Ḥammūd Ramaḍān: Modernity and Poetry in Algeria

Starting from Pierre Bourdieu’s claim that “the impetus for change” — what I identify with modernity — “resides in the struggles that take place in the corresponding fields of production” (Bourdieu 1995: 81), and from a reading of literary texts I discussed elsewhere (Guardi 2016), in this paper I will present the life and work of Ḥammūd Ramaḍān (1906–1945). My aim is to highlight the “impetus for change” that occurred in the Algerian literary field long before 1962. Ḥammūd Ramaḍān, an Algerian poet and intellectual, thoroughly discussed the role of poetry in society and proposed new ways of writing in a changing era. He can be considered the first Arab poet who challenged the classic mode of Arabic language poetry in Algeria, and this happened before the emergence of the free verse movement in Iraq. His work will be analysed not only within the general framework of Arab modernity with the aim to provide a new definition of the Arab modernity’s canon, but also within the framework of Algerian literary production in Arabic. My main focus will be on some of his theoretical writings, in which he urges his fellow poets and intellectuals to make fundamental changes in their use of language in poetry so as to get closer to society. Although well versed in classical Arabic and in the Arab-Muslim classical heritage, Ramaḍān sees all this not as a chain that keeps the poet tethered to the past, but as a springboard to jump into the future.