Lesson 3: "In Elegy of Maya" by Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad and the School of al-Diwan

01Origin of the school of al-Diwan and its founders

Preparation

• Khalil Mutran had a French culture tied to the French poets. After him came three poets whose culture joined the Arabic heritage to English literature.
• These three are the group of al-Diwan: Abdul Rahman Shukri (1886–1958), Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad (1889–1964) and Ibrahim Abdel Qader al-Mazini (1889–1949).
• The school was named after the book "al-Diwan in Literature and Criticism", issued by al-Aqqad and al-Mazini in 1921.

The conditions that made the group

• The three embodied the Arab youth of the early twentieth century, living a suffocating crisis imposed by colonialism through the disorder, ignorance and poverty it spread.
• Young people found no room for the growth of their human personality, no way to free themselves from colonialism or to bear responsibility, since their resources were weak against the coloniser.
• Their hopes collided with the hateful colonial reality, so they fled the painful world of fact into the world of dreams and imagination.
• They took refuge in nature, pouring into it their lost hopes and their despair of life, and contemplated the universe and the secrets of existence.

What bound them together

• Pride in Arab culture, and the influence of English Romanticism.
• Expressing, with warm positions and a sincere experience, the tragedy of their generation; turning towards the human self and leaning towards imagination.
• In this they agreed with Khalil Mutran, who took from French Romanticism the personal emotional feeling-direction.
• From 1909 they began publishing their opinions and calling to their doctrine in newspaper articles and in the prefaces to their diwans.
• Al-Aqqad summed up the school's position in the preface to al-Mazini's first diwan (1913): they were young men raised by upbringing and reading, so they feel as an Easterner feels and picture the world as a Westerner pictures it.
• The first fruit of this temper was that pens strained towards independence, the removal of the film of hypocrisy, and freedom from artificial restraints.

02The school of al-Diwan and the Revivalists

Why they differed

• The school held that its view of poetry differed from that of the Revivalists: those men look backwards, while they express the tragedy of their own age.
• They attacked the Revivalists, foremost among them Ahmed Shawqi, Hafiz Ibrahim and Mustafa Sadiq al-Rafii.
• Their most famous and harshest writing is "al-Diwan in Literature and Criticism" (1921), from which the school took its name — though their poetic work and critical opinions appeared before it.

Their criticisms of the Revivalists

• Taking the old rhetorical models as the highest ideal, and the dominance of the rhetorical side over content and idea.
• Exaggeration in panegyric and dishonesty in expressing the human self — although al-Aqqad held that sincere panegyric is not a fault.
• Caring for the husks of things and their surfaces.
• Excessive imitation of the old in language and imagery.
• No regard for artistic unity, passing within one poem from one subject to another.
• Exaggerations and the absence of evident sincerity in their poetry.

03Traits of the school of al-Diwan

• Combining the two cultures: Arabic and English.
• Ambition: the school's young men look to the horizons and the highest ideals, but their ambitions outrun the reality of their age.
• Organic unity: the poem is a living being in which each part has its function and place, as each organ of the body does, so its subjects are not multiple and its parts do not clash under one title.
• Contemplation: they reflect on the universe and search deeply into the secrets of existence.
• Sincerity of expression and distance from exaggeration.
• A touch of sadness, pain, pessimism and despair.
• Freedom from the old: they did not borrow the old literary material but used the language of their age.
• Distance from occasional subjects and from political and social topics.
• Deepening phenomena: they cared for the essence of things, so thought came before feeling in their work.
• The title: they deepened the idea of titling a poem and went on to title the whole diwan — "A Passing Traveller" for al-Aqqad, "Flowers of Autumn" for Shukri — whereas their predecessors named the diwan after its owner (the diwan of al-Barudi, the diwan of Shawqi).
• Al-Mazini evidenced artistic unity with verses addressed to Shawqi, in which he says that he wore the mantle of the age for twenty pilgrimage seasons.

