Deserts Within and Without
The desert is perhaps an elemental theme in our own psychology. What is it that can be found in the desert?
I have often been struck how the external world around me can reflect so accurately, in a symbolic way, inner states and conditions of life, and vice versa. Part of this may be to do with the eyes that see this world, or, rather, the mind behind the eyes, changing how things are perceived depending on that inner state. There may also be influences of surrounding Nature, in her many forms and moods, the influence of social and home conditions, of artifice, of the materials with which I work, and the purpose towards which I strive. And there is also, small but cumulative, an influence moving the other way, from myself to that which surrounds me, people, animals, plants, and seemingly inanimate things. Thus, my conditions of life in so many ways reflect what I am, and what I am striving for.
Further, Nature can often help see things in oneself that are usually dormant and hidden behind the veneer that ordinary life freely gives, almost imposes. And Nature can allow a kind of opening to something much bigger than myself.
It is with these thoughts that I approach a slim volume of poems entitled Desert Songs by the Egyptian poet, Yahia Lababidi. It is bilingual, in English and Arabic, and graced with evocative photographs of the desert.
How can one like me, with minimal experience of deserts extract all the meaning and mystery shared in these poems? It is true that my parents’ love of the Arizona and Utah deserts and my own scanty remnants of memories as a toddler in those deserts, where my parents took me with them on backpacking expeditions, have given something of live experience. Yet, perhaps there is something more universal even, about the mythic significance of the desert, and its presence in scriptures, in epic tales, in allegory and symbol, to affect all of us deeply. It is something, perhaps, of an elemental theme in our own psychology, which could be seen to mirror in some ways the forms and processes of our mother Earth. It is similar with mountains and oceans. But what is it about deserts?
What are the impressions I receive from these poems, or, as they are called here, songs? There is the evocation of silence, the realisation of a certain harshness and difficulty, as Nature does not hide herself here. Likewise, in the desert I am faced with myself: the old masks fall, and I am compelled to see myself as I am.
Are these songs because the desert evokes music as well as poetry in the heart of one who approaches her with respect and love, not only in spite of, but because of, her emptiness and silence, because of the ease in which one may lose and then find oneself in that place?
In Solitude and the Proximity to Infinite Things, with which the volume begins, we have an encounter with death, and with “exchanging secrets / of terrible, Eternal matters.” It is perhaps a hint, as I am always looking for allegorical and symbolic opportunities, of how in the desert there is the possibility of dying to the old self and its trappings in the face of the uncompromising truth of the place. For this, silence and aloneness are also necessary. It is a death that occurs in life, yet life is born in this death.
Desert, Revisited again touches “the presence of silence.” Images are evoked of whirling dervishes with the “whirling skirt of sky.” We become aware of the desert as Beginning – “incorruptible starting point / inviolable horizon,” and “the immutable letter / (first of the alphabet) Alif.” Yet there is a need for inward purity and striving in order to survive the embrace of the desert.
In Eternity Beckons, wetness meets the desert and there is the groaning of creation – “experience my birth pangs / witness my death throes.” The desert becomes green. We notice how time is different – “Time collapses.” Even simply in the reading of these “songs,” there is a call to a different tempo, quite otherwise than ordinary life. We see the unfinished nature of life, and are reminded of “the vulnerability of all things” and the changing forms of Nature.
Beauty, though often harsh, may be part of the desert’s allure. Yet, what about the “Overbearing rock sculptures / carved from Time and Being”? Is there a warning here that a monster can also be formed in this place?
We travel through the desert with a lover of the desert, and finally there is the transition to night. We have learned something of what the desert gives and enables. We have had hints of freedom, enchantment and eternity; of pilgrimage, purity of perception and visions; aloneness, secrets and spiritual longing.
Returning to inner states, is not the desert that place of emptiness, that condition, from which most of us flee? And if involuntarily we approach it, do we not often make ourselves ill unless we can fill that emptiness with meaningless distractions? If, however, we can even seek, as well as accept with gratitude, that still inner expanse, and listen to the silence therein, then we may find all that has been described in Desert Songs about the Egyptian desert and its awe-inspiring secrets, that she will reveal to the one who spends devoted time with her.
Yahia Lababidi - Desert Songs, Rowayat, 2022.
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Thank you Clare. Very encouraging!