The Metaphors We Live By: The Embodiment of Ramadan Hamoud Between Creativity and Criticism

Abstract

Ramadan Hamoud gave great importance to the concept of poetry. For him, poetry is an electric current centered in the soul, and a gentle imagination thrown out by the self. Meter and rhyme have nothing to do with its essence; their ultimate purpose is merely verbal improvements required by taste and beauty.

This concept sparked great controversy among critics. Was poetry, for him, merely creativity, an attempt to establish a critical concept, or something else?

In this article, we seek to clarify Ramadan Hamoud's innovative approach, aiming to highlight some critical issues as intensive material that illuminates his orientation and vision in this creative and intellectual judgment. The latter (referring to his judgment/vision) prompted us to examine the critical concepts that distinguished Ramadan Hamoud from his contemporaries.

In his view, poetic language is not linked to the 'science of poetry,' given that the former does not employ ordinary language that relies on direct description, but is linked to rhetorical images with metaphors and similes that represent the poetic spirit. It would be theoretically possible to rely on this.

Hence, the main question that underlies our intervention is: How did he portray poetry, and how was critical engineering formed as a means of achieving his poetic specificity?