The tragedy of death in the poetic theater of Salah Abdel Sabour

Abstract

As a poet of the generation of pioneers who faced bitter conflicts with colonialism, with pro-colonial regimes and with repressive regimes, the  Poetic Theater of Abd Sabor is characterized by a prominent theme which is death. Aspects of death are reflected through different images with the woman, with authority, with the self, with reality and with the community, wherein there is a full determinism. Death results from the human being’s alienation, frustration and sense of the absurdity of life.

        This theme is seen in all his poetic drama in various forms ranging from natural death in "After the Death of the King"; murder in "Travelers Night", "The Waiting Princess”, and “Leila and the Mdaman";  to crucifixion in "The Tragedy of Al-Halaj,". All these reveal the grief and pain endured by Sabour, and his generation from the tyranny of injustice and the domination of the ruling regimes. This is also reflected in the image that was the embodiment of the emotional impulse signs where the poet used the acts of transformation and change which give the world silence and take it away from his presence to absence.