How to see palace pillars as if they were palm trees

"For so it happens that when the poets speak, objects appear closer to their own shadows. The poet’s mouth fills up with horses and marble, and his verses start to shine like rivers. These rivers then turn back to flow through the very palace he is depicting. The poet’s own words begin to weigh down on him, as though he were holding up a palace with his palms. Then he travels, and the palace is obliterated. Countries and nations change, and naught remains but what the poets had seen. Of what the poets had seen, naught remains but what people believed, and of that too nothing remains but its image in anthologies. And when the libraries have been flooded or burned to the ground, nothing but the commentaries on those anthologies are left, and all that one finds in these commentaries is that which was appropriated and wrought a thousand times over."

This book explores writings and poems that exist on the margins of canonical Arabic literature. Many such poems exist now only through the footnotes of other documents, referenced but uncredited, republished in part, or lost forever to the endless fragmentation of sources in libraries and within manuscripts. Starting from analyzing a single verse of poetry on Abdallah the Killed (Abdallah al Qateel), who was killed by the last thing he saw; the columns of the castle, this book reflects on Abdallah the Killed, a fictional character that has a real genealogy, who nevertheless only exists in extensive footnotes that expound on his stories, and form the body of this book. An exploration of the idea of uncredited literature, authorship, historiography and its negative space.

Hussein Nassereddine is a Lebanese poet, artist and graphic designer. His works in video, photography, image-making and writing deal with different ideas including fragility, poetics of images, personal and collective memory, history and mythology. He lives and works in Beirut.

Translated by Ben Koerber.

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