'MAHJAR' AND ROMANTIC POETRY 203sive individualism which marked life both in the Arab East and in the West is
beginning to disappear in the East, giving place to different forms of social
and political life. The Middle East has its own problems, social, political and
cultural, distinct from those that may face those Arabs settled in America.
The poets in both parts of the world are now preoccupied with different
matters. At the same time immigration to the United States is no longer un-
restricted, and it is difficult to see how the second generation of Arab im-
migrants who have been totally absorbed by American culture could continue
to speak Arabic, let alone compose poetry in it.
But although it is hard to see any future for Arabic poetry in Mahjar, no one
can deny its past achievement or the extent of its influence on the rest of
Arabic poetry. We have already mentioned how deeply indebted to that
poetry Shabbi was, and Shabbi was by no means the only one who fell under
its spell. In fact, it can safely be said that the whole generation of romantic
poets who reached their maturity in the inter-war period came directly or
indirectly under their pervasive influence. By introducing a new conception
of poetry, by adding a spiritual dimension to it, so to speak, by turning away
from rhetoric and declamation, by concentrating on the more subjective
experience of man in relation to nature and ultimate questions, by introduc-
ing biblical themes and images into their poetry, by their preference for short
metres and stanzaic forms, the Mahjar poets, especially of the United States,
exercised a liberating influence upon modern Arabic poetry. Indeed their
extremist views were often rejected, the revolt of some of them against Arabic
versification which resulted in the once fashionable prose poetry of Rihani
and Jibran, proved to all intents and purposes to be a dead end, at least until
recently; their language was sometimes severely criticized for not being
sufficiently correct or even grammatical, and the tendency of many of them to
turn their back on the Arab cultural past was often violently attacked. None-
theless, it would be difficult to exaggerate the significance of the role they
played in the development of modern Arabic poetry, and of the subtle in-
fluence they exercised in shaping modern Arab sensibility. Without their
seminal minds the course of modern Arabic poetry would in many ways have
been different.