 2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 U. Tabbert, M. K. Ibrahim, Sherko Bekas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30602-0_1

1

2 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

fact, Bekas appears not to be widely known to a ‘Western’ audience. With this book we intend to remedy this. When reading poetry written by Bekas in Sorani, we are intrigued by the richness of expression and the many layers of meaning we discovered by means of in-depth critical stylistic analysis of the original Sorani and the translated English texts (as outlined in Chaps. 3, 4 and 5). Bekas holds strong political views and even after his death continues to be a Kurdish voice against oppression as well as a driving force in support of the Kurds’ wish for an independent Kurdistan. It is fascinating for us to see how Bekas skilfully plays with different layers of meaning and the options the Sorani (a dialect of Kurdish) language structure offers. We found an abundance of implied messages in every line of his texts. For Bekas, however, it is not merely an application of the skills he possesses as a poet but his poetry is, in fact, a liberation from the boundaries of language as well as an issue of aesthetics as Bachtyar Ali remarks in his foreword to a volume of poems by Bekas, translated into German: Je mehr ich las, umso klarer wurde mir, dass Sprache mehr vermag, als nur etwas darzustellen und auszudrücken. Bislang hatte ich hinter jedem Text seinen Sinn und die Absicht des Autors gesucht. Aber in diesem Augenblick spürte ich zum ersten Mal die Ästhetik der Sprache als eigenständige Kraft und begriff, dass die Befreiung der Sprache wesentlicher ist als der Sinn hinter den Worten. Sherko Bekas’ Poesie schwebte außerhalb jener rigiden Lyrikstrukturen, die ich kannte. Sie war ein endgültiger Abschied von der klassisch traditionellen Dichtkunst …. (Ali 2019, p. 7) [Translation: The more I read, the more I realised that language can do more than just representing and expressing something. Until then, I had looked for the meaning of a text and the intention of the author. But at that moment, for the first time, I felt the aesthetics of language as a force in its own right and realised that the liberation of language is more important than the meaning behind the words. Sherko Bekas’ poetry hovered outside of the rigid lyric structures I was familiar with. It was a definitive farewell to classical, traditional poetry …]

Bekas, the ‘mother poet of Kurdistan’3 as he called himself, was unable to remain silent when he witnessed injustice as, for example, in the case of the killing of three students on December 17, 1985  in his hometown Sulaiymaniyah (see poem The Martyrs’ Wedding, analysed in Chaps. 3 and 3  Speech at Folkore Hois, ‘The Whole Sky of My Borders’, 8-8-1987, http://www.rudaw. net/english/opinion/12092013

1 INTRODUCTION 

3

5). He did have an opinion on issues concerning his own people and had expressed his views in his (poetic) texts throughout his life. Bekas touched on minority issues and suppression of the Kurds in Iraq. His contribution to establishing Kurdish identity and belonging cannot be underrated. Bekas stated that the main source for his poetry stems from his political life and literary beliefs, and is inspired by his cultural community’s wishes, hopes and aims (Bekas 2008, p. 16).

1.1   Defining Political Poetry Written by Bekas We begin this book by approaching our definition of poetry or, to be exact, political poetry as Bekas used poetry to express his stance and spread a message. We think it is necessary to clarify our terminology before we present biographical and historical details (in Chap. 2) and our analysis of two selected poems (Chaps. 3, 4 and 5). Towards the end of this present chapter, we provide an overview of the book to give the reader orientation where to look for those aspects that most interests them. In order to arrive at a definition of political poetry, it appears suitable to present Aristotle’s definition of poetry first: [I]t is not the poet’s business to relate actual events, but such things as might or could happen in accordance with probability or necessity. A poet differs from a historian, not because one writes verse and the other prose […], but because the historian relates what happened, the poet what might happen. That is why poetry is more akin to philosophy and is a better thing than history; poetry deals with general truths, history with specific events. (Aristotle 1961, ch. IX)

According to this definition, Bekas’ poems would not be considered poetry at all because Bekas writes about actual and thus historical events (as in the case of the killing of three students in The Martyrs’ Wedding; see Chaps. 3 and 5). Furthermore, he uses the typical verse form to express his opinion on the matter. He invites the reader to step into his shoes and see the world presented by the text with Bekas’ eyes, in other words, from his point of view4 (Simpson 1993; McIntyre 2006). He is neither a historian nor a poet judged on the grounds of Aristotle’s definition. 4  For the purpose of this book, we follow Simpson’s (1993, 11ff) argument, based on Fowler (1977) and Uspensky (1973), that there are ‘four important categories of point of view’, namely the spatial, temporal, psychological and ideological point of view. A list of viewpoint indicators can be found in Short’s (1996, 2019) and McIntyre’s (2006) works.

4 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

Another argument made by Preminger et al. (1993, p. 960) holds that poetry was ‘negatively affected by its contact with political issues’. Such a value judgement immediately begs the question as to the meaning of ‘negatively’ in this context. What could be a framework for objectively establishing if there was any impact and whether it was a negative one? And also, does this mean that poetry has to shun away from any ‘political issues’? So far, we raised more questions than we provided answers and we conclude that a definition of poetry might be unsuitable as a starting point for our definition of the type of political poetry Bekas writes. Instead, we argue that a definition of rhetoric fits much better in our attempt to arrive at our definition. Rhetoric refers to ‘the skills of public speaking as a means of persuasion’ (Wales 2001, p. 344). What Bekas does in his poetic texts is to invite the reader to share his point of view as well as to persuade the reader to take action as we will see later in our analysis of the poem The Martyrs’ Wedding (in Chap. 3). For Bekas, the typical verse form is a means to convey his point of view on political (and also non-political5) issues. More importantly, though, Bekas makes use of the aesthetics of (poetic) language and the depth of meaning conveyed by only a very limited number of words (compared to the length of a prose text). Bekas employs the poetic form as a means to spread his message, but not only that, he wishes to persuade the reader. Persuasion is an aspect if not even the aim of rhetoric but to a lesser extent of poetry, at least not when considering Aristotle’s definition. We therefore find Burke’s definition of rhetoric most suitable to develop our definition of political poetry from. Burke (1969, p. 41) defines rhetoric as ‘the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other agents’. Given that Bekas’ poems which we present and analyse in this volume have a political meaning, the notion of ‘attitudes’ Burke mentions is of importance to our work. The reason why we put emphasis on ‘persuasion’ and ‘attitudes’ lies in the nature of the framework we use for our analysis which is Critical Stylistics. The term ‘Critical Stylistics’ as introduced by Jeffries (2010, 2014a, b, 2015a, b) is concerned with a systematic and thus rigorous and replicable

5  Not all of Bekas’ poems deal with political issues. In this book, however, we focus on two poems that have a clear political agenda.

1 INTRODUCTION 

5

detection of ideological meaning6 in texts. Jeffries initially developed her framework from analysing political and other non-literary texts and expanded and renamed her framework recently to ‘encompass literary work, and in particular poetry’ (Jeffries 2022, p. 8). Ideologies, she argues, are conveyed by texts in that these texts construct a ‘particular description of the world through language’ (Jeffries 2015a, b, p. 384) which aligns with the ideational metafunction of language (Halliday 1971, p. 332f). Ideology ‘enters the picture […] where these ideational processes in texts produce worlds which have values attached to them’ (Jeffries 2015a, b, p.  384). Jeffries (2022) recently underlined this distinction between ideation (a term she borrowed from Halliday but uses it as ‘the construction of a particular view of the world through textual choices’, p.  4) and ideology. She argues that ‘ideology implies evaluation whereas ideation is neutral’ and that both ‘are delivered by the same mechanisms […], namely the TCF’s [textual-conceptual functions]’ of Critical or Textual Stylistics (p. 9). Jeffries sees ‘no theoretical reason why the same mechanisms that produce the ideation underlying this ideology shouldn’t also underlie the aesthetic or literary effects of, for example, contemporary poetry’ (p. 9). Here we return to Burke’ notion of ‘attitudes’ as well as the notion of ‘persuasion’ which is central to the purpose of rhetoric. We argue that all poetry (as well as prose and drama texts) present text worlds7 that have values attached to them and are thus intrinsically ideological in their meaning. In order to understand what values are attached to the text worlds presented by the text, it is important for the reader to at least temporarily leave their real world situation (e.g. sitting in a chair in one’s own home reading a poem by Bekas) or their ‘default position’ at their ‘own deictic centre’ and be positioned ‘in the viewing position of the consciousness behind the text, whether that is the author or some kind of narrator’ (Jeffries 2010, p. 150). This way, the reader is open to a new point of view (or, in fact, Bekas’ point of view). We argue that the reader is foremost positioned at the spatio-temporal centre of the text but eventually also the psychological and ideological centre, if only temporarily, as the two 6  We understand ideological meaning in its widest sense and political meaning as a sub-­ section of ideological meaning. 7  We are aware of Text World Theory (Werth 1999; Gavins 2007) but, in accordance with Jeffries (2022, p. 2), we use the term ‘text world’ as a fundamental metaphor and a useful analytical concept in this book.

6 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

remaining categories of point of view. It does, however, not end here as Ibrahim (2018, p. 21) argues because Bekas also calls for action, if only implicitly. This is the point where persuasion is being located. Next, we present some existing definitions of political poetry, keeping in mind our goal to present our own definition of Bekas’ political poetry. Dowdy (2007, p.  11) holds that political poems have as their topics ‘injustice, suffering, materialism, oppression’ as well as ‘compassion, justice, and so on’. He considers these concepts to be political. Poetry, as many poets and critics say, ‘takes its stand on the side of liberty’ or ‘speaks for the party of humanity’ (Levertov 1985, p.  166). Preminger et  al. (1993, p. 961) argue that political poetry describes ‘the conditions of life in different historical contexts’ and that ‘political poets succeed by comprehending a wide range of the demands and conflicts of their time, not by rising above their historical moment’. What these three definitions of political poetry have in common is that the topic of the poem defines it as a political poem. Ibrahim (2018, p. 23) takes up this notion of topic and defines political poems as those ‘that express attitudes towards those political issues’. Political poems ‘can deepen consciousness or be implicit or explicit calls for action. Political poems are not restricted to one particular issue; rather they can be about anything related to conflict within a society as in Bekas’ poetry’. We extend this presentation of existing definitions of political poetry to include the notion of the purpose and function of political poetry. Bly [cited in (Dowdy 2007, p. 11f)] holds that political poems merely raise our awareness, rather than call for action. Dowdy (2007, p. 11) goes as far as to assert that political poetry does not ‘challenge dominant political groups or social principles’, but ‘implicitly or explicitly supports them’. After this rather pessimistic view of the power of poetry seen through the eyes of oppressed Kurds, we cite McGrath (1982, p.  28f), who distinguishes between strategic (to expand consciousness) and tactical (show causes for and diagnose political problems) poems and thereby states that poems can have an effect on the audience. To arrive at our own definition of political poetry, we build on a core definition of poetry as a genre of literature (beside prose and drama) that makes use of rhyme and rhythm and has a visually distinct verse form. Furthermore, Bekas’ political poems deal with historic events and convey an ideological meaning as every text does but in his case his value judgements or ‘attitudes’ follow from conscious stylistic choices he makes on all levels of language structure. He intends to persuade the reader and

1 INTRODUCTION 

7

(implicitly) calls for action in his poetic texts. This epistemic notion (what might happen if readers follow Bekas’ call for action) reconciles us with Aristotle in that Bekas does write about ‘what might happen’ (Aristotle 1961).

1.2  Overview of the Book Having defined Bekas’ political poetry, we continue by providing an overview of this book. As we write this book with a linguistically trained audience in mind, we do not introduce all theories and concepts used in this book. Instead, we present references for those readers who might feel that their appreciation of this volume could benefit from some extended reading around certain topics. Our intention when we developed the idea for this book was to bring undervalued Kurdish poetry into focus. Furthermore, we want to bring Bekas, who is very popular among the Kurds, and his political poetry to the attention of a ‘Western’ audience. At times when the Kurds still have no autonomous state but live in parts of Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria, where they consider themselves to be a minority in each of these countries, we point towards issues of identity, oppression and belonging for a people still living in a diasporic state. Given that both poems analysed in this book were written in Sorani, we also wish to make a contribution to translation studies, in particular from Kurdish (Sorani) to English. Chapter 2 presents biographical details about Bekas (1940–2013), who initially served as ‘party poet’ for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a major political party in the Kurdish Regional Government autonomous zone, and his career as a writer who later claimed to be a poet ‘of all Kurdish nation, the poet of revolution and Peshmergas’ and ‘the mother poet of Kurdistan’.8 We shed light on his political career (after 1991 he was a member of the Kurdish parliament and became Minister of Culture in the first Kurdish government). In addition, we explore his development as a writer, from translating foreign literature to Kurdish (like Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea) and his role as founding member of the Rwanga movement, a new style of writing that broke with the tradition of rhyme and rhythm in Kurdish poetry (as skilfully used, for example, by Bekas’ father Fayaq Bekas, also a famous Kurdish writer).

8

 See Footnote 3.

8 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

Furthermore, Chap. 2 contains an interview with Bekas’ son Halo Sherko Bekas, whom one of the present authors is in contact with. Halo Sherko Bekas, who speaks five languages (Kurdish, Farsi, English, Swedish and Russian), has Swedish and Iraqi citizenship. He was born in Sulaiymaniyah where he attended the Eastern School of Sulaiymaniyah. In 1988, he lived in Iran for one year before he completed his degree at a university in Stockholm. He lives in Sweden and in Iraq and is a journalist and a poet. He agreed to give an interview for this book. Given that Sherko Bekas’ father, Fayaq Bekas (1905–1948), was also a famous Kurdish poet in terms of traditional Kurdish poetry, our catalogue of questions focused on the differences between the poetry written by three generations of poets in the Bekas family and the different styles of their works. In this book, we focus on two poems by Bekas, şayi şehîd/The Martyrs’ Wedding from Bekas’ book keşkollî pêşmerge/Miscellany of Peshmerga (Bekas 2006a) and tacî xwênawî/Bloody Crown (Bekas 2006b). In Chap. 3 we present our analysis of the English translation of The Martyrs’ Wedding and in Chap. 4 of Bloody Crown. Bekas wrote the poem The Martyrs’ Wedding in response to the killing of three students in his hometown Sulaiymaniyah on December 17, 1985, after they were arrested in front of their school for political reason. We approach the linguistic construction of the three martyred students in this poem by using the framework of Critical Stylistics / Textual Stylistics (Jeffries 2010, 2022). This approach is a further development of a stylistic analysis of poetry and especially suited to detect ideological meaning in texts as Bekas used the art of poetic writing to express his political stance on the murders. Chapter 3 begins with a brief introduction to the linguistic sub-discipline of Stylistics as well as to the framework of Critical Stylistics (Jeffries 2010) or Textual Stylistics (Jeffries 2022) which guides the analysis of the selected poems in this book. Given the brevity of the Pivot Series, we limit this introduction to a minimum and provide references for introductory literature to Stylistics and Critical/Textual Stylistics. The linguistic and poetic tools Bekas employs in this poem address an informed reader. However, the beauty and aesthetics of the language he uses (that shines through even in the English translation and is much richer in the original text as shown in Chap. 5) touch the reader also on an emotional level. They raise core issues of identity, belonging and injustice. We are aware that our analysis as presented in this chapter is focused on

1 INTRODUCTION 

9

selected passages to which we were pointed by frequency counts. A critical stylistic analysis of this poem shows a way to decipher Bekas’ ideological (here it is, in fact, a political) statement and we add a critical view because this text is one of those that has the ‘power to influence us’ (Jeffries 2010 p. 1). Chapter 4 continues with the presentation of our analysis of Bloody Crown, a poem Bekas wrote to support his friend, Karim Hashimi, a Kurdish fighter for freedom in Iran. This poem, although written in 1985 after the Revolution in Iran that ended with the abdication of the last Persian Shah, is a timely poem given the current revolution that we witness happening in Iran at the time of writing this book. The reader might recognise familiar demands Iranian protesters reiterate these present days. Given that both analyses focus on the English translations of the poems, Chap. 5 deals with issues of translating Bekas’ poems from Sorani to English and provides a critical stylistic analysis of the opening lines of both poems. The poems we analyse in Chaps. 3 and 4 are originally written in Sorani and are translated to English by one of the present authors who is a native speaker of Sorani. Sorani is referred to as the Kurdish language although Kurmanji and Gorani are also Kurdish languages or rather dialects. In this book, we use ‘Sorani’ and ‘Kurdish’ interchangeably. By including this chapter on translation issues we intend to widen the appeal of our book to translation studies scholars, particularly since we print the original text of the poems alongside our translation. There are some major grammatical differences between Sorani and English that are to be considered in our analysis, as, for example, the fact that, in contrast to English, the word order in Kurdish is subject–object–verb. When the subject is a pronoun, it is often omitted which leaves object and verb. Furthermore, a verb on its own can already make a complete statement sentence because it is always combined with the subject pronominal enclitic (bound pronoun) as in arom/I go. In case the object is a pronoun, it can be attached to the verb in the form of a bound pronoun to form a subject–verb–object structure. Chapter 5 points out these and other differences between the two languages. We show the impact of these differences in our analysis of both poems and provide a critical stylistic analysis of the opening lines of both poems based on the original Sorani version. With this book, we put forward our argument that Sherko Bekas’ work rightfully belongs in the canon of world literature but has been overlooked

10 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

in its importance to the present day. We provide linguistic proof for his virtue as a poet who uses ‘deep language’ (see interview with his son in Sect. 2.3) and how Bekas achieves meaning making in a skilful and multilayered way. After this brief overview of the book, we turn to Bekas himself and introduce the reader to Bekas in the following chapter.

References Ali, B. (2019). Sherko Bekas und die vielen Formen der Freiheit. Geheimnisse der Nacht pflücken: Gedicht, mit einem Vorwort von Bachtyar Ali. S.  Bekas. Zürich, Unionsverlag: 7–15. Aristotle (1961). Aristotle’s poetics. New York, Hill and Wang. Bekas, S. (2006a). Shay Shahid (The Martyrs’ Wedding). Diwane Sherko Bekas (The Divan of Sherko Bekas). Iraq, Kurdish and European. 2. Bekas, S. (2006b). tajî xwênawî (Bloody Crown). Diwane Sherko Bekas (The Divan of Sherko Bekas). Iraq, The Kurdish Union Writers. 2. Bekas, S. (2008). dewane sherko bekas: barge dwam (The divan by Sherko Bekas). 2nd volume. Kurdistan (Iraq). Bekas, S. (2019). Geheimnisse der Nacht pflücken: Gedichte, mit einem Vorwort von Bachtyar Ali. Zürich, Unionsverlag. Burke, K. (1969). A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley, University of California Press. Dowdy, M. (2007). American political poetry in the 21st century. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. Fowler, R. (1977). Linguistics and the novel. London, Methuen. Gavins, J. (2007). Text World Theory: An introduction. Edinburgh, Edingburgh University Press. Halliday, M. A. K. (1971). Linguistic function and literary style: An inquiry into the language of William Golding’s The Inheritors. Literary style: A symposium. S. Chatman. London, Oxford University Press: 330–368. Ibrahim, M. K. (2018). The Construction of the Speaker and Fictional World in The Small Mirrors: Critical Stylistic Analysis, University of Huddersfield. Doctoral thesis. Jeffries, L. (2010). Critical Stylistics. The power of English. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. Jeffries, L. (2014a). Critical Stylistics. The Routledge handbook of Stylistics. M. Burke: 408–420. Jeffries, L. (2014b). Interpretation. The handbook of Stylistics. P. Stockwell and S. Whiteley. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 469–486. Jeffries, L. (2015a). Critical Stylistics. A companion to Stylistics. V.  Sotirova. London/New York, Bloomsbury: 157–176.

1 INTRODUCTION 

11

Jeffries, L. (2015b). Language and ideology. Introducing language and linguistics. L. Cummings and N. Braber. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 379–405. Jeffries, L. (2022). The Language of Contemporary Poetry: A Framework for Poetic Analysis. Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan. Levertov, D. (1985). On the edge of darkness: What is political poetry. Poetry and politics: An anthology of essays. R. Jones. New York, Morrow. McGrath, T. (1982). ‘The frontiers of language’. North Dakota Quarterly 50: 28f. McIntyre, D. (2006). Point of view in plays: A cognitive stylistic approach to viewpoint in drama and other text-types. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins. Preminger, A., et al., Eds. (1993). The new Princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. Short, M. (1996). Exploring the language of poems, plays and prose. Essex, Pearson Education. Short, M. (2019). Discourse presentation and point of view in “Cheating at Canasta” by William Trevor. In Simpson P. (ed.) Style, Rhetoric and Creativity in Language: In memory of Walter (Bill) Nash (1926–2015). Linguistic Approaches to Literature, vol. 34. John Benjamins, Amsterdam: 101–111. Simpson, P. (1993). Language, ideology and point of view. London, Routledge. Uspensky, B. (1973). A poetics of composition, trans. V. Zavarin and S. Wittig. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wales, K. (2001). A dictionary of stylistics. Essex, Pearson Education Ltd. Werth, P. (1999). Text worlds: Representing conceptual space in discourse. Harlow, Pearson Education.

