Arguing that the poetic quest is an instance of the modernist movement at crossroads, this article compares poetic quests as represented in the works of T. S. Eliot and ʿAlī Aḥmad Saʿīd, pen-named Adūnīs (Adonis). The article (re-)examines Eliot’s most famous poem The Waste Land and some of Adūnīs’s short poems alongside their respective prose works on literary criticism. I demonstrate how Eliot’s and Adūnīs’s poetic quests are an instance not only of the modernist movement at crossroads, but also of liminality where the modernist poet presents fluctuating images of himself: the poet as a knight that can change the world and, at the same time, as the little man who is blown in the wind. Hence Eliot’s and Adūnīs’s poetic texts are full of paradoxes and are peopled by those that bear within themselves opposites and are capable of everything and nothing. The modernist poet is Eliot’s Tiresias and Adunis’s al-Buhlūl. I illustrate how this instance of liminality is represented in their treatment of the theme of tradition.

本文认为诗歌追求是现代主义运动在十字路口的一个实例，本文比较了TS艾略特（TS Eliot）和笔名阿杜尼（Adūnīs，阿多尼斯（Adonis））的ʿAlīAḥmadSaʿīd作品所代表的诗歌追求。本文重新审视了艾略特最著名的诗《荒原》以及阿杜尼（Adūnīs）的一些短诗以及他们各自的文学批评散文作品。我展示了艾略特和阿杜尼的诗歌追求如何不仅是十字路口的现代主义运动的实例，而且是现代主义诗人呈现出自己的波动形象的边缘性的代表：诗人作为骑士可以改变世界，同时，就像被风吹动的小矮人一样。因此，艾略特和阿杜尼的诗词文本充满了悖论，并被那些在自己对立面，无所不能的人所拥护。现代派诗人是艾略特的《提尔西亚斯》和阿杜尼斯的《布尔胡尔》。我说明了在处理传统主题时如何体现这种限制性。