THE RECOIL FROM ROMANTICISM 250the opening of the poem entitled 'The Bottomless Pit' (pp. 4Iff.). Using a
modified version of the biblical story of Lazarus as a scaffolding for his poem,
Hawi records his disenchantment with the dream of Axab revival, and shows
how when values die in the soul of the leader of the struggle, the hero be-
comes a tyrant. This is a very pessimistic poem which in its unrelieved gloom
can be compared only to some of Sayyab's works.
Sayyab
Badr Shakir al-Sayyab (1926-1964), who led a life marked by failure, suf-
fering and exile on account of his political beliefs, and of disease and slow
death towards the end, is arguably one of the two or three greatest poets of his
generation. A graduate of the Baghdad Teachers' Training College, he was
considerably influenced by modern English poetry, particularly Eliot and
Edith Sitwell, and by Lorca. He translated Aragon's Les Yeux d'Elsa and also
published a volume containing his translation (not always accurate, and done
through the medium of English) of twenty poems by poets as diverse as
Pound, Eliot, Edith Sitwell, Stephen Spender, Day Lewis, De la Mare, Rilke,
Lorca, Neruda, Rimbaud and PieVert, under the title Selected Poems from
Modern World Poetry.^62
Sayyab started as a romantic poet, an admirer of Taha and Abu Shabaka.
His first volume. Withered Flowers (1947), which strangely enough was
published when the poet was already a member of the Iraqi Communist
Party, did not differ markedly from the work of any other young poet who
derived his ideals from the established romantic poets. However, it included
his famous poem "Was it Love?' which shows his experimentation in form.
(Later on Sayyab tried to get rid of some of the romantic dilution and vague-
ness by making some drastic changes in the first version of his poems.)^63
The change in Sayyab's style begins to be noticeable in the second volume,
Myths (1950), in the introduction to which the poet draws the reader's atten-
tion to three features of the contents: the new and unfamiliar rhythm of the
poems which rely on the use of an irregular number of feet, a form which he
claims to have been inspired by his readings in English poetry, the relative
obscurity of some poems (which, however, he hastens to point out, is not due
to his being a symbolist poet - a denial which seems to be prompted by a
desire not to be branded as a supporter of the doctrine of art for art's sake),
and lastly the adoption of the principle of the association of ideas in the
creative process as well as the mixing of the conscious and the unconscious.
It is interesting that at the conclusion of his introduction Sayyab is careful to
affirm the social and political function and relevance of poetry, and to assure
the reader that he has already written a large number of poems on social
themes. It is also significant that in a footnote to a poem^64 he refers to Eliot as