MAZINI 107of the rest of the Diwan group. It was their awareness of their own suffering
as poets that bound the three poets together, as is clearly seen in the poem
addressed by Mazini to Shukri entitled 'The Vanity and Futility of Life'
(p. 175). Mazini held that 'the more sensitive men are, the greater is their
suffering' (p. 44). And because they suffer, Mazini says in 'The Poet's Consola-
tion' (p. 169), poets can bring comfort to the lonely and the suffering. It is
clearly part of the romantic image of the poet as a man whose exquisite sen-
sibility distinguishes him from (and probably sets him on a higher level than)
the rest of the community (p. 115). In 'The Worshipped Shepherd' (p. 121),
a poem indebted to James Russell Lowell, we find the image of the singer who
charms his hearers, men and beasts alike, and who is endowed with super-
natural qualities and is therefore little understood by the rest of mankind to
whom he is a superior being. The poet both as sufferer and as visionary is
clearly seen in 'The Poet' (p. 178). Another component of the romantic image
of the poet is that of the superiority of imagination: in 'Creature of Fancy'
(p. 162) the beauty created by the imagination is regarded as more perfect
than any real human being. Even the dangerous impact of the vision of beauty
on a mere mortal is shown in 'The Bewitched Mariner' (p. 206) where the
poet sees himself as an enraptured sailor lured to his destruction by a beauti-
ful mermaid. The belief in the happiness and innocence of a prelapsarian state
of childhood is expressed in the poem entitled 'Childhood' (p. 195) in which
the suffering poet looks back nostalgically upon his childhood, the happiest
period of his life.
All these elements of romanticism in Mazini's attitude towards man and
society, poetry and the imagination generally remain somehow ill-digested
and not sufficiently fused together and reduced to deeply satisfying artistic
form. Yet despite their melodramatic quality they are the expression of a
genuine state of mind and feeling: we must not forget that in his Introduction
to Mazini's first volume of verse 'Aqqad praises the poet primarily for his
sincerity (p. 24). Even making allowance for the propaganda-like aims of
'Aqqad and his intention to pave the way for the appreciation of his own
similar brand of poetry, it would be foolish to dismiss his judgment altogether
or, as is often done, to accept Mazini's later judgment on his own poetry in
which he denied that he was a poet. Both Mazini and 'Aqqad believed in the
romantic relativist notion that art expresses or should express the spirit
of the age (p. 17ff). They were both deeply and painfully aware of living in
a period of transition during which traditional cultural values were being
seriously eroded without any other firm values being put in their place. As
in the case of Shukri, the poet's suffering, doubts and anxieties were in
many ways the reflection of the times which 'were characterized by anxiety