THE EMIGRANT POETS 202dream of rising to the world of the spirit is really motivated by a desire to
escape from reality, a rejection of the sorrows and sufferings of this world
and of what it stands for. By means of his poetry he flew high above the earth
in search of the tranquillity of the spirit, 'away from the wrongs of this world'.
'Voluntarily', he writes, 'he turned away from the earth, to which he had
come against his own will. To the earth he belongs, yet he is not of it, so he
remains a stranger amidst his mother's children.'^70 These words, which occur
in the first of the fourteen cantos of which the poem consists, provide the
keynote to the whole work. From it emerges a highly romantic picture of the
poet as an idealized figure, an ethereal being, above the order of ordinary
mortals, suffering from a sense of isolation and from a morbid sensitivity to
the pain and sorrows of the world, and yearning for death which would set
his soul free from the shackles and misery of clay. In fact, Fauzi al-Ma'luf's
romantic pessimism and despair were such that even the romantic poet
Abu Shadi condemned his attitude on the grounds that it is too negative and
extreme.^71 But on the whole the picture of the poet which is depicted in 'On
the Carpet of the Wind' and which was identified with Ma'luf himself,
struck a sympathetic cord in the Arabic romantic poets. The poet's early
death occasioned many elegies, of which one of the most moving is 'A Poet's
Grave'^12 by the Egyptian poet 'Ali Mahmud Tana, who both here and else-
where, as we have seen, gives expression to a similarly idealized view of
poetry and the poet.
'Mahjar' poetry and romantic poetry
In fact, despite the geographical distance that separates them, there is a real
and close link between Mahjar poetry and the romantic poetry which we have
seen developing in the Arab world.^73 No doubt, there were mutual influences
as well as common sources. Both were deeply affected, directly or indirectly,
by the European Romantics. Even those Mahjar poets who, like Nu'aima and
'Arida, had acquired a deep knowledge of Russian literature, found the Rus-
sian romantics most appealing, 'Arida chose to translate someone like
Tyutchev who wrote romantic poems on metaphysical themes. The heyday
of the romantic movement in Arabic poetry is the period between the two
world wars, and that is in the Mahjar no less than in the Arab world. Most of
the major Mahjar poets are now dead, or have ceased to write, or have re-
turned to their homeland after long absences, and there are no signs that a
new generation of powerful poets with clearly marked characteristics are
taking their place. In the Arab world itself, however, after the Second World
War, we find different trends beginning to appear in poetry, and a younger
generation with their own definite views on form and content. The exces-