CHAPTER 2

Sherko Bekas

Abstract  This chapter provides biographical information about Sherko Bekas (1940–2013), his father Fayaq Bekas and his son Halo Sherko Bekas. We show how Bekas’ writing was influenced by the canon of world literature as well as by the political situation in Iraqi Kurdistan and worldwide. Bekas, together with other writers, founded the Rwanga movement, a new style of writing that broke with the tradition of rhyme and rhythm in Kurdish poetry (as skilfully used, e.g., by Bekas’ father Fayaq Bekas). Rwanga was developed in reaction to the social and political situation and allowed writers to find new, creative ways of expression. In the third section of this chapter, we present an interview with Halo Sherko Bekas that focuses on the main differences between the writings of three generations in the Bekas’ family. Keywords  Sherko Bekas • Fayaq Bekas • Halo Sherko Bekas • Peshmerga • Rwanga movement • Kurdish Regional Government Sherko Bekas (1940–2013) was a contemporary Kurdish poet, ‘a poet of lofty visions and noble actions’ (Sharifi and Ashouri 2013). His father, Fayaq Bekas (1905–1948), was also a well-known Kurdish poet within traditional Kurdish poetry and a teacher. In a documentary (Raheem 2022), Bekas stated that his father had been a candle of hope for him.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 U. Tabbert, M. K. Ibrahim, Sherko Bekas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30602-0_2

13

14 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

Bekas’ father died when his son was only ten years old (Sharifi and Ashouri 2013, p. 6). According to Bekas, his mother Shafiqa Saeedi Wasta Hassan read poetry to him when he was a child (Raheem 2022), which might have planted a seed for his love for this literary genre. He said, ‘if there is a great hero in anyone’s life, my mother is the hero in my life’ (Raheem 2022). In 1969, Bekas married Nasrin Mirza. Bekas has a son, Halo Sherko Bekas, born on November 13, 1972, and three daughters: Halbast (born in 1970), Hezha (1974) and Hana (1979). Bekas initially read romantic poetry by Hardi and Goran, two famous Kurdish poets. He submitted his first poem to the Zhen Magazine, the only magazine available at that time. The magazine was owned by Ahmed Zerf, who was a relative of the famous Kurdish poet Permerd. Goran, the mentioned poet, was chief editor of the magazine and revised Bekas’ poem for him. For Bekas, simple poems reflect realities better compared to difficult poems as the first resemble reality. Bekas stated on August 8, 1987 in a speech at Folkore Hois (The Whole Sky of My Borders)1 that he considered himself to be the poet ‘of all Kurdish nation, the poet of revolution and Peshmergas, flowers, Kurmanji children of the South and North, I consider myself the mother poet of Kurdistan’. In this chapter we introduce the reader to Sherko Bekas and begin with some biographical information, followed by an introduction to the Rwanga movement Bekas founded and conclude this chapter with presenting our interview we conducted with Bekas’ son, Halo Sherko Bekas.

2.1   Biographical Information Sherko Bekas was born in Sulaiymaniyah on May 2, 1940 and says that he was born in the heat of World War II in the Goizha-Gawran neighbourhood. Many of our neighbours were Christians. Jamila Kahn was the mother of Nuri Mati, my [mother’s] midwife. After I was born, she drew a cross with a piece of coal on my forehead. The women around her asked, ‘What is this?’ She told them it’s for blessing intelligence/Mubarak’s intelligence. I am happy that I had a midwife from a [Christian] religion, because it is a sign of harmony and exaltation …. (Raheem 2022)

1  Speech at Folkore Hois, The Whole Sky of My Borders, 8/8/1987, https://www. rudaw.net/english/opinion/12092013

2  SHERKO BEKAS 

15

Bekas lived in an era (from the inception of modern Iraq until 1991) when the Kurds had been viewed as being second-class citizens. Bekas and his family, like many other Kurdish families, were displaced inside Iraq in an attempt to arabise them. He therefore had to live in Ramadi for a while from 1974, same as one of the present authors of this volume whose family was displaced in 1987 and came to live in Ramadi as well. The discrimination increased during Saddam Hussein’s regime (Ba’athist government from 1968 to 2003) and was practised in the educational and cultural sectors as well as in the job market. In the 1970s, Kurds like Bekas and one of the present authors were displaced in an attempt to demolish the Kurdish dream of having their own autonomous state. The situation further escalated in 1988, with the destruction of over 3000 Kurdish villages, more than forty chemical attacks, one event killing over 5000 Kurds in Halabja, and a total of 100,000 civilians being buried after mass killings. Bekas wrote a poem called Sculpture about the massacre in Halabja, included in the collection The Small Mirrors and published in Bekas’ Diwan (2008). For our analysis of the poem Sculpture we refer to previous publications (Ibrahim 2016, 2018; Ibrahim and Tabbert 2021, 2022a, b). The political situation in the Kurdistan region of Iraq is of importance for the interpretation of the poem The Martyrs’ Wedding to be analysed in Chaps. 3 and 5 in this book. At the time of the killings of the three students, the governor of the province of Sulaiymaniyah, Sheikh Jaafar Barzinji, had already been facing far-reaching protests from the (mainly Kurdish) people in the region. From an early age, Bekas had taken a political stance, not only in his poetic texts but also by joining the Peshmerga at the age of twenty-five. The Peshmerga, whose name translates as ‘those who face death’, is the military of Iraqi Kurdish forces. Bekas worked for the media of the revolution and took on a role as the ‘party poet’ for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a major political party in the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), a semi-autonomous region in Iraq (Levinson-LaBrosse 2018). After joining the Kurdish Liberation Movement in 1965, Bekas worked for their radio station (The Voice of Kurdistan). In seeking ‘new aspects and dimensions’ for the thus far heavily arabised Kurdish poetry, Bekas turned to international texts and translated Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (2000) and Federico Garcia Lorca’s (1899–1936) Blood Wedding into Kurdish (Naderi 2011, p.  50). Bekas’ poetry depicts his political and literary beliefs, his cultural community’s wishes, aims and preferences (Bekas 2006, p.  16) as we will see when analysing the two

16 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

poems in Chaps. 3, 4 and 5. Bekas published his first collection of poetry in 1968. He stated that he only loved his poems when he read them once or twice which indicates his own critical perception of his work. In the already quoted documentary by Raheem (2022) he says, ‘if I am satisfied with it [a poem] completely then I will stop. I feel I have never done anything yet, I feel I am looking for that water that quenches my thirst and I know I will never find but will always look for it.’ In 1985, he considered poetry to be a breath and in said documentary he stated, ‘it is still a breath and part of me, but I always tried to improve my poetry and expand my experience.’ Bekas joined the second Kurdish Liberation Movement in 1974. After the failure of that movement, the Ba’ath regime exiled Bekas to Ramadi as mentioned above where he stayed for three years. At some point, Bekas became aware that the Ba’ath regime wanted to award him with the Al-Qadsya Award in order to drew him to their side. He was forced to either accept the award or leave and chose the latter (Raheem 2022). In 1986, he left for Sweden where he published The Small Mirrors in 1987, Butterfly Valley in 1991 and, most importantly, Diwani Sherko Bekas (1974–1986). In these collections of poems, he mourns the victims of Kurdistan. While in Sweden, he became a member of the Swedish Writers’ Union and the Swedish Pen Club (Sharifi and Ashouri 2013). Bekas once said that he had never stayed in Sweden for longer than two months in a row because he was invited all across Europe by communities of Kurdish migrants to read his poetry (Raheem 2022). For a brief period of time, Bekas stayed in Syria where he was received by Kurdish and Palestinian people. When he publicly read his poetry there, the regime’s intelligence agency asked him what his poetry was about, also because he read his poems in Kurdish. In 1990 he visited California in the United States. Following the uprisings in Kurdistan in March 1991, Bekas returned to Iraqi Kurdistan. After the 1991 Gulf War, the already mentioned semi-­ autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) was created in northern Iraq and the Iraqi government withdrew its troops. This development prompted Bekas to return to Iraq from Sweden in 1992. In the first regional election, Bekas was elected a member of the Kurdish parliament and became Minister of Culture in the first Kurdish government. In 1993, he resigned from this position because of what he regarded as violations of democracy.

2  SHERKO BEKAS 

17

Bekas returned to Sweden and died in exile in Sweden on August 4, 2013. Due to Bekas having been exiled, further due to his work with Peshmerga soldiers fighting for freedom and his work as the manager of the liberation movement radio, he held a special status within his community. These aspects are reflected in his poetry, particularly in diwani awena buchkalakan/The Small Mirrors in Bekas’ Diwan (Bekas 2006). Many of Bekas’ poems emphasise the importance of poetry as a powerful weapon to pursue global recognition of Kurdish culture and rights (Ibrahim 2018). His poetry impresses through ‘hard’ simplicity (see interview with Halo Sherko Bekas) and elegance. His poems express humanist thoughts in a sympathetic manner. Bekas was a poet who cried out for justice and freedom, and was full of love for his fellow humans. He took a stance against human suffering. His writings are not limited to a certain region, instead he wrote about events worldwide. Literary critics (Ali 2009; Omer 2011) consider Bekas’ poetry to be political (see our definition of political poetry in Chap. 1). We would like to add that, in fact, not all of Bekas’ poetry is political because some poems do not include any political issues but centre around concepts of love, nature and humanism. However, some political concepts are readily transparent in his poetry such as freedom, war, immigration, and/or the sacredness of martyrdom. There were political attempts to oppress Bekas, as mentioned by Bachtyar Ali (2019, p. 7ff), but his tireless work for the Kurdish people and against oppression was recognised by awarding him with the Swedish Tucholsky Award (a scholarship) by the Swedish PEN Institute in 1988. This award was presented to him by the former Swedish Prime Minister Gösta Ingvar Carlsson. Bekas received the Freedom Prize of the city of Florence/Italy and became an ‘Honorary Citizen’ of Milan. Bekas has an international reputation for his literary works. The introduction of the ‘poster poem’ (which has its origin in sculpture and painting) to Kurdish poetry was his doing, ‘with its novel verbal patterning and aesthetics in which the senses of seemingly trivial and mundane objects inhabiting his micro-poems open hidden realities and mysteries of the world through his aesthetic and linguistic variations’ (Sharifi 2016). 2 His poetry consists of 8000 pages, the published collections carry the following titles:

2

 https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/06082016, accessed January 13, 2023.

18 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

- Moonlight Poems - The Small Mirrors (which contains the poem Sculpture we mentioned above) - Dawn - I Appease My Thirst with Fire - Two Juniper - Eagle, Cemetery Lighted, Sulaiymaniyah - The Dawn of the World and the Seat - The Crying Mule Litter - Graveyard of Candles - The Ode to Migration - The Secret Diary of a Rose

Apart from poetry, Bekas wrote a novel entitled The Cross and the Snake, which Naderi (2011, p. 32) described as ‘a panorama view to his own life and his homeland’ and ‘a unique genre in Kurdish literature at the time of its composition’. Besides writing poetry and novels, Bekas wrote two plays, Kawa, the Blacksmith and The Gazala. Furthermore, he contributed to children’s literature.

2.2  Rwanga/Ruwange Movement Bekas had a huge influence on the development of Kurdish poetry. Whereas in the generation of poets including Bekas’ father, major attention was being paid to rhyme and rhythm, Bekas, together with other poets and writers, founded the Rwanga movement in 1970 (Fahmi and Dizayi 2018). The name ‘Rwanga’ means ‘immediate observation’ in Kurdish. Rwanga poetry was a reaction to the social and political situation and is considered to be ‘one of the fruitful consequences of the socio-­ political developments’ (Fahmi and Dizayi 2018, p. 72). Poets from the Rwanga movement tried to adjust poetry to real life (Naderi 2011, p. 32), thus, it breaks from the traditional rules of rhyme and rhythm to express many beautiful fantasies. Rwanga allows poets to convey their vision accurately and to overcome the boundaries of language. This was a radical change in Kurdish poetry (Riengard and Mirza 1998, p.  8). From his experience of translating works of world literature like Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea to Kurdish, Bekas identified ‘new elements in the world literature’ and utilised them in his own poetry (Fahmi and Dizayi 2018 p. 73).

2  SHERKO BEKAS 

19

Bekas stated in an interview that the Rwanga movement aims to explain that their desires are ‘free to discover what has not yet been discovered, to mix local and global languages in new and creative writings, and to support freedom all over the world’ (Dhiab 2007 p. 132). Naderi (2011, p.  12) lists several features of the Rwanga movement that underline its novelty and political agenda: - It was a reaction to the social and political situation - It deals with new words, new thought, and new behaviour - It deals with realism which stimulates the founders of the movement because they were interested in the Liberation Movement - It modifies classical works to meet the requirement of the contemporary world - It emphasises novelty and innovation and focuses on the subject or writing, rather than to whom the writing is addressed.

The poets of Rwanga proclaimed in 1970 (Naderi 2011, p. 12): - Our writing is full of suffering …. Thus we are fighting against suffering. - Beauty is the center of our writing …. Therefore, it is against ugliness. - It is free and independent …. Hence it breaks boundaries. - It is revolutionist ….

The Rwanga movement aims to gain justice and to fight suffering. It uses a mix of local and universal languages in creative ways and supports freedom universally (Sharifi and Ashouri 2013).

2.3  Interview with Sherko Bekas’ Son Halo Sherko Bekas Halo Sherko Bekas, as he revealed in personal conversations with one of the present authors, was born on November 13, 1972 in the Iskan neighbourhood of Sulaiymaniyah. He completed his primary education at the Maulana Khalid School and his secondary education at the Rojhelat Center, both in Sulaiymaniyah. Due to the unfavourable political situation, Bekas’ family moved abroad and after staying in Iran for a year, they arrived in Sweden on May 17, 1988, where Halo completed his secondary education and attended university in Stockholm. He was active in the field of journalism and was a member of the Kurdish Youth Union in Sweden. In addition to Kurdish, he is fluent in Swedish, English, Russian and

20 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

Persian (Farsi). Being a poet himself, he wrote a number of short and long poems and was interviewed by radio and TV stations. Halo is a well-known figure in the field of literature and poetry and takes an active role in social networks (Facebook, in particular) where he publishes his fathers’ and his own poems on his official page ‘Halo Sherko Bekas’ with 76,187 followers. 3 After the death of his father, Sherko Bekas, on August 4, 2013, Halo appeared more often in connection with Kurdish cultural and literary activities and introduced himself to the larger public. When reading poetry, his tone of voice resembled that of his father. As his father used to read his poems on TV and on the radio, his tone of voice is famously linked to his poems. Halo completed and published his poem Memories of a Kirkuk Bicycle in five parts after his father’s death, which caused a lot of controversy and was discussed by a number of well-known writers. 4 In 2018, he published a book entitled One Hundred and One Days of Loneliness (420 pages) about the last days in the life of the late poet Sherko Bekas (from April 25, 2013 until his death on August 4, 2013). At present, Halo is writing a book about haiku/poetry posters in both Kurdish and English entitled I Wish My Father Would Give Me These Poems. He lives in Sweden and in Iraq, and has Swedish and Iraqi citizenship. Halo Bekas agreed to be interviewed for this book. What follows is him answering our questions via email. As his answers are in Sorani and translated by one of the present authors, we provide the original interview in Appendix I. Q How would you describe your father to those who don’t know him? What kind of person was he? A He was calm and quiet, listening more than speaking, a good-hearted, naturally soft-spoken man. Also, he was very committed to his time, and he made every promise he made. Q What has most attracted you in the poetry of your father? A My father’s poems as I said have a hard simplicity and language at a very high level. It seems that he writes fluent, simple and deep language, always.  https://www.facebook.com/sacco.bekas https://www.facebook.com/halosherkobekas, both accessed November 20, 2022. 4  https://www.kurdipedia.org/default.aspx?q=20191203133310376068&lng=16, accessed January 22, 2023. 3

2  SHERKO BEKAS 

21

Q Do you feel like you can write that too but you have not written it? A It is the beauty of his poetry. Q How does your father’s poetry differ from the poetry your grandfather, Fayaq Bekas, wrote? And to the poetry you yourself write? A Fayaq Bekas’s poems, my grandfather’s is more poetic and patriotic in terms of art. Poetry is somewhat simple, for example, simple feeling. They are beautiful like ‘Hemn’ poems … My poems are shorter and have a case of poetic briefs that are more advanced in today’s world of technology. In terms of content, they are closer to my father’s poems than my grandfather’s poems. Q What is typical for the style of your father’s poetry? A It is a style of its own and nature is a stable centre in it. The philosophy of humanity exits behind it, working continuously. Q Given that you, your father and grandfather are poets, is poetry something innately endowed or inherited? A Poetry writing is not inherited, it’s more talent and self-education. Through continuous reading … But at the same time, there is a spiritual motivation if your father and grandfather are poets. The fathers and grandfathers of other poets were not poets and they nevertheless became great poets, such as Goran in modern Kurdish poetry and Nali in classic poetry, for example, of the world and there are tons of other examples. Q Do you follow your father in using stylistic elements from the Rwanga movement? A Possibly, time may be different … Like everything else, so does poetry. It changes the level of vision and perspective for me. It is very important to me, in the briefest form and style of modernity, I convey what I want to the reader. Q Are you going to add a new element to Kurdish poetry as your father did when he founded the Rwanga movement? A I am working more on writing Haikoyi poems now. Perhaps this is a newer work for the World of Kurdish Poetry. Q Given that you, your father and grandfather lived in different political and geographical environments, do you think each of these environments plays a role in shaping the way poetry is constructed? A Of course poetry is completely different considering the political and geographical environment … even in my father’s poems.

22 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

This can be seen when he writes mountain defence poems and the homeland will be a prominent centre of poetry. Yet, the same poet forty years later reverses this in a text like ‘Now a girl is my homeland’. He is a wake-up man. Q Is there anything in particular that has made your father’s poetry so widely known and popular and what is it? A Sherko’s poetry horizon is wide and has not stopped at some level. He has always thrown his poetry in all his time. That is why people feel a rapid and continuous change in their poems and are far from imitating and repeating themselves, so they always feel a new and unique sensitivity to readers … In addition, he writes in a ‘simple and expensive’ language that characterises Sherko one by one and has his own seal and mark. Q Do you think that there are links between poetry in different languages or do you think they are completely separate because of the different languages they are written in? A Of course, every language has its own code and secrets. But beautiful poems are beautiful in any language they are written in. There is still a connection because they are the product of human imagination such as a beautiful poem by Paploniro in Chile. Mahmud Darwesh should be in Palestine or Abdullah Pashew in Kurdistan, they have to do with the same universal imagination. Q What difficulties do you face when translating your father’s poems into English like you do on your Facebook account? A As they say: translating your poetry into another language is a kind of betrayal! You may still be able to convey your idea. But you lose the feelings, senses, and secrets of the language. The translator should be well aware of both languages in a good way and have a rich literary background in both languages. Only language knowledge is not enough to translate poetry. And there is no solution. You have to do it like that. It is like smelling artificial flowers!

References Ali, A. (2009). ‘The Structure of Artistic Imagery in Sherko Bekas’ Poems’. Iraq: Sulaymanya. Ali, B. (2019). Sherko Bekas und die vielen Formen der Freiheit. Geheimnisse der Nacht pflücken: Gedicht, mit einem Vorwort von Bachtyar Ali. S.  Bekas. Zürich, Unionsverlag: 7–15.

2  SHERKO BEKAS 

23

Bekas, S. (2006). Awena Buchkalakan (The Small Mirrors) in Dewane Sherko Bekas: Barge Dwam (The Divan of Sherko Bekas), 2nd volume. Iraq: Kurdistan. Bekas, S. (2008). dewane sherko bekas: barge dwam (The divan by Sherko Bekas). 2nd volume. Kurdistan (Iraq). Dhiab, S. (2007). ‘Reality precedes Poetic Vision (translated by Chenwa Hayek)’. Masarat Magazine. Fahmi, I. M. and S. Dizayi (2018). ‘The Thematic Presence of The Wast Land in Sherko Bekas’ Jingl’. University-Erbil Scientific Journal 1: 71–90. Ibrahim, M.  K. (2016). A Critical Stylistic Analysis of Sherko Bekas’ Snow. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA). https://www.pala.ac.uk/uploads/2/5/1/0/25105678/ibrahim_ mahmood.pdf. Ibrahim, M. K. (2018). The Construction of the Speaker and Fictional World in The Small Mirrors: Critical Stylistic Analysis, University of Huddersfield. Doctoral thesis. Ibrahim, M.  K. and U.  Tabbert (2021). A Critical Stylistic Analysis of the Construction of State Crimes in Sherko Bekas’ Poem The Small Mirrors. Proceedings of the 20th Meeting of the Texas Linguistics Society, Austin, Texas. Ibrahim, M. K. and U. Tabbert (2022a). Do not ask how? – A Critical Stylistic Approach to Sherko Bekas’ Poem ‘The Martyrs’ Wedding’. In: Fazeli, Seyed Hossein (ed.). Ahwaz/Iran: Ahwaz Publication of Research and Sciences (The Ministry Approval Number: 16171). ISBN: 978-622-94212-2-2. pp.  1–11. Full Articles: The Seventh International Conference on Languages, Linguistics, Translation and Literature. Volume 2. S.  H. Fazeli. Ahwaz/Iran, Ahwaz Publication of Research and Sciences (The Ministry Approval Number: 16171). ISBN: 978-622-94212-2-2: 1–11. Ibrahim, M. K. and U. Tabbert (2022b). The Linguistic Construction of Political Crimes in Kurdish-Iraqi Sherko Bekas’ Poem The Small Mirrors. The Linguistics of Crime. J. Douthwaite and U. Tabbert. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 105ff. Levinson-LaBrosse, A.  M. (2018). ‘A Portfolio of Kurdish Poetry’. World Literature Today 92(4): 42. Naderi, L. (2011). An Anthology of Modern Kurdish Literature: A Short Study of Modern Kurdish Poetry in Southern Kurdistan, University of Kurdistan. Omer, S. (2011). ‘Realism in Bekas’ Poetry’. Unpublished MA Thesis. University of Sulaimani. Raheem, S. (2022). Poetry Forest – Sherko Bekas, Rudaw Channel, https://www. rudaw.net/sorani/onair/tv/episodes/episode/documentari-­sherko-­bekas/ 13102022041338.

