NEOCLASSICISM 44say that he nearly surpassed Arabic poets (i,33).^47 His conception of poetry
revealed in the preface he wrote to his Diwan is traditional in the extreme,
and that is despite his famous poem in which he laments the stranglehold
of conventions on Arabic poetry and calls for its liberation (i,2 2 5).
Hafiz Ibrahim composed poems of the traditional type such as panegyric,
elegy and description and treated traditional themes like love and wine. But
with the exception of his elegies these poems tend to be cold, artificial and
purely imitative. This is particularly true of the very few love poems he wrote.
His elegies, on the other hand, are seldom regarded by critics as mere literary
exercises devoid of feeling. Taha Husain, who can never be accused of critical
partiality for either Shauqi or Hafiz, commented on the excellence of Hafiz's
elegies which he attributed to the poet's keen sensibility and great loyalty
to his friends.^48 Similarly, Ahmad Amln expressed his admiration for his
elegies in the introduction he wrote to the poet's Diwan. Another critic re-
marked that 'in two genres Hafiz excelled Shauqi, namely elegy and des-
cription of natural disasters'.^49 The poet himself is reported to have said,
'I enjoy composing poetry only when I am in a sad mood',^50 and wrote that
'whoever peruses my Diwan will find that half of it consists of elegies' (i,l 30).
Hafiz's elegies therefore seem to agree with his melancholy temperament.
It is surprising that in his poetry there is very little trace of his celebrated
sense of humour which was apparently such a marked feature of his con-
versation. On the contrary, he was prone to complain of his ill-fortune and
the way he was treated by the world. Most of the poetry he wrote during his
sojourn in the Sudan expresses his unhappiness and his longing to be united
with his friends and nostalgia for familiar scenes and haunts in Cairo. The
fact that he had to spend many years in poverty and without employment did
not help to make his poetry less gloomy. In a poem in which he bids farewell
to this world he describes himself as one who finds more 'solace and profit
in the darkness of a tomb'. (n,114ff.)
Hafiz wrote some of the best-known of the elegies produced on the deaths
of public figures such as Muhammad 'Abduh, Mustafa Kamil and Sa'd
Zaghlul. These are obviously not purely personal statements, in spite of the
strong element of personal emotion which some of them contain; because
of the public career of the persons whose death he laments the poems are
full of social and political commentary. However, Hafiz was not a profound
thinker, and his sentiments and reflections were little more than what the
average Egyptian of the time felt and thought on current issues. Critics are
agreed that his imaginative power was not of the highest and that he dealt
with a narrow range of subjects.*^1 His poems are free from any deep philoso-
phical or moral reflections and his more subjective pieces are limited to com-