Moral summons across traditions: Shared rhetorical function in Taufiq Ismail’s and Abu Nuwas’s poetry

This article compares Taufiq Ismail's "Kita Adalah Pemilik Sah Republik Ini" and Abu Nuwas's "al-Amal al-Kadhūb" from the zuhd section of Dīwān Abī Nuwās. It asks whether the two poems share a rhetorical function even though they rest on different domains, namely the civic-political and the eschatological-religious. This descriptive qualitative study applies the American school of comparative literature, which does not require influence, combining hermeneutic reading and content analysis with the sociology of literature as a contextual framework. The findings identify four points of functional convergence. First, both poems take the form of a moral summons in the directive mood, delivered through direct address to "yā nafs" and "kita". Second, both mobilise a logic of deadline through "ḥattā matā" and the closure of alternatives. Third, both invalidate the legitimacy of the present by invoking a higher law that applies equally to all, namely death as a single ordinance and the equal sovereignty of citizens. Fourth, the critique in both is self-inclusive, so that moral authority derives from the poet's implication. The study concludes that the critical function of poetry can converge rhetorically across referential domains, and that such parallel reading positions Indonesian poetry as an equal interlocutor in world literature.