24 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

Riengard and S. Mirza (1998). A journey Through Poetic Kurdistan, The Secret Diary of a Rose, Sherko Bekas, Translated by Reingard and Shirwan Mirza. Suleimani, Khak Press. Sharifi, A. (2016). ‘Third anniversary of Sherko Bekas: A poet’s death, a national loss’. https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/06082016. Sharifi, A. and A. Ashouri (2013). ‘A Tribute to Sherko Bekas, the Kurdish Poet of the Century’, https://www.rudaw.net/english/opinion/12092013.

CHAPTER 3

Introduction to Critical Stylistics and Analysis of The Martyrs’ Wedding

Abstract  This chapter is the first of three chapters in this book that presents a Critical Stylistic analysis of two of Bekas’ poems and begins with an analysis of our own English translation of The Martyrs’ Wedding. Bekas wrote this poem in response to the killing of three students in his hometown Sulaiymaniyah. We approach the linguistic construction of the three martyred students in this poem by using the framework of Critical Stylistics (Jeffries, Critical Stylistics. The power of English. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and a revised version of the framework called Textual Stylistics (Jeffries, The Language of Contemporary Poetry: A Framework for Poetic Analysis. Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). The chapter begins with an introduction to the framework followed by the analysis. Keywords  Critical Stylistics • Textual Stylistics • The Martyrs’ Wedding Bekas’ work is widespread among the Kurdish people but also well known beyond the borders of his homeland among the Kurds living in diaspora, which allows researchers to conduct their work on his œuvre in several languages. In an interview with NRT TV, Halo Sherko Bekas pointed out that his father’s poetry is studied in history classes in the United States, Canada and Finland (Bekas 2018). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 U. Tabbert, M. K. Ibrahim, Sherko Bekas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30602-0_3

25

26 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

Bekas’ poetry is mainly examined from the perspective of literary criticism (Muhammed 2001; Ali 2009; Omer 2011; Mala 2012; Ghaderi 2015; Tabari et al. 2015; Fahmi and Dizayi 2018; Mohammad and Mira 2018; Abdulqadir 2019; Darwish and Salih 2019). These studies reveal the different techniques Bekas uses in his writings to depict the political and social situation. One of the present authors (Ibrahim 2018) employed a stylistic perspective to primarily reveal ideological meaning in Bekas’ texts and is thus the first to apply Critical Stylistics (Jeffries 2010) to Kurdish poetry. The present authors have further developed this critical stylistic approach to analysing Bekas’ poems. We have already pointed to our analysis of the poem Sculpture in the collection The Small Mirrors, published elsewhere (Ibrahim and Tabbert 2021, 2022a, b). In this chapter, we analyse the poem The Martyrs’ Wedding and begin with a brief introduction to Stylistics and, in particular, Critical/Textual Stylistics, the framework we use for our analysis. Due to space constrains that come with publishing in the Pivot Series, we refer those readers who wish to get a deeper understanding of the framework of Critical/Textual Stylistics to Jeffries’ (2010, 2022) and Tabbert’s (2016) publications.

3.1   A Brief Introduction to Critical/ Textual Stylistics During the time of Ba’athist power (1968–2003), an incident occurred in Bekas’ hometown Sulaiymaniyah in the north of Iraq, not far from the Iranian border. Three students (Aram Muhammed Karim, Sardar Osman Faraj and Hiwa Faris Fayeq) were shot dead on December 17, 1985, one month after they were arrested in front of their school for political reasons. Their deaths led to an outcry and protests against Sheikh Jaafar Barzinji, the governor of the province during Saddam Hussein’s regime, and prompted Bekas to write his poem The Martyrs’ Wedding about the three sons of his hometown Sulaiymaniyah as he commented at the end of this poem (see Appendix II). He also indicated that he dedicated his poem to them and he read it himself for the first time in a broadcast for the Kurdistan People’s Voice Station. This poem and the collection which includes it both have the same title The Martyrs’ Wedding. It is the second of fourteen poems in this collection. We approach the linguistic construction of the three martyred students by using the framework of Critical Stylistics (Jeffries 2010), further

3  INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL STYLISTICS AND ANALYSIS OF … 

27

developed into Textual Stylistics (Jeffries 2022). This approach is based on a stylistic analysis of poetry and especially suited to detect ideological meaning in texts as Bekas, first and foremost, uses the art of poetic writing to express his political stance on the murders. Stylistics, to begin with, is ‘a sub-discipline of linguistics that is concerned with the systematic analysis of style in language and how this can vary according to such factors as, for example, genre, context, historical period and author’ (Crystal and Davy 1969, p.  9; Leech 2008, p.  54; Jeffries and McIntyre 2010, p. 1). Stylistics focuses on why one textual feature is chosen over other possible alternatives and thus on the ‘element of choice’ (Jeffries and McIntyre 2010, p. 25) or on the ‘variation of language use’ (Nørgaard et al. 2010, p. 155). Stylistics offers a broad analytical toolkit for the examination of poetic texts but is not so much concerned with the detection of ideological meaning in (poetic) texts. Critical Stylistics, developed by Prof. Lesley Jeffries at the University of Huddersfield, UK, is firmly grounded in stylistics and is a further development of Critical Discourse Analysis (Wodak and Meyer 2009). CDA ‘itself is not a method of research but a social movement of socio-politically discourse analysts using many different methods of analysis’ (Van Dijk 2011, p.  621). Therefore, there is no agreed-upon framework of CDA and no single tradition. From her experience as a teacher, Jeffries saw the necessity to provide her students with a framework that guides them when approaching a text and doing Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Jeffries acknowledged that CDA does not offer such a framework but most scholars choose their own method of analysis which frequently includes transitivity analysis, speech acts, modality, and lexical and syntactic structure (Jeffries 2010, p. 13). Done this way, one might criticise results and conclusions drawn from a CDA approach and claim that the analyst subjectively chose the tools to verify pre-fabricated results. Jeffries argued that because CDA aims to expose an ideological stance presented in the analysed text, any claims of bias should carefully be avoided. One means to do so is to secure rigour and replicability of the analysis by following a framework such as the one provided by Critical/Textual Stylistics. It allows the analyst to remain in an objective position as opposed to a manipulative position where too many choices are made subjectively. As Stylistics, Critical Stylistics builds on established linguistic foundations like Saussure’s (1986) distinction between langue and parole, speech act theory (Searle 1969; Grice 1975) and Halliday’s (1985) three metafunctions of language (textual, ideational, ideological). Based on these

28 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

foundations, Jeffries initially developed ten textual-conceptual functions (TCFs) of texts, like Naming and Describing or Representing Actions/ Events/States (see Table 3.1). Each TCF ‘refers to a feature of the text which is evident in the lexis and grammar (thus textual) but performs a specific type of role in building the world of the text (hence conceptual)’ (Jeffries 2022, p. 7). These TCFs, according to Jeffries (2022, p. 8), are ‘form-meaning dyads’ but with no ‘one-to-one relationship between form and meaning because the forms which deliver the TCF are often made up of a range of forms, sometimes with a prototypical form at the centre and fuzzy boundaries’. Under each of these TCFs, Jeffries lists linguistic realisations like, for instance, for Naming and Describing she recommends to analyse the build-up of noun phrases with their pre- and postmodifications, nominalisation and apposition. In the category of Representing Actions/Events/ States, Jeffries recommends to look at the verb phrase and to analyse transitivity mainly. Jeffries never claimed that these ten textual-conceptual functions were cast in stone and always emphasised the flexibility of her framework (Jeffries 2015a, b, 2014, p. 412). On the topic of languages other than English, as relevant to this book, she sees ‘the potential for different languages and cultures to have a different (sub-)set of textual-­ conceptual functions to English, or to prioritise their use differently to English-speaking communities’ (2014, p. 412). Table 3.1 provides an overview of the original framework with ten TCFs alongside the revised model and points out similarities as well as differences. In her recent book, Jeffries (2022, p. 8f) argues that ‘there is no absolute cut-off between intentional manipulation’ by means of normalising ideologies on the one hand and ‘everyday assumptions’ of those ideologies that are widespread in society and thus subconscious. She argues to thus pay attention to ideation (‘the construction of a particular view of the world through textual choices’ which is ‘neutral’, p.  4, 9) as well as to ideology, both ‘delivered by the same mechanisms, namely the TCFs’ (p. 9). The emphasis on ideation allows Jeffries to apply her framework, or model as she now calls it (Jeffries 2022, p. 9), not only to non-literary, political texts but also to poetry. She argues that ‘there is no theoretical reason why the same mechanisms that produce the ideation underlying this ideology shouldn’t also underlie the aesthetic or literary effects of, for example, contemporary poetry’ (Jeffries 2022, p. 9). In her revised model, Jeffries acknowledges the importance of the ‘soundscape of poems’

3  INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL STYLISTICS AND ANALYSIS OF … 

29

Table 3.1  A synopsis of the tools of Critical Stylistics and Textual Stylistics and their conceptual categories Textual-­ Conceptual Function Critical Stylistics

Textual-­ Formal Realisation/List of Conceptual Analytical Tools Critical Function Stylistics Textual Stylistics

Form(s) in Textual Stylistics

Naming and Describing

Naming and Describing

Noun phrases, adjectival modifications, adjectival phrases

Representing Actions/ Events/States Equating and Contrasting

Representing processes

Exemplifying and Enumerating

Listing

Prioritising

Prioritising

Equating and Contrasting

The choice of a noun to indicate a referent; nominalisation; the construction of noun phrases with modifiers (in pre- and post-position) to further determine the nature of the referent The choice of a verb, transitivity (Simpson 1993, p. 88ff) Antonomy, equivalence (parallel structure) and the creation of oppositional meaning (Jeffries 2010)

Three-part lists (implies completeness without being comprehensive, Jeffries 2010, p. 73), four-part lists to indicate hyponymous and meronymous sense relation, apposition Relates to sentence structure: three ways in which the English language may prioritise elements of its structure: exploiting the information structure (clefting), transformational possibilities (active/passive voice) or subordination possibilities

Choice of main (lexical) verb transitivity type Intensive relational structures and apposition (equating) Syntactic and semantic triggers, including, for example, not X but Y frame Lists of words, phrases or clauses which perform the same function in the higher-level structure Placement in syntactic structure (subordination or fronting)

(continued)

30 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

Table 3.1 (continued) Textual-­ Conceptual Function Critical Stylistics

Textual-­ Formal Realisation/List of Conceptual Analytical Tools Critical Function Stylistics Textual Stylistics

Form(s) in Textual Stylistics

Implying and Assuming

Alluding

Definite noun phrases and of logical presuppositions Triggers of conventional implicatures

Negation

Negating

Hypothesising

Hypothesising

Modality (Simpson 1993)

Presenting Other’s Speech and Thoughts

Presenting Others’ Speech and Thought

Speech and thought presentation (Semino and Short 2004; Short 1996)

Representing Representing Time, Space and Time, Space Society and Society

Evoking

Adapted from Jeffries (2010, 2022)

Relates to Pragmatics (Levinson 1983): existential and logical presupposition, implicature according to the cooperative model of interaction by Grice (1975, 1978) (maxims of quality, quantity, relation, manner) The creation of unrealised worlds (Nahajec 2009)

Deixis, Text World Theory (Werth 1999), Possible World Theory (Ryan 1991), choice of verb tense, metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 2003)

Core negators (no, not), pronouns (none), morphemes (de-), lexical items (deny) Modality from modal verb through modal adverbs and adjectives to lexical verbs of opinion Direct, indirect and free indirect reporting mechanisms Deixis

Onomatopoeia (sound) Layout Line-breaks and stanzas Long, delayed or extended clause elements Minor sentences

3  INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL STYLISTICS AND ANALYSIS OF … 

31

(phonological choices, p. 10ff) and of the use of figurative language (metaphor, p.  12). Furthermore, she now distinguishes between ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ TCFs due to different frequencies of their occurrences in analyses (p. 12f). She introduces an eleventh TCF which she calls ‘Evoking’, see Table 3.1. Our approach to decipher ideological meaning in (political) poems by Bekas sits comfortably between the original framework of Critical Stylistics and the revised model of Textual Stylistics. With her revisions, Jeffries paved the way for our argument that Critical/Textual Stylistics is applicable to poetry (Ibrahim 2018). With this book, we apply the model to poems in Sorani and thus show how it needs to be adapted when dealing with a language other than English. For a more comprehensive introduction to Critical/Textual Stylistics, the reader is referred to Jeffries’ books Critical Stylistics (2010) and The Language of Contemporary Poetry: A Framework for Poetic Analysis (2022) as well as to both present authors’ applications of Critical Stylistics to the topic of representations of crimes and criminals (Tabbert 2015, 2016) and, as mentioned, to our analysis of Bekas’ poems (Ibrahim 2016, 2018, 2021; Ibrahim and Tabbert 2021, 2022a, b). We are aware that The Martyrs’ Wedding carries political meaning as Bekas presents his view and judgement of the incident. We understand political meaning as a sub-section of ideological meaning in that value judgements are added to ideation with the purpose of persuading the reader of a particular point of view on a political topic and the often subtle call for action in reference to a political purpose. With one of the present authors being of Kurdish origin, we are critically aware of a possible bias in our analysis and therefore strictly follow the framework of Critical/Textual Stylistics in order to pre-empt criticism in that respect. However, as every text carries ideological meaning, so does this book which means that despite all precautions there might still be the possibility that our personal views on the incident are visible in this book. For clarification, we acknowledge that linguistic meaning-making happens on two planes, namely meaning is projected by the text through textual features (semantics, pragmatics and grammatical structure) which trigger meaning and, on a different plane, meaning-making happens in the mind of the reader who constructs meaning by bringing their world knowledge to the text (Semino 1997, p. 125). Therefore, Jeffries in her framework of Critical/Textual Stylistics acknowledges this by presenting textual-conceptual functions of texts and by combining textual and

32 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

conceptual meaning-making. This meaning becomes ideological when values are attached to the constructed text world (ideation) following a judgemental process (Jeffries 2015a, b, see also Chap. 1 in this book). Bekas, as we will see, does attach his own value judgements about the incident, and thus a political issue, to the textual meaning and it is our aim to decipher and prove it linguistically. Out of the ten/eleven textual-conceptual functions of texts as formulated by Jeffries (2010, 2022), our focus when analysing The Martyrs’ Wedding in English lies on naming and describing entities from the same-­ named TCF (e.g. the meaning created by Bekas’ repeated use of the numeral adjective ‘three’ in pre-modifying positions when naming the killed students). Furthermore, we look at negation (TCF: Negating) in this rather lengthy poem, foregrounded most prominently in eleven repetitions of the phrase ‘Do not ask (how)’. We show a way to decipher Bekas ideological statement by means of a detailed stylistic analysis and we add a critical view because this text is one of those that has the ‘power to influence us’ (Jeffries 2010, p. 1). We do not, however, analyse rhythmic aspects of the poem because, as Ibrahim has argued elsewhere (2016, p. 206), ‘I do not think these aspects reveal much about the world of the poet’. According to Jeffries, rhythmic aspects belong to ‘more conventional stylistics’ and are not usually ‘exploited for ideological purposes’. In her revised model, Jeffries takes the view that phonological aspects ‘should not be excluded from consideration where [they] contribute[s] to the textual meaning’ (Jeffries 2022, p. 10). In our analysis of the original Sorani texts we found these ‘musical aspects of poetic form’ (p. 10) not leading to new insights into the meaning of these poems.

3.2   Analysis of Sherko Bekas’ Poem The Martyrs’ Wedding We began our analysis by one of the present authors translating the poem into English. In finding the best possible translation, Ibrahim sought the help of native Kurdish speakers who speak English as well. Both poems were given to twelve teachers of English at the English Zone Institute for Languages in Kirkuk and to thirteen English teachers at Kirkuk Private Institute. These persons are between twenty-two and thirty years of age with at least three years of experience in teaching English as a foreign language. They were all asked to first translate the poem individually. Then,

3  INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL STYLISTICS AND ANALYSIS OF … 

33

after a thorough discussion of all translated versions, the translation we present in this book was found jointly. Halo Sherko Bekas in his interview for this book (see Sect. 2.3) emphasises that the ‘translator should be well aware of both languages in a good way and have a rich literary background in both languages’. With our way of translating the poem we are confident to have found a good basis for our analysis. Although Bekas is a well-known poet among speakers of Kurdish, not all of his works have been translated into other languages and we know of no translation of The Martyrs’ Wedding into English. The complete text of the (translated) poem is provided in Appendix II, together with the original Sorani text to enable speakers of Sorani to critically follow our argument. In a next step, we converted the .docx file into a .txt file to make the text readable for the software package AntConc (Anthony 2022). Although we could have counted the words manually, using a software tool allows us to gain results much quicker. At the top of the wordlist (which lists all the words in the poem according to their frequency) we found ‘three’ (28 occurrences) and ‘not’ (17 occurrences)/‘no’ (8 occurrences) which provides the statistical reason for our foci of analysis. 3.2.1   The Cardinal Number ‘Three’ or Naming and Describing the Killed Students The cardinal number ‘three’ first occurs 505 words into the English text. It co-occurs with itself, mainly in clusters, meaning we find at least two occurrences in close proximity to each other. We looked at the biggest cluster ranging from lines 161 through 180 (we underlined all occurrences of ‘three’ and numbered the lines for ease of reference, the full poem is to be found in Appendix II): 159 December 17th, a sunny morning, 160 It was a big marriage. 161 He was the king of our three sons. 162 They were three grooms. 163 There were no brides, 164 There were no three shy flowers 165 There were no three legs of the highland of kalikhani 166 They were three red dressed grooms 167 There were no brides, 168 There were not three girls

34 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

169 Not three (young cute) girls such as white shirt pears 170 they were three Wanawashas with blue T-shirts 171 not three dotted partridges. 172 There were three grooms, no brides. 173 The brides were all the girls of Sulaiymaniyah and Kurdistan! 174 The brides were the daughters of Zozan and Kwestan. 175 They are three knight/horsemen sons-in-law 176 They were three storms 177 But the beloved and the fiancée with flowers in their hands 178 Were thousands of Khaj, Sherry, and Parikh 179 They were three groomed mountains 180 The brides were not three. 181 River … was a bride. 182 Snow … was a bride. 183 Garden was a bride. 184 Poetry … was a bride. (Cited from the poem The Martyrs’ Wedding by Sherko Bekas, complete text in Sorani and in English in Appendix II)

Out of a total of twenty-eight occurrences of the word ‘three’ in the entire poem, fourteen and thus 50% are to be found in the lines of the passage cited above. The numeral adjective ‘three’ in the context of this poem has multiple layers of meaning. ‘Three’ refers to the number of students who were killed in the incident on December 17, 1985. Furthermore, ‘three’ in rhetorics indicates completeness or even perfection. It shows in the Bible (trinity of father, son and holy ghost) as well as in the Qur’an (the shortest Surahs—Al-Kawthar/Abundance (108) and Al-Asr/Time through Ages (103)—consist of three verses each). Three is called a triade, meaning it has a beginning, a middle and an end. ‘Three’ refers to the build-up of the world (heaven, earth, water) as well as of a human being (body, soul, spirit). Time is divided into three periods (past, present, future) as is human life (birth, life, death). ‘Three’ occurs three times in a pre-modifying position to the head noun ‘groom’ (lines 162, 166, 172), naming the killed students. Furthermore, the students are named with reference to nature [Wanawasha/violet (with blue T-shirts), storms, groomed mountains] as well as with reference to family relations (sons, sons-in-law). What makes it clear that these metaphorical naming choices refer to the killed students is the pre-modifying cardinal number ‘three’ that unites all these naming choices and foregrounds the number itself and the different layers of meaning it has in the poem by means of repetition.

