“Irony is a sign of dignity” (Umberto Eco)
No one disagrees that the Moroccan zajli poem is an aesthetic reality that cannot be overridden or abolished for both those looking at the morphology of Moroccan poetry and its transformations, or looking at digging into the genealogy of creative writing in Morocco in general.
It is also no secret that Zajal writing in Morocco has schools, scholars and specialized critics from the dean of Moroccan literature Abbas Al-Jarari, who opened the door to criticism of the Zajal experience wide through his thesis on Moroccan Zajal, to the head of the House of Poetry Murad Qadri, who received the torch of Zajal criticism - with others - and developed its tools Criticism according to a different modernist reading horizon befitting the synthetic, semantic, deliberative and visionary clothes in which the modern Moroccan poem has been impregnated.
It should be noted that what interests us in this brief article is not the history of the Zajal writing, its characteristics, its flags, or in other words its aesthetic faculties, but rather a feature of its aesthetic features, which we called “persuasion strategies in the Moroccan Zajli poem”, this feature that we chose to We represent him with a textual example of the most prominent poets of the satirical zajli poem in Morocco, and its knight - in the words of the critic Murad al-Qadri - the poet Bouazza al-Sanawi, whose satirical zajli poems became famous in festivals and literary clubs and in all digital media.
Among the poems of our poet in which irony is combined with persuasion, we chose the poem “An Open Letter…”, which we quote in full before explaining its apparent persuasive plans folded in its textual structure:
“...Allow me, my great classical poet.
Ella, I wrote with laughter
La laughter is my habit, the expression.
Where Melli laughed at me for a poem
i hated crying
I wanted joy, so my writing was Yazka
And we come out of the darkness of this well.
I know what I'm Ndk.
where i'm poor
What Quraysh Qadk?
You wrote and published
I posted and posted
until it became
Your poems are Karma Gdid.
We told you the chant is our place
And the fever when the case increases.
I thought your head was a groom
We are a door to a poem by Obeid.
But we tell you in a whisper, you are a poet from yesterday
You'll have the arena decorated.
Your poems are lost.
and your language
Of the many honored to write.
And the rest of it has a bitter taste.
but my words
I give you my peace
Every time, he wears a new dress.
ohhh
You likened your hair to winter
ra smack agrit
And the cloud is in your hand Skat.
I think
Why did my mother laugh?
And my neck and joys.
Melli saw the chest breasts
And I said to my girlfriend
Hado Gog apples.
Understand you are the metaphor
metaphors and displacements.
ohhh
Our eyes with nostalgia
And write p for cane and rabab.
I told you politics
play for guish
between lahyush
and for parties
Play hide and seek with us.
I wrote on Diab to Harzo a forest
I wrote a sickle
I knew you thief
Packed with forty Ali Baba.
Haze, the engine is full!
and blushing
On horses out of the mist.
Afak when he read Kilito
What he wrote, literature and strangeness” (end of text)
The first thing that strikes the beholder after reading this interesting Zajal text are two characteristics: a formal characteristic, and a pragmatic one.
Formal property: we mean the geometric formulation of the signifier adopted by the poet Bouazza Al-Sanaoui in forming the body of the poem, where we glimpse his dependence on the technique of textual gradation, structurally and stylistically, where he started it with a formula in which the matter is detailed by calling (allow me, great classical poet / Ella, I wrote with laughter / ra Laughter is my habit and expression), and we stopped it in a sign of a growing pictorial scene, extending from: (Where you filled me laughed at me for a poem) to (Understanding you are metaphor / metaphor and displacement), and closed it with a sarcastic text (forgive you when he read Kilito / What wrote in literature and strangeness) in which he summoned other voices To leave the moral effect of the formal lock open to more than one interpretation.
It is no secret that this gradual, formal textual synthesis was dictated by the keenness to simulate the structure of the argumentative writing written by the addressee and the addressee.
The deliberative characteristic: It is manifested through the intentional multiplication of the text, in which two complementary intents are combined: the intent of irony, and the intent of persuasion and change (change of vision / position), as well as taking into account the communicative consideration that produced a scholarly poetic dialogue based on the growing scenery depiction of a rhythmic growth in which the eloquence of irony is coupled with the eloquence of persuasion. According to the two rhetoric, the poet Bouazza El-Sanaoui established his polemic discourse with an opponent who disputes his aesthetic choices.
