'AQQAD 113poem is 'A Devil's Biography' (pp. 241 ff.), which is also written in an interest-
ing and more satisfactory form, the quatrain, which contributes towards the
rapid movement of the story. It is a long narrative poem of over a hundred
quatrains and it tells the story of a demon who grew bored with his job of
tempting human beings to their perdition, since he saw that they were all
alike, more to be pitied than to be envied, and that in his view there was no
difference between the so-called good and bad. He repents, and God accepts
his repentence and settles him in heaven in the company of angels, but he
soon resents having to sing the praises of the Lord and he aspires to be as
exalted as God himself. He rebels, and God immediately rums him into a
stone statue. But even in his final state he still exercises an evil influence, for
as a statue of perfect beauty he has the power to bewitch the beholder. The
poem is interesting on account of the view of mankind it reveals and which,
according to the poet, is coloured by the despair engendered in him by the
shocking events of the First World War. Although the devil, clearly a mouth-
piece of the author, says that all mankind is to be pitied, it is not because
he believes that men are innocent: on the contrary when he was on earth the
worst trick the devil could devise to play on mankind was to invent the word
'right' (haqq which means both Truth and Right) in the name of which all
human action was justified. The poet makes a repeated profession of faith
and belief in God, yet it is not without significance that the charm and lure
of the statue, which is seen by him simply as a work of art, is related to the
wiles of the devil. Although one should not drive the point too far, it seems
that 'Aqqad's view of art and the creative imagination is somewhat similar
to Shukri's, which, as we have seen, involves some degree of moral danger.
That 'Aqqad was drawn to the supernatural in this manner seems to be, at
least in part, the result of his reading in English literature; we know that
he was familiar with Milton's Paradise Lost and with the writings of Joseph
Addison whose papers in The Spectator on the Pleasures of the Imagination
reveal the common eighteenth-century view of the imagination which
limited its creativity largely to the invention of supernatural characters.^52
'Aqqad also wrote some memorable poems on children, and as Mandur
has said, some of his most successful poems deal with childhood themes.
For instance, 'A Little Girl's Jealousy' (p. 53) possesses considerable charm,
while 'Elegy on a Little Girl' (p. 56) is a moving elegy strongly reminiscent
of Wordsworth's Lucy poems. A large proportion of'Aqqad's work, however,
is love poetry. This varies considerably in quality. Although he is capable of
writing a good poem on the happy experience of fulfilled love, such as 'Tell
Me' (p. 314), it is on the whole the poems dealing with his doubts and dis-
appointments in love which stand out, poems such as 'Suspicious Love' and