TAHA 141Intoxicated with its radiance...
Until night spread over me its shade
Then I would lie awake amidst roses
Inhaling their breath as their hearts throbbed
In tenderness and love for the spring, (p. 155).Love is a theme often linked with nature in Taha's first volume, the
natural scenery which forms the background of his love poems generally
ennobling and idealizing the poet's passion, which in turn bestows upon
various aspects of nature the ability to share the poet's emotions of love.
An excellent example of this dual process is furnished in his 'A Pastoral
Song' (p. 52), where water 'caresses' the shadows of trees, clouds 'flirt', with
the moonlight, the ring dove 'moans with love', the breeze 'kisses' every
passing sail, yet the poet is eternally faithful to his unattainable mistress.
This melancholic idealized love which we have encountered often in the
work of romantics is the dominant variety of love in Taha's first volume.
Despite its trials and sufferings it is welcomed by the poet: in 'The Return
of the Runaway' (p. 41) he prefers bondage in love to freedom without it. As in
'A Singing Girl's Boudoir' (p. 45), where he declines an invitation to a night
of sensuality, it is the spiritual aspect of the sentiment that the poet wishes
to assert, although in the highly sensuous and sensual quality of the descrip-
tion of the woman and her boudoir we may detect a tendency in Taha's
poetry which will be further developed in his later productions.
In Taha's second volume, The Nights of the Lost Mariner (1940), a significant
change takes place. It is true that in it we still find a poem such as 'The
Statue' (p. 313), which is a dramatically moving and somewhat allegorical
work, representing the loss of hope at the approach of old age. This poem
however, is not typical of the general mood of the second volume, any more
than a poem like 'She' (p. 266) in which the poet expresses regret at having
defiled his spirit by indulging in carnal pleasures. The Nights of the Lost
Mariner celebrates the pleasures of the flesh in a manner that is perhaps new
in modern Arabic poetry. It represents the poet's liberation from the narrow
teachings of a puritan society, mainly as a result of his exposure during his
travels to Europe in which he found not only a different kind of landscape
of breathtaking beauty, consisting of lakes and mountains hitherto unfamiliar
to him, but also a way of life that is colourful and gay. With the opening poem
in the volume 'Song of the Gondola' (p. 225) a musical poem written in an
accomplished stanzaic form, a new note is struck: a romantically idealized
picture of the West as the embodiment of glamour, pleasure-seeking and
fun-loving begins to enter modem Arabic poetry. The poem describes in
graphic and lyrical terms a gondola trip during a Venetian carnival. Taha's