We summarize the persuasive strategies folded in the structure of the satirical Sana'a zajal poem in two broad strategies:
The strategy of embedding: It manifests itself through the joining of our zajal to a tribal debate with the classical poet, to which our zajal responded by mocking his model and his poetic reference (but we tell you in whispers/You are a poet who came yesterday/You are a good yard/Your poems are well done/Your language/Your language has multiplied to write honor/What is left It has a bitter taste).
It refers to the intrusiveness of a previous discourse, a set of clues, in the forefront of which are the omission points with which its introductory lines were issued, then the ordering sentence whose stylistic structure shows appreciation and whose contextual structure contains irony and a visionary break (...Allow me, great classical poet) and the conditional sentence (Ella, I wrote with laughter/Ra Laughter is my habit, the expression), and it is no secret that this conditional form is the best evidence of the implicitness of a previous saying uttered by the subject, so it is here as an answer to a question whose appreciation has been deleted: “Why did he write in this ironic form? Or why did you write poetry in colloquial, not classical?” And so implicit interrogative formulas, which the poet Bouazza responded by adopting a conditional formula, “Laughter is my habit of expression,” as it is the most eloquent formula in the vernacular to demonstrate implicit questions.
The Manifestation Strategy: It is manifested through the growing satirical scenery in which our Zajal presented all the persuasive arguments that could smother the addressing opponent, with persuasive methods wrapped in three-dimensional irony: mockery of the same saying, “You are a great poet from yesterday,” and a mockery of his poem. / His experience, “Your poems have become worn out”, and a mockery of the language of writing, “And your language / Who multiplied to write honors / What remains in it is a bitter taste”, and among the persuasive mechanisms that the poet al-Zajjal pleaded in his satirical poem, the mechanism of denial and proof “there is no taste left in it / As for my words / He comes to you every time in a new dress”, the comparison mechanism “I thought your head is a groom / Hana Fabab for Obaid’s poem”, the interview mechanism “the eloquence of colloquial / classical eloquence”, and the mechanism of the heart “I likened your hair to winter / Sammak Igrit”, and the mechanism of summoning through a remote summons It consists in invoking the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves “I knew you as a thief / wrapped in forty Ali Baba”, and a close summons represented in the invocation of Kilito, “You are forgiven when Kilito read / Wash books, literature and strangeness.”
It should be noted that invoking voices belonging to the culture to which the speaker belongs was intended on the one hand to diminish the poet’s fanaticism for his eloquent speech and to prove his ignorance of the culture to which he belongs, and on the other hand to prove the victory of the poet Al-Zajjal, the breadth of his perceptions and the diversity of his readings, as an open reader. On everything he sees, no fanatical reader will negate the right of others to express.
Among the persuasive stylistic mechanisms, we also find the condition “When you laughed at me for a poem / I hated Labaka”, as well as the construction methods, in which the ordering methods were performed, such as the command (understand you are the metaphor) and the question (what was written in literature?), and the call (O poet of classical For Kabeer), wishful thinking (I wanted joy, so my writing is Yazka), the function of persuasion, and non-structural methods such as praise and slander (you are a great poet), exclamation (Oh, our eyes with longing / writing on the qasab and the rabab), and please (forgive you when he reads) performed the function of irony, Through the revolution of Al-Zajal Al-Sana’awi on the linguistic reality of these methods in the positive origin, the reversal of their functions, and their expansion to serve the purposes of the sarcastic response speech that the poet Al-Zajal Bouazza Al-Sana’awi wins for in his Zjal experience.
In sum, the poem “An Open Letter” by the poet Al-Zajal Bouazza Al-Sanawi is a good example of the ironic argumentation of the Zajal poem, and its structural fullness, whether it is style, representation or vision, as well as its destruction of all postulates and verbal certainties, its mockery of the normative language, and its challenge by inventing new strategies. In the verbal performance, astonishment is doubled with pleasure, which the prudent recipient cannot help but stand before her stunned and amazed.
*Poet and critic
About margins:
Since irony encroaches on language, we have chosen to transgress and transgress the margins, as long as the text of zajal and its criticism, and theories of discourse analysis are accessible to all, and because we suppose a conscious reader is able to deconstruct our article and succumb to the theories of analysis that directed its author, the depth of his yield, or the stagnation of his merchandise.