In keeping with the key themes of “The Wound,” the third and fourth stanzas display a variety allusions and metaphors which can come across in a very vague, almost mysterious manner.
“I named you cloud,
wound of the parting dove.
I named you book and quill
and here I begin the dialogue
between me and the ancient tongue
in the islands of tomes
in the archipelago of the ancient fall.
And here I teach these words
to the wind and the palms,
O wound of the parting dove.
If I had a harbor in the land
of dreams and mirrors, if I had a ship,
if I had the remains
of a city, if I had a city
in the land of children and weeping,
I would have written all this down for the wound’s sake,
a song like a spear
that penetrates trees, stone, and sky,
soft like water
unbridled, startling like conquest.”
Certain phrases within these stanza are also repeated multiple times throughout Adonis’s poetry. “The dialogue” mentioned in the fourth line of stanza three is fleshed out in the “Dialogue” poem on page 37; to whom is the narrator speaking? What does this passage suggest about internal struggle and personal consciousness? What does it suggest about the importance of religion? Does Adonis believe in free will or are we destined to a predetermined fate?
What is the significance or meaning behind “the parting dove” in the second and tenth lines of stanza three? Where else can you locate this image within the Songs of Mihyar?
Additionally, “the ancient fall” brought up in line seven clearly ties to the poem “The Fall” on page 36. These recurring allusions to the past reiterate the significance of knowing and understanding history–as the past is a continual presence that creates the present and informs the future. What exactly IS “the fall”? Can you trace this term through the history of Damascus?
World Lit 2014 
Additionally, “the ancient fall” brought up in line seven clearly ties to the poem “The Fall” on page 36. These recurring allusions to the past reiterate the significance of knowing and understanding history–as the past is a continual presence that creates the present and informs the future.
This question lead me to find this article and I believe it answers this question better than I could myself. I was very fascinated about this concept.
New Historicism, Cultural Studies (1980s-present)
Summary:
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding literary theory and schools of criticism and how they are used in the academy.
Contributors:Allen Brizee, J. Case Tompkins
Last Edited: 2012-03-16 09:50:08
It’s All Relative…
This school, influenced by structuralist and post-structuralist theories, seeks to reconnect a work with the time period in which it was produced and identify it with the cultural and political movements of the time (Michel Foucault’s concept of épistème). New Historicism assumes that every work is a product of the historic moment that created it. Specifically, New Historicism is “…a practice that has developed out of contemporary theory, particularly the structuralist realization that all human systems are symbolic and subject to the rules of language, and the deconstructive realization that there is no way of positioning oneself as an observer outside the closed circle of textuality” (Richter 1205).
A helpful way of considering New Historical theory, Tyson explains, is to think about the retelling of history itself: “…questions asked by traditional historians and by new historicists are quite different…traditional historians ask, ‘What happened?’ and ‘What does the event tell us about history?’ In contrast, new historicists ask, ‘How has the event been interpreted?’ and ‘What do the interpretations tell us about the interpreters?'” (278). So New Historicism resists the notion that “…history is a series of events that have a linear, causal relationship: event A caused event B; event B caused event C; and so on” (Tyson 278).
New historicists do not believe that we can look at history objectively, but rather that we interpret events as products of our time and culture and that “…we don’t have clear access to any but the most basic facts of history…our understanding of what such facts mean…is…strictly a matter of interpretation, not fact” (279). Moreover, New Historicism holds that we are hopelessly subjective interpreters of what we observe.
Typical questions:
What language/characters/events present in the work reflect the current events of the author’s day?
Are there words in the text that have changed their meaning from the time of the writing?
How are such events interpreted and presented?
How are events’ interpretation and presentation a product of the culture of the author?
Does the work’s presentation support or condemn the event?
Can it be seen to do both?
How does this portrayal criticize the leading political figures or movements of the day?
How does the literary text function as part of a continuum with other historical/cultural texts from the same period…?
How can we use a literary work to “map” the interplay of both traditional and subversive discourses circulating in the culture in which that work emerged and/or the cultures in which the work has been interpreted?
How does the work consider traditionally marginalized populations?
Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding of this theory:
Michel Foucault – The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences, 1970; Language, Counter-memory, Practice, 1977
Clifford Geertz – The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973; “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” 1992
Hayden White – Metahistory, 1974; “The Politics of Historical Interpretation: Discipline and De-Sublimation,” 1982
Stephen Greenblatt – Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, 1980
Pierre Bourdieu – Outline of a Theory of Practice, 1977; Homo Academicus, 1984; The Field of Cultural Production, 1993
What exactly IS “the fall”? Can you trace this term through the history of Damascus?
The answer to this questions is answered in the article below. In summary It is the prediction that Damascus will fall the prediction is in the Bible. Also the world will end some day and man is dust and unto dust he shall return. It is all true, but when all of this will come to pass is still anyone s guess.
With U.S. warships looming offshore, reports of chemical weapons and saber-rattling from Iran about the coming of Armageddon, the nation of Syria and its capital, Damascus, are at the epicenter of what some suggest may become a prophesied battle of biblical proportions.
“Many students of the Word of God see a major alignment of ancient prophecies regarding the end times being fulfilled right before our eyes,” asserts Carl Gallups, pastor, radio host and author of “The Magic Man in the Sky: Effectively Defending the Christian Faith.” “More importantly, we are the first generation in history to see such dramatic and striking alignments.”
Gallups points to the biblical passage of Psalm 83 – which tells of the nations surrounding Israel conspiring against it – and especially to Isaiah 17, which tells of a day when Damascus, often cited as the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, will be utterly destroyed.
“Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap,” states the ancient prophet Isaiah. “The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria: they shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, saith the LORD of hosts.”
“I also want to note,” adds author of “The 9/11 Prophecy,” James F. Fitzgerald, “that the prophecy of the destruction of Damascus in Isaiah 17 is directly connected in its context to the fall of Ephraim and the Northern Kingdom of Israel as Isaiah previously warned in chapter 9:10. That is the same prophecy messianic rabbi Jonathan Cahn has written about in ‘The Harbinger’ and in ‘The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment’ documentary, where he’s applied the specific pattern of judgment there to the remarkable events that have transpired here in America after 9/11.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/biblical-doom-of-damascus-right-before-our-eyes/#sqH722CMkZqqSROY.99