NEOCLASSICISM 36tree (n,146,171) and her teeth like pearls (n,153). The situation is conven-
tional, with the figure of the jealous spy or stem counsellor ever present
(n,148). The language may at times attain great simplicity (n,l 74),andapoem
(such as n,143) may in fluent and musical verse attempt to depict the
pains and tribulations of love, but despite the general pleasant effect there
is no depth of feeling. Here the poet's remarkable ease of writing can some-
times be a defect. Yet because of their fluency and musicality and their
simplicity oflanguage many of Shauqi's poems in this genre were successfully
set to music by the popular composer and singer 'Abd al-Wahhab who
became the poet's close friend and companion.
It would be wrong, however, to think as 'Aqqad and others have done
that in Shauqi's poetry the subjective element is completely absent. Para-
doxically enough there is more lyricism and passion in some of the speeches
of lovers in his dramas, especially, as is to be expected, in his Majnun Laila,
than in many of Shauqi's own love poems. But the personal element is there
nonetheless, although often combined with nostalgia and a looking back
upon the past. Because it is nearly always recollected in tranquillity the
emotion naturally loses something of its sharp edge and poignancy. A
typical example is his poem 'Bois de Boulogne' (n,30). A similar mixture
of love and nostalgia with even more pronounced echoes from Abbasid
poetry is to be found in his well-known poem Zahla (n,224), part of which
has been set to music. The poem opens with these lines:
With a weeping heart I bade farewell to my dreams;
From the way of fair maidens I gathered my nets,
Tracing my steps back from youth and its rosy path.
And now I walk upon thorns ...He goes on to lament his lost youth and recall an old love. A purer note of
nostalgia is struck in his Andalusian poem Andalusiyya (n,127), which by
its combination of metre and rhyme is deliberately designed to recall Ibn
Zaidun's famous poem of courtly love, the Nun poem. The subjective element
in Shauqi's poetry is not to be found only in his poems of nostalgia. There
are many poems of his which arise from personal experience, if we care
to look for them; poems like al-Hilal (The Crescent Moon) (n,34) which was
inspired by the poet's thirtieth birthday. Here the poet's sense of boredom
and monotony of life, his disappointed hopes and aspirations, his awareness
of the insignificance of individual man measured against the endless expanse
of all human history as well as the transience of man compared with the
permanence of planets, are all subtly blended together while the poet is