Baradoni, the Great Yemeni Intellectual Perceptive man in the time of the blind [Archives:2002/35/Culture]
August 26 2002
YASSER AL-MAYASI
YEMEN TIMES STAFF
[email protected]
The talented poet, Al Baradoni, was born in Baradon village, Dhamar governorate in 1928. At the age of five, he was stricken by smallpox which resulted in losing vision to go blind all his life ever. Baradoni started his basic education in 1034 in his village where he learnt reading, writing and kept about third of the holy Koran by heart. After that he moved to Dhamar to complete his Kora’anic studying. In 1941, Al Baradoni starting writing poems in which he was interested but it brought him into prison in 1948 to spend 9 months imprisonment.
After his release, he moved to Sana’a in which he joined the Sciences House and got a Certificate in the legal sciences. He lived a very tough life, full of suffering, misery but he was strong at heart and advocated to his country’s love and freedom which was so clear in his poetry as he dealt with many issues related to the country.
Al Baradoni was known of his poetic production and he has a lot of collections but his first collection ever was ” From Bilquis land ” printed in Cairo in 1961 which was introduced by the Arab critic Ali Al Gendi. In 1971 Al Baradoni was invited to participate in the Festival of Mawsel Iraq, to celebrate the first millennium of the great poet, Abu Tamam, in which he delivered his famous poem “Abu Tamam and today’s Arabism” which granted him more popularity. Al Baradoni also contributed to the historical issues specially for analyzing country’s issues as noticed on his book ” Yemeni Issues” and his collection “A time with no quality”.
Al Baradoni, as described by most of the critics, contributed to the rising of the Arabic poem along with few great poets not only that, but he was described by the Washington Post as one of the best contemporary Arabic poets who could enrich the Arabic literature with their great works. Similarly, The Gardian News paper, said ” Baradoni life was characterized with many variables, a radical politician, fond of his country and heritage, and a writing hero in a half uneducated country. In spite of being a blind, he could see what healthy people could not and he did not hesitate to express his own views transparently.” However, due to his plenty production, most of his works did not find its way for publishing and this can be attributed to the negligence which struck his along his life. It is a pity to notice that we remember our intellectuals after their death only so it an occasion to ask the related authorities to publish all his works and this the least thing we can do for such a great poet who lived in poverty and overcame the unbearable circumstances that he was described as ” Perceptive man in the blinds time”.
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