The Aesthetics of Color Imagery in the Poetry of Ibn Ma'tuq al-Musawi (d. 1087 AH): An Analytical Study

Abstract

The Arab poet sought to make color an objective language and an expressive medium, based on the radiant light waves it reflects. He relied on its psychological impact and aesthetic value, reflected in the appearance of things, people, and actions, within an expressive framework of the soul's anxieties and feelings, in a comprehensive vision, through the semantic application of color. The poet's conviction grew in presenting color as an objective correlative for everything around him and everything within him, including thoughts and meanings. Poets addressed color as an objective element, in addition to its perceptible, sensory qualities, and employed it in all their poetic forms because of the symbolic connotations color carries, which contribute significantly to shaping the poetic image and enriching the meaning the poet wishes to convey. Color was fundamentally symbolic in its structure and in expressing its themes within a visual aesthetic of that chromatic composition. Therefore, we have taken this chromatic approach to the poetic texts of a medieval poet, Ibn Ma'tuq al-Musawi, and extracted the poetic images drawn by those colors in their various forms, which possessed profound lines and features in depicting reality, clarifying what happens to the poet, what he does, and his final words and deeds.