3  INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL STYLISTICS AND ANALYSIS OF … 

35

Other than what the three students are, it is also worth looking at what they are not and at what is not there for them which means that we extend our analysis of naming choices to include negated and oppositional meaning. According to the framework of Critical/Textual Stylistics, these are separate textual-conceptual functions of texts, but it has turned out that the textual-conceptual functions cannot always be looked at separately but instead sometimes need to be looked at in tandem in order to describe a phenomenon in its entirety. It clearly has its advantages to follow the framework/model word for word in order to avoid bias. We do, however, find it useful to be guided in our analysis by the poem itself and not by the model. We also do not believe that Jeffries intended for her TCFs to be entirely fenced off from each other as can be deducted from her critical remarks in her conclusion from testing the model on (English) poetry (Jeffries 2022, p.  245ff). In order to pay attention to the separation between textual-conceptual functions listed by the model, we present a separate Sect. 3.2.2 where we specifically look at the use of negation and implied meaning in the poem. Lines 170, 171 present an opposition between what the killed students are and what they are not. Here we notice an ellipsis because subject and predicator (‘they were’) are not repeated in line 171. Nevertheless, the parallel syntactic structure in these two lines is still intact, the same structure as in the majority of lines presented in the extract under scrutiny. However, the syntactic difference by means of the ellipsis leads to an imbalance because of the omission and thus shorter form in line 171. This brings in a subtle feeling that not all is well or a slight uneasiness and increases the pathos of the scene. Parallelism as well as repetition are means to create a foregrounding effect. The noun phrases in a subject complement position are foregrounded (‘Wanawasha with blue T-shirts’, ‘dotted partridges’), both noun phrases being further pre-modified by the cardinal number ‘three’. Comparing the two subject complement slots, however, finds that the parallelism is interrupted as there is postmodification of the head noun by means of a prepositional phrase in line 170 but not in line 171 which underlines this effect of imbalance and uneasiness mentioned before. The just described parallelism together with negation lead to the creation of oppositional meaning between the two head nouns ‘Wanawasha’ (or violet, a flower that grows in Kurdistan) and ‘partridges’ (here Bekas uses the Kurdish word for a female partridge). Although both nouns refer to nature, ‘partridge’ names an animal and ‘Wanawasha’ a flower. Nature is

36 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

at the heart of Bekas’ poetry as Halo Sherko Bekas stated in our interview (Sect. 2.3) and as Malmir (2017) remarked. The meat of a female partridge is more delicious and more costly than that of its male counterpart because female partridges offer less meat as they are smaller. Furthermore, female partridges are known to be more peaceful as opposed to their male counterparts. With regard to politics, female partridges in Kurdish culture are furthest away from any political meaning or dispute. Wanawasha (violet) is used as medication and is either taken orally or sniffed, to treat different diseases such as coughs, flu, breathing sores and all the pain of the throat. In Kurdish culture, the violet is also used to produce olive oil, rosewater or as an ingredient in creams. Smelling the Wanawasha helps to alleviate anxiety and insomnia. Naming the students ‘three Wanawashas’ means that killing them is actually an act of killing nature. This underlines the brutality of the killings and evokes the notion of the three killed students being ‘ideal victims’ (Christie 1986) in terms of their victimhood status, the same as, for example, the fictional character of Little Red Riding Hood from the same-named fairytale who is innocent and unaware of the danger she is in. However, not only the cardinal number ‘three’ or ‘trio’ (line 195) contributes to a foregrounding of the number of the students who were killed. We also find – an actual list of three romantically involved characters (‘Khaj, Sherry, and Parikh’, line 178), – a triple repetition of the modal adverb ‘maybe’ in line 55, – three negated verb forms in a row ‘does not blink, neither faints nor dies’ (lines 61 through 63) as well as – three parallel syntactic structures ‘will be the suns, will be moons, will be kings’ (lines 137 through 139).

Bekas thus foregrounds the number ‘three’ at various linguistic levels, first and quite obviously by a frequent use of the actual numeral adjective but also by means of three-part lists, triple repetition, syntactic structure and negation. The latter brings us to our second part of the analysis, namely the use of negation and thus the creation of implied meaning in the poem.

3  INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL STYLISTICS AND ANALYSIS OF … 

37

3.2.2   Positioning Bekas as the Author: The Use of Negation and Implicitness In this section, we analyse the phrase ‘Do not ask how’/‘Don’t ask how’/‘Don’t ask’/‘Do not ask’ that is repeated eleven times in the poem out of which nine occurrences appear in lines 1 through 33 (the poem has 208 lines in total) in the beginning of the poem. In fact, the poem begins with this phrase. It is presented in interrogative (questions) and imperative (directives) sentences, in lines 17 and 18 it provides both the (rhetorical) question and the subsequent answer. The high frequency of repetitions, especially in the beginning of the poem, has a foregrounding effect and invites if not even urges the reader to do the opposite and ask this question. Furthermore, the frequent repetition creates a contradictory effect to the literal meaning of the phrase: Although the phrase forbids to ask the question ‘how’, the expression of absence draws attention to the possibility of presence (Nahajec 2012, p. 39), that is to ask that question, and thus makes the reader aware of an alternative scenario (Jeffries 2010, p. 106). Negation usually works on two levels, first it creates a pragmatic presupposition (that is the meaning tied to particular words, here the negator ‘not’ added to the auxiliary, (Levinson 1983, p. 167ff)) and secondly, a conversational implicature arises from flouting the cooperation maxims in conversation (Grice 1975) in that the conversation is not as direct and therefore as informative as it could be. In the phrase under scrutiny (‘don’t ask’), the pragmatic presupposition is that the (implied) narrator presupposes that the reader wants to know how this incident happened and that the reader has questions (which is the meaning of the phrase without the negating participle—do ask). By adding a negative particle (the negator ‘not’), the narrator implies that there is no use in asking questions about the incident. That would be the meaning of this phrase if Bekas had used it only once in the poem. However, the repetitive use of the phrase ‘don’t ask’ and its grammatical variations adds an additional third layer of meaning to the discussed meaning conveyed by the pragmatic presupposition and implicature. In fact, the frequent repetition of the phrase annuls negation and brings back the positive meaning of ‘do ask’ the question ‘how’. Why does Bekas use this detour to get the reader to ask this question, especially since he could have said so straight away? This has something to do with hedging, a politeness strategy (Leech 2014) described in pragmatics, where it could be regarded a face-threatening act to be direct and is considered more polite to, for example, express a request indirectly.

38 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

Viewed against the background of Bekas’ poem in the time of the Ba’ath regime and the already ongoing public protests following the incident, it becomes clear why Bekas felt the need to disguise his request to the reader of the poem. In addition, Bekas uses this strategy to avoid presenting his own point of view expressively and opts for an indirect means of expression. Point of view, briefly mentioned in Chap. 1, is the ‘angle of telling’ a story (Simpson 1993, p. 2) and thus a ‘projection of positions and perspectives, as a way of communicating attitudes and assumptions’ (Simpson 1993, p.  2). A comprehensive analysis of point of view expressed in this poem is not possible due to space constraints. However, building on the already established requests with which Bekas addresses the reader (to actually ask the question ‘how’), we end our analysis of The Martyrs’ Wedding with positioning Bekas in regard to the text. The phrase ‘Do not ask how’ is the negation of a verbalisation process (Simpson 1993, p.  90), that is, verbally asking the question ‘how’. Classifying the predicator in terms of transitivity (as recommended by Jeffries under the headline of the second textual-conceptual function, namely Representing Actions/Events/States or Representing Processes) sheds light on ‘how speakers encode in language their mental picture of reality and how they account for their experience of the world around them’ (Simpson 1993, p. 88). Asking the question ‘how’ has an additional layer of meaning which is the metaphorical meaning that by asking this question, the sayer extends a verbal, one-sentence utterance to an act of actively searching for truth and information about how the students died. Considered in light of speech act theory, asking this question thus becomes a speech act (Searle 1969) that, by and in itself, can be regarded as an act of doing and thus a Material Action Intention Process in transitivity terms (Simpson 1993, p. 89, 2014, p. 22ff). Asking questions and searching for the truth metaphorically lead on to a subsequent process of mental cognition, a process of revelation and realisation. This is how Bekas pictures the ideal and thus implied reader (Genette 1980, p. 260, 1988, p. 135ff) of his poem. This reader is able to decipher Bekas’ implicit request to do something by critically searching for answers and thereby revealing the truth. Bekas is the author of the poem as well as the implied author in the poem itself, addressing the implied and therefore ideal reader (Genette 1980, p. 260; Genette 1988, p. 135ff). Bekas furthermore appears as the first person narrator evidenced, for example, in lines 51 through 53:

3  INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL STYLISTICS AND ANALYSIS OF … 

39

51 It is very possible my heart neighbourhood. 52 My eye house. 53 My room of my soul and my abdomen.

The use of the possessive pronoun ‘my’ indicates the presence of a narrator who also addresses a ‘you’ (social deixis, TCF: Representing Time, Space and Society), that is the implied reader, for example by means of the imperative ‘Do not ask how’. Bekas’ presence in the text world of this poem becomes even more obvious by the metaphorical aligning of the narrator’s physical body with urban structure (‘neighbourhood’, ‘house’, ‘room’), a phenomenon we also found and described in relation to Bekas’ poem Sculpture from the collection The Small Mirrors (Ibrahim 2021; Ibrahim and Tabbert 2021, 2022a, b). The effect is that Bekas almost melts in with the city of Sulaiymaniyah (spatial deixis) and its people, and draws the (implied) reader into this union, making it a very personal message by framing (Fillmore 1982, 1985) the incident as a matter that concerns all. However, Bekas by means of politeness strategies (hedging), implied meaning (through repeated use of negation), conceptual metaphors (urban structure is a human body), the use of questions and repetition as rhetorical tools as well as his choice of the predicator (transitivity) presents meaning on an implicit or subtle level instead of providing a onesided, explicit account of events. Bekas asks questions (or rather one question ‘Do ask how?’) and invites the reader to do the same. In this chapter we have looked at selected parts from the rather lengthy poem The Martyrs’ Wedding that deals with a political event and have presented our critical stylistic analysis of it. Our aim was to discover the ideological meaning projected by the text. We acknowledge that there is a certain degree of contextual knowledge necessary to understand the meaning of this poem and we also acknowledge that the analysis in this chapter focuses on the English translation of the original Kurdish text. We hasten to add that one of the present authors is a native speaker of Kurdish who was raised in the Kurdish area of Iraq and therefore possesses the relevant cultural knowledge and is familiar with the Kurdish language to analytically decipher the meaning of this highly political text. The reader is also referred to Chap. 5 in this volume where we present a critical stylistic analysis of the original Sorani text. As mentioned, the linguistic and poetic tools Bekas uses in this poem address an informed reader. However, the beauty of the language he uses (that shines through even in the English translation and is much richer in

40 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

the original text) touches the reader also on an emotional level. This might also be due to the fact that Bekas uses ‘the method of memory narrative and the enumeration of the natural elements of the Kurdistan climate’ (Malmir 2017) the Kurdish reader is familiar with. Bekas raises core issues of identity, belonging and injustice. We are aware that our analysis as presented here is focused on selected passages to which we were pointed by frequency counts. It has to be left to another publication to present an in-depth analysis of the entire poem. In the following chapter we turn to another poem by Bekas and present a critical stylistic analysis of Bloody Crown.

References Abdulqadir, B. (2019). ‘Alienation in Sherko Bekas’ Poetry, Chair Human as a Model’. Arabic Language Department, College of Education/Shaqlawa, Salahaddin University.. Ali, A. (2009). ‘The Structure of Artistic Imagery in Sherko Bekas’ Poems’. Iraq: Sulaymanya. Anthony, L. (2022). ‘AntConc (Version 4.0.3) [Computer Software]’. Tokyo, Japan: Waseda University. Available from https://www.laurenceanthony. net/software. Bekas, H. S. (2018). Halo Sherko Bekas/Interviewer: B. Ali. NRT Days (rozhanay NRT), NRT TV, Sulaymaniyah. Christie, N. (1986). The ideal victim. From crime policy to victim policy. E. A. Fattah. Basingstoke, The Macmillan Press: 17–30. Crystal, D. and D. Davy (1969). Investigating English Style. London, Longman. Darwish, N. and S. Salih (2019). ‘A Comparative Study of Soul’s Alienation in Poe’s The Raven and Bekas’s The Cemetery of Lanterns.’ Journal of University of Garmian 6(1): 510–516. Fahmi, I. M. and S. Dizayi (2018). ‘The Thematic Presence of The Wast Land in Sherko Bekas’ Jingl’. University-Erbil Scientific Journal 1: 71–90. Fillmore, C. (1982). Frame Semantics. Linguistics in the Morning Calm. L. S. o. Korea. Seoul, Hanshin. Fillmore, C. (1985). ‘Frames and the Semantics of Understanding’. Quaderni di Semantica VI(2 (December)): 222–254. Genette, G. (1980). Narrative Discourse: An essay in method. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press. Genette, G. (1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca/New York, Cornell University Press. Ghaderi, F. (2015). ‘Ji nû ve Hizirîna li ser Peydabûna Helbessta Kurdî ya Modern [Revisiting the Emergence of Modern Kurdish Poetry]’. Zarema I(3): 136–141.

3  INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL STYLISTICS AND ANALYSIS OF … 

41

Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. Syntax and semantics 3: Speech Acts. P. Cole and J. Morgan. New York, Academic Press: 41–58. Grice, H. P. (1978). Further notes on logic and conversation. Syntax and semantics 9: Pragmatics. P. Cole. New York, Academic Press: 113–127. Halliday, M.  A. K. (1985). An introduction to functional grammar. London, Edward Arnold. Ibrahim, M.  K. (2016). A Critical Stylistic Analysis of Sherko Bekas’ Snow. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA). https://www.pala.ac.uk/uploads/2/5/1/0/25105678/ibrahim_ mahmood.pdf. Ibrahim, M. K. (2018). The Construction of the Speaker and Fictional World in The Small Mirrors: Critical Stylistic Analysis, University of Huddersfield. Doctoral thesis. Ibrahim, M. K. (2021). The Linguistic Construction of Political Crimes in Sherko Bekas’ Selected poems. On-line Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), [https://www.pala.ac.uk/ uploads/2/5/1/0/25105678/ibrahim.pdf], University of Nottingham, UK. Ibrahim, M.  K. and U.  Tabbert (2021). A Critical Stylistic Analysis of the Construction of State Crimes in Sherko Bekas’ Poem The Small Mirrors. Proceedings of the 20th Meeting of the Texas Linguistics Society, Austin, Texas. Ibrahim, M. K. and U. Tabbert (2022a). Do not ask how? – A Critical Stylistic Approach to Sherko Bekas’ Poem ‘The Martyrs’ Wedding’. In: Fazeli, Seyed Hossein (ed.). Ahwaz/Iran: Ahwaz Publication of Research and Sciences (The Ministry Approval Number: 16171). ISBN: 978-622-94212-2-2. pp.  1–11. Full Articles: The Seventh International Conference on Languages, Linguistics, Translation and Literature. Volume 2. S.  H. Fazeli. Ahwaz/Iran, Ahwaz Publication of Research and Sciences (The Ministry Approval Number: 16171). ISBN: 978-622-94212-2-2: 1–11. Ibrahim, M. K. and U. Tabbert (2022b). The Linguistic Construction of Political Crimes in Kurdish-Iraqi Sherko Bekas’ Poem The Small Mirrors. The Linguistics of Crime. J. Douthwaite and U. Tabbert. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 105ff. Jeffries, L. (2010). Critical Stylistics. The power of English. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. Jeffries, L. (2014). Critical Stylistics. In The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics. M. Burke (ed.). pp. 408–420. Jeffries, L. (2015a). Critical Stylistics. A companion to Stylistics. V.  Sotirova. London/New York, Bloomsbury: 157–176. Jeffries, L. (2015b). Language and ideology. Introducing language and linguistics. L. Cummings and N. Braber. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 379–405. Jeffries, L. (2022). The Language of Contemporary Poetry: A Framework for Poetic Analysis. Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan.

42 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

Jeffries, L. and D.  McIntyre (2010). Stylistics. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. (2003). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press. Leech, G. (2014). The pragmatics of politeness. New York, Oxford University Press. Leech, G. N. (2008). Language in Literature: Style and Foregrounding. London, Pearson Education. Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Mala, A. (2012). ‘binbest le şî’rî şêrku bêkesda û çend babetêkî tir (Bases in Bekas’ poetry and some other subjects)’. Avda. Université de Castilla la Mancha-Espagne. Malmir, T. (2017). ‘A Comparative Study of Love and Politics in the Poems of Sherko Bekas and Hamid Mosadegh’. ‫ همانشهوژپ تایبدا یدرک‬3: 1–30. Mohammad, M. D. A. and A. M. R. Mira (2018). ‘Sherko Bekas’s rebellion poetic language in the volume of: Now a girl is my country’. International Journal of Kurdish Studies 4(2): 534–561. Muhammed, S.  H. (2001). ‘Alienation in Sherko Bekas’ Poetry’. Unpublished MA Thesis. University of Sulaimani. Nahajec, L. (2009). “Negation and the creation of implicit meaning in poetry.” Language and Literature 18(2): 109–127. Nahajec, L. (2012). Evoking the possibility of presence: Textual and ideological effects of linguistic negation in written discourse. Huddersfield, University of Huddersfield. PhD. Nørgaard, N., et al. (2010). Key terms in stylistics. London, Continuum. Omer, S. (2011). ‘Realism in Bekas’ Poetry’. Unpublished MA Thesis. University of Sulaimani. Ryan, M. (1991). Possible worlds, artificial intelligence and narrative theory. Bloomington and Indiana, Indiana University Press. Saussure, F. d. (1986). Course in general linguistics. Chicago, Open Court. Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Semino, E. (1997). Language and world creation in poems and other texts. Harlow, Longman. Semino, E. and M. Short. (2004). Corpus Stylistics: Speech, writing and thought presentation in a corpus of English writing. London, Routledge. Simpson, P. (1993). Language, ideology and point of view. London, Routledge. Simpson, P. (2014). Stylistics: A resource book for students. Abingdon/New York, Routledge. Short, M. (1996). Exploring the language of poems, plays and prose. Essex, Pearson Education. Tabari, P., et  al. (2015). ‘Humanism in Intellectual Style of Sherko Bekas, the Contemporary Poet from Iraqi Kurdistan’. International Journal of Review in Life Sciences 5: 1299–1303.

3  INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL STYLISTICS AND ANALYSIS OF … 

43

Tabbert, U. (2015). Crime and corpus: The linguistic representation of crime in the press. Amsterdam, John Benjamins. Tabbert, U. (2016). Language and crime: Constructing offenders and victims in newspaper reports. London, Palgrave Macmillan. Van Dijk, T. A. (2011). ‘Discourse studies and hermeneutics’. Discourse Studies 13(5): 609–621. Werth, P. (1999). Text worlds: Representing conceptual space in discourse. Harlow, Pearson Education. Wodak, R. and M. Meyer, Eds. (2009). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London, Sage Publications.

CHAPTER 4

Critical Stylistic Analysis of Bloody Crown by Sherko Bekas

Abstract  This chapter continues with the presentation of an analysis of our translation of the second poem entitled Bloody Crown, a poem Bekas wrote to support his friend, Karim Hashimi, a Kurdish fighter for freedom in Iran. This poem, although written in 1985 after the revolution in Iran that ended with the abdication of the last Persian Shah, is a timely poem given the ongoing revolution that we witness in Iran. Keywords  Metaphor • Opposition • Karim Hashimi • izâfa construction • AntConc In this chapter we present and analyse the poem Bloody Crown, written by Bekas for Karim Hashimi in 1985. Hashimi was born in 1940 in Bana. He was a fighter, writer and intellectual from eastern Kurdistan (Iran) who worked for the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDP). From 1947 to 1959, he completed his studies in his hometown and joined Sina University to be a teacher. In 2005, he published a book with the title ‘Hashemite Karimi, Religion and Power’. Bekas and his family lived in Iran for a short period of time; Bekas’ son Halo speaks Farsi.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 U. Tabbert, M. K. Ibrahim, Sherko Bekas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30602-0_4

45

46 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

The poem was published by the Kurdistan Union of Writers and was intended as a motivation for Hashimi not to surrender. We present our translation of the poem here and the Sorani text in Appendix III: Bloody Crown 1 For my friend Karim Hashimi 2 Oh right atrium of my heart 3 Oh the east window of my wounds 4 Oh my Kurdistan of Iran 5 In the country of gown of black 6 My poetry of Syamnd1 (my poetry turned smart) 7 Searched for the eyes of Khaja2 8 The poetry of love with the height of Warmi3 9 Tried to hold a flower in (its) hand 10 And smile with freedom 11 Wanted to put mouth in its mouth 12 It was a clear fountain 13 Actively sprays 14 Asked a lot 15 Searched a lot and saw the smile of none 16 Khaja is a moon 17 A detained moon in jail inside Iran 18 My Khaja 19 Like the reddish apple of BuKan4 garden 20 Its neck is tilted and its eye is full of water5 21 Like - the groom and bride of - Sablax6 22 The beauty of Kurdistan is grounded - the hair distorted 23 Now May 24 Like the pale cheeks of 25 Children of all Iran 26 Annoyed, weak and pale 27 Waiting for a new rain 28 Now my fountain resembles

 Khaja’s lover.  Name of a women that carries cultural connotations. 3  A place in Iran. 4  A city in Iran. 5  Indicated weakness and being tired. 6  A place. 1 2

4  CRITICAL STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF BLOODY CROWN BY SHERKO BEKAS 

47

29 The gaze of Sinnandaj’s7 girls 30 It is blurred 31 It does not become clear until 32 The owls8 leave the country *** 33 Oh part of my life 34 Oh the bloody crown of my head 35 Collect all the gowns predating on other people 37 Like a locked curtain in a dark night 38 From Khan to Saqiz9 39 They cover your body but they will 40 Not cover the candles of the wound of the martyrs 41 Will not block my storm 42 I am the tree of this life 43 you cut me from here 44 I grow from there 45 My pain is a chopper cut 46 The more it cuts me, the stronger I grow 47 Oh water killer! 48 You tie all the hair of the preachers 49 Together 50 Like a rope 51 From ‘Bana’10 52 To Sardasht11 53 You extend it very much 54 Even then, you cannot stop the mouth of my arts 55 And automatic Kalashnikov! *** 56 Oh, the weapon of my right shoulder! 57 The guard of my east castle 58 All the offspring and precedents of ‘Shah’12 59 From ‘Kursh’ to ‘Qachar’13 60 Every day they were killing flowers  Name of a city in Iranian Kurdistan.  Referring to the religious men in Iran (negative connotation in Kurdish). 9  Khan is the ancient name of Piranshahr, local people still call the city by this old name. The distance between Khan and Saqqez is 205 kilometres. 10  City. 11  City. 12  Shah is a royal title for the ruler of Iran, the last Iranian Shah Pahlavi was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution in 1979. 13  Cities. 7 8

48 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

61 They were shedding the blood of the weather 62 But then 63 Flower was not lost 64 Weather did not die 65 The one who died was the Shah, the king 66 The one who lived, who stayed was Kurdistan! *** 67 Oh my battlefield full of eastern sun 68 Oh the flower on the chest of Shirin14 69 The torch in the hand of Farhad15 70 The preacher said 71 I am cancerous 72 I am shield wall against hatred 73 But not tomorrow 74 The day after tomorrow 75 When the compressed flood of my nation 76 Spilled onto 77 The street. 78 Then the gown will tear apart by itself 79 Then I get Khaja 80 Children 81 Flowers and fountains 82 I get all with a smile 83 Then darkness will know 84 If cancer exists and does not stop 85 If it exists and does not die 86 Nothing stops it 87 It is only the sun of a nation 88 Heart of a nation 89 Power of a nation

We began our analysis by converting the text into a .txt file and uploaded it into the software package AntConc (Anthony 2022), the same procedure we applied to The Martyrs’ Wedding (see Sect. 3.2). Highest-ranking words in the wordlist are ‘the’ (44 occurrences), ‘of’ (35), ‘my’ (16), ‘a’ (15), ‘and’ (10), ‘oh’ (9), ‘it’ (8), and ‘not’ (8) which means that these words are used most frequently in Bloody Crown. We will deal with most  The name of a female character in a romantic fairytale.  The male character in the same fairytale.

