SHAUQI 41phate and, especially later, he derived subjects for his poems from other Arab
countries, taking the entire Arab world for his province: it was partly because
of this broad sympathy for all the Arabs, in Syria and the Lebanon, in Iraq no
less than in Egypt, that he was named the 'prince of poets'.
It may be useful to conclude this account of Shauqi's poetry with an at-
tempt to list the main characteristics of his style. Although basically a reviva-
list, profoundly influenced by the great poets of the past, Shauqi evolved a
style of writing which, for all its classical character, is entirely his own. And
perhaps the most striking feature of this style is his cunning use of the musical
potentialities of the Arabic language. Shauqi is essentially a great craftsman,
a fact which is soon borne out by any close analysis of the structure of sounds
in his successful poems. But he is more than a mere conscious craftsman: he
was, in fact, greatly endowed with what Coleridge called 'the sense of musical
delight'. This explains not only the haunting, incantatory effect of some of his
lines, but also their untranslatability: few poets are more difficult to translate,
or at least lose more in translation, than Shauqi.^41 It may also help to explain
why much of his poetry has been set to music.
Secondly, Shauqi's descriptive power has already been mentioned, his
ability to convey the effect of rapid movement or to breathe life into an inani-
mate object. Related to that is his power of thinking in terms of images. At his
best his creative imagination is so active that one image follows another
in quick succession. Sometimes, it is true, the images are borrowed or even
commonplace, but the sheer force of rhetoric and the music of the verse man-
age to hide the lack of originality. A typical example is to be found in the way
he celebrates Sa'd Zaghlul's narrow escape from assassination, through an
elaborate and extensive use of the images of Noah's ark and the Ship of the
State (i,3O9).
Thirdly, Shauqi has epigrammatic power to a very high degree, the power,
that is, of embodying a commonplace in a condensed, pithy form. That, toget-
her with their smooth flowing rhythm, explains why so many of Shauqi's
lines are eminently quotable and memorable.
Fourthly, although Shauqi's poetry is free from the turbulence or violence
of passion, through it often runs a certain feeling or undercurrent of tender-
ness, and of nostalgia.
Lastly, at its best Shauqi's poetry has the impersonality of great classical
art. This is seen particularly in a poem which deserves much more praise
than most of the better known poetry of Shauqi — a poem called 'The Destiny
of Days', masa'ir al-ayyam (u,182—6), in which, with great irony, calm con-
templation and detachment the poet describes, in alternate moods of humour