RUSAFI 57Rusafi's poetry: Rusafi did not take sufficient care to preserve all his work:
more than 600 lines, we are told, were lost in a fire.^84 Some of his poetry
was suppressed on political, religious or moral grounds. Together with his
Diwan Rusafi published a collection of children's songs for use in schools
(Jerusalem, 1920), his lectures on Arabic literature, some literary criticism
(mainly on al-Ma'arri) and a number of philological studies. Other prose
works of his are still unpublished: these are chiefly philological and religious
in content but they include a social and political commentary on Iraq with
revolutionary implications, entitled al-Risdla al-'Iraqiyya (The Epistle on
Iraq) and written in 1940.8S While he was in Turkey Rusafi improved his
knowledge of the Turkish language from which he translated into Arabic a
work by the Turkish author Namiq Kemal.
Rusafi's personality did not have the complexity of Zahawi's. He was a
relatively simple, passionate and impulsive person whOse frankness often
caused him much trouble. In his younger days he was inclined to lead a
Bohemian kind of life, clearly reflected in some of his poems which have been
saved from oblivion. In many ways Rusafi's poetry forms an interesting con-
trast to Zahawi's. Even when both poets wrote on similar social and political
subjects, which happened fairly often, Rusafi's poems were freer from the dry,
cerebral approach of Zahawi; they were on the whole more direct and impas-
sioned. Because of this and also because of the music of his verse Rusafi
attained a greater degree of popularity; Nearly all who wrote on him empha-
sized the poet's sincerity and candour.^86 In a poem he wrote for the reception
held in honour of the Egyptian poet Shauqi, he did not refrain from attacking
the Egyptian government for her suppression of the freedom of thought
reflected in the way writers like Taha Husain and' All' Abdul-Raziq were mal-
treated on account of their unorthodox views.^87 Rusafi's view of poetry is
directly emotional. 'Poetry', he writes in one of his poems, is 'my comforter
in my loneliness', adding that 'my soul is melancholy, and inclined to melan-
choly verse' (p. 196). Unlike Zahawi, Rusafi tends to be conservative in the
few pronouncements he makes on modem poetry. He believes that metre and
rhyme are essential in poetry and he therefore emphasizes the nee*d to adhere
to traditional forms.^88 In his actual poetry he never abandons metre and
rhyme and when he seeks a change from the monorhyme form he resorts to
the stanzaic structure of the traditional muwashshah. Rusafi's range is also
wider than that of Zahawi who on the whole tends to be solemn and whose
humour is somewhat heavy. Rusafi, in contrast, is just as capable of levity as
of high seriousness. Some of his erotic poetry which has been preserved for us
possesses considerable charm: he can write well about his feelings as he
watches a woman dancer in an Istanbul night club, he can paint a highly