THE RECOIL FROM ROMANTICISM 248the beginning of the poem. The poet's recovery is helped considerably by the
use of the resurrection myths of Tammuz and the Phoenix. However, before
the poet reaches 'After the Ice' he has to go through 'The Ice Age' in which he
fully admits that 'death has struck the veins of the earth' and all the veins in
his people, so that their bodies are all frozen. After this realization the poet
is able to offer a prayer to the god of fertility, to Baal, Tammuz and to the
harvest sun to save the veins of the earth from sterility and destruction, to put
some warmth into the frozen slaves in the ice desert (p. 73). If indeed nothing
could revive the veins of the dead, the poet says in his prayer, except a fire
that begets the Phoenix, a fire that feeds on the ashes of our death, then let us
endure the hell-fire which will grant us certain rebirth (p. 77). In 'Love and
Golgotha', helped by his love for his people, the young men and women and
children, he 'challenges the ordeal of crucifixion and endures death in his
love for life' and he regains the light of the way that he has lost. In 'Return to
Sodom' he returns to his people with his all-consuming fire to destroy his
people who are the children of slaves and whom the raids of the East and
West have turned into 'robbers and whores, rags and the doormat of the grand
hotel of the East' (p. 86). He is hopeful (in 'The Bridge') that the miracle of
rebirth will take place.
In The Flute and the Wind, Hawi is more difficult to understand, but the
poetry gains in subtlety and the subjective element in the experience becomes
more pronounced. On the whole the mood is much less sombre. There are
four poems in this volume: the first, "With the Fortune-Teller', describes
how, assailed by doubts about the validity of his confidence in the future and
the possibility of his being deluded as regards himself and his society, the
poet seeks the service of a fortune-teller, but when her prophecy does not
appeal to him he has sufficient courage and self-assurance to ignore it and
defy her. 'The Flute and the Wind', a poem in which symbols are used some-
what arbitrarily, shows in sinewy verse of great orginality the conflict in the
poet between his family obligations, scholarship and academic ambitions on
the one hand, and on the other his love of freedom which alone would make
him the poet that he wants to be. But his ideal is not purely subjective, for in a
subtle way his poetic creativity is intimately bound up with the creativity and
rebirth of his society. In the remaining two poems, 'The Faces of Sindbad'
and 'Sindbad on his Eighth Voyage', Hawi speaks through the persona of
Sindbad, one of the figures from the medieval Arabic literary tradition that
have become very popular in modem Arabic poetry. 'The Faces of Sindbad'
is perhaps the most subjective poem in the collection: it is primarily an
account of the effect of time on the poet, and describes with some irritation
how the woman that he loves remains totally unchanged throughout his long