14 15

4  CRITICAL STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF BLOODY CROWN BY SHERKO BEKAS 

49

of these words in the following Chap. 5. In particular, the use of the (in) definite determiner or the generic form as well as the possessive preposition ‘of’ are examples for the structural differences between English and Sorani. What is most noticeable in Bloody Crown is frequent repetition of single words or structures which is best explained under the headline ‘Equating and Contrasting’ as one of the textual-conceptual functions in the framework of Critical/Textual Stylistics. Furthermore, we noticed the use of metaphors (e.g. ‘owls’, line 32, for religious men in Iran) and negation (e.g. ‘smile of none’, line 15). The latter will also be dealt with in Chap. 5. The presentation of our analysis of Bloody Crown in English will be shorter compared to Chap. 3. The reason is that frequency results point us towards phenomena that are well suited to present structural differences between English and Sorani and how this affects the application of the framework of Critical/Textual Stylistics to Sorani texts. We therefore decided to present our findings in Chap. 5 and in connection with the Sorani text to enable a better understanding of the argument. This means that Chap. 4 is rather short and focused on the textual-conceptual function of Equating and Contrasting that was briefly mentioned in Chap. 3.

4.1   The Textual-Conceptual Function of Equating and Contrasting This textual-conceptual function, as outlined elsewhere (Jeffries 2010a, p. 51ff, b; Tabbert 2016, p. 103ff), ‘deals with the construction of equivalence and opposition’. Equivalence is mainly achieved by means of apposition or subject/object complements, whereas opposition can take various forms, for example, negated opposition (X, not Y), as outlined in more detail elsewhere (Jeffries 2010a, b). In her recent revision of the model, Jeffries (2022, p. 11, 113f) explicitly includes the frame ‘Not X but Y’ in the TCF ‘Equating and Contrasting’, although it would also fit in the TCF ‘Negating’, which indicates the permeability of the different TCFs. We begin our presentation with four lines from the end of Bloody Crown where Bekas pictures the future of Kurdistan. The four lines we present all contain a high-ranking content word, namely the noun ‘nation’ (rank 19 in the wordlist with four occurrences):

50 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

75 When the compressed flood of my nation … 87 It is not only the sun of a nation 88 Heart of a nation 89 Power of a nation (Extract from Bloody Crown)

The possessive relationship between ‘nation’ as a modifier and the (different) head nouns is established by means of a prepositional phrase postmodifying the respective head noun. In the original Sorani text, we find an izâfa construction, further explained in Chap. 5. We argue that this parallel grammatical structure underlines the notion of a united (Kurdish) ‘nation’ by means of repetition but also foregrounds the head nouns ‘flood’, ‘sun’, ‘heart’ and ‘power’ and brings them into a meaning relation with each other. This is the future Bekas pictures not only for the Iranian Kurds but for, at least, South Kurdistan. All four nouns are positively connotated and are used in a metaphorical sense as the ‘compressed flood’ can be understood as the amount of Kurdish people or protesters on the streets, the ‘sun’ relates to radiance and attractiveness of the Kurdish nation but also its warmth in terms of hospitality, ‘heart’ refers to the emotions and feelings of this nation but also its culture, history and legends and, finally, ‘power’ is a reference to the military power of the Peshmerga fighters, called ‘PJAK’ in Iran. Our reading of the meaning of ‘power’ is supported by Bekas mentioning of ‘Kalashnikov’ (line 55) and ‘weapon’ (line 56). We therefore argue that the four head nouns are not put in opposition to each other but complement each other, each emphasising a different aspect of Kurdish strength. In this sense, the ending lines of this poem are a plea for strength based on unity. Another extract from the poem that makes use of parallel structure is to be found in lines 63 through 66: 63 Flower was not lost 64 Weather did not die 65 The one who died was the Shah, the king 66 The one who lived, who stayed was Kurdistan!

Lines 63 and 64 differ in their structure compared to lines 65 and 66. The first two use negation and list things that did not die although someone expected them to ‘die’ or to get ‘lost’. Here we bring in the

4  CRITICAL STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF BLOODY CROWN BY SHERKO BEKAS 

51

textual-­conceptual function of negation/negating (for an explanation we refer to Sect. 3.2.2). The expectation by a discourse participant that these two ‘died’ is a pragmatic presupposition (see Sect. 3.2.2). By negating their deaths, Bekas establishes that the Kurds are like ‘flower’ and ‘weather’ and therefore subject to natural laws as opposed to man-made laws, for example, by the Shah. They cannot be oppressed and will not ‘die’ as no ruler in this world is powerful enough to turn against the laws of nature. In line 65, we find ‘negated opposition’ (Jeffries 2010a, p. 55, b) in the form ‘Not X, Y’ (Jeffries uses ‘X not Y’ but in lines 64 and 65 we find the opposite order). Another type of opposition is to be found in lines 65 and 66, namely opposition created by means of parallelism. These two lines have the same sentence structure, namely a cleft sentence where one ‘takes one of the clause elements from the basic sentence and places it into focal position’ (Jeffries 2010a, p.  83,  b). The analysis of prioritising (e.g. by means of cleft structure) belongs to the textual-conceptual function of ‘Prioritising’ but we discuss this in tandem with the creation of oppositional meaning to fully appreciate the meaning of the lines under scrutiny. This cleft structure has the effect that the ‘Shah’ is placed in opposition to ‘Kurdistan’. One might argue that also the verb ‘died’ is placed in opposition to ‘lived’ because of said parallel structure. However, these two are canonical opposites that are naturalised and come to mind in an almost automatic way. Them being placed in opposition by means of this parallel syntactic structure underlines the opposition that is central to lines 65 and 66, namely the opposition between ‘Shah’ and ‘Kurdistan’. Given the historical context at the time when this poem was written, we argue that Bekas encourages Karim Hashimi, the addressee of this poem, not to lose faith given that one ruler (the Shah) had already been successfully overthrown and that the ‘preachers’ and ‘owls’ could be as well. What succeeds and endures is ‘flower’, ‘weather’ and ‘Kurdistan’, aligning ‘Kurdistan’ with beauty and (the power of) nature. Both nouns ‘flower(s)’ and ‘Kurdistan’ re-occur in the text and are to be found five and three times in the poem respectively. The metaphorical naming strategy Bekas employs here and also in the poem Sculpture, where he uses words from the semantic category of nature to name human entities (see also our interview with Halo Sherko Bekas, where he states that ‘nature is a stable centre’ in his father’s poetry) was explored by the present authors in another publication (Ibrahim and Tabbert 2022).

52 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

4.2   The Use of Metaphorical Meaning-Making We have already pointed out that Bekas used words from the semantic category of nature to name human entities and the Kurds in particular. An example is the use of ‘heart’ and ‘fountain’ in the opening lines of the poem. For an analysis we refer to Chap. 5. Another vivid image that Bekas creates is to be found in lines 48 through 53 that has metaphorical meaning: 48 You tie all the hair of the preachers 49 Together 50 Like a rope 51 From ‘Bana’ 52 To Sardasht 53 You extend it very much

The visibly worn beards of religious man, if tied together, form a rope that does not reach from Banabad to Sardasht (14 kilometres on the map). These two places are in the Kurdish region of Iran, Banabad is a village with a population of 609 inhabitants (according to the census in 2006), Sardasht is the capital of Sardasht County, West Azerbaijan Province in Iran, with a population of 68,165 people (according to the census of 201616). Sardasht was bombed by Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein in 1987 and thus after the poem was written. Wearing a turban and growing a beard is a century-old custom following the example of the Prophet. Wearing a turban symbolises a certain degree of (religious) learnedness and wisdom. Although many Kurds are of Muslim faith, Bekas in these lines of the poem sarcastically remarks that even if the beards of all the religious men were tied together, it would not span said distance. Although there is a simile to be found in line 37 (‘like a rope’), there is an additional layer of metaphorical meaning in these lines. In a metaphorical sense, the beard and its length stand for the religiousness of the wearer and what Bekas is saying metaphorically is that their religiousness is only pretence and that these ‘preachers’ are not as full of religious wisdom as they pretend to be, expressed by the fact that the rope does not even cover such a relatively short distance.  https://www.amar.org.ir

16

4  CRITICAL STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF BLOODY CROWN BY SHERKO BEKAS 

53

A continuation of this metaphor theme is to be found in lines 35 through 40, where we encounter a combination of a parallel structure and a metaphor that continues on the same topic: 35 Collect all the gowns predating on other people 37 Like a locked curtain in a dark night 38 From Khan to Saqiz 39 They cover your body but they will 40 Not cover the candles of the wound of the martyrs

Especially lines 39 and 40 with their ‘negated opposition’ (see previous section) metaphorically construct the physical gown that covers one’s body as a means of hiding torture and killing. Here a conceptual metaphor is used to understand and experience ‘one kind of thing in terms of another’ (Lakoff and Johnson 2003, p. 5). We consciously leave aside any ongoing discussion about and further development of this basic definition. A gown is usually used to cover one’s body and has its origin in the Bible, where Adam and Eve, after they had eaten from the forbidden fruit in paradise, became ashamed of their nakedness and sought to cover themselves (Genesis 3). A gown, apart from covering one’s nakedness, also has the function of warming the human body, it is used to express cultural belonging, status and gender. This familiar concept of ‘gown’ (or conceptual domain) is mapped onto the conceptual domain of covering or hiding all sorts of wrongdoings in order to arrive at the conceptual metaphor ‘wearing a gown is covering wrongdoing’. We acknowledge that this conceptual meaning is supported by the simile ‘like a locked curtain’ which underlines the notion of hiding and secrecy. The noun ‘gown(s)’ together with the pronoun ‘they’, used as an anaphoric reference pointing back to ‘gowns’, occurs five times and thus frequent in the poem. Here is a list of all occurrences: 5 In the country of gown of black 35 collect all the gowns predating on other people 39 They cover your body but they will … 78 Then the gown will tear apart by itself

The black gown is central to this poem as Bekas views Iran as ‘the country of gown of black’ (line 5) and projects a future where the gown will be torn apart (line 78). In this sense, the gown is also used as a symbol of

54 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

oppression and an ongoing fight for freedom. As Hashimi is an activist who is fighting for freedom, he is also put in opposition to the metaphorical ‘gown’ or ‘locked curtain’ (line 37) with freedom to be found on the other side. In this chapter we provided an analysis of some aspects in the English translation of the poem Bloody Crown. We outlined findings from the category of ‘Equating and Contrasting’ and we highlighted some of the metaphors Bekas used. Being aware of the multilayered meanings in Bloody Crown, we intend the following chapter with an analysis of Bloody Crown in Sorani to complement this chapter.

References Anthony, L. (2022). ‘AntConc (Version 4.0.3) [Computer Software]’. Tokyo, Japan: Waseda University. Available from https://www.laurenceanthony. net/software. Ibrahim, M. K. and U. Tabbert (2022). The Linguistic Construction of Political Crimes in Kurdish-Iraqi Sherko Bekas’ Poem The Small Mirrors. The Linguistics of Crime. J. Douthwaite and U. Tabbert. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 105ff. Jeffries, L. (2010a). Critical Stylistics. The power of English. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. Jeffries, L. (2010b). Opposition in discourse: The construction of oppositional meaning. London, Continuum. Jeffries, L. (2022). The Language of Contemporary Poetry: A Framework for Poetic Analysis. Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson (2003). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Tabbert, U. (2016). Language and crime: Constructing offenders and victims in newspaper reports. London, Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER 5

A Critical Stylistic Analysis of Both Poems in Sorani

Abstract  This final chapter deals with issues of translating Bekas’ poems from Sorani to English and provides a critical stylistic analysis of the opening lines of both poems in Sorani. Although Sorani has a different language structure compared to English, particularly when it comes to the use of possessives and the addition of (in)definite articles, this does not hinder the application of Critical/Textual Stylistics to the original Sorani texts if used in a flexible way. Keywords  Sorani • Kurmanji • Translation • izâfa construction • Indefinite article • Generic form • Transitivity • Negation • Presupposition In this final chapter of the book, we provide a critical/textual stylistic analysis of the original Sorani texts of both poems. This chapter intents to complement Chaps. 3 and 4 and is limited to the opening lines of both poems. With our analyses in Chaps. 3 and 4 we focused on the translated texts of both poems. We have, however, not dealt with the original texts yet. We are aware that translating a text is, in fact, the creation of a new text that is different from the original. In this chapter, we will see if the findings so far are in support of our findings from analysing Bekas’ original texts. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 U. Tabbert, M. K. Ibrahim, Sherko Bekas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30602-0_5

55

56 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

We therefore apply Jeffries’ framework/model (2010, 2022) to the original (Sorani) texts and take into consideration the typological differences between English and Sorani to test the applicability of Jeffries’ model to Sorani in particular. This was done before by both present authors, Ibrahim (2018) with Sorani and Tabbert (2015) with German. With this chapter, we build on these foundations and indicate modifications for Jeffries’ model in a way that makes it comprehensive and workable with languages other than English. Furthermore, this chapter contributes to the field of translation studies between English and Kurdish (Sorani).

5.1   Application of Critical/Textual Stylistics to Kurdish Poems The main concern of the study presented in this chapter centres on the use of Critical/Textual Stylistics (Jeffries 2010, 2022) to analyse the poems in Sorani and the differences when applied to the English translations of a Sorani text. Naturally, our work can only analyse those textual features that we encounter in these poems. There may be other distinct features in Kurdish that are not present in our data and that we therefore cannot discuss in this chapter. Stylistics and Critical/Textual Stylistics were developed based on texts in English (Simpson 2004; Leech and Short 2007; Jeffries 2010; Jeffries and McIntyre 2010). They are applicable to Kurdish texts with some modifications and additions (in particular at the intersections between the textual-conceptual functions) that we will point out in this chapter. This is because of the differences between the two languages that we focus on next. For example, we have found that Bekas repeatedly used words semantically related to nature in modifying positions in noun phrases in both poems, Bloody Crown and The Martyrs’ Wedding. Furthermore, the former poem has more nouns than the latter (which has more verbs). We therefore argue that the textual-conceptual function of ‘Naming and Describing’, which deals with the build-up of noun phrases, needs modifications when the framework is applied to Kurdish texts. This is due to the fact that in Sorani, the meaning changes if there is an (in)definite article present in a noun phrase and also where it is placed (in proximity to the head noun or the pre-/postmodifier). This can change the connotations of the noun phrase and is the reason for most of the differences between the Sorani and the English version of the poem Bloody Crown.

5  A CRITICAL STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF BOTH POEMS IN SORANI 

57

We begin with some general remarks on the Kurdish languages in comparison to English, followed by our analysis of the opening lines of both poems in Sorani. Kurdish belongs to the Western Iranian group of Indo-Iranian languages. This group is a branch of the Indo-European language family. There are two main dialects in modern Kurdish. The first is Kurmanji, which is the native language of most of the Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Armenia and Azerbaijan, an area known among the Kurds as ‘North Kurdistan’. This language is spoken by an estimate fifteen to seventeen million speakers. The second dialect is Sorani, the language of the vast majority of Kurds in Iraq and Iran (about five million speakers each), in an area known as ‘South Kurdistan’. Although both dialects are closely related, Kurmanji and Sorani differ in their basic structure, vocabulary and idioms. In addition, Kurmanji is still not a unified or standardised language, whereas Sorani has been the second official language in Iraq since its foundation after World War I.  There have been activities in the literature for many decades to use Sorani more often. In contrast, Kurdish has never been an official language in Iran. Nevertheless, there are noteworthy Kurdish publications in Iranian Kurdistan, especially after the Iranian Revolution in 1978/79. Outside this area (in the south to Kermanshah and in the east as far as Bijar), the language is known as Gorani or South Sorani, which has a language structure derived from Persian but with Kurdish vocabulary. It is noteworthy that Sorani Kurdish dictionaries are not easy to find (Wahby and Edmonds 1966; McCarus 1967; Jolaoso and Olajimbiti 2020). Sorani Kurdish is written with a modified Arabic alphabet. Throughout this chapter, we use the Latin alphabet to make it easier for the reader to follow our argument. For this purpose we used the Arabic to Latin online converter. 1 There are some descriptive or prescriptive grammatical studies such as, for example, by Haig and Matras (2002) and critical literary studies as, for example, by Mohammad and Mira (2018) on Kurdish. However, no study has yet applied stylistic analysis to Sorani data. Our study is a contribution to the application of (Critical/Textual) Stylistics to Sorani language data. It is also useful for teachers of Kurdish literature and language as C ­ ritical/ Textual Stylistics provides a systematic set of tools, which can also be used for analyses of prose, drama and poems (see Sect. 3.1). 1  http://www.lexilogos.com/keyboard/kurdish_conversion.htm, accessed on November 14, 2022.

58 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

Table 5.1  Enclitic pronouns in Kurdish qutabim kuřekim dáchim

Student (copula verb, first-person singular possessive) Son (first-person singular possessive) Go (first-person singular possessive)

I am a student a son of mine I go

The poem Bloody Crown consists of 341 words in the original Sorani text while it is 478 words long in the English translation. The Martyrs’ Wedding consists of 922 words in Sorani and 1,163 in the translation. The increase in words is due to the fact that articles, pronouns and present copulas are enclitic which means they are part of the preceding words in Sorani (and not separate words as in English) as in the following examples (Table 5.1).

5.2  The Textual-Conceptual Function of Naming and Describing We begin our analysis with the textual-conceptual function of ‘Naming and Describing’ strategies in the two poems. For this purpose, we sorted the noun phrases from the beginning lines of both poems into categories and found two predominant patterns in the data: an izâfa construction and modifying adjectives. With our analysis we demonstrate why some patterns are culturally sensitive or embedded even and how cultural connotations play a crucial role in the analysis of noun phrases. We show features related to ‘Naming and Describing’ that are present in Sorani but not to be found at all or with minor differences in English. We find it useful to discuss our findings from our ‘Naming and Describing’ analysis together with findings from other textual-conceptual functions to avoid repetition. In Bloody Crown, Bekas used eyi/‘Oh’ in the beginnings of lines 2 through 4 (as well as in lines 33, 34, 56, 67 and 68). In Kurdish, similar to English, ‘Oh’ is used when introducing something new, when talking to someone (as a form of address) or when one wishes to express something in an emotional way. In the context of this poem, Bekas addresses ‘the atrium of my heart’ (line 2), ‘the east windows of my wounds’ (line 3) and ‘my Kurdistan of Iran’ (line 4) to enforce emotionality of the message. The interjection ‘oh’ is followed by an izâfa construction. In this construction, the izâfa vowel i links two parts of a possessive construction

5  A CRITICAL STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF BOTH POEMS IN SORANI 

59

and can be compared to the use of the possessive  preposition ‘of’ in English. In Sorani, i is used as a modifier and can be combined with an adjective or a noun. This construction is different in Sorani compared to English in where the article is placed. There are three uses of an article in Kurdish: definite, indefinite and a zero article. The use of a zero article in a noun phrase constructs a generic noun phase (absolute) or, in other words, establishes a permanent relation between the head noun and the modifier. For example, in the noun phrase gwêçkîleyi rastî dllm/‘right atrium of my heart’ (line 2), the modifier right is a permanent and not a temporary property of heart, referring to the commonly known fact that human hearts have a right atrium. Bekas used ‘right atrium’ because it refers to the part of the heart that receives deoxygenated blood from the veins/body and pumps it into the ventricles of the heart and out through the left atrium into the body again. During this process the blood is enriched with oxygen. The heart is metaphorically known as the place where pain is felt, and therefore the right atrium, in a metaphorical sense, is the place where the pain first hits the heart and is then transferred on to the deeper parts of the heart (the ventricles) which metaphorically deepens the pain felt. This line emphasises the severity of the pain. Furthermore, the right atrium receives deoxygenated blood which metaphorically refers to poverty and deprivation. The examples in Table 5.2 all display an izâfa construction, which links noun and modifier. Furthermore, we need to examine the use of the article in these examples as they carry different meanings for Sorani speakers. In Example 2, because the definite article –ka-/‘the’ is part of the modifier (‘wounds’) and not the head noun (‘window’), the canonical opposite Table 5.2  izâfa construction in the opening lines 1–12 of Bloody Crown Line in Poem

Example

Translation

2 3 4 5 6 8 9 10 12

1. gwêçkîleyi rastî dllm! 2. epencereyi rojhellatî zamekanm 3. kurdistanî êranm! 4. wllatî cbeyi reşa 5. şî’rî tazem 6. şî’rî şeydayi 7. destî gullê 8. zerdexeneyi hîçî 9. kanîyeki rûn

right atrium of my heart east window of my wounds my Kurdistan of Iran country of gown of black my poetry of Syamnd/new Poetry of love Hand of flower Smile of freedom Fountain of clear

60 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

of ‘wounds’ (which is ‘safety/health’) automatically comes to mind as a desirable condition. 2 Bekas uses this naturalised opposition between the state of being healthy and that of being wounded to call for an end of the bloodshed in a subtle way. It is slightly different in Example 9, where the indefinite article -yek (‘a’ or ‘an’) is part of the head noun (‘fountain’). Here, the reader/hearer might imagine a clear fountain in opposition to a fountain with turbid water. We combine the textual-conceptual function of ‘Naming and Describing’ with the TCF ‘Equating and Contrasting’, concerned with the linguistic construction of oppositional meaning on different levels of language structure and which we encountered in Sect. 4.1. The use of the definite article enables the creation of oppositional meaning in this line due to the grammatical structure of Sorani. In Example 5, meaning is constructed by a combination of an enclitic possessive preposition and a generic noun (without an article). Therefore, şî’rî tazim/‘my poetry of new’ does not refer to poems as a literary genre but, we argue, rather to the feeling of the poet. In order to create a different meaning, the definite article could have been used as part of the noun, for example şî’rî tazakam. In Examples 4 through 6, the generic meaning of the nouns is expressed by the omission of any article (zero article). This indicates that the stated facts (‘poetry of Syamnd’, ‘poetry of love’ and ‘country of gown of black’) must not be questioned. This is an important addition at the intersection between ‘Naming and Describing’ and another of the ten textual-­ conceptual functions, namely ‘Assuming and Implying’ (new: Alluding). The effect is an explicit and categorical unification between poetry and love/Syamnd and between country, gown and black. By using these constructions (this is the ‘element of choice’ we mentioned in Sect. 3.1), the relationship between ‘Iran’ and ‘Kurdistan’ (line 4), ‘country’ and ‘black’ and ‘gown’ (line 5), ‘poetry’ and ‘love’ (line 8), ‘hand’ and ‘flower’ (line 9) as well as between ‘fountain’ and ‘clear’ (line 12) is inseparable and treated as permanent. This finding complements our argument in Sect. 4.2 that the (metaphorical) meaning of ‘gown’ plays a crucial role in this poem. 2  Another canonical opposition, one might argue, exists between the second level modifier ‘east’ which brings to mind the opposite ‘west’ and, in this context, is linked to Eastern and Western Kurdistan, one is Iran and the other Iraq.

