Colors complain: A Reading of Adonis' Color Semantics

Abstract

Objectives: This study aims to clarify the concept of colors and their presence in literary texts, in order to examine their presence in samples of Adonis' Diwan, Songs of Mihyar al-Damascene and other poems, in order to reveal their role in the poetic semantic structure and the functions they perform in relation to the meaning and intent that the poet wants in the poetic text.
Methodology: The study adopts a qualitative, descriptive, and analytical approach. It provides a brief reading of the main transformations in modern Arabic poetry, briefly addresses the biography of the poet Adonis, presents theoretical material on the concept of colors in literature and poetry, and focuses on analyzing samples of Adonis's poetry that contain the use of colors.
Results: The study led to findings that confirm the breadth of Adonis' culture and his ingenuity in the process of employing colors in his poems in a way that serves the text and refers it to suggestive integration and symbolic semantic depth. This indicates his awareness of the relationship of colors with the human psyche and the reader.
He was able to employ colors in order to deepen the text and its connotations connotations and adds ambiguity to the entirety of his Diwan, which expresses his great interest in displacement and suggestion in line with the doctrine of modernist poets.
Conclusion: The study attempts to read Adonis' texts that employed colors and included a semantic task consistent with their depth, based on a sample of texts in which the colors appear with a reasoned meaning that serves the apparent content, participates in tightening the symbolic structure and poetic image, and contributes to revealing the hidden connotations in the interior of the text, it was found that Adonis is good at pricking his texts with colors that declare his complaint and reveal his pain.