The Sufi experience and the mechanisms of experimentation in modern Arabic poetry

Abstract

This article examines the efficacy of the Sufi experience in shaping the features of Arab poetic modernity, as a spiritual and aesthetic refuge for the contemporary poet confronting a crisis-ridden reality. It demonstrates how the Sufi experience converges with modern poetry through a set of shared foundations, including vision (ru’yā), unveiling (kashf), imagination, subjectivity, and the transcendence of context. It also highlights the dependence of modernist poets—such as Adonis, Ṣalāḥ ʿAbd al-Ṣabūr, and ʿAfīfī Maṭar—on Sufi language and symbolism, whether through the employment of letters, ecstatic utterance (shaṭḥ), or occult/visionary insights, thereby transforming poetry from mere linguistic expression into an act of unveiling and creation. The article concludes that Sufism was not simply a heritage-based metaphor; rather, it constituted a profound creative horizon that contributed to renewing the structure of the modern poem, enriching it semantically and aesthetically, and linking it to questions of existence, destiny, and freedom.