NAJI 129poets, who either flourished or were brought up during that period. Here are
some revealing ones: The Lost Mariner by 'Ali Mahmud Taha, Behind the Clouds
by Ibrahim Naji, Lost Melodies by Hassan Kamil al-Sairafi, Burnt Up Breaths
by Mahmud Abu'l Wafa, The Dreaming Boat by Mukhtar al-Wakfl, The Dream-
ing Palm-Trees by 'Abdul 'Aziz 'Atlq or The Unknown Shore by Sayyid Qutb.^44
One of the most interesting and gifted of these poets was Muhammad' Abd
al-Mu'ti al-Hamshari, who died tragically young (1908—38) and never col-
lected his poems in any one volume. But together with some very fine lyrics,
such as 'To Charming Jita',^45 he published in the first volume of Apollo a
long narrative poem written in 1929 and consisting of more than 300 multi-
rhyme lines (divided into units of four rhyming lines each) entitled 'The
Shore of A'raf ',^4 * A'raf being a Koranic word denoting a place between
heaven and hell, but used by the poet to signify a place dividing life from
death. Hamshari, who was passionately interested in English Romantic
poetry and the Bible, imagines himself taking a trip after his death accom-
panied by the Muse in the 'magic boat of memories' to the shore of A'raf.
The imaginary shore is where all life and sound come to an end, all spirits
cease their wandering and come to rest, and where the landscape is bleak
with nothing to see but snow-covered rocks. The poet sees the ships of death
sailing silently towards the shore as processions of life heading for the tomb
of nights at the end of the sea of time. The poem ends with a description of
the poet in the valley of death with his lute broken and mute, forced by
death to eternal silence — which is in many ways an eloquent comment on
the sorrows of this generation of sensitive and frustrated romantics yearning
for death as an escape from a painfully oppressive reality. Significantly enough
it is the sight of the Nile in Cairo which, as he says in the introduction he
wrote to the poem in Apollo, evoked in the poet's mind the image of the land
of death.
The Egyptian romantic poets associated with the Apollo magazine are so
many that it is clearly impossible to deal with them all in a book of this
size. Lack of space therefore compels us to discuss in some detail only two:
Naji and Taha, who, different as they are, may together with Abu Shadi be
regarded as representative of certain facets of romantic poetry in Egypt.
Naji
Ibrahim Naji (1893 -195 3) was born in Cairo in a well-educated family: his
father was well read in Arabic and was familiar with English literature which
he used to discuss with his son. After finishing his education at the modem
schools Naji entered the School of Medicine from which he graduated in
- He worked as medical officer in various ministries, and he continued