IN THE UNITED STATES 195vehemence of feeling nearly caused him to break the form of the metre
(al-Kdmil) into its constituent parts (i.e. tafilat) and make the foot and not
the combination of feet or the line the basic unit of the poem, a fact which
has led some people to assume with some exaggeration that he anticipated
the much later metrical developments in Arabic poetry which we begin to
see after the Second World War.Perhaps the most striking example of Jibran's influence on Mahjar poetry
can be seen in the work of Rashid Ayyub (1872-1941). Ayyub is not of the
same calibre as Abu Madi, 'Arida or Nu'aima. He wrote some interesting
poems of great spontaneity and unquestioned sincerity, such as 'Spring', in
which the return of spring does not bring joy to the poet, but only arouses
his memories of the spring of his childhood in his native village in the
Lebanon, or his portrait of the poet, obviously a self-portrait, under the title
'He Is Gone and We Knew Him Not', a poem moving in spite of, or rather
because of, the vague feelings it evokes.*^9 But even these poems are thin in
their intellectual content, compared with the best work of the other poets.
Yet a word about Rashid Ayyub seems necessary in order to illustrate the
extent of Jibran's influence on Mahjar poetry. Rashid Ayyub was born in the
Lebanon in the same village as Nu'aima. In 1889 he left for Paris where he
spent nearly three years, after which he returned to his native country, only
to leave again for Manchester. From Manchester he emigrated to the United
States, where his life was never free from financial worries. He joined the
New York circle of expatriates and with them founded al-Rabita. He published
three volumes of verse, all in New York: al-Ayyubiyyat in 1916; Songs of the
Dervish in 1928 and finally Such is Life^50 in 1940. He died in the United States
in 1941.
The largest part of Rashid Ayyub's first volume was written before he fell
under the influence of Jibran. The difference between it and the other two
volumes is so great that Nu'aima says in the introduction to Ayyub's work:
'it is as if it had been written by another man'.^51 In al-Ayyubiyyat the reader
finds many of the features of neoclassicism, such as the use of long and stately
metres, of resounding words, stock imagery and hyperbole, of traditional
genres like panegyric, elegies and descriptions, the imitation of classical
models.^52 His descriptive poem of New York is neoclassical in tone and
language. Ayyub writes about social and political occasions, like the meeting
of an Arab conference in Paris, the famine in the Lebanon, and the First
World War; he also writes about major events like the Titanic disaster.
Yet it would be wrong to claim that the author of al-Ayyubiyyat is a
thorough-going neoclassicist. Already in this volume one detects signs, or the