IN LATIN AMERICA 197influence of the West. At the same time the industrial and economic pressure
of life in the United States was undoubtedly greater: in New York the immi-
grant Arab had more reason to feel isolated and to suffer from the effects of
a materialistic society. There were, therefore, more grounds for him to adopt
an attitude to life which is regarded as 'romantic'.
Compared with the United States poets, the Latin American poets were,
therefore, on the whole much more moderate, and their attitude to the
achievements of their Northern brethren varied considerably. Both Ilyas
Farhat and Rashid Salim al-Khuri (better known as al-Sha'ir al-Qarawi)
vehemently attacked their extremism. The latter, in fact, regarded any devia-
tion from the high standards of classical Arabic as a sign of lack of faith in
Arabism and the Arabs. On the other hand, Fauzi al-Ma'luf stressed the need
for modernity, the need for emancipation from the shackles of the outmoded
traditions of the desert Arabs. Ni'ma Qazan opposed Jibran to the ancient
Arab grammarians, regarding him as an example to follow, but the extrem-
ism of Qazan is obviously the exception in Latin America (Brazil) and the
date of his long poem Mu'allaqat al-Arz ("The Cedar Ode'), 1938, shows how
much later Jibran's influence began to spread there.
Yet it cannot be said that the work of the chief Latin American poets was
merely a continuation of neoclassicism. In spite of individual differences,
their work as a whole contains some of the general features of Mahjar poetry.
In what follows the work of three fairly representative figures will be briefly
discussed: Ilyas Farhat, Rashid Salim al-Khuri and Fauzi al-Ma'luf.
Ilyas Farhat was born in the Lebanon in 1893, in the town Kafr Shima,
which produced other distinguished writers such as al-Yaziji and Shum-
mayyil. His parents were poor and he was, therefore, obliged to earn his living
while still a child, having had only an elementary education. In 1910 he
emigrated to Brazil to join his brothers and improve his fortune. At first he
had great difficulties and worked as a travelling salesman in haberdashery.
In 1919 he helped edit a review called al-Jadfd, on which he continued to
work until it ceased publication in 1928. He published his first volume of
verse, his Quatrains, in 1925, his Diwan in 1932, and The Shepherd's Dreams
in 1953. In 1954 an edition of his complete works appeared in San Paolo.^55
Farhat is a powerful poet who shares with the pre-romantics their concern
for the polish and correctness of their language. The occasional stylistic weak-
nesses to which most Arab critics objected rather too strongly in al-Rabita
poetry are completely absent from his work. In fact, his style is at times
reminiscent of that of Mutran. Much of his output is cast in the single-rhyme
qasida form, and he has no particular preference for short metres or stanzaic