Figurative imagery and rhetorical devices

10Figurative imagery and rhetorical devices

Simile (tashbih)

• "An exile that will be my medicine", "the futility of my circling", "my banishment is a sickness": exile and circling are pictured as medicine and as malady.
• "A heart like this deaf rock": the heart likened to a rock, showing his wish for numbness.
• "Waves like the waves of my sorrows": the pressing of waves likened to the pressing of sorrows.
• "The sea... like my chest": the sea's narrowness likened to the chest's narrowness.
• "Like the dark colour of clouds", "like a red tear": the sun and the twilight likened to blood and to a tear.
• "Mourning-halls of the lights": the light of sunset likened to a funeral gathering.

Metaphor (isti'ara)

• "The sweetness of its air heals this body", "does it soften fires?": fires stand for the pains of the heart.
• "Complaining to the sea... it answers me", "the sea fluttering and cramped": personification of the sea.
• "Stripping-off of day and striking-down of the sun", "the day bidding farewell": personification of day and sun.
• "The horizon darkened, wounded in its lid": the horizon personified as a man wounded in the eyelid.

Metonymy (kinaya)

• "The heart between awe and hope": a kinaya for unsettlement and confusion.
• "As if I had seen my passing day": a kinaya for the poet's end and the nearness of his term.

Sound and balance devices (badi')

• Good division (husn al-taqsim) in the fourth verse.
• Antithesis (Tibaq): I lodged / exile · sickness / seeking cure · complaining / answering me.
• Imperfect paronomasia (jinna naqis) in ibrah and 'ibrah — with the open and the broken first letter.
• Synonymy (taraduf): stripping-off / striking-down.
• Repetition: "illah" repeated because the kinds of pain differ, and "alone" repeated to confirm the solitude and the grief.