THE ROMANTICS 128by means other than verse composition, towards the cause of modern Arabic
poetry. In September 1932, thanks to his initiative and effort, the Apollo
Society was formed with its threefold aim: to promote the cause of Arabic
poetry in general, to help poets morally, socially and materially, and to sup-
port new, serious movements in poetry. The catholicity of the taste of Abu
Shadi, the driving force behind the group, is revealed in the fact that member-
ship of the Society was by no means confined to one school or to one genera-
tion or even to one country. The first to be elected president of the Society
was none other than Ahmad Shauqi, and when Shauqi died in 1932 he was
succeeded by Khalil Mutran. Abu Shadi, acting as secretary to the Society,
was the editor of its organ, the Apollo magazine, the first periodical in Arabic
devoted exclusively to the publication of poetry and poetry criticism. The
choice of the name was itself significant of the width of the editor's outlook,
although it was severely criticized by 'Aqqad. The same catholicity of taste
is revealed in the poetry published in the periodical, which embraced such
different types of poets as the neoclassicists Shauqi, Ahmad Muharram,
Mustafa Sadiq al-Rafi'i, the pre-romantics Mutran and 'Aqqad, and the
romantics Naji, Hasan Kamil al-Sairafi, 'Ali Mahmud Taha and Mahmud
Hasan Isma'fl. Apollo also published works by the Lebanese Abu Shabaka,
the Tunisian al-Shabbi, the Iraqis Rusafi, Jawahiri and Mustafa Jawad, the
Sudanese Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahjub, and the Mahjari (American) Iliya
Abu Madi, Shafiq al-Ma'luf and Shukrallah al-Jurr.
Yet despite this catholicity of outlook it must be admitted that one school
seemed to be dominant in the movement and that was the romantics. The
magazine, which continued to appear monthly till December 1934, published
in translation a good deal of western poetry and criticism, both of which
happened to be of a dominantly Romantic character. For instance, the trans-
lations from English poetry were confined to works by Shakespeare, Thomas
Gray, Scott, Wordsworth, Shelley, Hardy and D. H. Lawrence, and of these
Wordsworth and Shelley had the lion's share. Moreover, the magazine be-
came the rallying ground for a number of enthusiastic young poets, most
of whom were of a romantic turn of mind. Furthermore, the political situa-
tion itself seemed to be favourable to the spread of romanticism. The early
1930s witnessed the government of Sidqi Pasha, which effectively made
hollow parliamentary democracy and limited the freedom of expression,
with the result that young intellectuals were driven to escape from social and
political reality into a solipsistic inner world of private sorrows and vague
longings, and into excessive preoccupation with depopulated nature. The
extent of the contemporary malaise and day-dreaming can be inferred from
the titles of some of the volumes of verse published by the young romantic