NEOCLASSICISM 42and deep seriousness, a class of school children and meditates upon their
diverse individual futures, both pitiful and great, tracing it until they are all
lost in the wastes of time.Hafiz Ibrahim
Shauqi's name is often linked in the minds of most Arabs with that of Hafiz
Ibrahim (1871 — 193 2), the two Egyptian poets being among the best-known
neoclassicists in the Arab world. In spite of much resemblance between them
in style and general attitudes they form a contrasting pair, for whereas
Shauqi was for a large part of his life the poet of the court, Hafiz Ibrahim
was more related to the common people. He was often described as 'the
people's poet', and that was not simply because he was born in a lower
middle class family and grew up in poverty, but because he wrote much of
his poetry about the suffering of the people and about nationalistic themes —
although lately he has come under severe criticism on the grounds of not
being nationalistic enough.^42
Hafiz was of mixed origin: his father was an Egyptian engineer and his
mother Turkish. He lost his father at the early age of four, and from that
time on his uncle, also an engineer living in Cairo, took charge of his upbring-
ing. Hafiz was sent to a modem secular school, but his schooling was inter-
rupted when his uncle took him to Tanta to which he had been transferred.
After a period of irregular attendance at the Azhar type of madrasa at Tanta
Hafiz felt he was not particularly welcome at his uncle's, and so he moved to
Cairo where he first tried unsuccessfully to take up the profession of law, then
joined the military academy and graduated as army officer in 1891. In 1896
he was posted in the Sudan which he regarded as exile. He was accused of
taking part in an abortive army rebellion and was court-martialled. In 1900
he was cashiered and given the meagre monthly salary of £4.
After an unsuccessful attempt to get a post in the newspaper al-Ahram
Hafiz sought the help of the well-known religious reformer Muhammad
'Abduh, who soon became his patron and introduced him to the leading
figures in the intellectual and political life of the time, like Sa'd Zaghlul,
Qasim Amin, Mustafa Kamil and Lutff al-Sayyid. Hafiz Ibrahim's wit and
sense of humour soon made his company welcome to the leading person-
alities of the day, to whom he addressed panegyrics, or poems on various
social or political themes of particular interest to them. During this period of
his life he wrote his prose work Lyali Satih (1907), in which he dealt with the
problems of contemporary Arab society in a manner showing the influence of
his master Sheikh Muhammad Abduh, and of al-Muwailihi, the author of
Hadith 'Isa Ibn Hisham. He also tried to leam French from which, in spite of