The Lady of the Marshes has another name in the poem that reinforces the connotations of this character and her high status; she is called: "Tsawahan." It is a popular name that is very common among Iraqi village women, meaning the woman who surpasses all other women in physical beauty and good character. Thus, the name of the Lady of the Marshes, or Tsawahan, or the Lady of the Two Rivers, becomes a meeting point for a set of qualities that the model woman possesses in terms of beauty, coyness, and deep belonging to the land. The connotations of the name may expand, overflowing its current meaning. Let us contemplate the following two verses from the poem:
"Applaud, O palm fronds,
The daughters of the marsh have come to you."
In the phrase "daughters of the marsh," compared to the phrase "Lady of the Marshes," there is something that draws attention to the state of plural or singular in the possessor and the possessed in each. The possessor came in the plural and the possessed in the singular in the first case, while they took a different form in the second example. In this difference, there will be something that perhaps helps with interpretation. While the daughters of the marsh come as many, from one aquatic place, the Lady of the Marshes comes from more than one place: the marshes. Thus, the equation becomes: many representing one, versus one embodying many. Thus, this multiplicity shifts the connotation of the marshes from its old environmental suggestion to a modern connotation, where the multiplicity of place is a diversity in identity, and also a multiplicity in choices.
The Dramatic Event and the Poetic Event
The dramatic event, in the poems of Yousef Al-Saigh in general, does not stop at the limits of contradiction or conflict between characters, or the physical actions that lead to the explosion of the latent motives or intentions, and their emergence from internal latency to the public. Rather, it goes beyond all that to rich transitions in styles of expression and intertwining of meters and rhythms. It may go further than that, where the richness of the text is sometimes in what the emotional state, which the poem expresses, is crowded with in terms of subtle transformations and shifts. This applies to a large extent to the poem "Lady of the Marshes."
The description of this poem as having a dramatic undulation is not complete and final, as will become clear later, but remains largely tinged with the poet's enormous linguistic ability for description, fueling, and excitement, and the resulting emotional ascent that reaches very high peaks. In other words, although the dramatic movement and linguistic agitation both proceed in the poem "Lady of the Marshes" with a sometimes calculated balance, the dominance of the poetic event over the course and atmosphere of the poem remains very clear.
The poet always enriches this state with forms of metaphors and allusions to other works, with a kind of intertextuality, or the connection of texts to one another, as is evident in many of the poet's references and allusions to songs, religious heritage, ancient poetry, and folk heritage.
There is no doubt that the poet has a great ability to embody his ideas and obsessions and give them influential sensory forms. Dialogue, soliloquy, internal monologue, dreams, memory, the cinematic scene, and the painting. All of this represented deeply influential means of expressing the long experience of the poem in a dramatic way, as embodied in the poem we are dealing with now, I mean the poem "Lady of the Marshes," which begins with this bloody ritual scene:
"With the blood of a woman,
From the people of the marsh,
I dipped my hand."
Elements of the Poetic Event
The structure of the text, in this poem, is founded on the killing of the Lady of the Marshes, and although it is a specific and limited event, which does not extend much in its spatial or temporal dimensions, the poet continued to maneuver and dialogue with it, and add to its emotional fervor and realistic details what takes it out of the framework of the realistic possible into the imaginary possible. I mean, he transforms it from being an event with a realistic root into an event with a poetic aura: it shifts from the circle of history to the space of myth, so it does not go directly to the realistic event, so as not to be an event governed by a closed situational moment, and thus was its belonging to the space of language and the possibility of imagination.
There is one lady and two children, two elements of the elements of the poetic or dramatic event in this poem. And there is the character of the narrator who represents an important fulcrum in this text, playing a decisive role in imagining the event, and linking the transitions of its movement and the growth of its contexts. And if we add to that other elements no less powerful than them, which we will talk about later, we are facing a group of dramatic pillars that rely, through their connection to other pillars that all join together, to bring the event to its final dramatic and poetic climax.
