On the surface, Syrian-born poet Nizar Qabbani was either seen as someone who objectified women or as someone who was overt about sensuality.
He was often labeled with many different titles; some have described him as a progressive Arab poet, while others have criticized him for moral degeneracy. But beneath all of these labels, not many have looked at his poetry through the lens of Qabbani as a ‘philosopher of love.’
His poetry did not merely portray love and sensuality as emotions to be experienced, but as human experiences worthy of contemplation. In his work, love becomes a subject of reflection, questioning, and philosophical inquiry.
During the 20th century, at a time when speaking openly about sexual desire was forbidden, censored, or considered socially taboo, Qabbani revived the ancient artistic tradition of using coded and symbolic language. It was a communication tool used by artists and poets to express what could not be spoken openly, while also protecting them from the consequences of addressing taboo subjects directly.
Of the many codes and symbols that have been used to express desire, the fruit is perhaps one of the most enduring. Throughout art and poetry, fruits have often served as symbols of human desire, while also carrying deeper associations with sensuality, temptation, and sexual repression.
In his poem Orange (1978), featured in his poetry collection titled I Love You, I Love You, and the Rest is Yet to Come (1978), the poet explores the multi-layered experiences of falling in love, using the symbol of an orange to express how love both unpeels and exposes us.
Flavours of Love
There are many flavours to love, just as there are many flavours and layers to a piece of fruit. Love can be sweet, sour, bitter, juicy, or even slightly sharp, changing as we peel back each layer and become more familiar with another person.
In this sense, a piece of fruit holds both experiences at once: the physical desire of lust and the emotional intimacy of love, where the act of tasting and consuming becomes intertwined with the act of discovering and revealing another person.
Many of the modern fruit symbols, particularly the use of emojis shaped by internet culture, are often used as sexualized meanings due to their shapes and cultural associations. The fig’s association with female genitalia stems from its cleft shape, while the pomegranate has traditionally symbolized fertility and procreation through its colour and abundance of seeds.
Yet for Qabbani, a fruit like an orange is far more than simply a symbol of sensuality or lust, because beneath its sensuality lies a parallel layer of reflection and depth. The orange does not simply describe sexual or romantic desire; rather, it presents love as a force that can dismantle identity, social boundaries, language, religion, and even the self.
As a philosopher of love, Qabbani beautifully employs a coded symbol to explore questions such as: how can we understand love beyond the idea of it as a transaction, and instead see it as an emotion that allows us to better understand who we are deep within, as well as the beliefs that shape us?
Mixing the sensual with the philosophical, Qabbani opens the poem with the striking visual, “love peels me like an orange.” The image is deliberately sensual, yet it also carries a sense of vulnerability and tenderness, revealing the extent to which love can expose our deepest flaws and weaknesses.
To peel an orange is to strip away its outer layer and reveal what lies beneath; in much the same way, love removes the hardened exterior, or mask, that people often construct and project to the world around them.
Paradoxically, love becomes both a tender and violent act, as it destroys something in him, but the destruction is not necessarily experienced as suffering.
It is almost like a necessary opening; an opening through which he can come to understand himself beyond the boundaries of court documents, religious rituals, and marriage ceremonies.
As he later suggests in the poem, “love…annuls the place of birth. It annuls the years of study. It revokes from me my passport,” stripping away the markers through which identity is conventionally defined.
Love strips all of these away, and the orange can be read as a metaphor for the human self being peeled down to its most essential layer, making the poem’s eroticism inseparable from its philosophical dimension.
Throughout the poem, Qabbani continually transforms sensual experience into something greater, elevating it toward transcendence.
Desire becomes a way of encountering beauty, while beauty, in turn, becomes a way of understanding the world around us.
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