NEOCLASSICISM 34imagery in Shauqi's verse 'helps to create a beautiful poetic atmosphere in
which the old and the new, the past and present meet'. Furthermore, the
cultural significance of the persistence of the ancient Arabic poetic conven-
tions, and the nasib or amatory prelude in particular, has also been noticed
by Professor Gibb who claims that these cunventions have a real cultural
and psychological function^36 — a function, one may add, the importance of
which was greatly enhanced at the turn of the century, when Arabs felt that
their cultural identity, among other things, was being threatened by power-
ful alien forces. This, in fact, may help to explain, at least in part, the secret
of the unparalleled popularity which Shauqi enjoyed throughout the Arab
world. For Shauqi managed to manipulate skilfully the ancient poetic
conventions, breathing life into them and releasing their still powerful
latent energies. In many ways he was the modem Arab poet of cultural (and
probably personal) nostalgia par excellence. And because of his spectacular
success Shauqi made it extremely difficult for modern Arabic poetry to
change its idiom as quickly as it might otherwise have done if he had not
appeared on the literary scene.
There are, however, points worth mentioning in this connection. First,
some of Shauqi's poems on public themes (like his panegyrics) are con-
structed in such a way that the amatory prelude is easily detachable and in
these cases it fulfils a function, interestingly enough similar to that which
the medieval critic Ibn Qutaiba had assigned to it in the pre-Islamic Ode:
it creates the right atmosphere by establishing a relationship of kinship
with the reader, by evoking stock emotional responses it puts him in a
receptive mood, preparing him for the poet's political or social message
on the important issue of the moment. Secondly, not all the poems of course
begin with the customary prelude. When the issue is a truly burning one
the poet's earnestness and involvement are such that he dispenses with the
prelude and plunges directly into the subject, in an overwhelmingly angry
or jubilant mood, as for instance in his poem on Lord Cromer's departure
(i,206), or al-Mu'tamar (The conference) (n,190) in which he celebrates the
occasion of the all-party conference convened by the Egyptian leader Sa'd
Zaghlul in 1927 in order to save the constitution.
Shauqi's poems then are varied in subject, ranging from the traditional
panegyric, elegiac, amatory, bucolic, descriptive, didactic and devotional
verse to poems on social and political themes as well as poems of a more
subjective and lyrical nature. Shauqi's heart was not in the panegyrical
type of poem which he wrote to the Khedives, Taufiq, Abbas, Husain and Fuad.
Significantly enough he felt panegyric to be at least an outmoded subject,
if not beneath the poet's dignity, and he wished modern Arabic poetry to be