The Influence of The Waste Land on Modern Kurdish poetry: Strani Nergiz as a Sample

Abstract

This paper examines the influence of T.S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land on Străni Něrgiz (Daffodil's Song) a poem by the contemporary Kurdish poet Dilshad Abdullah. One of the factors that make one literature influenced by another, in two different languages, is the existence of a masterpiece in one of them. The passage of this work will be either through the original language or through translation. The Kurdish poet Dilshad Abdullah (b.1956) started writing in the mid 1970s and was known in the 1980s. Abdullah has his peculiarity among poets of his generation. He is concerned with the needs of Kurdish culture in general. Besides Kurdish culture, he has been interested in foreign cultures and literatures, especially the poetry of T.S. Eliot. That is to develop his poetic talent, and to create a new style and form in Kurdish poetry. Abdullah gave T.S. Eliot special importance. One can easily notice the Eliotan imagery and techniques in his poems utilized by his own expressions and colored by his personal psychology. Accordingly, this study adopts a comparative method to reveal the influence of The Waste land on Strani Nergiz in a away enriched the style and techniques of Dilshad Abdulla's poetry in specific and Kurdish poetry in general. Consequently, he transferred certain stylistic features and techniques from The Waste Land into Kurdish poetry.