THE ROMANTICS 138Europe, especially to the landscape of Italy, Switzerland and Austria, about
which he wrote some descriptive and nostalgic poems. Although he was
widely read neither in classical Arabic nor in western literature, he knew
English well and some French: in fact, he translated Lamartine and Verlaine,
John Masefield, and Shelley. In Mansura he benefitted from his association
with Naji and other young poets who read and discussed the English Roman-
tics. He also derived some of his knowledge of the western Romantics, or at
least he received their influence, indirectly, through his contact with the
Apollo group, and his readings ofMahjar poetry. His volume of essays, Vagrant
Spirits, contains brief accounts of his travels in Europe and essays on English
and French writers such as Shelley and H. G. Wells, de Musset, de Vigny,
Verlaine, Rimbaud and Baudelaire (although in his writings on French poetry
he seems to have relied mainly on English sources).^65 He was particularly
drawn to Verlaine and Baudelaire: he regarded the former as a victim of
wine and the latter as a victim of women while considering himself to be a
victim of both wine and women, thereby flattering himself with the thought
that in his person both Verlaine and Baudelaire met!
Taha's poetic output consists of seven volumes: The Lost Mariner (1934),
The Nights of the L ost Mariner (1940), Spirits and Shades (1942), Song of the Four
Winds (1943), Flowers and Wine (1943), The Return of Longing (1945), and lastly
East and West (1947).^66 The dedication of the early volumes is significant:
the first is dedicated 'to those enamoured of longing for the unknown, those
lost on the sea of life, those who haunt the deserted shore'. These words, in
fact, set the keynote to the whole of his work. The poems are variations on
these themes of mysterious longings for strange and undefined objects, the
strong appeal of the unknown, the vague metaphysical doubt as to the end
of existence, the feeling of loss of direction. The picture conjured up by the
title, of a mariner lost on a sea, is a pregnant comment upon the whole of his
poetry. The student familiar with western Romantic poetry may be tempted
to find little that is particularly striking about these themes or images, but
it must be admitted that in Arabic literature, by Taha's time they had not yet
become the commonplaces they now are. In fact it was Taha himself, who by
his exceedingly skilful handling of them in a highly musical verse, encouraged
a whole generation of younger men among his admirers to imitate him, there-
by rendering such themes and images the mere stock-in-trade of facile
romantic poetry. It was Taha's followers, therefore, who were largely res-
ponsible for their demotion.
Two of the poems in Taha's first collection are called respectively 'The
Lost Mariner' and 'The Deserted Shore'. The volume ends with a verse
translation of Lamartine's Le Lac which probably inspired the title of Taha's