SHAUQI 33(iv,63) and celebrate the nationalist struggle, as in his powerful poems:
al-Hurriyya al-hamra' (Red Freedom) (n,235) and 'Id al-Jihad (Anniversary
of the Struggle) (rv,29), to underline the need for Egyptian political parties
to sink their differences (II,2O5), to support Syria's nationalist struggle
against French imperialism (11,88), and in memory of its 'martyrs' (n,227).
Shauqi also composed poems on the occasion of the safe arrival of the first
Egyptian pilot from Berlin in 1930 (u, 194), on disasters like the fire in the
town of Mait Ghamr in 1905 (rv,45), the golden anniversary of the Teachers'
Training College (Dar al-'Ulum) (iv,21), the establishment of the National
University (i, 182) and on the Egyptian University (iv,10), on the foundation
of Misr Bank in 1925 (iv,14; i,223), the opening of a new building of Misr
Bank in 1927 (iv,17), and of a branch of it in Alexandria in 1929 (iv,24),
the foundation of the Oriental Music Club in 1929 (iv,49), and on the Red
Crescent (the Islamic branch of the Red Cross) (i, 175,340). He addressed
the country's workers in verse (i,95) and members of educational missions
before their departure for Europe (iv,69). He greeted journalism (i, 190),
supported fund-raising efforts for social welfare purposes (rv,26), welcomed
al-Azhar reforms (i,177), and defended women's education 0,110) and their
freedom (n,208), expressed alarm at the growing incidence of suicide among
students on account of failure in examinations 0,151), and exposed social
scandals like the tendency in aged married men to marry young girls whom
they virtually bought from their greedy parents 0,155).
Of course, much of this work is closer to verse journalism than to what
an avant-garde Arab poet of today would be prepared to regard as poetry.
This, however, is not the point, although it has been argued that in this
Shauqi represents the last stage in the development of Arabic poetry which
seemed to revolve mostly round 'occasions'.^34 What Shauqi managed to do,
which is no mean service, was to make the traditional Abbasid idiom so
relevant to the problems and concerns of modern life that poetry became a
force to be reckoned with in the political life of modern Egypt. The banish-
ment of Shauqi by the British authorities is in fact an eloquent testimony
to the extent and significance of this force. Unlike Barudi, Shauqi was
exiled not because of his political activity, but simply because of his poetry.3i
Moreover, in Shauqi's poetry the conventions of the old Arabic qasida, the
desert imagery and the amatory prelude perform a function not altogether
different from that of Greek and Roman mythology in the poetry of modem
Christian Europe, a point which has already been noted by an eminent
scholar, Shauqi Daif, who in his study of the poet argues that Shauqi uses
these things as conscious symbols to bestow beauty and dignity upon his
poetry. Like classical mythology in modem western poetry the Arab desert