THE ROMANTICS 118the poet and scholar Katnal Nash'at suggests, his thwarted ambition and
desire to obtain some recognition, since for a long time his poetry was either
attacked or merely passed over in silence by influential critics such as Taha
Husain.^1 One reason why he was not sufficiently appreciated was almost
certainly his unwillingness to join political parties at a time when party
politics penetrated the whole fabric of the literary and cultural world — with
damaging results which he himself lamented.^6 The literary establishment,
the guardians of traditional poetic values (including even a poet like Shauqi
for whom Abu Shadi had expressed admiration on many occasions) seemed
to be alarmed by the new values which Abu Shadi and his followers re-
presented. He was therefore attacked, sometimes mercilessly, and often
made fun of and represented as the physician who dabbled in poetry. Satires
on him were published. Those who attacked him were not confined to the
champions of neoclassicism: 'Aqqad and his followers joined the rank of
Abu Shadi's detractors and denigrators because Abu Shadi dared to publish
some critical remarks in an otherwise sympathetic review of a volume of
verse by 'Aqqad in Apollo. A cursory look at the contents of the issues of Apollo
will give the reader some idea of the extent and strength of opposition with
which the poetry of Abu Shadi and his disciples met, for the periodical is
full of replies to such adverse criticism. This hostile reception of Abu Shadi's
work no doubt deepened his sense of grievance and isolation in his own
country. Yet despite his feelings of sorrow and frustration he never ceased
to struggle or to serve the cause of modern Arabic poetry. He made enormous
financial sacrifices: he bore the entire cost of printing and publishing not
only the periodical, but also many volumes of verse written by the younger
generation of poets which he printed in a printing press he had bought with
his own money for this purpose, although he was not a very wealthy man.
His yearning for communication is felt in the Introduction to his volume
The Torch, in which he claimed that his motive in publishing it was neither
profit nor fame, but simply the pleasure of spiritual communion with his
readers. As his disappointment increased with the passage of time he found
himself printing no more than fifty copies of the volume The Shepherd's Return
(1942) which he distributed mainly among his friends and public libraries.^7
Four years later his sense of frustration and bitter disillusionment, enhanced
by what he felt to be persecution and intrigue by reactionary forces in his
country on the one hand and his grief over the death of his wife on the other,
drove him to choose exile in America.
It would not be surprising to find that a poet who could write so much
or with such ease was liable to be uneven, and this indeed was the case