From imperial capital to dungeon: The construction of the image of the city in the works of the Kurdish-Iraqi poet buland al-haydarī

This paper provides a systematic examination of the unique ways used by the Kurdish-Iraqi poet Buland al-Haydarī (1926, Baghdad-1996, London) to shape the image of Baghdad, in the context of the perception of the city's status among intellectuals of the political left in mid-twentieth-century Iraq, and as a reflection of his own life philosophy. Al-Haydarī, a prominent Leftist intellectual who was persecuted by the Iraqi authorities and who spent much of his life in exile, embodies in his works a very sharp and unusually original voice. The purpose of the present article is to decipher the unique poetic molds he uses when depicting the image of the city, in order to examine how this image functions as what may be called an "apparatus of criticism", and abo in order to cast light not only on his personal artistry but abo on an entire generation of Iraqi writers whose disappointment with their country's political and social systems brought them to the edge of despair.