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The arti le begins by onsidering Giuseppe Ungaretti’s fas ination with an early Canzone by Leopardi, “Alla Primavera, o delle favole anti he” (1822). The poem draws on old superstitions about the so- alled demonio me idiano said to haunt the earth at noontime. Ungaretti takes this “blind hour” when vision be omes mirage as the inaugural moment of a new poeti s, Leopardi finding in the “un ertainty” of modern experien e an alternative to the omfortable li hés of neo lassi ism. Mallarmé and Valéry later per eive these intensities of light and heat as onditions of a poetry the latter des ribes “à la fois étranger et étrangère.” Valéry develops this idea of “foreignness” by des ribing the poet as “un espè e singulière de tradu teur qui traduit le dis- ours ordinaire . . . en ‘langage des dieux’.” The arti le onsiders ways in whi h some later Fren h poets develop this nexus of poetry, painting and translation to explore the kinds of “foreignness” said to animate poeti language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines foreignness in Mohja Kahfs poetry volume, E-mails from Scheherazad (2003), as a celebratory commodity rather than a literary trope to resist Arab women representations or to accentuate exilic voices. Drawing on Julie Kristeva's conceptualization of foreignness as internal personae and not a projection of an external locus of identity, this paper explores how the speakers in some of Kahfs poems view foreignness as festive rather than negative. In sharp contrast to the traditional conception of difference as publicly alienating, foreignness to the Arab-American speakers becomes a distinctive mark that they uphold and celebrate. Examining foreignness in Kahfs poems through Kristeva's lens provides a sense of uniqueness to the immigrant's experience. The notion of recognizing the foreigner in ourselves, that Kristeva provides, subverts the general perception of foreignness as external and intruding. Kahfs poetry can be perceived as a negotiation of foreignness, which is not an estranging element that incurs resistance but rather as a celebratory part of the human consciousness that should be jubilantly defined rather than politically defended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]