MUTRAN 83of poems on social and political subjects and a lessening in the poet's imagina-
tive inventiveness. Indeed one still finds in this volume poems of con-
siderable appeal such as the nostalgic 'Do You Remember' (n, 13 5), the theme
of which is childhood memories and in which the poet 'tries to salvage
fragments of his life that float on the surface of time', or the remarkable
poem 'Christmas' (n,246) which he wrote when he was forty-five years old.
On Christmas Eve the poet, alone in his room, recalls how as a child he
used to look forward to finding a present by his bedside when he woke up.
Now he is a middle-aged man and expects nothing. He cannot go to sleep,
thinks at first of drinking himself asleep, but decides not to do so on moral
grounds, retires to bed and is rewarded for his virtue by falling asleep im-
mediately. He dreams of large beautiful gardens and at dawn when he wakes
up he is surprised to find a plant in a pot on his bedside table, a present his
mother has surreptitiously placed for him during his sleep. The subject is an
ordinary one, namely the loneliness of a middle-aged man with nothing
to look forward to in life. Yet the poem is remarkable for its immediacy,
its dramatic quality, created partly through the use of untypical simple
language and a conversational rhythm. The poet's meditations, the move-
ments of his thoughts on a variety of topics, his momentary self-indulgence
to be followed by his apologizing or chiding himself, are all subtly conveyed,
and the description of his sparsely furnished room with its crooked bedstead,
its so-called wardrobe which cannot be locked, its piles of books, is admirably
vivid. But it is perhaps significant that the impressive poems in this volume
are poems of nostalgia and reminiscence, of looking back to the past. On
the other hand, the gradual drying-up of inspiration or the creative impulse
can be detected not only in the preponderance of direct political and social
verse, but also in the quality of the few descriptive and nature poems. For
instance, a poem like 'Sunset in Cairo' (H,186) obviously lacks the fire and
feeling for nature which is so unmistakable in Mutran's earlier work. 'In
the Shadow of the Statue of Ramses' (n,175) is straightforward and didactic,
compared with the earlier poem 'Baalbek Castle' (i,97), in which the remains,
far from being treated in an objective, descriptive, moralistic or didactic
manner, are related to the poet's personal experience by being made part of
his childhood memories. The third volume of the Dhvan has few or no poems
in which Mutran breaks new ground (with the possible exception of'Nero'),
but it is taken up with conventional elegies and panegyrics, poems written
on social occasions to express gratitude to various bodies for receptions held
in the poet's honour in different places in Syria and Lebanon, congratulations
to friends on joyful occasions, celebrations of anniversaries and of establishing
new buildings, and so on. In the fourth and last volume, which is no less