The Dialectic of Cosmic Opposites in the Dīwān of Hayṣa Bayṣa: A Stylistic Study

Abstract

This study investigates the phenomenon of "cosmic dialectical opposition" in the Diwan of the Abbasid poet Hays Bays (492–574 AH) from a stylistic-analytical perspective, a phenomenon significant for reflecting the poet's profound vision of existence and his fundamental inquiries into the nature of life and destiny. The study is grounded in a central problem: although previous studies on the Diwan — historical, biographical, structural, and thematic — have addressed the poet's work from multiple angles, none has treated cosmic opposition as an independent stylistic-semantic structure in its own right, instead reducing it, where mentioned, to a secondary rhetorical device within broader studies. This constitutes the scholarly gap the present research seeks to address.

The study is guided by four central questions: What are the most prominent patterns of cosmic opposition in the Diwan, and how can they be semantically classified? What stylistic mechanisms underlie their construction? How do they express the poet's existential vision? And to what extent do they reflect the civilizational crisis of the late Abbasid era?

Adopting the descriptive-analytical method supported by stylistic-analysis tools, the study classifies the cosmic oppositions in the Diwan into two interrelated tiers: major existential-cosmic oppositions (such as life/death, light/darkness, existence/non-existence, and presence/absence) that touch directly on the essence of human existence, and subordinate moral-psychological oppositions (such as nobility/treachery, generosity/miserliness, peace/war, fear/hope, stillness/motion, and speech/silence) that emanate from the same visionary root and constitute its natural extension. The findings reveal that these oppositions, across both tiers, are not merely rhetorical ornamentation or conventional antithesis, but perform tensional, condensational, and structurally organizing functions that render them the fundamental structural and semantic axis around which the Diwan is organized, expressing the poet's existential anxiety and bewilderment before the contradictions of the cosmos. The study recommends further exploration of Hays Bays' poetry through modern critical lenses, along with comparative studies to highlight the distinctiveness of this phenomenon within late Abbasid poetry.