5  A CRITICAL STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF BOTH POEMS IN SORANI 

61

In these constructions, the head nouns include the normal possessive preposition and unstressed enclitics are added to the noun. An enclitic possessive preposition may be added to the generic form (dl/‘heart’), the definite (dlakam/heart-DEF-my) or indefinite (dlekm/heart-INDEF-­my) forms of the noun. By adding a possessive pronoun (‘my’) to the generic form as in line 2 (Example 1), the noun (‘heart’) gets a figurative meaning. In order to achieve actual and concrete meaning, the definite form is used. The noun ‘heart’ in its generic form as used in line 2 of the poem refers to emotions of fondness and love. For more information on article placement in Kurdish we refer to Thackston (2006). Similarly, zamekanm/‘my wounds’ (line 3) conveys a negative experience that does not directly result from any physical wounds but is metaphorical in meaning. We refer back to Sect. 4.2 and lines 39–40 of the poem, where we argued that the ‘gown’ is unfit to cover torture and killings. Based on the outlined grammatical differences, we are able to distinguish different spheres of emotions in these opening lines of Bloody Crown. On the one hand, there is a sphere of romantic disposition (poetry of love, hand of flower in lines 8 and 9). On the other hand, there is a sphere of negative (sad/painful) emotions (east window of my wounds, country of gown of black, lines 3 and 5). We notice instances of metaphorical meaning like in line 9 (hand of flower) where we find the conceptual metaphor a human being is a flower and thus has a (human) hand. Hand stands for the whole human being in a figurative comparison and is thus metonomy. We now turn to The Martyrs’ Wedding where most nouns are used without an article. Similar to English, the lack of an article before these nouns makes them generic and thus referring to a whole class of things instead of one thing in particular. The use of generic nouns makes the reader feel that the things mentioned are rather vague (Table 5.3). If we look more carefully at these nouns, we can distinguish different semantic fields. There are nouns used in relation to the human body (heart, head, eye(lids), wounds, tears, and, arguably, chest). Next there are feelings (pain, concern, love). Then there are words from positively connotated nature (partridge, Wanawasha, nest, sky, cloud, mountain, thunder), words that refer to urban structure (Sulaiymaniyah, streets, houses) and, finally, words that we group into the broader semantic category of human life (words, poems, chest). We argue that chest is ambivalent in its meaning in line 14, as it can either mean a wooden chest where papers full

62 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

Table 5.3  Nouns in the opening lines 1–14 of The Martyrs’ Wedding

Dll Slêmanî swêske Hêlane şî’r Asmanêke Pol Wşey sewz û sûrî sere grrgrtuweyş hewrêkî nzim Newîy Ezimirr Grme Zhanewe şeqam û mallanda şî’rîş Serçaweyeke binarî çawanewe Serçaweye Xem Brûske ewînî wenewşeyî Çaw Rêga Brûske Trûsk zamî şî’ranem bestellekî singed

heart Sulaiymaniyah female partridge nest poetry a sky herd red and green words eager head a low cloud offspring Azmar booms pain streets and houses poetry a source mountain of eyes tears concern thunder love of Wanawasha eye path thunder shine? wounds of my poems ice of chest/frozen chest

with poems are stored or this noun refers to the human chest and would then be grouped into the semantic category of the human body. We find the use of ‘Wanawasha’ (a violet that grows in Kurdistan) in these opening lines interesting and the reader might remember that we pointed out this flower in our interpretation of lines 159–184 of this poem in English (see Sect. 3.2.1). The name ‘Wanawasha’ carries positive associations in Kurdish. It is a small flower, it is clearly pretty and smells sweet. Kurdish readers/hearers immediately relate ‘Wanawasha’ to this positive image. ‘Wanawasha’ was also used historically to alleviate stress which correlates with the outrage the victims’ families and the Kurdish people in Sulaiymaniyah felt over the killings of the students. In the context of this

5  A CRITICAL STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF BOTH POEMS IN SORANI 

63

poem, the noun ‘Wanawasha’ interestingly enforces the innocence of the victims. Whereas Wanawasha is a flower, partridge is an animal and this noun has positive connotations for Kurdish speakers as the meat, especially of the female bird, is very delicious (again we refer to Sect. 3.2.1). As we have pointed out there, female partridges in Kurdish culture are furthest away from any political meaning or dispute. Mentioning a stress-relieving flower and a peaceful bird in the opening lines of this poem underline the striving of the people for peace and tranquility. To summarise, we found that naming strategies in the opening lines of both poems show repeated use of an izâfa construction, through which a possessive relationship between the head noun and the modifier (e.g. ‘hand of flower’) is established. We also found repeated use of generic noun phrases (e.g. şî’rî/‘poetry’, three instances in Bloody Crown and one in The Martyrs’ Wedding). Furthermore, we pointed out an infrequent use of the definite article (one instance in The Martyrs’ Wedding: ḧucrekeyi «nalî»/‘Nali’s room’) and a limited number of instances where an izâfa construction is used in combination with an adjective (four instances, e.g., kanîyek rûn/‘fountain of clear’ in line 12 in Bloody Crown). The low frequency of definite articles as well as the frequent use of generic nouns makes the world constructed in both poems appear new and unfamiliar, as if this world were somehow out of place. This increases the alienation the speaker feels from the situation portrayed in the poems. This effect is due to the fact that definite articles trigger an existential presuppositions (Levinson 1983, p.  172ff), meaning ‘assumptions that are built into a text’ (Tabbert 2016, p. 113). If, for example, one talks about ‘The king of France’, the use of the definite article presupposes that such a king exists (Levinson 1983, p. 172). The low frequency of definite determiners therefore makes the things mentioned in both poems new and unfamiliar. The frequent use of the izâfa construction that we pointed out in the opening lines of Bloody Crown establishes relations between these ‘new’ things and therefore creates a new (text)world with its own rules and relations. The reader/hearer brings their own knowledge of the abstract concepts mentioned to the text which allows for the text to be meaningful to a varied audience with individual background knowledge. We again felt the need to cross boundaries between the textual-conceptual functions of ‘Naming and Describing’ and ‘Assuming and Implying/Alluding’ to  fully

64 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

appreciate the meaning we deciphered. Having looked at naming strategies we  now  proceed with an analysis of the predicators in the opening lines of both poems.

5.3  The Textual-Conceptual Function of Representing Actions, Events and States or Representing Processes We began with an analysis of the predicators in the opening lines of Bloody Crown and noticed that the first verb occurs in line 7 only. In lines 7–15 we find eight verb phrases: ‘searched’ (lines 7 and 15) ‘tried to hold’ (line 9), ‘smile’ (line 10), ‘wanted to put’ (line 11), ‘sprays’ (line 13), ‘asked’ (14) and ‘saw’ (line 15). These verbs belong to the following transitivity categories: material action intention processes (searched, tried to hold, wanted to put, sprays), verbalisation process (asked), mental perception (saw) and mental reaction (smile) (Simpson 1993, p. 88ff, 2014, p. 22ff). The frequent use of material action processes (not only in the opening lines but throughout the poem) signals that the fictional world projected by this poem is less static but rather dynamic and thus mirrors the dynamics of protests and uprising in the years of the revolution in Iran. Interestingly, Jeffries (2022, p. 246) argues for an inclusion of the semantic labels ‘stative/dynamic’ in the TCF ‘Representing Processes’ based on her analysis of poetry. Furthermore, this high frequency of material action creates the expectation that there is an actor and, ideally, also a goal like in the invented sentence ‘Mary kicked the ball’ where Mary is the actor and the ball is the goal. The actors are ‘poetry’ and ‘fountain’ which are metaphorical naming strategies for the people of Iran (TCF: Naming and Describing). In the opening lines of this poem, Bekas states his friendship with Karim Hashimi and underlines that this poem was written to support Hashimi in his fight for freedom for the Kurds and against oppression by the religious leaders (Mullahs) in Iran. This poem, although written in 1985, cannot be surpassed in terms of topicality given the ongoing revolution in Iran at the time of writing this book. We move on with an examination of the extended verb phrase zerdexeneyi hîçî nedî/‘saw the smile of none’ (line 15), a mental process of perception in combination with negation. Negation is the absence of something and a separate TCF in Critical/Textual Stylistics. In order to understand absence, the absent part first needs to be imagined as existing which is a necessary intermediate state to then picture absence

5  A CRITICAL STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF BOTH POEMS IN SORANI 

65

(Hidalgo-­Downing 2000; Nahajec 2009, 2012, 2015, 2021). Negation therefore is a ‘powerful linguistic device because the expression of absence draws attention to the possibility of presence’ (Nahajec 2012, p.  39, quoted in Tabbert 2016, p. 126). What Bekas is saying in line 15 is that nobody was smiling which draws attention to the fact that at least somebody was expected to be smiling (pragmatic presupposition) and underlines the uneasiness of the situation projected by the text as mentioned in Sect. 5.2. Furthermore, ‘smile’ occurs in lines 10 and 15 and in both instances the smile is denied as ‘poetry’ ‘tried’ to smile (lines 8–10) but did not. The verb ‘saw’ is a mental process of perception and usually done by humans. Here, it is an inanimate ‘clear fountain’ that ‘saw’ and therefore perceived something. This deviation from expectations has a foregrounding effect and underlines that ‘fountain’ is, in fact, a metaphorical name for people who ‘saw the smile of none’. Our reading of line 15 correlates with the use of inanimate ‘poetry’ that ‘tried’ to ‘smile with freedom’ and ‘wanted to put mouth in its mouth’ which entails that these actions create positive emotions evoked by gestures between people and that ‘poetry’ is therefore a metaphorical naming strategy for human beings seeking happiness. These naming strategies (TCF: Naming and Describing) have the effect of creating proximity in the perception of these pleasant acts and make the reader/hearer feel that these people named in the poem are innocent and very beautiful and emotional entities. The poem sets a romantic scene by mentioning Syamnd and Khaja, who are lovers in a well-known Kurdish fairytale. In addition, treating poetry as humanlike suggests unity between human beings and their feelings. This personification of poetry produces a tension between reassurance on the one hand and, as mentioned before, alienation through the use of generic nouns. The fact that humans can do good things, even in difficult circumstances, is part of the ideological meaning that Bekas wants to convey. Halo Sherko Bekas refers to the ‘philosophy of humanity’ in his father’s poems (see Sect. 2.3).

5.4  The Textual-Conceptual Function of Equating and Contrasting Bekas used parallelism to construct equivalence. Parallelism is the repetition of the same structures at phrase-, clause- or sentence-level. Parallelism is used to foreground specific words or concepts and often makes an oppositional meaning apparent. In Bloody Crown, lines 2–4 bear witness to this.

66 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

Table 5.4  Parallel structure in Bloody Crown eyi gwêçkîleyi rastî dllm! eyi epencereyi rojhellatî zamekanm eyi kurdistanî êranm!

Oh right atrium of my heart Oh the east window of my wounds Oh my Kurdistan of Iran

The parallel syntactic structure foregrounds the head nouns (‘atrium’, ‘window’, ‘Kurdistan’) and the (post)modifiers (‘heart’, ‘wounds’, ‘Iran’) and sets them into a meaning relation with each other. We have already established that ‘right’ refers to eastern Kurdistan (Iran) and ‘heart’ is a metaphorical naming choice for the people of Iran. The first and third lines in Table  5.4 show the nouns used in their generic form whereas in the middle, a definite article is used. This alteration from generic to definite and back to generic constructs a continuity of emotion. In this trio of parallel syntactic structure the middle line is set  apart from the other two in that extra emphasis is put  on this middle line. Turning to The Martyrs’ Wedding, one could argue that the repetition of the phrase ‘do not ask how’ is a form of parallelism and we have already established (see Sect. 3.2.2) that this phrase is highly foregrounded in the poem. However, given the meaning of this phrase, we opted for presenting our analysis in the TCF ‘Negation’ and will continue with it in the next section.

5.5  The Textual-Conceptual Function of Negation/Negating The Martyrs’ Wedding begins with the phrase meprsin çon/‘Do not ask how’. This clause is repeated three times (lines 1, 4 and 10) in the opening lines that we examine (we refer to our analysis of this phrase in Sect. 3.2.2). The phrase is presented in the form of different sentence types, namely as an interrogative (question, lines 1 and 4) and an imperative (directive, line 10). The questions are, of course, rhetorical as Bekas provides the answer in his poem as outlined above. The frequent repetition of this phrase throughout the entire poem has a foregrounding effect in that it makes this phrase central to the meaning of this poem and invites, if not even urges, the reader to do the opposite and ask this question.

5  A CRITICAL STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF BOTH POEMS IN SORANI 

67

We found other instances of negation in The Martyrs’ Wedding, namely in line 10 (ger xem nebê be brûske/‘if concern does not become a thunder’) and in lines 11 and 12 (ewînî wenewşeyî çawî êwe, nebê be rêga û tiruske/‘if Wanawasha love of your eye does not become a path and a thunder’). Both instances construct an alternative scenario, namely the possibility of presence. In these alternative scenarios, concern does become a thunder and Wanawasha love does become a path and a thunder. We wish to point out that ‘thunder’ has positive connotation in Kurdish and we argue that in this alternative scenario, the positively connotated thunder becomes a force and relates to the request to ask questions. In the poem Bloody Crown we found negation in the following lines: - line 15 ‘saw the smile of none’ - line 31 ‘does not become clear until’ - lines 39, 40 ‘they will not cover’ - line 41 ‘will not block my storm’ - line 54 ‘you cannot stop the mouth of my arts’ - line 63 ‘Flower was not lost’ - line 64 ‘Weather did not die’ - line 73 ‘But not tomorrow’ - line 84 ‘does not stop’ - line 85 ‘does not die’ - line 86 ‘Nothing stops it’

In all these instances, Bekas uses negation to draw attention to the possibility of presence, namely that people smile, things become clear, the body is not covered and protests are not blocked. Here again, like in The Martyrs’ Wedding, Bekas uses negation as a hedging strategy to convey his message of support and encouragement in a subtle and indirect way. Lines 39 and 40 present negation together with oppositional meaning, indicated by the conjunction ‘but’. Bekas refers to covering of the female body with a head scarf (rusari) or a niqab and of the male head by means of a turban (especially among the religious leaders in Iran) as a superficial demand and therefore unsuitable to cover the wrongdoings committed ‘under’ such cover, like the killing of martyrs. We did not mention the textual-conceptual functions of ‘Exemplifying and Enumerating/Listing’ as well as ‘Hypothesising’, ‘Presenting Others’ Speech and Thought’ and ‘Representing Time, Space and Society’ in this chapter as we were guided by the text and used the framework of Critical/

68 

U. TABBERT AND M. K. IBRAHIM

Textual Stylistics in a rather flexible way and according to the findings in the texts. Interestingly, Jeffries herself in her revision to the model distinguishes between core and peripheral TCFs and three out of the four mentioned TCFs that we did not cover here are regarded as peripheral. With reference to the core TCF ‘Representing Time, Space and Society’ (the use of deixis) we point to our various instances of mentioning spatio-­ temporal or social pointers as, for example ‘I’/‘you’ in relation to the implied author/reader or the mentioning of the city of Sulaiymaniyah as the place where the killings occurred, both in Sect. 3.2.2. This chapter focused on the application of Critical/Textual Stylistics to poems in Sorani and has shown that some adaptation is in order due to the differences between Sorani and English. Nevertheless, we can confidently argue, that Critical/Textual Stylistics is applicable to Sorani texts if used in a flexible and adapted way. We put forward the argument that the textual-­conceptual functions can guide the analysis in order to avoid bias but that the interpretation of the findings requires to combine different textual-conceptual functions to explain more comprehensively how meaning making is achieved in the text. Although Sorani has a different language structure compared to English, particularly when it comes to the use of possessives and the addition of (in)definite articles, this does not hinder the application of Critical/Textual Stylistics when one bears these differences in mind. Sherko Bekas’ poetry, for sure, is precious material for the testing and adapting of the model of Critical/Textual Stylistics to Sorani texts. Or, as we would rather frame it, Critical/Textual Stylistics helps to uncover the multiple layers of meaning in Bekas’ poems and thus to fully appreciate Bekas’ ‘deep language’ (Halo Sherko Bekas in Sect. 2.3).

References Haig, G. and Y.  Matras (2002). ‘Kurdish linguistics: a brief overview’. STUF-­ Language Typology and Universals 55(1): 3–14. Hidalgo-Downing, L. (2000). Negation, text worlds and discourse: The pragmatics of fiction. Stamford, Ablex. Ibrahim, M. K. (2018). The Construction of the Speaker and Fictional World in The Small Mirrors: Critical Stylistic Analysis, University of Huddersfield. Doctoral thesis. Jeffries, L. (2010). Critical Stylistics. The power of English. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

5  A CRITICAL STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF BOTH POEMS IN SORANI 

69

Jeffries, L. (2022). The Language of Contemporary Poetry: A Framework for Poetic Analysis. Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan. Jeffries, L. and D. McIntyre (2010). Stylistics, Cambridge University Press. Jolaoso, O. and E.  Olajimbiti (2020). ‘The pragmatic use of verisimilitude in selected interactions between terminally-ill patients and their caregivers’. International Journal of Language and Literary Studies (3): 80–93. Leech, G. N. and M. Short (2007). Style in fiction: A linguistic introduction to English fictional prose, Pearson Education. Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. McCarus, E. N. (1967). ‘A Kurdish-English Dictionary, Dialect of Sulaimania, Iraq’. Mohammad, M. D. A. and A. M. R. Mira (2018). ‘Sherko Bekas’s rebellion poetic language in the volume of: Now a girl is my country’. International Journal of Kurdish Studies 4(2): 531–558. Nahajec, L. (2009). ‘Negation and the creation of implicit meaning in poetry’. Language and Literature 18(2): 109–127. Nahajec, L. (2012). Evoking the possibility of presence: Textual and ideological effects of linguistic negation in written discourse. Huddersfield, University of Huddersfield. PhD. Nahajec, L. (2015). ‘Being creative with negation’. Babel The Language Magazine (February): 35–39. Nahajec, L. (2021). Negation, Expectation and Ideology in Written Texts: A textual and communicative perspective. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins. Simpson, P. (1993). Language, ideology and point of view. London, Routledge. Simpson, P. (2004). Stylistics: A resource book for students, Psychology Press. Simpson, P. (2014). Stylistics: A resource book for students. Abingdon/New York, Routledge. Tabbert, U. (2015). Crime and corpus: The linguistic representation of crime in the press. Amsterdam, John Benjamins. Tabbert, U. (2016). Language and crime: Constructing offenders and victims in newspaper reports. London, Palgrave Macmillan. Thackston, W. M. (2006). Sorani Kurdish – A Reference Grammar with Selected Readings, Harvard University. Wahby, T. and C. J. Edmonds (1966). ‘A Kurdish-English Dictionary’.

