Manifestations of Passion and Deviation from the Norm in the Themes of Love and Wine in Abbasid Poetry

Abstract

The theme of the dialectic of passion and deviation from the norm in the genres of love poetry and wine poetry represented the level of deviance and freedom of expression for the Abbasid poet. For him, passion was a vast field for reflecting his personal inclinations, desires, and emotional reactions towards the other/beloved, which allowed him to establish a new poetic system that transcended inherited values. This deviation was embodied in the genres of love poetry and wine poetry, as they were the most representative poetic genres of this newly established system, as is the case in the poetry of Abu Nuwas, Bashar ibn Burd, Ibn al-Rumi, Waliba al-Hubab, and others. However, due to the limited scope of the research, the researcher restricted the selected models for the study to only two poets: Abu Nuwas and Bashar. They are credited with playing a leading role in disrupting the traditional poetic structure of that era, as their poetry represented levels of ethical, thematic, and artistic deviation. It is worth noting here that there are many previous studies that have examined this development in poetic art. For example, Hamda Al-Ruwaili's study, entitled: Asceticism and debauchery in Abbasid poetry until the end of the fourth century, and Arabic literature in the first Abbasid era by Muhammad Abdul-Munim Khafaji, along with another study on the history of Islam, Yemen, and culture by Hassan Ibrahim Hassan, and others. The study was divided into an introduction and two axes: The first axis: the concept of passion within the framework of culture in the Abbasid era, while the second axis focused on the appearance of deviation from and its manifestations in the poetic text. We lost in that century a concluding summary that won the results that were determined in this study through the stages of analysis, its integration due to its comprehensiveness in studying the genetic poetic texts of the research.