Ninth: the qualities of style and music

09Ninth: the qualities of style and music

• Suggestive language, far from directness and flat statement.
• Plurals: the poet uses plural forms because he is dealing with a matter of humanity in our age, in two fields — greatness (eagles, mountains, suns, stars, spearheads, heads, summits, lighthouses) and comfort (rabbits, fields, plains, shadows, pools).
• Tibaq (true contrast): "climb high and flutter (ta'lu wa-takhfaq)" to balance a thing against its opposite.
• Muqabala (extended contrast): "the free eagles in space" against "the squatting rabbits in the deep narrow pass".
• Repetition for confirmation of meaning: "the free eagles…" three times, "the horizon" three times, "the free ones" three times, "the plains" three times.
• The present tense verb spreads to show renewal and continuation of the act: for the ambitious — lies in wait, soars, climbs high, raises; for the inert — leaps, eats, trembles, together with the active participle "squatting (qabi'a)" — so the difference between the two positions is confirmed.
• The music of the taf'ilah: short and long lines according to the completion of the emotional flow, and varied rhymes with no commitment to a single one.
• Objective unity and the unity of a psychological atmosphere built on the conflict between the two methods of life.