THE RECOIL FROM ROMANTICISM 260but without, losing his passivity, his talent for suffering. In the last phase
of the development of Arabic poetry the poet has become once again identi-
fied with his own people, but he is no longer the spokesman: he is the hero
who in his personal salvation seeks the salvation of his people. Admittedly
this often leads to excessive solemnity and hollow self-dramatization in
contemporary Arabic poetry. But it also explains why in its best examples,
the spiritual experience, which is the poem, becomes at once a political and
a cultural comment. It is interesting to note how deeply, and even tragically,
concerned many of these poets are about the need to revive Arab culture and
society, and drag it into the context of the fast-moving civilized western
world, how this theme runs through their works like a leitmotive under one
guise or another. Myths of resurrection like the Phoenix, Tammuz/Adonis,
are used by Adunis, Hawi, Khal, Sayyab and Jabra among others.^83 The poet
thinks of himself as Noah or Christ the Redeemer, Sindbad the explorer. This
is no less true of'Abd al-Sabur, Buland Haidari and the present writer than
of Adunis, Hawi and Khal. The poet is no longer the passive sufferer, but the
active saviour, the one who performs a heroic act of self-sacrifice to save his
people. In the context of Marxist thinking the nature of the poet's activity is
clear enough, but with the Shi'r group the poet's action is his poetry, for by
creating his own language, his own imagery and metaphors the poet arrives
at a new apprehension of reality, thereby creating a new order and a new
world.^84
There were, of course, many angry reactions from conservative quarters
against the extreme anti-traditionalism of some New Poetry. Mention has
already been made of 'Aqqad who on formal grounds simply dismissed
it as non-poetry. Amongst the most vociferous critics was the scholar
Mahmud Muhammad Shakir who expressed violent objections on religious
grounds to the use of Christian symbolism and terms like sin, redemption
and crucifixion in modem Arabic Muslim poetry. Some less tolerant minds
even saw in New Poetry a threat to Arab civilization and Islam, nothing
short of a 'western imperialist plot'.^85