NEOCLASSICISM 64tradition had had a lasting effect upon his poetry, even in his latest work.
Jawahiri has never been able to resist the temptation of using archaic diction.
Critics have often complained of the difficult language of his poetry, which
arises mainly from his tendency to use far-fetched vocabulary, a feature which
is no doubt due to his early traditional philological training.^101 In his view
the only training that an Arab author can profitably receive is the traditional
training in the Arabic classics, for 'there can never be a poet or an author
of genius who does not stand on the foundation of his own language'.^102
Clearly Jawahiri is thinking here of his own 'foundation'. He was widely
read in the Arabic poetic tradition, and he knew most of al-Buhturi's poetry
by heart. He had great admiration for poets like Mutanabbi and for Ma'arri,
on whom he wrote a poem. His traditionalism shows itself in the high
esteem he had for neoclassicists such as the Egyptians Shauqi and Hafiz,
and the Syrian Badawl al-Jabal Sulaiman Ahmad; he regarded Shauqi as
the supreme modern poet.^103 In the preface to his first volume of verse,
which consists largely of imitations (mu'draddt) of poets ancient and mo-
dern like Ibn al-Khatib and Shauqi, he states that his deliberate aim was to
imitate his examples, both in their intention and in their techniques and
method.^104 The influence of Shauqi and Rusafi on Jawahiri's later poetry is
unmistakable, the former, to mention but one example, in the poem cele-
brating the opening of a school in 1947, and the latter in the well-known
political satire Tartar a (1946), which is clearly indebted to Rusan's 'Freedom
Under Imperialist Policy'.^105
Despite a somewhat romantic view of poetry expressed in an untypical
poem, 'The Poet', written when he was twenty-one (m,205ff.), in which the
poet is viewed as someone whose eye sees the hidden mystery of things, Jawa-
hiri's poetry is generally neoclassical in form and spirit. The monorhyme and
monometre are hardly ever abandoned, and although in his more recent
poetry, such as his latest volume, To Sleeplessness (1971), he displays a greater
freedom in the use of rhyme, the traditional metres remain intact. Apart
from his strongly neoclassical language, the great care he takes over polishing
his style^106 and his tendency to use archaic diction, Jawahiri's poetry is often
loud in tone and displays many features of the oratorical style, particularly
his fondness for repeating key words or phrases in order to produce an almost
incantatory effect. This last feature can be seen in his famous poems such
as 'Lullaby for the Hungry', 'My Brother Ja'far' and "Descend, Darkness'.^107
He sometimes repeats the opening line of a poem at the conclusioa thereby
giving it a circular shape, as in 'Lullaby for the Hungry' and 'Descend, Dark-
ness', a device which is particularly effective in oratory.
Jawahiri treats the usual themes of the neoclassicists, such as panegyric,