Lesson 1: "Exile and Longing for the Homeland" by Ahmed Shawqi and the Revival and Neo-classicism School

01The Revival and Neo-classicism school and the generation of development

How the generation was formed

• Al-Barudi's pupils followed his method by direct teaching (face to face): Hafiz Ibrahim, Ahmed Shawqi and Abdul Muhsein al-Kazemi.
• Others followed him by correspondence, such as Shakib Arslan.
• Others still came to it by reading his poetry through "al-Wasilah al-Adabiyyah", the textbook of his teacher Sheikh Hussein al-Marsafi.
• From all of them formed a generation that developed the direction whose foundations al-Barudi had laid.

Causes of the development

• Openness to Western culture — by knowing foreign languages, mixing with foreigners, or reading translations — after the British occupation of Egypt.
• National struggle, which deepened awareness of the heritage and of a distinguished past, together with belief in the idea of Islamic solidarity (al-Jama'ah al-Islamiyyah).
• Political and social positions: the Denshaway incident, for example — Hafiz Ibrahim said of the occupation a line mocking and criticising it ("Are we and the doves the same?").
• Their positions on the constitution, representative councils, freedom of the press, the multiplicity of parties, the unity of the nation (Muslims and Copts), the founding of the Egyptian University in 1908, and Qasim Amin's call for the liberation of women.
• Their connection with the press, which had appeared and spread, made their style fluent and easy.

The traits of renewal in their work

• They treated the problems of their society and the external affairs of the Islamic world, so they expressed the spirit of the age.
• Their poetry takes its form from the old and links its content to the self or to the events of the age.
• They cared for the rhetorical side: the majesty of wording, the beauty of expression and the sweetness of music, and did not confine themselves to imitation.
• They opened room for personal experience, diversified the purposes of poetry and invented new meanings.
• They reconciled two directions: taking from the heritage and turning to the culture of the age.
• They came closer to the ordinary people, and their poetry was more concerned with others than with the self.

What remained in them of the old

• They begin some poems with the traditional love-prelude and then pass to the actual subject.
• They describe the ruined campsites (atlal), as Shawqi did.
• Occasional poetry dominated their work, because they were busy with the questions of their age.

02Ahmed Shawqi and the generation of development

• Shawqi combined with his Arab culture a European culture: he studied law in France and read French literature.
• He watched the European theatres, sat with Western poets, and read the marks of renewal among the masters of French poetry: Victor Hugo, Lamartine and de Musset.
• To this was added his Turkish culture and his exposure to the audience, the critics and the national movement.

The marks of his development

• He turned from panegyric to history in his poem "The Great Events of the Nile Valley".
• In part of his poetry he took an Islamic direction, and turned to modern achievements — like his description of the aeroplane — abandoning the old poets' motif of the she-camel.
• At the opening of "The Great Events" he begins with the description of a ship instead of standing on the ruins.

His leadership of the theatre

• He led Arabic verse drama, beginning with "Oli Bakr al-Kabir", which he wrote in France.
• He then returned to the theatre and wrote "The Death of Cleopatra", "The Madman of Layla", "Cambyses", "Antarah", "Sat al-Huda" and "The Princess of Andalusia".
• For all of this he was titled the Amir al-Shu'ara (Prince of Poets).

Others of the generation

• Ahmed Moharram tried to turn poetry towards heroic historical narrative in his long work "Diwan Majd al-Islam", which some call "the Islamic Iliad".

03Introducing the poet and the occasion of the poem

• Ahmed Shawqi (Amir al-Shu'ara) is the most prominent poet of the Revival and Neo-classicism school and of the generation of development.
• He was exiled to Andalusia (Spain) during the First World War because of his national position.
• There he felt he had lost his freedom and been deprived of his homeland and his people.