It is natural that these characters and elements are dramatic means chosen by the poet to perform this complex role. The narrator's character here expands to mean, implicitly, the power of history or its conscience as it witnesses the heroism of an extraordinary woman. Its role is not limited to linking events or commenting on them, nor is it limited to being an open space through which events and details erupt, despite the importance and vitality of this role. Rather, its influence reaches a further extent, as we shall see. The poet invested these characters and other elements, in the most wonderful way, to push the event in its growing path until the climax, including the painting, elements of nature such as wind, rain, reeds, and night.
The Narrator and the First Spark
The poem begins with a hypothetical scene, or a scene in which the narrator redraws an actual incident, as he, being also a painter, paints this scene with the blood of a murdered woman; that is the first spark. Then he involves others, an audience or readers, to add some details with which they complete the dramatic scene to become more poetic. It is interesting to note here that the narrator's role is very similar to his role in epic theater where the event is narrated, in the here and now, on stage, and where the spectators contribute to developing and growing the theatrical performance.
In addition to that, the poet has used a very skillful technique in this poem, which is the painting. Yousef Al-Saigh, as a poet, seems always crowded with the character of Al-Saigh as a painter, so his poem is often co-written by two: the poet and the painter. He was able, in this poem, and with clear skill, to create a lively dramatic atmosphere through a type of living marriage between poetry and painting:
"And I will paint a lady,
A symbol of a victorious Iraq,
So suggest, you..
The glimmer of her eyes..
And add the laughter of two small children.. to her."
The scene here is teeming with details, colors, and characters. The poet paints it with high skill and deep Iraqi belonging, just as the poem in general is crowded with everything that reinforces the power of joy and the victory of the dream. And there is not much in it that reminds of death, and what it represents of symbols and connotations. For as we said, it celebrates life and triumphs over the elements of destruction and fading that threaten it. Even this lady whom the poet is painting represents "a symbol of a victorious Iraq."
It is as if the poet opens the frame of the painted picture, and frees it from its outer lines, so its contents pour out: the characters shatter their painted frame, and the event flows onto the ground, and the bitter blood and fragments scatter. Let us contemplate the completion of the opening scene:
"And light ten moons..
In a little while,
The Lady of the Marshes will arrive..
Floating.. like a candle on the water..
Carrying in her right hand
Red loaves of bread..
And in the left.. a fruit of fire."
Techniques for Developing the Event
And after the narrator finished painting the picture, he now seems ready to break its frame and move its contents on a realistic ground, with what it includes of childhood, bloody femininity, and fragments. And in the next scene, the narrator himself is subjected to transformation in a way. After he was, in the opening scene of the poem, defenseless, carrying nothing that would enable him to defend himself, or paint the image of the lady, we find him in the new scene carrying a sword with an edge "I dip the edge of the sword in your blood," and he had entrusted the attendees, in the first scene, to add the laughter of two children to the lady, just as he also entrusted them to light the ten moons. As for now, he confirms his ability to act:
"I dip the edge of the sword in your blood,
And I paint a lady,
Above the wall of the house..
I paint two children,
And ten moons
I paint this safe country..
And I tell the children,
The story of (Tsawahan)."
And after the narrator completes the image of the lady, the two children, the ten moons, and the safe country, he tells the children the story of this wonderful lady: "Tsawahan." And if the poet used, at the beginning of the poem, the past tense verb "dipped," then here, he uses the present tense verb, "dip," and this different usage has a clear connotation. For the past tense embodies a disconnected time, and a finished relationship that has no extension. Also, in the phrase "with the blood of a woman," there is a generalization that did not give the scene specificity or familiarity, whereas now the present tense expresses a warm connection whose warp and woof are based on interaction and participation. Also, the woman is no longer indefinite after he linked between her and the narrator a bond of connection and the discourse of vigilant knowledge.