‫‪Appendix I‬‬

‫)‪Interview with Halo Sherko Bekas (in Sorani‬‬ ‫چۆن باسی باوکت دەکەیت بۆ ئەو کەسانەی کە نایناسن؟‬ ‫چ جۆرە کەسێک بوو؟‬ ‫*كەسێكی لەسەرخۆ و ئارام بوو‪ ،‬زیاتر گوێی دەگرت وەك لەوەی‬ ‫قسە بكات‪ ،‬كەسێكی دڵپاك و بە سروشت نەرم و نیان بوو‪،‬‬ ‫زۆر پابەند بوو بە كاتەوە لە كاتی خۆیدا هەر بەڵێنێكی بدایە دەیكرد‪..‬‬ ‫چ شتێک زیاتر سەرنجی تۆی ڕاکێشاوە لە شیعرەکانی باوکتدا؟‬ ‫*دیارە زمان پاراو و ساكار و قووڵ دەینووسی‪ ،‬هەمیشە‬ ‫واهەست دەكەیت كە تۆش ئەتوانی وا بنووسی بەاڵم نەتنووسیوە؟‬ ‫ئەوە سەخڵەتی هەرجوانی شیعرەكانیەتی‪.‬‬ ‫چۆن شیعرەکانی باوکت جیاوازە لەو شیعرانەی کە باپیرت فایق بێکەس نووسیوویەتی؟ و لەو‬ ‫شیعرانەی خۆت دەینووسیت؟‬ ‫*شیعرەكانی باوكم وەكو ووتم ساكارێكی سەختە و زمان‬ ‫تێدا لە ئاستێكی ئیجگار بااڵدایە‪ ،‬شیعرەكانی فایەق بێكەسی‬ ‫باپیرم زیاتر شیعری بۆنەیی و نیشتمانپەروەرین لە ڕووی هونەری‬ ‫شیعرەوە تا ڕادەیەك سادەن بۆ نموونە سادەیەكی هەست‬

‫‪71‬‬

‫‪© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature‬‬ ‫‪Switzerland AG 2023‬‬ ‫‪U. Tabbert, M. K. Ibrahim, Sherko Bekas,‬‬ ‫‪https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30602-0‬‬

‫‪Appendix I‬‬

‫ ‪72‬‬

‫جوانن وەكو شیعرەكانی“هێمن“ …شیعرەكانی خۆم زیاتر كورتن و حاڵەتێكی كورتە نامەی‬ ‫شیعریی هەیە كە لە دونیایی ئیمڕۆی تەكنەلۆجیادا زیاتر برەویان هەیە‪ .‬لە ڕووی ناوەڕۆكەوە‬ ‫نزیكترن لە شیعرەكانی باوكمەوە زیاتر وەك لە شیعریی باپیرمەوە‪.‬‬ ‫شێوازی بنەڕەتی شیعرەکانی باوکت چۆنە؟‬ ‫*شێوازێكی تایبەت بە خۆیەتی‪ ،‬سروشت تێدا سەنتەریكی‬ ‫جێگیری هەیە‪...‬فەلەسەفەیەكی ئینسانی لە پشتیەوە بەردەوام‬ ‫كار دەكات‪.‬‬ ‫بە ڕەچاوکردنی ئەوەی کە هەم تۆ وهەم باوک و باپیرت شاعیرن‪ ،‬ئایە شیعر شتێکە کە لە‬ ‫سەرەتاوە لە ناخی شاعیردا بوونی هەیە یاخود بۆماوەییە؟‬ ‫*شیعر نووسین بۆ ماوەیی نییە‪ ،‬زیاتر بەهرەو خۆ پەروەردە كردنە‬ ‫لە ڕێگای خوێندنەوەی بەردەوامەوە‪...‬بەاڵم لە هەمان كاتدا هاندانێكی مەعنەویش هەیە ئەگەر‬ ‫باوك و باپیرت شاعیر بن‪...‬‬ ‫زۆربەی شاعیرانی تر باوك و باپیریان شاعیر نەبوون و زۆر شاعیری گەورەشن‪ ،‬وەكو گۆران‬ ‫لە شیعری هاوچەرخی كوردی و‬ ‫نالیی لەشاعیرانی كالسیكدا بە نموونە و دەیانی نموونەی تریش‬ ‫هەیە‪.‬‬ ‫ئایا هاوشێوەی باوکت هەمان ئەو پێکهاتە ستایلیستیکانەی بزوتنەوەی ڕوانگە بەکاردەهێنیت؟‬ ‫*ڕەنگە زەمەنەكان جیاواز بن‪...‬وەكو هەموو شتێكی تر شیعریش‬ ‫ئاستی بینین و ڕوانگەی بۆ من دەگۆڕێت‪...‬بۆ من زۆر گرنگە‬ ‫بە كورتترین شێوە و ستایەڵی سەردەمیانە ئەوەی ئەمەوێ بێگەینمە خوێنەر‪.‬‬ ‫ئایا پێکهاتەی نوێ دەهێنیتە ناو شیعری کورديیەوە وەک چۆن ئەوەی باوکت ئەنجامی دا کاتێک‬ ‫بزوتنەوەی ڕوانگەی پێکهێنا؟‬ ‫*من زیاتر كار لەسەر نووسینی شیعری هایكۆیی دەكەم ئێستا‬ ‫ڕەنگە ئەمە كارێكی نوێترە بۆ دونیایی شیعری كوردی‬ ‫بە لەبەرچاوگرتنی ئەوەی باوک و باپیرەت لە دوو ژینگەی سیاسی و جوگرافی جیاوازدا ژیاون‪،‬‬ ‫ئایە بڕوات وایە هەریەک لەم ژینگانە ڕۆڵێک دەبینێت لە دیاریکردنی ئەوەی چۆن شیعر پێکدەهێنرێت؟‬ ‫*بێ گومان شیعر تەواو جیاواز دەبێتەوە بە لەبەرچاوگرتنی‬ ‫ژینگەی سیاسیی و جوگرافی‪...‬تەنانەت لەناو شیعرەكانی باوكمدا‬ ‫ئەمە بەدیی دەكرێت كاتێك شیعری بەرگری لە شاخ دەنووسێ و‬ ‫نیشتمان دەبێتە چەقی سەنتەرێكی دیاری شیعرەكانی‬ ‫كەچی هەمان شاعیر چل ساڵ دواتر ئەمە لە دەقێكی وەكو ئێستا كچێك نیشتمانمەدا تەواو پێچەوانە‬ ‫دەكاتەوە‪...‬ئاشكرایە بۆ…‬

‫‪73‬‬

‫ ‪  Appendix I‬‬

‫ئایا شتێکی دیاریکراو هەیە کە وای لە شیعرەکانی باوکت کردووە ئەوەندە الی خەڵکی بەرباڵو‬ ‫و ناسراو بێت؟ ئەو شتە چییە؟‬ ‫*بازنەی شیعری شێركۆ فراوانە و لە ئاستێكدا نەوەستاوە‬ ‫بەردەوام كاژی شیعری خۆی لە هەموو سەردەمەكاندا فڕێداوە‬ ‫بۆیە خەڵك هەست بە گۆڕانكاریی خێرا و بەردەوام دەكات لە شیعرەكانیدا و دوورە لە السایی و‬ ‫خۆدووبارە كردنەوە بۆیە هەمیشە الی خوێنەران هەست بە ئحساسێكی نوێ و ناوازە دەكەن‪...‬جگە‬ ‫لەوەش بەزمانێكی “سادە و گران “دەنووسێ كە یەكسەر شێركۆی پێدەناسیتەوە و مۆر و ماركەی‬ ‫خۆیی پێوە‬ ‫دیارە…‬ ‫بڕوات وایە کە پەیوەندی لە نێوان شیعری زمانە جیاوازەکاندا هەیە یاخود بە تەواوی جیاوازن‬ ‫چونکە بە دوو زمانی جیاواز نوسراون؟‬ ‫بێگومان هەموو زمانێك‪ ،‬كۆد و نهێنی تایبەت بە خۆی هەیە‪.‬‬ ‫بەاڵم شیعری جوان هەر جوانە بە هەر زمانێك نووسرابێت ئەو‬ ‫پەیوەندیيە هەر هەیە چونكە زادەی خەیاڵی ئینسانن‪.‬‬ ‫شیعرێكی جوان هی پاپلۆنیرۆدا بێ لە چیلی و یان هی‬ ‫مەحمود دەروێش بێ لە فەلەستین یان هی عەبدواڵ پەشێو بێ‬ ‫لە كوردستان پەیوەندییان هەیە بە هەمان خەیاڵی گەردوونی‬ ‫شیعرستانەوە…‬ ‫ئەو ئاستەنگانە چین کە ڕووبەڕوویان دەبیتەوە لە وەرگێڕانی شیعرەکانی باوکت بۆ ئینگلیزی‬ ‫وەکو ئەوەی دەیکەیت لە پەیجی فەیسبووکەکەت؟‬ ‫*هەروەك دەڵێن‪ :‬وەرگێڕانی شیعر خۆی بۆ زمانێكی تر جۆرێكە لە خیانەت! تۆ ڕەنگە هەر‬ ‫بتوانیت فكرەكە بگەیەنیت‬ ‫بەاڵم هەست و ئیحساس و نهێنی زمانەكە لە دەستدەدەیت‪،‬‬ ‫وەرگێڕەكە دەبێت تا ڕادەیەكی باش ئاگاداری هەر دوو زمانەكە بێت بە شێوەیەكی باش و‬ ‫پاشخانێكی ئەدەبی دەوڵەمەندی هەبێت لەسەر هەردوو زمانەكە‪...‬تەنها زمان زانین بەس نییە بۆ‬ ‫وەرگێڕانی شیعر‪ .‬چارەش نییە دەبێت هەروا بكەیت و وەكو‬ ‫ئەوە وایە بۆنی گوڵی نایلۆن بكەیت!‬

Appendix II

The Martyrs’ Wedding by Sherko Bekas (in English, line numbers added for ease of references) 1 Do not ask how? 2 When the heart turns into a partridge and ‘Sulaiymaniyah’ becomes its nest 3 And poetry is a sky and herd by herd green and red words fly in it. 4 Do not ask how? When this eager head 5 Becomes a heavy cloud and the offspring of ‘Azmar’ painfully and with booms 6 overflows down 7 On the streets and the houses 8 Then poetry is a productive source of these eyelids 9 sheds tears 10 Do not ask how if worry does not become a thunder 11 If Wanawasha love of your eye 12 Does not become a path and a thunder 13 The blossom wound of my poems 14 In the frozen chest opens?! 15 How voice becomes a storm 16 And how the wave in my body sleeps?! 17 Do not ask how? 18 No. do not ask! 19 In the middle of Goyzha’s eyes and

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 U. Tabbert, M. K. Ibrahim, Sherko Bekas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30602-0

75

76 

Appendix II

20 The neck of Peramagron 21 My love: the Peshmerga pigeon 22 With a letter from the last martyred 23 With a lamentation comes and goes 24 Do not ask how?! 25 Now the lover of ‘Sulaiymaniyah’ 26 Is a red moon and 27 Slowly slowly rises 28 Don’t ask how? 29 No … Don’t ask! 30 The poet is like a migrant swallow 31 Twitting for its lover 32 And that is a voice and closers its eye 33 Don’t ask how? 34 Peshmerga legend says: 35 Syamand’s path is Khaje 36 In which big whales pass 37 The season of love wants 38 Farkh, Mam, Mamarisha and Najo there! 39 A lot poetry wings 40 A lot of songs. 41 will shed in this winter 42 their hair is too purple. 43 Very weeping willow. 44 like my city daughter’s hair. 45 Fall by this snowflake. 46 Perhaps a lot of fast growing love poplars 47 in front of Nali’s room 48 fall off while standing! 49 Maybe Habiba breast. 50 Will be hammered on this night wall. 51 It is very possible my heart neighbourhood. 52 My eye house. 53 My room of my soul and my abdomen. 54 Destructively, destructively get flattened 55 Maybe. Maybe. Maybe 56 But the vision of ‘Glazarda’ 57 Is a candle in the hands of the martyr 58 since two hundred years 59 visits different houses and wanders. 60 Since two hundred years. 61 This flame of this eyelid of this candle does not blink

  Appendix II 

62 neither faints 63 nor dies! *** 64 17th of December. 65 In autumn animals, before the last bird’s death last year 66 A sunny morning, a morning, a bright cheek, like a child, 67 laughed and glittered on the city of Ben-Banar 68 A sunny morning, a cold scarlet, like a hail. 69 It was the breath of Saiwan hill 70 like every morning. 71 Today my city was worried confused queen. 72 Whose guilt was a blink, blink suit 73 on the sidewalks 74 In welcoming that day 75 They put their hands on their neck and chests 76 they besieged them for killing them 77 They examined the body of poetry 78 They put flowers under their feet. 79 A sunny morning. 80 on the street sword 81 One by one, two by two students 82 Like colourful pen 83 quick word ingress 84 They were flying bees. 85 to the classroom! *** 86 The month of leakage and fall 87 December 17th, a sunny morning. 88 Under the moist ground of the city 89 from the prison of the faithful. 90 They brought out three beauties. 91 Three Beauties rebelling the mesh 92 They were excited 93 And tortured forehead 94 in the heat of a tank 95 upside down 96 They were taken to be slaughtered. *** 97 The month of leakage and fall 98 December 17th, 99 on a sunny day 100 In front of a surprised school

77

78 

Appendix II

101 Next to a low wall, they stopped them 102 They were very purple 103 They turned to Parametron. 104 They were three deer 105 Three deer of ‘Sulaiymaniyah’ 106 Three beauty of the season of sacrifice. 107 Three songs. 108 Three trees. 109 ‘Sardar’ was the branch of apricot bud 110 It was the first spring to flower. 111 ‘Hiwa’ was similar to a laughing spring 112 ‘Aram’ was a baby eagle with a sharp eye 113 wanted fly before getting feather. 114 to Hasarost! 115 Next to a low wall, they stopped them 116 A match strike (light), two, three, four, and fourteen 117 Rifles are going to kill the sun! 118 Rifles throw blood of my flowers 119 on the street! 120 Rifles dig cultures eyes 121 Rifles. Rifles 122 Three blood stains, three red fields 123 Under three electric trees in front of the school 124 Leave it for the bulbs and for the passengers! *** 125 December 17th, a sunny morning, 126 in the autumn beast 127 Before the year wears winter coats 128 Before it carries the wand and raise his trembling hand 129 And says goodbye to all of this world. 130 Thirteen days, before life was again 131 Engages to a new year! 132 On that day, our mountains, from the top, 133 Towards history 134 They played the game. 135 to know who they are in that year 136 in the country of martyrs 137 will be the sun. 138 will be moons. 139 will be kings. ***

  Appendix II 

140 December 17th, a sunny morning. 141 with the sound of the red mountain flute 142 With the sound of the soil of Sharazur 143 The mouth with flowers and lips with a smile 144 ‘Sulaiymaniyah’ has curtained its three son-in-law! 145 The seventeenth of December, a sunny morning, 146 Suddenly, 147 In front of a surprised school 148 In front of messed up hair 149 It was a weeding of our three son-in-law. 150 It was martyr’s party 151 It was a party of love and burning 152 Among the companions of the victims of this city 153 On that day, who you do not see! 154 On that day, my Kurdistan looked 155 In the weeding gathering for 156 Those who have shed bleeding two hundred years ago 157 And sacrificed themselves for it 158 It saw there! *** 159 December 17th, a sunny morning, 160 It was a big marriage. 161 He was the king of our three sons. 162 They were three grooms. 163 There were no brides, 164 There were no three shy flowers 165 There were no three legs of the highland of kalikhani 166 They were three red dressed grooms 167 There were no brides, 168 There were not three girls 169 Not three (young cute) girls such as white shirt pears 170 they were three Wanawashas with blue T-shirts 171 not three dotted partridges. 172 There were three grooms, no brides. 173 The brides were all the girls of Sulaiymaniyah and Kurdistan! 174 The brides were the daughters of Zozan and Kwestan. 175 They are three knight/horsemen sons-in-law 176 They were three storms 177 But the beloved and the fiancée with flowers in their hands 178 Were thousands of Khaj, Sherry, and Parikh 179 They were three groomed mountains 180 The brides were not three.

79

80 

Appendix II

181 River … was a bride. 182 Snow … was a bride. 183 Garden was a bride. 184 Poetry … was a bride. 185 On that day they will be grooms 186 My Kurdistan was just a bride! 187 Don’t ask how? That poetry will be loving and 188 ‘Sulaiymaniyah’ is the place of lover meeting! 189 So my patience is a tree, 190 On the streets, venus, and houses of that city 191 set on fire! 192 Don’t ask how? No … Don’t ask. 193 Now in the ‘Sarchnar’ of this heart 194 Martyr weeding is boisterous 195 The dance is of Trio-dance, it is Shekhania 196 Of this party 197 It is neither seven nights nor seven days. 198 Until the bride freedom does not arrive its place 199 The moon will not go down to the groom 200 This wedding does not end 201 Martyr wedding is boisterous 202 All the days 203 All night. 204 I’m a nephew of a poem 205 Tara blood and 206 And the head of the dance chain 207 And the heat of my head. 208 On January 17, 1985, the brutal Regime of Iraq shot and killed three Young Kurds in The War of Sulaiymaniyah. This is a poem that has been said to them, and for the first time, I presented and read the voice of the martyrs with my voice in The Voice of the People

Poem ‘The Martyr’s Wedding’ in Sorani ‫شایی شەهید‬ ‫مەپرسن چۆن؟‬ ‫کە دڵ ئەبێ بە سوێسکە و «سلێمانی» بە هێالنەی‬ !‫ئیتر شیعریش ئاسمانێکە و پۆل پۆل وشەی سەوز و سووری تێدا ئەفڕێ‬ ‫مەپرسن چۆن؟ کە ئەم سەرە گڕگرتووەیش‬

‫‪81‬‬

‫ ‪  Appendix II‬‬

‫ئەبێ بە پەڵە هەورێکی نزم و نەویی سەر «ئەزمڕ» و‬ ‫بە دەم گینگڵی ژانەوە‪ ،‬گرمەگرم‬ ‫بۆ بەرەوخوار دائەگەڕێ‬ ‫بە سەر شەقام و مااڵندا دائەبارێ‬ ‫ئیتر شیعریش سەرچاوەیەکە و قوڵپەقوڵپ‬ ‫لەم بناری چاوانەوە هەڵئەقوڵێ!‬ ‫مەپرسن چۆن؟ گەر خەم نەبێ بە برووسکە‬ ‫گەر ئەوینی وەنەوشەیی چاوی ئێوە‪،‬‬ ‫نەبێ بە ڕێگا و ترووسکە‬ ‫چرۆی ئەم زامی شیعرانەم‬ ‫لەم بەستەڵەکی سنگەدا‬ ‫چۆن ئەپشکوێ؟!‬ ‫دەنگ چۆن ئەبێ بە ڕەشەبا و‬ ‫شەپۆل چۆن لە گیانما ئەنوێ؟!‬ ‫مەپرسن چۆن؟‬ ‫نەء‪ ،‬مەپرسن!‬ ‫ئیستە الی من‬ ‫هەموو ڕۆژێ‬ ‫لەنێوان چاوانی «گۆیژە» و‬ ‫گەردنی «پیرەمەگروون»دا‬ ‫خۆشەویستیم‪ :‬کۆترەشینکەی پێشمەرگەیە و‬ ‫نامەی دوا شەهیدی پێیە و‬ ‫شەقژەنێتی دێت و ئەچێ‬ ‫مەپرسن چۆن؟!‬ ‫ئیستە الی من‬ ‫هەموو شەوێ‬ ‫خۆشەویستیی «سلێمانی«‬ ‫مانگی سوورە و‬ ‫لەناو بەفری شیعرەکانما‬ ‫ورد ورد هەڵدێ!‬ ‫مەپرسن چۆن؟ نەء‪ ،‬مەپرسن‬ ‫شاعیر وەکوو پەڕەسێلکەی کۆچەر وایە‬ ‫هەرچەند وەرزێ بۆ «شەم»ی یار ئەجریوێنێ و‬ ‫ئیتر ئەویش ئاوازێکە و چاو لێک ئەنێ!‬ ‫مەپرسن چۆن؟!‬ ‫داستانی پێشمەرگە ئەڵێ‪:‬‬ ‫ڕێی سیامەند بۆ الی خەجێ‬ ‫بە ناو گەرووی زۆر نەهەنگدا تێئەپەڕێ‬ ‫وەرزی عاشق سواری وەکوو‬ ‫«فەرخ» و «مەم» و «مامەڕیشە» و «نەجۆ»ی ئەوێ!‬ ‫ڕەنگە باڵی زۆر هۆنراوە‬ ‫زۆر گۆرانی‬

‫‪Appendix II‬‬

‫لەم زستانەدا هەڵوەرێن‪.‬‬ ‫ڕەنگە قژی زۆر ئەرخەوان‬ ‫زۆر شۆڕەبی‬ ‫وەکوو پرچی کچی شارم‬ ‫بەم کڕێوەیە داڕنرێن‪.‬‬ ‫ڕەنگە زۆر چناری عیشقی هەڵچووی‬ ‫بەردەم وەک حوجرەکەی «نالی«‬ ‫هەر بە پێوە هەڵپڕووکێن!‬ ‫ڕەنگە مەمکی زۆر «حەبیبە»م‬ ‫بەم دیواری شەوگارەدا دابکوترێن‪.‬‬ ‫ڕەنگە زۆر گەڕەکی دڵم‬ ‫ماڵی چاوم‬ ‫ژووری دەروون و هەناوم‬ ‫کاوالش‪ ،‬کاوالش‪ ،‬تەخت کرێن!‬ ‫ڕەنگە‪ ،‬ڕەنگە‪ ،‬ڕەنگە‬ ‫بەاڵم نیگای «گڵەزەردە«‬ ‫چرایەکە وا بە دەستی شەهیدەوە‬ ‫دووسەد ساڵە‬ ‫ماڵەوماڵ ئەکا و ئەگەڕێ‬ ‫دووسەد ساڵە‬ ‫ئەم چرایە نە پێڵووی گڕی ئەترووکێ و‬ ‫نە کز ئەبێ و‬ ‫نە ئەشمرێ!‬ ‫**‬ ‫حەڤدەی «کانوون«‬ ‫لە گیانەاڵوی پاییزدا‪ ،‬پێش دوا کۆچی باڵندەی پار‬ ‫بەیانییەکی خۆرەتاو‪ ،‬بەیانییەک ڕوومەتی گەش‪ ،‬وەکوو منداڵ‪،‬‬ ‫پێئەکەنی و سوورمەی شەوقی ئەدا لە شاری بن بنار‪.‬‬ ‫بەیانییەکی خۆرەتاو‪ ،‬کزەبای سارد‪ ،‬وەکوو تەرزە‬ ‫هەناسەی گردی سەیوان بوو‬ ‫وەکوو هەموو بەیانییەک‬ ‫ئەمڕۆیش شارم‪ ،‬شاژنێکی شڵەژاوی نیگەران بوو‬ ‫تاوانی جل بەڵەک‪ ،‬بەڵەک‬ ‫لەسەر پیادەڕەوی شەقام‬ ‫لە پێشوازی ئەو ڕۆژەدا‬ ‫دەستیان ئەکردە مل سونگی و‬ ‫تاقیان لێ ئەدا بۆ مەرگ‬ ‫تاوانی جل بەڵەک‪ ،‬بەڵەک‬ ‫دەست لەسەر چەک‬ ‫لەشی شیعریان ئەپشکنی و‬ ‫گوڵیان ئەخستە ژێرپێیان‪.‬‬ ‫بەیانییەکی خۆرەتاو‬