The occasion

• He composed the poem in exile, out of longing for and yearning after Egypt, out of anger at colonialism, and remembering the glories of the Muslims in Andalusia.
• Andalusia holds a place in the heart of every Muslim and in the heart of a sensitive poet.
• The poem belongs to "Shawqi's Andalusians" — his poems of exile.
• It answers ("mu'arada") al-Buhturi's seniyya on the palace of Khusraw: Shawqi said that whenever he stood by a stone or circled a relic, al-Buhturi's verses came before him.
• He took the same metre and the same rhyme, composing on the same radif — the sin with the kasra — which is what is called mu'arada (emulation).
• Among the verses of this emulation is his line saying that the palace of Khusraw taught al-Buhturi a lesson and the palaces of the Umayyads healed him — meaning that the palaces the Umayyads built in Andalusia healed him and gave his heart rest from the misery of distance from his homeland.

04The first idea (verses 1-7): remembering and longing for Egypt

Simplified explanation

• He begins with a maxim: the succession of night and day makes a man forget what is old.
• Yet he remembers his youth and his days of happiness in Egypt, and so he asks two imagined companions to recall his youth to him.
• He describes those days as having blown past like the sportsmanlike breezes (al-sa), or like a nap of sleep, or like a pleasure snatched away swiftly.
• He then asks a question whose purpose is negation: "has the heart forgotten her?" — that is, the heart has not forgotten Egypt nor healed from the wound of exile.
• He says that as the nights pass his longing grows finer and more tender, while the bond between people hardens and is forgotten with the nights — so he contrasts his own faithfulness with the change of others.
• He describes himself as terror-stricken when the steamships sound early in the night or howl after a bell: every ship's whistle wakes his longing.
• He paints his heart as a monk inside his ribs, alert to the ships, ringing its bell and seeing them off whenever they stir and sail.

Idea drawn

• Sincere longing for Egypt, and a yearning for any means that connects him to his homeland.

05The second idea (verses 8-12): the address to the ship

Simplified explanation

• He addresses the ship as "daughter of the sea", begs her generosity and compassion, and wonders at the sea's stinginess towards him: his father is no miser — so why this habit of withholding and holding back?
• He asks in indignant interrogation: how is a man barred from his homeland while the great trees are lawful to birds of every kind yet forbidden to the nightingales that live in them?
• He joins this to a maxim: "every dwelling has more right to its own people" — and only a foul, vile doctrine denies it, meaning colonialism, which made other people's homes lawful for itself and expelled their people.
• He names the means by which the ship moves: the boiler, the sail and the buoyant water.
• Then he makes himself all of those means:
  • "My soul is the boiler": the energy of his breaths and the fire of his longing are fuel for the ship.
  • "My heart is the sail": his turbulent, surging heart is like a sail driven by the wind.
  • "Sail upon the tears and cast anchor": his tears are the sea in which the ship swims.
• He asks her to make the lighthouse of Alexandria her destination, between the two quarters of al-Raml and al-Maks.

Idea drawn

• Reaching one's homeland is a demand that cannot be barred: the right to one's country is a natural right.

06The third idea (verses 13-15): a love of homeland that never fades

Simplified explanation

• He shows that his love of Egypt is above every love: were he occupied instead with paradise itself, his soul would still dispute with him about Egypt.
• He feels a great thirst to see its places, so his heart turns towards the sweet smooth water (salsabil) and towards the thick greenery of the quarter of Ain Shams, where he lived for a time.
• He calls God to witness that the image of his homeland does not leave his eye for an hour, nor leave his feeling — it is never absent from his senses.
• So he sees it with both his sight and his insight: the homeland is in the heart and before the eye.

Points of beauty

• The acceptable exaggeration in "were I occupied with paradise instead of it" — proof of the strength of the love, not a denial of paradise.
• The combining of longing, wisdom and patriotism in a single psychological unity.

07The vocabulary of the poem and its meanings

08Figurative imagery and rhetorical devices

Simile (tashbih)

• "It blew like the playful sa", and the passing of "a doze" and "a snatched pleasure": the days of youth are likened to a soft breeze, to quick sleep and to a stolen joy — all for the swiftness of their passing.
• "My soul is the boiler and my heart is the sail": a concise simile (baliagh) that makes the soul the boiler and the heart the sail.

Metaphor (isti'ara)

• "Has the heart forgotten", "time heals its wound": personification of the heart and of time.
• "The steamships rang... and howled": the ships are likened to crying creatures.
• "The heart is an alert monk that sees the ships off with its bell": a concise simile carrying personification of the heart.

