Al-Bārudī Precursor of the Modern Arabic Poetic Revival

Abstract

Arabic literature was slow to react to the changes that were taking place in the Arab world in the nineteenth century. The adoption of western literary modes came much later than that of western technology or even of western thought. And although contemporary Arabic poetry betrays a high degree of westernization, bearing little relation to the traditional Arabic ode or qaszda, of all the branches of Arabic literature poetry was the last to come under western influence. This is not at all surprising. Poetry is the sublest and most complex form of literature, and its appreciation therefore presents peculiar problems to the foreign reader. It requires not only an intimate and living knowledge of the language, but also a complete readjustment or re-education of the reader's sensibility. Moreover, the Arabs have always prided themselves on their poetry, which they regarded as their greatest and most congenial mode of literary expression. For a long time they could not conceive of any terms in which to express their experiences other than those supplied by their own poetic tradition. Until the end of the nineteenth century we find even those writers who were familiar with western literature expressing their firm conviction that Arabic poetry was superior to western poetry in all respects and can therefore learn nothing from it. It is on these grounds that Al-Muwailihi, who himself was not averse to experimenting in imaginative prose, berated the young poet Shawqi for daring to suggest in the Preface to his first volume of verse, al-Shawqiyyat which appeared in I898, that he could benefit from his reading in French poetry.1