HAFIZ IBRAHIM 45plaints. Much of the effect he had upon his contemporaries — which accord-
ing to enthusiastic reporters was at times overwhelming — was due to the
skilful way he intoned and declaimed his verse at public gatherings. In this
respect he was a master of so-called 'platform poetry'.^52 His was oratorical
poetry par excellence,^53 and in it what matters most is less what is said than
the manner in which it is said, a manner calculated to affect the listener
at first hearing. Thought is often sacrificed for the sake of immediate emo-
tional effect. Consequently, even more than Shauqi, Hafiz Ibrahim generally
comes across in translation very badly.
As is to be expected, the bulk of Hafiz Ibrahim's poetry is public poetry
written on social or political occasions, ranging from the fall of the Ottoman
Caliphate or the Anglo-French entente cordiale of 1904, or the injustice of the
occupying power, to the establishment of ophanages and educational institu-
tions. He also wrote on natural disasters like fires and earthquakes, important
events in the Orient like the Japanese victory over the Russians (11,7ff.), whose
significance was understandably inflated, as well as Islamic themes, as in his
long poem on the life and achievement of the second Caliph 'Umar Ibn al-
Khattab (i,71— 90). Throughout these poems Hafiz Ibrahim gives expression
to his sympathy for the cause of Islam and the Arabs, his belief in the political
aspirations of his nation, his tortured awareness of the social problems of the
time: poverty, ignorance and disease. He particularly emphasised the subject
of the sufferings of the poor and the victims of natural disasters, the lurid
details of which he described with so much gusto that it seems to betray
what is perhaps at bottom a rather crude and blunted sensibility in the poet.^54
What is perhaps of lasting value in Hafiz Ibrahim's poetry is not the mawkish
emotionalism and the near hysteria which some critics mistake for sen-
sibility, but its irony which, although it shows the depth of the poet's feelings
towards his subject, acts as a brake against blind emotionalism and therefore
helps him maintain his clarity of vision. A typical example of this irony is to
be found in the poem he wrote on Danshaway. The Danshaway incident,
which became symbolic of the injustice of the imperialist and has been the
theme of many a poem and popular ballad for decades after,^55 occurred in
1906 under Lord Cromer. A fight broke out between three British officers,
who were shooting birds, and the villagers of Danshaway in Upper Egypt,
during which one officer lost his life. Two days later the government retal-
iated by sentencing four villagers to death, two to life imprisonment and three
to one-year imprisonment and fifteen lashes, and the sentence was that the
hanging and flogging should be carried out publicly in the village. Naturally
the harshness of the sentence only helped to inflame nationalist feeling.
Addressing the British government in his poem, Hafiz Ibrahim says: