THE PRE-ROMANTICS 74Assailed by waves like the waves of my affliction which wear it out as
my disease wracks my frame
While the sea is heaving with grief like my heart at the hour of dusk.
Gloom spreads over the world, as if it had risen from my heart to my
eyes...The poem concludes with an identification between the poet ana me natural
scene, in which the setting sun and the sky seem to him to join in the lament
over his misfortune as his thoughts turn to the woman he loves.
Nature, however, is not always a mere echo of the poet's feeling in the
manner of pathetic fallacy, as we find hi "Evening' or in 'The Rose and the
Lily' (i,134). It is often viewed as a source of solace for the suffering poet.
For instance, in 'Death of a Dear Couple' (1,66) he addresses the meadows,
saying:Bring peace to my heart
Be my refuge from constant sorrow...
Here is my solitude to which I flee
From a painful world where injustice is rampant.This escapist attitude is even more striking in 'Solitude in the Desert' (n,19),
where the poet openly turns his back on civilization and seeks refuge hi the
desert away from the vices of the city and the world of men. Mutran's pas-
sionate interest in the details of landscape, seascape and skyscape is apparent
throughout his poetry. One poem in particular, 'Sunset in the Egyptian
Countryside' (nil) deals mainly with the fantastic shapes formed in the sky
by clouds, the rays of the setting sun and the oncoming darkness of the
night. Here we notice nature gradually assuming a mysterious character hi
the poet's mind and reality in the process of being transfigured. At times the
physical world of the senses is seen by the poet as a door leading to another
purer or greater world of the spirit. In 'The Illusion of light' (U65), Mutran
describes a girl dressed in a white frock seen from a distance on the bank of
the Nile in the moonlight, observing how the rays of the moon suddenly
turn the girl into a pure spirit of transparent light, robbing her of the solid
and opaque clay of her body. In another, 'Microcosm and Macrocosm: a Cup
of Coffee' (i, 15 5), we get something closer to Blake's vision which sees a world
in a gram of sand and Eternity hi an hour. The air bubbles floating on the
surface of the cup are seen by the poet as miniature suns, stars and planets,
all uniting and merging into one another. This, he says to his beloved, is the
fate of the universe and the fate of all lovers. But the link between death
and fulfilment of desire is an essential condition in man just as it is for the
whole of the universe. The movement from the cup of coffee to the cosmos
and then back to the poet and his mistress is subtly conveyed. Here the rela-