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

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.