Holistic Poetic Imagery: a partnership of the senses in alliance with primal language – some considerations from classical Arabic desert poetry

Abstract

The epistemological primacy of the sense of sight, over all other senses combined, is quantitatively established from the Qur’ān and the lexica. Sight (ba ar) and insight (ba īrah), though etymologically related, are not the same. The pictorial is the gate to the visionary, and, in poetic imagery, it is only one element in an ‘inter-sensory mix’. For it to qualify as great, poetic imagery must transcend the direct yields of the optic nerve. This is accomplished through a ‘partnership of the senses’. This partnership is what produces the ‘inter-sensory mix’, or the ‘sixth’ sense which is the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. This is still one step short of the concept of ‘holistic poetic imagery’. To attain that, this partnership allies itself to ‘primal language’ which is the product of revitalising language by elucidating its primordial power which subsists in the system of derivation. Close analytical examinations of great poetic images, taken from early Arabic poetry, attempt to establish the foregoing.