THE RECOIL FROM ROMANTICISM 224powerful influence of T. S. Eliot. Eliot's name seems to occur for the first time
in Arabic literary criticism in 1933 and 1934 in two articles published in
Egyptian periodicals in which Mu'awiya Nur (1909—1941), a young Sudanese
intellectual, launches the 'earliest attack on romantic poetry and poetic
theory from a "modernist" point of view'. Influenced by T. E. Hulme and F. R.
Lea vis, Nur criticizes the poetry of Naji and Taha for its reliance on 'poetical'
subjects such as breezes, birds, waves and desolate shores, its neglect of aspects
of urban life and its lack of modernity, or lack of 'awareness of the age in
which they live'.^33 But as Abdul-Hai points out, Nur's articles passed com-
pletely unnoticed because the literary scene, especially in Egypt, was
dominated by the romantic poets of the Apollo group. It was Luwis' Awad who
really introduced Eliot to the Arabic reader in 1946 in a long article published
in al-Katib al-Misri. As has been rightly observed:
The tone of the article shows that it was intended not only to inform the
reader about a contemporary Anglo-American poet, but mainly to 'create'
the Arab reader who would appreciate a 'new poetic method', which is
'obscure', 'allusive' and 'does not conform to the familiar patterns of the
traditional verse we know'.^34Since the publication of'Awad's article Eliot began to assert his presence in
Arab cultural life. In the 1950s much of his poetry and criticism was trans-
lated into Arabic and published in leading literary reviews such as Adab and
Shi'r in Beirut and Adab and Majalla in Cairo. In the late 1950s and early 1960s
Eliot became the subject of broadcast talks, and of many heated arguments
on the literary pages of Cairo newspapers in which leading Egyptian critics
took part.
The influence of Eliot is shown not only in the structure and style, the use
of myth and allusion and of the interior monologue, in Iraqi, Lebanese and
Egyptian poetry, but Eliot's attacks on the English Romantic poets, his reac-
tion against what he regarded as their limitations both in style and subject
matter, no doubt affected the attitude of the younger generation of Arab poets
towards their own romantic poetry, making them reject the false simplicity,
the sentimentality and sugary poeticality of some romantic poetry in favour
of a pregnant style more capable of expressing real-life experience in all its
complexity and harshness.^35 But the interest taken in Eliot, which seems to be
common to all the major figures in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, is an ex-
pression of a much wider concern with modem western poetry in general.
Scholars have shown, for instance, the impact of Lorca and Edith Sitwell on
Sayyab, of Saint John Perse on Adunis, and of Yeats on M. M. Badawi.^36
Among those intimately acquainted with modern western poetry are the