Neoclassicism
Arabic literature was slow to react to the changes that were taking place in
the Arab world in the nineteenth century, the adoption of western literary
modes came much later than that of western technology or even of western
thought. And although contemporary Arabic poetry betrays a high degree of
westernization, bearing little relation to the traditional Arabic ode or qasiia,
of all the branches of Arabic literature poetry was the last to come under
western influence. This is not at all surprising. Poetry is the subtlest and
most complex form of literature, and its appreciation therefore presents
peculiar problems to the foreign reader. It requires not only an intimate and
living knowledge of the language, but also a complete readjustment or re-
education of the reader's sensibility. Moreover, the Arabs have always
prided themselves on their poetry, which they regarded as their greatest
and most congenial mode of literary expression. For a long time they could
not conceive of any terms in which to express their experiences other than
those supplied by their own poetic tradition. Until the end of the nine-
teenth century we find even those writers who were familiar with western
literature expressing their firm conviction that Arabic poetry was superior
to western poetry in all respects and can therefore leam nothing from it. It is
on these grounds that al-Muwailihi, who himself was not averse to experi-
menting in imaginative prose, berated the young poet Shauqi for daring to
suggest in the preface to his first volume of verse, al-Shauqiyyat, which ap-
peared in 1898, that he could benefit from his reading in French poetry.^1
For many decades after the Arabs' cultural contact with the West had
been firmly established, Arabic poetry, therefore, continued to pursue the
same path as in the eighteenth century. The works of these poets who were
popular throughout the first half of the nineteenth century do not materially
differ from those of their immediate predecessors. We encounter the same