In 1993 Dafatir Kalimat, an imprint of the avant-garde, short-lived, but highly esteemed literary journal Kalimat, published an edited volume entitled Al-Bayanat (The Manifestos). The volume, introduced and assembled by the Tunisian Muhammad Lutfi Al-Yousfi, brought together three manifestos by the Syrian Adunis (“The Manifesto of Modernity” (1979-1992)), the Moroccan Mohammed Bennis (“The Writing Manifesto” (1981)), and the Bahraini Qassim Haddad and Amin Saleh, who co-authored “The Death of the Chorus” (“Mawt Al-Chorus” (1984); hereafter “Chorus”). The first three authors were already well on their way to producing massive works of literary scholarship, namely, Al-Yousfi’s Fitnat Al-Mutakhayyal, Adunis’ Al-Thabit Wal-Mutahawwil, and Bennis’ Al-Shi’r Al-’Arabi Al-Hadeeth, texts which have since become mainstays of research into Arabic poetry from the second half of the twentieth century onward, aside from their influence on the self-understanding of modern Arabic poetics. These multi-volume studies can be seen as materializations of their respective authors’ condensed theoretical statements as found in Al-Bayanat. Haddad/Saleh’s “Chorus” stands orphaned by comparison. The two Bahraini authors also stand awkwardly beside Al-Yousfi, Adunis, and Bennis for their non-academic orientation: “Chorus” was written by a practicing poet and a storyteller (of sorts), neither of whom was academically trained. Of the collection, “Chorus” reads the least like prose, having been written rather as an imaginative statement of poetic principles. And while the three other manifestos were eventually complemented by the aforementioned scholarly projects, “Chorus” was followed by a perverse work of oneiric writing, penned by the same two authors, entitled Al-Jawashin (plural of jawsh, “al-sadr min al-insan aw al-layl,” according to Ibn Manzur; roughly, the foremost part of a person’s body -- thus “sadr” = chest -- or the night). The relationship between “Chorus” and Al-Jawashin appears tenuous until we learn that “Chorus” was originally written as an introduction to Al-Jawashin. I propose the perhaps ill-advised task of reading Al-Jawashin through the lens of “Chorus,” that is, as an expression and extension of the theses suggested by the latter. To this end I will bring together the critical artillery presented in “Chorus” and “Al-Damm Al-Fadheh” (the only other text co-authored by Haddad/Saleh) to bear on Al-Jawashin. Above all, I will be concerned with anchoring the aesthetic concerns of Haddad/Saleh to the cultural and political “night” with which they brand the historical moment of the 80’s and 90’s in the Gulf and the wider Arab context.