A Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry

NEOCLASSICISM 18

an imaginative spark that radiates in the mind, sending forth its rays to

the heart, which then overflows with a light that reaches the tip of the

tongue. The tongue then utters all manner of wisdom which dissipates dark-

ness and guides the wayfarer.^9

Poetry satisfied a real need in man, for the love of poetry is 'imprinted in the
hearts of men'. Whoever is endowed with the gift of good poetry and happens
'to be virtuous and pure of soul will have control over the hearts of men'.
In Barudi's view of poetry morality is, therefore, an essential ingredient: he
has no doubt that the end of poetry, as well as its effect, is moral. If poetry
does no more than 'educate the soul, train the understanding and awaken
the mind to noble virtue' it will have achieved its ultimate purpose.
But it is not enough to be virtuous and to have a lesson to preach, for poetry
is primarily an art, and as such it has to be learned and mastered. Barudi
is aware of the enormity of the task, partly because he is fully conscious of the
whole of the Arabic poetic tradition and of his place in it. There is no poet
in the history of modern Arabic poetry to whom Eliot's thesis in the celebrated
essay on Tradition and Individual Talent applies more aptly. Barudi writes
'not only with his own generation in his bones', in Eliot's words, but with
a feeling that the whole corpus of Arabic poetry of the past 'has a simultaneous
existence and composes a simultaneous order'.^10 This is abundantly clear not
only from his poetry,' or the vast anthology of Abbasid poetry which he
compiled,^11 but also from the preface, which, short as it is, reveals his know-
ledge of the Arabic poetic heritage. Understandably, this acute awareness of
the tradition places a heavy responsibility upon the poet which at times he
finds somewhaf daunting. The theme of ars longa vita brevis is conspicuous in
the preface: he quotes the famous lines by an ancient Arab poet:

Poetry is difficult and its uphill path is long.

Whoever tries to ascend it, not being familiar with it,

Will stumble and fall into the abyss.

Because of his keen awareness of the difficulty of the metier Barudi admits
that at one point he decided to give up writing verse. But, he says, like the
Umayyad poet 'Umar ibn Abi Rabi'a, he failed to carry out his resolution
because he could not 'go against his own nature'. In other words Barudi wrote
poetry simply because he could not do otherwise.
This brings us to the last important issue raised in the preface, namely
the poet's sincerity:

I did not use poetry as a means for an.ulterior end, nor did I hope to achieve

any worldly gain by it. Instead, I was moved by certain impulses, over-

whelmed by a spirit of magnanimity and a feeling of love that flowed in