MUTRAN 81Smash all the pens, would that prevent
Hands from engraving the stone?
Cut off the hands, would that restrain
Eyes from looking in anger?
Put out the eyes, would that prevail
Against the fiery breath?
Stop then the breath, for that would be
The utmost you could do to us
We would then be saved from you
And for that we would offer you our thanks I
One of the most interesting of the long narrative poems which contains a
large dramatic element is 'The Martyred Foetus' (i,223) which was written in
1903 and comprises 115 stanzas with the rhyme schema aaaaa/bbbba/cccca,
etc. In it Mutran portrays the thoughts and feelings of a poor young un-
married prospective mother about to abort herself. She chooses to put an end
to the life of her baby in order to save it from the shame and misery which
would otherwise fill its life. A simple, innocent but attractive girl, she had
come to the city in search of employment to support her aged but un-
principled parents, but at the tavern where she was driven by them to work
and where her character slowly deteriorated, she met a man with whom she
eventually fell in love. He turned out to be a villain who deserted her and
ran away with her earnings after he had ravished her and she had become
pregnant. The dramatic monologue with which the poem ends, and which
describes convincingly the sufferings of the girl, is no less moving than, for
instance, Wordsworth's 'The Affliction of Margaret'. Needless to say, for
this dramatic type of verse there is really no precedent in Arabic poetry.
Among Mutran's contributions we ought perhaps to include some of his
prothalamia and epithalamia which possess much elegance and charm. For
instance, in 'A Gift of Flowers' (i,275) the poet sings an encomium on flowers,
and in a manner somewhat rerniniscent of a masque, the flowers, led by their
queen the Rose, prepare to arrange themselves in the form of a wreath to be
presented to the bride who is spoken of as one of their kind. This is poetry
written with great sensitivity and is characterized by its considerable power
of fantasy and charm.
It may seem strange, after this account of Mutran's poetry, that I have not
followed some Arab critics in calling him a 'romantic' poet.^21 After all,
Mutran wrote poems on Alfred de Musset (i,166) and Victor Hugo (iv,362),
emphasizing the hypersensitivity and the capacity for love and suffering
in the former and in the latter the rebellious impulse which drove him to
make a radical break with the neoclassical shackles. There are even some
signs that he saw something of himself in both poets. It is not that Mutran