IN LATIN AMERICA 201with an extremely precious introduction by Francisco Villa Spasa, who
translated the work into Spanish.^68
The plan of the poem is simple. The poet dreams that he is flying in a plane
to the upper regions of the sky. He first meets the birds, then the stars and
finally he enters the realm of the spirits. He has the chance of hearing what
these beings think and say about mankind. As a human being he is met with
suspicion and hostility wherever he goes, especially because of the shape and
noise of the plane which is taken for a strange and weird bird. But the poet
apologizes for his humanity stating that he is a poet, an ethereal creature who
rises above the world of matter and flesh and yearns for the world of the spirit.
The spirits, who recognize him to be nothing more than a fallen creature,
turn away from him in anger and disgust, but one friendly spirit draws near
him: it is the poet's own spirit, which explains to the others the spiritual
nature of the poet's self. Then follows a moment of ecstatic union between the
poet and his spirit, a moment when the truth of the universe is revealed to
him. But the union does not last long and the poet feels himself descending
back to earthly existence, his spirit having joined the other spirits. He wakes
up from his dream to find himself alone holding his pen: he only has his
poetry to comfort him.
Ma'luf 's poem is not without an element of absurdity, for it is difficult to
see the point of the poet's use of the aeroplane device. If it is all a dream any-
way, and an ancient dream that has haunted the imagination of poets and
others at that, why does not the poet fly on the wings of his poetic imagination,
instead of using an aircraft to invade the world of the spirits, whatever
that may be? However, the poet's urgency, seriousness and depth of feeling
are such that one responds fully to some of his emotional utterances, dis-
regarding the rather facile framework of the poem. The whole thing is
intended to be a poetic comment on the human condition, on the tragic con-
flict between soul and body, an allegory to show how man's yearning for the
world of the spirit can be satisfied only in very brief moments of dreaming
during which the romantic poet's self-alienation ceases and he is once more
united with his soul.
The romantic elements, of which this poem is full, bear a close affinity
to the poetry of al-Rabita. In fact, both Fauzi and his brother Shafiq, the author
of the long, imaginary narrative 'Fairyland', were deeply influenced by
Jibran (in his long poem 'The Dreams' (1923) Shafiq quotes Jibran in an
epigraph to his second dream).^69 The basic theme of Fauzi's poem, the rela-
tion between body and soul, is one of the important themes in Jibran's work,
although, as we have seen, Jibran himself was able to conceive a possible
reconciliation between the two. In Fauzi Ma'luf's poem the poet's age-old