The Sufi poem, between the specificity of experience and the skilled use of language

Abstract

Poets and critics sustain that every text has its own experience, language and formal structure. With this in mind, this paper examines the specificities of Sufi poetry, a literary prototype the purpose of which is to seek knowledge of God and attain divine love. Starting with the hypothesis that the linguistic structure of Sufi poems is closely related to the nature of the topic addressed, this article analyzes the relationships between Sufism as thought and poetry as a literary genre. It concludes that the confluence of these two dimen- sions gave rise to a particular literary aesthetic that allowed Sufi poets to express their spir- itual and transcendental experience. For this reason, Arabic literary critics deem Sufi poetry to be among the finest creative expressions in terms of form and subject.