NEOCLASSICISM 58erotic picture of a nude courtesan and give an amusing vivid description of a
game of billiards which reveals his unabashed homosexual feelings (pp. 201 ff;
283ff; 509). Such things were beyond the ability of Zahawi, and Rusafi has
been severely chided for them by respectable Arab critics and scholars, al-
though it is fair to point out that he did not altogether lack advocates, albeit
embarrassed ones.
But the two poets had much in common. like Zahawi, Rusafi was general-
ly troubled by doubt as regards man's fate and the truth of revealed religion.
Both poets have been accused of heresy and described as infidels (a charge
which both denied in many poems, but in terms not altogether convincing).^90
This was the result partly of their reading of popular scientific literature, part-
ly of the deep influence upon them of one aspect of the Abbasid poet al-
Ma'arri. In a poem entitled 'My Negative Truth' Rusafi asserts that he is not
one of those who 'believe that religions are founded on revelation sent down
to prophets, and not man-made creations', or who 'wrongly imagine that the
soul goes up to Heaven, For the Earth floats in space and Heaven is nought but
this space' (p. 189). Like Zahawi, and probably under his influence, Rusafi
sometimes inserts in his poems allusions to scientific theories, to electricity,
gravity and astronomy, and he even writes whole poems based on ill-digested
modern scientific information. For instance, a poem like 'The Earth' (pp. 27ff.)
is really no more than versified scientific commonplaces. This didacticism is
shown in many works, like his The Arab Galen' (pp. 359—66), which merely
summarizes the life and achievement of the medieval Arab thinker and
scientist Abu Bakr al-Razi. Moreover, Rusafi's desire to be regarded as a
modem poet is sometimes expressed in the same naive form as that which we
have seen in the poetry of the Egyptians Barudi and later Hafiz Ibrahim. He
even wrote complete poems on modern inventions like the railway train, the
motor car and the telegraph (see pp. 204ff.; 21 Iff.; 250).
However, these poems like others in which he attempted to describe as-
pects of modern living, such as a school game of football (p. 222), are by no
means among Rusafi's best or most serious works. Of far greater significance
are his poems dealing with political and social themes, for Rusafi was a com-
mitted poet whose attack on Iraqi feudalism reveals the full extent of his
revolutionary ideas.^91 In Iraq Rusafi is regarded as the poet par excellence
of freedom, for his poems contain many violent attacks on the tyranny of
Abdul Hamid and his men and many moving exhortations to the people to
rise and demand their political rights - although it is also fair to point out that
part of his popularity as the poet of freedom is probably due to the large num-
ber of patriotic children's songs he wrote. Rusafi identified himself completely
with the liberal forces in Ottoman Turkey. He first welcomed the declaration