‫ ‪82‬‬

‫‪83‬‬

‫ ‪  Appendix II‬‬

‫بە سەر شمشێری شەقامدا‬ ‫یەک یەک‪ ،‬دوو دوو‪ ،‬قوتابییان‬ ‫وەکوو قەڵەمی ڕەنگاوڕەنگ‬ ‫هەنگاوی خێرای وشە بوون‬ ‫هەنگ بوون ئەفڕین‬ ‫بەرەو شانەی پۆلی مەکتەب!‬ ‫**‬ ‫مانگی پژان و هەڵوەرین‪،‬‬ ‫حەڤدەی کانوون‪ ،‬بەیانییەکی خۆرەتاو‬ ‫لە ژێرزەمینی شێداری بن شارەوە‬ ‫لە زیندانی خونخوارەوە‬ ‫سێ جوانویان هێنایە دەر‬ ‫سێ جوانووی تۆڕ‬ ‫لە مێخ یاخی‬ ‫چاو ئاگرین‬ ‫پشت داخکراو‬ ‫یاڵ خوێناوی‬ ‫لەناو تەندووری تانکێکدا‬ ‫سەر بەرەوژوور‬ ‫ئەیانبردن بۆ سەربڕین‪.‬‬ ‫**‬ ‫مانگی پژان و هەڵوەرین‪،‬‬ ‫حەڤدەی کانوون‪،‬‬ ‫لە ڕۆژێکی خۆرەتاودا‬ ‫لە بەردەمی مەکتەبێکی حەپەساودا‬ ‫لەپاڵ دیوارێکی نزما‪ ،‬ڕایانگرتن‬ ‫ئەرخەوان بوون‬ ‫ڕوویان کردە «پیرەمەگروون«‬ ‫سێ ئاسک بوون‬ ‫سێ ئاسکی «سلێمانی«‬ ‫سێ جوانووی وەرزی قوربانی‪.‬‬ ‫سێ گۆرانی‪.‬‬ ‫سێ دارنەمام‪.‬‬ ‫»سەردار» لقی دارچوالە بوو‬ ‫یەکەم بەهار بوو گوڵ بگرێ‬ ‫»هیوا»‪ ،‬ئەتوت کانییەکە و پێئەکەنێ‬ ‫»ئارام»‪ ،‬بێچووە هەڵۆی چاو تیژ‬ ‫ئەیویست بەر لەوەی پەڕ دەرکا‬ ‫بەرەو حەسارۆست هەڵفڕێ!‬ ‫لەپاڵ دیوارێکی نزما ڕایانگرتن‬ ‫شریخەیەک و دوان و سیان و چوار و دە‬ ‫تفەنگ‪ ،‬خۆرەتاو ئەکوژێ!‬

‫‪Appendix II‬‬

‫تفەنگ‪ ،‬خوێنی گوڵەگەنم‬ ‫بە سەر شەقامدا ئەڕێژێ!‬ ‫تفەنگ‪ ،‬چاوی ڕۆشنبیریی هەڵئەکۆڵێ‬ ‫تفەنگ‪ ،‬تفەنگ‬ ‫سێ پەڵە خوێن‪ ،‬سێ کێڵگەی سوور‬ ‫لەژێر سێ داری ئەلکتریکی بەر مەکتەبا‬ ‫بۆ گڵۆپ و بۆ ڕێبواران بەجێدێڵێ‪!.‬‬ ‫**‬ ‫حەڤدەی کانوون‪ ،‬بەیانییەکی خۆرەتاو‪،‬‬ ‫لە گیانەاڵوی پاییزدا‬ ‫بەر لەوەی ساڵ پاڵتۆی زستانە لەبەر کا و‬ ‫گۆچانەکەی هەڵگرێت و دەستی لەرزۆک هەڵبڕێت و‬ ‫بە ئێجگاری مأل ئا وایی لەم دنیایە هەمووی بکا‪.‬‬ ‫بە سیانزە ڕۆژ‪ ،‬پێش ئەوەی ژیان هەمدیسان‬ ‫ساڵێکی تر مارە بکا!‬ ‫لەو ڕۆژەدا‪ ،‬شاخەکانمان لە لووتکەوە‬ ‫بەرەو مێژوو‬ ‫بازیان هەڵدا‬ ‫تا بزانن کێن ئەوانەی لەو ساڵەدا‬ ‫لە واڵتی شەهیداندا‬ ‫ئەبن بە خۆر‬ ‫ئەبن بە مانگ‬ ‫ئەبن بە شا‬ ‫**‬ ‫حەڤدەی کانوون‪ ،‬بەیانییەکی خۆرەتاو‬ ‫لەگەڵ دەنگی باڵەبانی چیای سووردا‬ ‫لەگەڵ هۆرەی خاکوخۆڵی شارەزووردا‬ ‫دەم بە گوڵ و لێو بە خەندە‬ ‫»سلێمانی»ی سێ زاوای خۆی کردە پەردە‪!.‬‬ ‫حەڤدەی کانوون‪ ،‬بەیانییەکی خۆرەتاو‪ ،‬لەناکاودا‬ ‫لە بەردەمی مەکتەبێکی حەپەساودا‬ ‫لە بەردەمی مەکتەبێکی قژ ژاکاودا‬ ‫شاییی سێ زاوای ئێمە بوو‬ ‫ڕەشبەڵەکی شەهیدان بوو‬ ‫ئاهەنگی عیشق و سووتان بوو‬ ‫لەناو یارانی قوربانیی ئەم شارەدا‬ ‫لەو ڕۆژەدا کێت نەئەدی!‬ ‫لەو ڕۆژەدا کوردستانم چاوی گێڕا‬ ‫لە ئاپوورەی زەماوەندا‬ ‫ئەوەی لە دووسەد ساڵەوە خوێنی دایە و‬ ‫خۆی پێ بەخشی‬ ‫لەوێ ئەیدی!‬ ‫**‬

‫ ‪84‬‬

‫‪85‬‬

‫ ‪  Appendix II‬‬

‫حەڤدەی کانوون‪ ،‬بەیانییەکی خۆرەتاو‪،‬‬ ‫زەماوەندێکی گەورە بوو‬ ‫شایی سێ کوڕی ئێمە بوو‬ ‫زاوا سیان بوون‬ ‫بووک سیان نەبوون‪ ،‬سێ گواڵڵەی شەرمن نەبوون‬ ‫سێ ڕێواسی قاچ خەناویی کەلیخانی کوێستان نەبوون‬ ‫ئەوان سێ زاوای جل سوور بوون‬ ‫بووک سیان نەبوون‪ ،‬سێ کیژۆڵەی‬ ‫سێ ناسکۆڵەی وەکوو هەرمێ کراس سپی‬ ‫سێ وەنەوشەی سوخمە شین و‬ ‫سێ ماکەوی خاڵدار نەبوون‪.‬‬ ‫زاوا سیان بوون‪ ،‬بووک سیان نەبوون‬ ‫بووک هەر هەموو کچەکانی سلێمانی و کوردستان بوون!‬ ‫بووک هەر هەموو کەنیشکەکانی گەرمێن و‬ ‫کیژی زۆزان و کوێستان بوون‪.‬‬ ‫ئەوان سێ زاوای ئەسپ سوار‬ ‫سێ زریان بوون‬ ‫بەاڵم یار و دەزگیرانی گوڵ بە دەستیان‬ ‫هەزاران خەج و شیرین و پەری خان بوون‪!.‬‬ ‫ئەوان سێ شاخی زاوا بوون‬ ‫بووک سیان نەبوون‬ ‫ڕووبار بووک بوو‬ ‫بەفر بووک بوو‬ ‫باخچە بووک بوو‬ ‫شیعر بووک بوو‬ ‫لەو ڕۆژەدا ئەوان زاوا و‬ ‫کوردستانم تازەبووک بوو‪!.‬‬ ‫**‬ ‫مەپرسن چۆن؟ کە شیعر ئەبێ بە دڵدار و‬ ‫»سلێمانی» بە جێژوان!‬ ‫ئیتر منیش چاوەڕوانیم درەختێکە و‬ ‫لەسەر شەقام و کۆاڵن و بەرمااڵنی ئەو شارەدا‬ ‫ئاگر ئەگرێ!‬ ‫مەپرسن چۆن؟! نەء‪ ،‬مەپرسن‬ ‫ئیستا لەناو «سەرچنار»ی ئەم دڵەدا‬ ‫زەماوەندی شەهید گەرمە‬ ‫ڕەشبەڵەکە‪ ،‬سێپێیییە‪ ،‬شێخانییە‬ ‫ئەم ئاهەنگە‬ ‫نە حەوت شەوە‪ ،‬نە حەوت ڕۆژە‬ ‫تا مایینی ئازادیی بووک نەگاتە جێ‬ ‫مانگ بۆ زاوام دانەبەزێ‬

‫‪Appendix II‬‬

‫ئەم شایییە دوایی نییە!‬ ‫زەماوەندی شەهید گەرمە‬ ‫هەموو ڕۆژێ‬ ‫هەموو شەوێ‬ ‫شیعرێکم برازاوایە و‬ ‫تارا خوێنە و‬ ‫دەسەسڕی سەرچۆپی کێش‬ ‫کڵپەی سەرمە!‪.‬‬

‫ ‪86‬‬

‫‪Appendix III‬‬

‫‪Poem Bloody Crown in Sorani‬‬ ‫)‪(English translation in Chapter 4‬‬ ‫تاجی خوێناوی  ‬ ‫ئەی گوێچکیلەی ڕاستی دڵم!  ‬ ‫ئەی پەنجەرەی ڕۆژهەاڵتی زامەکانم  ‬ ‫ئەی کوردستانی ئێرانم!  ‬ ‫لە واڵتی جبەی ڕەشا  ‬ ‫سیامەند بوو شیعری تازەم  ‬ ‫گەڕا بە شوێن چاوی خەجا  ‬ ‫شیعری شەیدای بااڵی «ورمێ«  ‬ ‫ویستی دەستی‬ ‫گوڵێ بگرێ‬ ‫ئازادانە پێبکەنێ!  ‬ ‫ویستی دەم بنێتە دەمی  ‬ ‫کانییەک ڕوون‪ ،‬گەش هەڵقوڵێ  ‬ ‫زۆری پرسی‬ ‫هەموو گەڕا و زەردەخەنەی هیچی نەدی!  ‬ ‫خەجم مانگە‬

‫‪87‬‬

‫‪© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature‬‬ ‫‪Switzerland AG 2023‬‬ ‫‪U. Tabbert, M. K. Ibrahim, Sherko Bekas,‬‬ ‫‪https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30602-0‬‬

‫)‪Appendix III (ENGLISH TRANSLATION IN CHAPTER 4‬‬

‫مانگی گیراوی زیندانی ناو ئێرانە‪  .‬‬ ‫خەجم  ‬ ‫وەکوو سێوە السوورەکەی باخی “بۆکان”  ‬ ‫ملی الرە و چاو پڕ لە ئاو  ‬ ‫وەکوو‪ -‬زاوابووک‪-‬ی ساباڵخ  ‬ ‫هەنیە ڕنراو‪ ،‬قژ ئاڵۆزکاو  ‬ ‫ئیستە گواڵن‬ ‫وەک ڕوومەتی ڕەنگپەڕیوی  ‬ ‫مندااڵنی هەموو ئێران  ‬ ‫پەست و سیس و بێ تریقەن  ‬ ‫چاوەڕوانی بارانێکی  ‬ ‫تازە ئەکەن‪.‬‬ ‫ئیستە کانیيم‬ ‫وەکوو نیگای کیژەکانی  ‬ ‫شاری سنە  ‬ ‫لێڵوپێڵن  ‬ ‫ڕوون نابنەوە‪ ،‬تا ئەو ڕۆژەی  ‬ ‫کوندەپەپووی مێزەر بە سەر  ‬ ‫ئەم واڵتە جێئەهێڵن  ‬ ‫* *  ‬ ‫ئەی پارچەیەک لە جگەرم!  ‬ ‫ئەی تاجی خوێناویی سەرم!  ‬ ‫هەرچی جبەی ئاخووندەیە کۆی کەنەوە  ‬ ‫وەکوو پەردەی شەوی تاریک بیگرنەوە  ‬ ‫لە «خانە»وە  ‬ ‫هەتا سەقز‬ ‫بیدەن بە سەر لەشی تۆدا  ‬ ‫چرای برینی شەهیدان ناشارنەوە‪  ،‬‬ ‫بەر لە زریانم ناگرن  ‬ ‫من درەختی ئەم ژیانەم  ‬ ‫تۆ لەو الوە من ئەبڕیت و  ‬ ‫لەو الی دیکە من دێمەوە  ‬ ‫ئازارێکم چەشەی تەور  ‬ ‫تا بمبڕێ من سەرلەنوێ  ‬ ‫بنچ قایمتر ئەڕوێمەوە  ‬ ‫ئەی ئاوکوژان!  ‬ ‫هەرچی تاڵەمووی ڕیشێکی ئاخووندەیە  ‬ ‫بە یەکەوە گرێی بدەن  ‬ ‫وەکوو گوریس‬ ‫لە «بانە»وە  ‬ ‫هەتا سەردەشت  ‬ ‫درێژ درێژی کەنەوە  ‬

‫ ‪88‬‬

‫‪89‬‬

‫ )‪  Appendix III (ENGLISH TRANSLATION IN CHAPTER 4‬‬

‫ئەوساش دەمی هۆنراوەم و  ‬ ‫تفەنگەکەم نابەستنەوە!  ‬ ‫* *  ‬ ‫ئەی چەکەکەی شانی ڕاستم!  ‬ ‫پاردەی قەاڵی خۆرهەاڵتم!  ‬ ‫پشتاوپشتی زنجیرەی «شا«  ‬ ‫لە «کۆڕش»ەوە هەتا قاجار  ‬ ‫هەموو ڕۆژێ گوڵیان ئەکوشت  ‬ ‫خوێنی کەژ و هەردیان ئەڕشت  ‬ ‫بەاڵم دوا جار  ‬ ‫گوڵ نەفەوتا  ‬ ‫کەژ هەر نەمرد  ‬ ‫ئەوەی کە مرد شا‪ ،‬سوڵتان بوو  ‬ ‫ئەوەی ژیا‪ ،‬ئەوەی هەر ما  ‬ ‫کوردستان بوو!‬ ‫* *  ‬ ‫ئەی سەنگەری پڕ هەتاوی ڕۆژهەاڵتم!  ‬ ‫گواڵڵەی سنگی شیرین و  ‬ ‫مەشخەڵی دەستی فەرهادم  ‬ ‫مەال وتی‪ :‬تەلیسماویم‪  .‬‬ ‫دیوارێکی گوەللبەندی زۆر ڕقاویم‪  .‬‬ ‫بەاڵم سبەی نا دووسبەی  ‬ ‫کە سێاڵوی پەنگخوراوەی نیشتمانم  ‬ ‫ڕژایە سەر‬ ‫سەر شەقام و گۆڕەپانم‪  .‬‬ ‫ئەوسا ئێران‬ ‫جبەی ڕەشی خۆی دائەدڕێ‪  .‬‬ ‫ئەوسا ئیتر بە خەج ئەگەم  ‬ ‫بە منداڵ و گوڵ و کانی‪  ،‬‬ ‫لێو بە خەندە هەمووی ئەگەم  ‬ ‫ئەوساش تاریکیی ئەزانێ  ‬ ‫گەر تەلیسمێ هەبێ و نەشکێ  ‬ ‫هەبێ و نەمرێ  ‬ ‫هیچ نەیبڕێ‬ ‫بە تەنها هەر خۆری گەلە  ‬ ‫دڵی گەلە  ‬ ‫هێزی گەلە!‬

Index

A Adjective, 32 Aesthetics, 2, 4 AntConc, 48 Apposition, 28 Arabic alphabet, 57 Attitudes, 4 B Ba’ath regime, 16, 38 Ba’athist government, 15 Barzinji, Sheikh Jaafar, 15, 26 Bekas, Fayaq, 7, 13 Bekas, Halo Sherko, 8, 14 Bekas, Sherko, 1, 13, 14 Belonging, 7, 8 Bible, 34 Bloody Crown, 9 Butterfly Valley, 16

C Canonical opposites, 51 Cardinal number, 33 Choice, 27 Conceptual metaphors, 39, 53, 61 Connotation, 67 Conversational implicature, 37 Cooperation maxims, 37 Critical Discourse Analysis, 27 Critical Stylistics/Textual Stylistics, 1, 4, 8, 26, 27, 56 D Definite article, 66 Diasporic state, 7 Diwan, 15 Diwani Sherko Bekas, 16

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 U. Tabbert, M. K. Ibrahim, Sherko Bekas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30602-0

91

92 

INDEX

E Ellipsis, 35 Equivalence, 49 Existential presuppositions, 63 F Face-threatening act, 37 Faraj, Sardar Osman, 26 Fayeq, Hiwa Faris, 26 Florence, 17 Flouting, 37 Foregrounding effect, 35, 65 Framing, 39 Freedom Prize, 17 G Generic noun, 60, 61 German, 56 Goizha-Gawran, 14 Goran, 14 Gorani, 9 Gulf War, 16 H Halabja, 15 Hardi, 14 Hashimi, Karim, 45, 51, 64 Head noun, 34 Hedging, 37 Hemingway, Ernest, 7 I Identity, 7, 8 Ideological meaning, 5, 8 Ideology, 5 Imperative, 66 Implicature, 37 Implied reader, 38 Indefinite article, 60

Indo-Iranian language, 57 Injustice, 8 Interjection, 58 Interrogative, 66 Iran, 7 Iraq, 3, 7, 15 Izâfa construction, 50, 58, 63 K Karim, Aram Muhammed, 26 Kurdish, 2, 3, 7, 9 Kurdish Liberation Movement, 15, 16 Kurdish poetry, 7 Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), 7, 15, 16 Kurdistan, 2, 7, 14, 51 Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), 45 Kurdistan Union of Writers, 46 Kurmanji, 9, 57 L Language, 8 Langue, 27 Latin alphabet, 57 Linguistics, 27, 31 M Material action intention processes, 64 Mental perception, 64 Mental reaction, 64 Metafunctions of language (textual, ideational, ideological), 27 Metaphorical meaning, 38 Metaphors, 49, 53 Metonomy, 61 Milan, 17 Minority, 7 Modality, 27 Modifier, 50

 INDEX 

N Naming and Describing strategies, 58 Negated opposition, 49, 51 Negation, 32, 35, 37, 38, 65, 67 Niqab, 67 Nominalisation, 28 North Kurdistan, 57 O Oppositional meaning, 35, 49 Oppression, 7 P Parallelism, 35, 65 Parole, 27 Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, 7, 15 Permerd, 14 Persuasion, 4 Peshmergas, 7, 14, 15, 17 PJAK, 50 Poetry, 2, 3 Point of view, 3–5, 38 Politeness strategy, 37 Political meaning, 4 Political poem, 6 Political poetry, 3, 6 Possessive preposition, 61 Poster poem, 17 Postmodification, 35 Power, 9 Pragmatic presupposition, 37, 65 Pragmatics, 31, 37 Q Al-Qadsya Award, 16 Qur’an, 34 R Repetition, 35, 50 Rhetorics, 4, 5, 34 Rwanga/Ruwange, 7, 14, 18–19

S Saddam Hussein, 15, 26 Sayi şehîd/The Martyrs’ Wedding, 8 Sculpture, 15 Semantics, 31 The Small Mirrors, 15, 16 Sorani, 7, 9, 57 South Kurdistan, 57 Speech act theory, 27, 38 Stylistics, 8, 27, 56 Subject, 35 Sulaiymaniyah, 2, 8, 14, 15, 26, 39 Sweden, 16 Swedish Pen Club, 16 Swedish PEN Institute, 17 Swedish Writers’ Union, 16 Syria, 7 T Tacî xwênawî/Bloody Crown, 8 Textual Stylistics, 8, 27 Text worlds, 5 Transitivity, 27, 28, 38, 64 Translation, 56, 58 Triade, 34 Tucholsky Award, 1 Turkey, 7 V Verbalisation process, 64 Verb phrase, 9, 28 Verse form, 3, 4 The Voice of Kurdistan, 15 W Word order, 9 World, 3 Z Zerf, Ahmed, 14 Zhen Magazine, 14

93