A Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry

THB ROMANTICS 168

as a means of attaining a fuller and more significant life. This we find in,
for instance, his poem The New Morrow' (1933), which is certainly one of
the most haunting poems in modern Arabic (p. 159). Here, partly by means
of dominant light imagery which, like Wordsworth, he tends to use in order
to express moments of ecstasy or spiritual revelation, Shabbi manages to
convey a profound experience of mystical dimensions, which makes the final
image, in the poem, of the poet unfurling the sails of his lonely boat on a
strange and vast sea, welcoming the hazards of the unknown, a perfect and
moving symbol of frail but heroic man, viewed almost sub specie aeternitatis.

Tijani

Even more striking in his fondness for light imagery is the Sudanese poet al-
Tijani - which is not surprising since much of his poetry deals with his
mystical experience.^133 He even chose for his collection of poems (published
posthumously in 1942) the significant title Ishraqa, meaning 'illumina-
tion'. Al-Tijani, whose poetry will be treated very briefly in the survey, has
often been compared with Shabbi: neither of them knew any European
language, both were brought up in conservative traditional families but grew
up to become rebels, both died tragically young.^134 Al-Tijani Yusuf Bashir
(1910-37) was bom in Omdurman in a family which had a long history of
promoting the teaching of Islam and of establishing Koranic schools. The
boy received his elementary education in such a school run locally by an
uncle, then he went to the Religious Institute where he distinguished him-
self; but as a result of an argument with his fellow students over the respec-
tive merits of the poetry of Shauqi and Hafiz, we are told, he was misreported
to the authorities, falsely accused of religious heresy and dismissed from the
Institute.^135 He had a passionate desire to complete his education in Egypt,
but his authoritarian father wanted him to stay in Sudan and foiled a des-
perate attempt made by his son to flee. For a while he worked as payment
collector for a firm, then as a journalist contributing literary articles, first
to the cultural review al-Fajr, then to Omdurman, but in 1936 he displayed
the first symptoms of consumption which proved to be the cause of his death
in the following year.
Like Shabbi, Tijani looked towards Cairo as his intellectual inspiration,
reading avidly its publications, both books and periodicals, and following
with great interest all its literary news and controversies. In his articles in
al-Fajr he refers to the work of 'Aqqad as well as younger romantic poets
such as Naji and 'Ali Mahmud Taha. like Shabbi, too, he read Mahjar litera-
ture, especially the work of Jibran. The influence of western Romantic poetry
upon him was therefore equally indirect, but no less profound. Tijani was