Abstract

The duality of life and death is considered one of the most important dualities that poets have paid special attention to. It is one of the dualities that attracts the recipient to arouse in him an optimistic feeling towards the expected birth. This duality was the focus of two poems by two poets, the first "Autumn Song" by the French poet Paul Verlaine and the second "Life in the Form of a Dead Leaf" by the Syrian poet Wafiq Sulaytin. The aim of the research is evident in its attempt to search for this duality in the two poems, through an inductive analytical comparative approach. The most important thing that the research addressed is summarized in analyzing the components of the poetic paintings; the auditory image and the visual image in the two poems, then the dialogue between the two texts on more than one level: the level of pronouns, the level of verbs, words and phrases, and reaching the dialogue of ideas. The most important results that the research reached are summarized in that man is a paper with two faces; If the Western poet chose his life to be on the first side; the world of material reality, then the Eastern poet had chosen to be on the other side of the paper based on his appreciation, appreciation and belief in this side. Hence, the point of difference between the two poets in their vision of the concepts of death and life; the first sees death as the end of life and the second sees it as its beginning in a Sufi view based on revelation. However, they agree on transcending the limits of closure and restriction in the poetic experience towards launching and liberating meaning from restrictions so that poetry becomes a new creative force capable of continuously revealing the depths, opening up to the horizon of meaning and the spaciousness of transcendence; transcending phenomena towards the hidden and transcending the body towards the soul.
 
Keywords: The duality of life and death, revelation, poetic paintings, autumn song, life in the form of a dead leaf.
 
Extended summary
Introduction
The duality of life and death is considered one of the most important dualities that poets have paid special attention to. It is one of the dualities that attracts the recipient to arouse in him an optimistic feeling towards the expected birth. This duality was the focus of two poems by two poets, the first "Autumn Song" by the French poet Paul Verlaine and the second "Life in the Form of a Dead Leaf" by the Syrian poet Wafiq Sulaytin. The aim of the research is evident in its attempt to seek this duality in the two poems.
Despite my diligent research, I did not find a study that compared the two poems, let alone a study that focused on the duality of life and death in them. However, there are critical studies on some of the works of the two poets, most of which are published in newspapers. I found a study by Adnan Shaheen published in issue 521, year 43, September 2014 of the monthly Al-Mawqif Al-Adabi magazine issued by the Arab Writers Union in Damascus. It focused on a critical view of the collection “Fragments of Meaning” by the poet Wafiq Sulaytin. In it, the researcher focused on the Sufi meanings mentioned in the collection, as if the poet was applying in his collection what he studied in his book (Between Poetry and Sufism). The study resembles newspaper articles that lack a scientific research system, so it is devoid of results. Hence the importance and necessity of the research, as it has not been previously discussed and is worthy of such a study to fill a gap in this field.
Methodology
If the trends of literary criticism have focused their attention on researching the relationship between the text and its author, as we find in psychological critical trends, or its relationship with its society, as we find in sociological trends, or in the interest in the structure of the text after isolating it from its environment, and severing its relationship with its multiple sources of author, society, etc., then the interest in analyzing the different relationships of the text with other texts can lead to an approach that places the text in confrontation with other texts in relationships of mutual effectiveness in influence and impact. Based on the usefulness of the analysis concerned with intertextuality, its effects, and interactions, since the relationship between literary texts has never been severed, we have adopted in this research a comparative approach that can be summarized in studying the relationships of a contemporary poetic text, "Life in the Form of a Dead Leaf", with an earlier poetic text, "Autumn Song", to answer the following questions: What is the role of language in establishing the poetic experience? What is the mutual denominator between the poetic and Sufi experiences? What is the role of imagination in the poetic and Sufi experiences?
Results
The title is generally considered the reference that includes within it the sign, symbol and condensation of meaning (Halifi, 2004: 10), and at the same time it is a miniature mirror of the textual fabric; it reflects ideas and feelings, and it is, in addition, an integral part of the general poetic scene of the poem: it foretells, suggests, and carries an essential function through which we can access the text. Therefore, reading the mutual relations between the titles of the two gates and the title of the poem that is the subject of the study, reveals the text that seems to be a natural and necessary result of the two previous titles. Was autumn, with its sad manifestations, combined with the indications of autumnal nature with its similar manifestations of sadness?
The poet and critic Ezra Pound insists that poetry should be read as music, not as speech, “where the words are charged with musicality.” (René Wellek, 2004: 345) Verlaine cleverly makes musicality the basis of his autumn poem, summoning sad autumn through the harmony between the music of the rich and multi-sourced vocalization on the one hand, and its material and moral sufferings in all their forms on the other. The first thing that attracts the listener’s ear is the implicit music of the poem emanating from its successive lines in a melodic rhythm, especially when reading it. Another musical richness that the poet focuses on when he relies on the musical vote achieved in the resulting harmony, whether in the letters with a phonetic specificity, or in the chosen words with a musical specificity, or in the chosen rhymes that supported the other musical sources to raise the pace of the melody and extend the sound of the tune to match the faint autumn melodies on the one hand, and the sad ones spread throughout nature on the other hand.
Sulaytin's inspirations from Verlaine's poem are varied; sometimes he invokes apparent intertextuality in some vocabulary and structures, and sometimes he draws inspiration from its basic idea about the tragedy of human existence to contrast it with another that is in line with his Sufi visions about death. The poet's multiple forms of dealing with Verlaine's text ultimately constitute nothing but creative interactions whose primary goal is to transform thought towards a direction other than the existential direction, in addition to enriching the poetic text and enriching these relationships with a different experience. So how does the text rebuild its vision through dialogue with the other text? The dialogue between the two texts takes place on more than one level: the level of pronouns, verbs, words and phrases, leading to a dialogue of ideas, modification of visions, and the production of a new text with a different vision.
Conclusion
The poetic text, through its gradual attempt, was able to transform the material existential vision of death, which stands at the surface without depth, into a Sufi vision that cares for the soul, and goes beyond the apparent to the inner, to the depths. Through all of this, it was able to possess a conscious and purposeful poetic act to influence the attitude of others towards their lives. It is the human being, the paper with two sides; if the Western poet chose for his life to be on the first side, the world of material reality, then the Eastern poet had chosen to be the other side of the paper based on his appreciation, appreciation and belief in this side. Hence, the point of divergence between the two poets in their vision of the concepts of death and life. If this vision differs between the two poles of the duality, can its two sides come together to transcend the limits of closure and restriction in the poetic experience towards taking off and liberating meaning from restrictions so that poetry becomes a new creative force capable of continuously revealing the depths, opening up to the horizon of meaning and the spaciousness of transcendence. Whatever the difference or agreement in the two visions, the condition of agreement between the two experiences, poetry in general and Sufism in particular, is achieved in that the reliance of the experiences of poetry and Sufism on language, not only as a means of communication, is a condition for establishing the two experiences. Despite the specificity of language in each of them, it is also characterized in both experiences as a language of suggestion and allusion, not a language of declaration. It is a language that does not inform, but rather reveals and suggests. Poetry has always been the tool for revealing the conditions of Sufis, and a means of expressing their experiences, conditions and struggles. The collections of Sufi poets are eternal witness to that.