SHABBI 167Life now appears as 'A Strange Play', the work of'a master of irony' (p. 164).^132
However, Shabbi's mood in these years alternates between despair and a
sense of the futility of existence on the one hand, and on the other, a passionate
love for life as we find in 'Confession' (1934). We even find a heroic defiance
of death, typical of the man, who, because he was acutely aware of suffering
both within himself and outside, rebelled against everything that tended to
restrict the freedom of the human spirit, whether intellectual and social, like
reactionary conservative modes of living and thinking, or political, like
tyranny or colonialism, even to the extent of denying at one point the exist-
ence of a merciful God. Shabbi, the author of the somewhat Nietzschean poem
'The Will of Life' (p. 167), made famous all over the Arab world by being
sung by a celebrated Egyptian singer, advocated a basically heroic attitude
to life which, while not ignoring the element of suffering, preaches the value
of the struggle for its own sake, life being a value in itself: this is best ex-
pressed in his 'Hymn of the Mighty or Thus Sang Prometheus' (1933), in
which, assuming the persona of Prometheus, the poet declares trium-
phantly (p. 179):
I shall live despite sickness and foes
Like the eagle on the highest summit,
Looking at the bright sun, mocking
The clouds, the rain and the storms.
I shall not look down at the gloomy shadow,
I shall not peer into the bottom of the dark pit.
I shall roam in the world of feeling,
Dreaming and singing, for such is the poet's bliss.
Listening to life's music and inspiration
Melting the world's soul in my creation.
Harking to the divine voice which breathes life
Into the dead echoes in my heart.
And I shall say to Fate which for ever fights
Against my hopes with every blow,
The bright flame in my blood shall not be quenched
By sorrow's waves or tempests of misfortune,
Buffet my heart as hard as you can
It shall remain steadfast as a solid rock.
Of course, Shabbi finally welcomed death as the only means to end his
suffering. But what is interesting is that his address to death is by no means
an expression of total defeat: it is not simply that the poet's view of death
is no longer fraught with elements of romantic glamour, which make dying
a 'rich' experience, to use Keats's epithet in the Ode to a Nightingale —
elements which exist in Shabbi's earlier poetry. Paradoxically enough, and
as is abundantly clear from a study of his imagery, Shabbi now regards death