The romantics
'Aqqad and Mazini proved much more successful than their greater con-
temporary Mutran in altering the current literary taste. They did not, how-
ever, accomplish this change by their own poetry so much as by their
criticism. Both 'Aqqad and Mazini were powerful polemic writers, brilliant
essayists who wrote much in the leading newspapers of the day, and were
avidly read especially by the younger generation. Having to a large extent
succeeded in dethroning Shauqi and Hafiz, or at least in dislodging them from
the seats of eminence, they made it possible for the public to be at least
prepared to listen to different voices, if not actually to welcome these voices.
What they were doing in Egypt was being done effectively in the Lebanon
and in America by even more radical innovators, extremists like Amin al-
Rihani, Jibran Khaffl Jibran and Mikha'il Nu'aima, whose writings were
by no means confined to these regions, but found their way to Egypt almost
immediately.
But the new poetic voices in Egypt were a development not so much of the
poetry of 'Aqqad or Mazini or even of Shukri, as of the great Syro-Egyptian
poet Mutran. Dr Ahmad Zaki Abu Shadi began as a disciple of Mutran, who
was a friend of his father's, and he acknowledged his debt to his master on
many occasions. At the conclusion of the second edition of his volume of
verse. The Dewdrops of Dawn (1910), Abu Shadi wrote an essay entitled
'Mutran's influence on my verse', and Mutran, in turn, wrote an introduction
to Abu Shadi's volume Spring Phantoms (1933). Similarly in the case of
Dr Ibrahim Naji, who was much more of a thoroughgoing romantic, Mutran
exercised a profound formative influence early in the poet's life. Naji was
an ardent admirer of Mutran, whose acquaintance he sought and developed
early in his career. Thanks largely to the efforts of these two remarkable
physicians and of the young men who gathered around them, principally