Investigating the factors of “versification” in Zakaria Tamer’s short story collection “The Neighing of the White Steed”

Introduction: The story is a kind of literature which seeks to be effective and involve the emotions and feelings of the reader primarily and then his or her mind and wisdom. This type of literary genre is popular in the contemporary era due to its coverage of topics. In order to influence the audience, it needs various factors. Story writers make their impacts by creating strange and dramatic events, use of powerful characters, the application of new themes and ideas. Among these features, poetry can be a component of a story and an important factor influencing the audience. The author of the story uses it with tools in a justified manner to have the ultimate impact on the reader and attract the audience with the adventures of their story. Therefore, it can be said that story and poetry are two separate literary genres, but this does not mean that their paths are completely different and there is no similarly between the elements of poetry and story. Sometimes, poetry observes the narrative elements such as an accident, a personality, etc., and becomes a fictional poem. However, among the types of stories such as novels, romance and short stories, short stories are more poetic than the others; because this type of story is closely related to poetry due to its shortness. Poetry itself requires smaller tools and components, including the use of poetic images and selecting poetic titles and interpretations, using techniques appropriate to the poetic world are such as the stream of consciousness and monologue. Due to the structural affinity of this fictional genre and poetry, both genres benefit from these cases.
Poetry in contemporary fiction or prose is considered as an issue that can be proposed in research. It has been used in different styles since ancient times. But the forms and characteristics that the contemporary writers use are very different from the style of the past. Prose versus poetry and the order in the works of the ancients can be examined only by being prose. But prose in our time is a literary category called a story or fiction. So, there is no necessity in the story for the author to use poetic component, unlike the old prose in which the use of poetry was a kind of stylistic trick. Among the contemporary narrative works, fiction is selected to be examined here along with its goals and functions.
Methodology: Among Arabic writers, Zakaria Tamer, a contemporary Syrian writer, is one of the most prominent writers in the field of poetic narratives. He often pays attention to features of poetry in his story collections. This is especially true about his first collection “The Neighing of the White Steed”, which has different poetic elements regarding social theme that create effects in special social contexts. He intends to defeat the rule of sorrow, grief, and absurdity in the society. Through a descriptive-analytical method, this study aims to come up with a theory related to the relationship between prose and poetry by examining the elements of poetry in the short story collection of Zakaria Tamer. In his story series, the author has used many poetic elements such as poetic title, simile, pleasing images, stream of consciousness, and temporal breaks. Each of these components is analyzed separately in this study.
Results and Discussion: The results show that this work has different elements of poetry. By adaptation from a scene of the short and transient life, it has a poetic capacity. This plays a key role in the collection. The deployment of poetic elements in this work proves it resemblance to poetry. The author uses poetic titles, poetic images, similes, stream of consciousness, and temporal interruptions.
Thus, Zakaria Tamer's deliberate and artistic use of poetic elements is closely related to text and language. These factors, with their high frequency in the collection, show that the concept of poetry has emerged well in the collection of stories. The author sticks to a combination of association and repetition to maintain unity and non-disintegration between the short stories, which has led to tangible fictional poetry.
The other poetic factors that make the poetry of the collection valuable are the connection of poetry with elements such as perspective, place, and personality and the theme, the existence of emotions and feelings, and the existence of multiple sentences that have led to the overall coherence of the work. Also, these poetic factors have made the work very effective in romantic and sensory terms and in terms of inner concepts, whispers and feelings. It also makes the poem-loving audience enjoy the story because narrative concepts such as storytelling and characterization elements are less pronounced than poetic concepts and poetic language and images.
Conclusion: This research is the descriptive and analytical investigation of the elements of poetry in Zakaria Tamer’s short story collection “The Neighing of the White Steed”. The results show that this collection has various elements of versification, and the the stories of this collection are very close to poetry.