THE PRB-ROMANTICS 78resorted to the narrative poem, and he even experimented with the dramatic
monologue. He wrote many narratives dealing with the theme of love such
as 'A Cup of Coffee' d,148), 'A Martyr of Chivalry and a Martyr of Love'
(L82). Devotion' (U05) and Two Children' (n,61). Some of these have been
aptly described as ballad-like on account of their short metre, stanzaic form
or rhyming couplets together with the nature of their subject matter.^18 With-
out a single exception they are all about disappointment or lack of fulfilment
in love. The impediment may be caused by a natural disaster like death (as in
'A Martyr of Chivalry' and 'Devotion') or by an unsympathetic parent or
society at large (as in 'A Cup of Coffee' and 'Two Children'). 'A Martyr of
Chivalry' is the story of an engaged young couple, who on their wedding
night are united by death: the hero risks his life in an attempt to rid the
community of a vicious wolf while the heroine prefers death to life without
her beloved. In 'Devotion' a young wife dies of consumption only a year
after her marriage, to be followed soon by her devoted husband who dies of a
heart attack - a story which closely parallels that of the poet's cousins and
which inspired his moving poem Death of a Dear Couple' (1,66). Mutran was
fascinated throughout his life by the theme of men and women dying young
either by drowning or by sudden natural death, or by committing suicide,
generally because of overwhelming misery brought about by unrequited
passion.^19 In 'Two Children' a young man has to part from the woman he
loves to make his fortune abroad so that he may become worthy of her hand,
but in his absence her parents force her to marry a rich man she does not
love. She pines away and dies, the young man comes back to learn of her
death, visits her grave, laments his fate and the cruel world of men and
decides to die beside his beloved. In 'A Cup of Coffee', one of the best of
Mutran's narratives partly because of the poet's admirable power of creating
the appropriate atmosphere for the events he narrates, both the princess and
the young officer she loves are killed because of the tyranny of her father, the
king: she dies of fright while he is ordered to drink a poisoned cup of coffee.
In his use of narrative form in such poems Mutran was something of a pioneer
in modern Arabic poetry.
Mutran's interest in narrative poetry goes back to his youth. In fact, the earl-
iest poem he cared to preserve to include in his first collection of poems and
which he composed in 1888 (at the age of fifteen), is cast in the form of narrative.
It is the poem called '1806—1870' in which he treats as his subject the wars
between the French and the Prussians. This, of course, indicates that already
in his youth the poet had become influenced by French culture. For although
there are a great many descriptions of fighting and wars in traditional Arabic
poetry, there is nothing quite like this, in many ways, impressive early work —