Metonymy / kinaya

• "Daughter of the sea" is a kinaya for the ship, and "your father" a kinaya for the sea.

Sound and balance devices (badi')

• Imperfect paronomasia (jinna naqis): "surah" and "tasawwurāt" (image and images).
• Perfect paronomasia (jinna tamm): "sala" and "sala".
• Antithesis (Tibaq): lawful/unlawful, "sail"/"anchor", "from it"/"to it", night/day.
• These devices are unforced and serve the meaning.

09Traits of Shawqi's style and of his school in this text

Style

• Styles are diversified: statement (khabar) predominates, with non-statement forms: command ("recall", "be pure", "forget", "make", "sail", "anchor"), interrogation used for negation or for indignant denial, exclamation ("daughter of the sea"), and wonder ("what makes him so bent on withholding?").
• Fronting for emphasis, as in "time heals its wound".
• The maxim, at the opening of the poem and in verses such as "every dwelling has more right to its own people".
• Music: the prevalence of the letter sin in the rhyme, with other letters such as sad and 'ayn, on a single metre and single rhyme.
• Imagery: he relies on partial imagery that builds into a whole serving the emotional experience.

Traits of the Revival school in the poem

• Many ideas within one psychological unity.
• Unity of metre and rhyme.
• Talking about the steamship as the ancients talked about the she-camel.
• Emulation (mu'arada) of the ancients — here al-Buhturi — with renewal in wording and imagery.
• Use of old vocabulary (al-sa, al-dawh) side by side with renewal.
• Addressing the self and a companion, in the manner of the ancients.
• Care for Islamic history and for patriotism.

10Values drawn from the text

• Love of the homeland and longing for it, and pride in belonging to it.
• The right to one's country, and the rejection of colonialism and of exile.
• Making use of the heritage and of history while renewing.
• Taking a lesson from the glories of nations, as al-Buhturi took a lesson from the palace of Khusraw.

11Exam traps and key takeaways

• Al-Barudi's pupils come through three routes: direct teaching (Hafiz Ibrahim, Shawqi, al-Kazemi), correspondence (Shakib Arslan), and reading his poetry in al-Marsafi's "al-Wasilah al-Adabiyyah".
• Renewal in form came from the content: the school's generation takes shape from the old and binds meaning to the self or to the events of the age — "they abandoned the old form" is a wrong option.
• The causes of development include Denshaway, the 1908 Egyptian University, Qasim Amin, the press; Hafiz Ibrahim's satirical line targets the occupation.
• Shawqi's renewal examples: history instead of panegyric in "The Great Events of the Nile Valley", the aeroplane, and opening with a ship instead of the atlal.
• Verses of theatre: first "Oli Bakr al-Kabir" (written in France); the title Amir al-Shu'ara rests on all of this. Ahmed Moharram — not Shawqi — wrote "Diwan Majd al-Islam", the "Islamic Iliad".
• The occasion: exiled to Andalusia during WWI for his national position; the poem is one of the Andalusians of exile.
• Mu'arada = taking the same metre, the same rhyme and the same radif (the kasra-bearing sin) as al-Buhturi's seniyya on the palace of Khusraw; the healing palaces in the emulation verse are the Umayyad buildings in Andalusia.
• Idea boundaries: verses 1–7 memory and longing · 8–12 the ship · 13–15 the unfading love.
• The question "has the heart forgotten?" is interrogation whose purpose is negation, not real questioning — a favourite multiple-choice trap.
• The self becomes all three means of movement: soul = boiler, heart = sail, tears = the sea; the destination is the lighthouse of Alexandria between al-Raml and al-Maks.
• "Every dwelling has more right to its own people, and only a foul doctrine denies it" targets colonialism, not religion.
• "Were I occupied with paradise instead of it" is acceptable exaggeration, not denial of paradise.
• Devices: "daughter of the sea" is kinaya for the ship and "your father" for the sea; jinna tamm on "sala/sala", jinna naqis on surah/tasawwurāt; Tibaq pairs lawful/unlawful · sail/anchor · from it/to it · night/day.
• Style summary: statement dominates; commands and indignant questions serve the emotion; fronting for emphasis; single metre and rhyme; sin dominates the music.