04The break-up of the school and the fate of its founders

• The friendship of the three failed after a time, and the group dispersed when Shukri attacked al-Mazini over a difference on some literary questions, and al-Aqqad took al-Mazini's side.
• Shukri: stopped writing poetry after his seventh diwan, "Flowers of Autumn", and gave himself to isolation.
• Al-Mazini: turned from poetry after his second diwan (1917) and preferred the short story and the newspaper article.
• Al-Aqqad: remained alone representing the direction, but put poetry second in his interests late in life, after his political, social, literary and Islamic writings.
• Writers who studied under al-Aqqad and carried the direction on include Mahmoud Imad, Abdul Rahman Sadiqi and Ali Ahmad Bakatheir and al-Hassani Abdullah in Egypt, and Muhammad Hasan Awwad in Saudi Arabia, with others in the Arab lands.

05Introducing the poet

• Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad (1889–1964): one of the signs of poetic renewal and critical thought in the modern age.
• With al-Mazini and Shukri he formed the group of al-Diwan.
• In the prefaces to his own diwans and to those of his colleagues and friends he set out the essence of poetry as he saw it:
  • Poetry is the expression of its owner's self and feeling, not the versifying of occasions.
  • Exalting the role of the image in carrying the poet's sensation.
  • Care for the coherence of the poem and its unity.
• Among his diwans is "A Passing Traveller".

06The subject of the text and its occasion

• The poem belongs to the art of elegy (marthiyyah), which is speaking of the dead and naming their virtues.
• The woman mourned is Maya Zaydah (1886–1941): a writer and poetess of wide cultural and social activity, of non-Egyptian origin.
• She was known for her literary salon, where the great writers and poets of the time gathered, and al-Aqqad was among its regulars.
• This elegy is an example of al-Aqqad's saying that sincere praise and sincere elegy are not faults when they come from a genuine feeling.
• The text belongs to the poets of al-Diwan and is read in the light of their experience: sincerity of feeling, the unity of the psychological atmosphere, and the coherence of the parts.
• It consists of four passages separated by points, rising in stages from shock to defiance.

07The ideas of the text, passage by passage

First passage: where is Maya?

• He begins with a question whose answer is known, yet puts it to answer it himself: "where in the assembly is Maya, O companions?"
• He reminds them that she had made it their habit in the assembly to give the decisive word — the right saying.
• He pictures her seated on the throne of the pulpit: the pulpit is the place worthy of her, because of her command of eloquence and public speech.
• Eloquence answered her when it was called, and she was dignified of bearing, proud of herself.
• He repeats the question at the end of the passage to confirm the shock.

Second passage: where did the two planets go?

• He orders the questioners to ask the elite, the chosen of her gathering: have you known where Maya is?
• He lists her physical qualities: the sweetness of speech, the moving melody (the beauty of her affecting voice), the clear brow, and the shining radiant face.
• Then he moves to the sad cry: "where did her two planets go? where have they vanished?" — making her a planet in height and fame.

Third passage: moral qualities and the shock of loss

• He lists her moral qualities: noble and lovely characters, intents that pierce with the right opinion, and a flashing intelligence like a meteor.
• Her beauty is sacred and beyond fault: she joined the physical and the moral in a pure beauty.
• He arrives at the hard reality: "all of this — in the dust?", the question of the shocked sceptic carrying wonder, disbelief and protest.
• Then he follows it with the cry "alas for this dust" — in it pain and resignation to what happened, and also a defiance of death.

Fourth passage: revolt against death and the immortality of glory

• He addresses the dust with "waih": "you will not give back what you hold" — it cannot return those it has taken.
• He denies that hope should be lost of reviving what was lost.
• He declares that Maya's glory is not the dust's to hold: it is "not entrusted to you", and the dust covers only her body.
• He is certain that her glory is free from its grip, and that for her merit she has a thousand reward — she is immortal through her works and her traces.

The progression of meaning

• Shock of the sudden loss → lamenting and suffering → revolt against death → defying it and affirming the immortality of the woman of letters.

08The vocabulary of the text and its meanings

09Styles, figurative imagery and music

Styles

• Interrogation abounds and closes the first three passages. Its chief instrument is aina ("where") asking about place; hal ("do you know") comes once; and one question has no instrument at all: "all of this in the dust?"
• Its purpose is wonder, denial and the showing of the shock of loss — not asking for an answer.
• Command: "ask the elite" comes joined to interrogation, and its purpose is direction and the confirming of the bereavement.
• Vocative: "O companions" shares the grief with his friends; and "her two planets" is an elegiac call with the particle of vocative dropped.
• The words of pain and wonder, "ahi" and "waih", express suffering and defiance.

Figurative imagery

• "Her throne is the pulpit": a concise simile making the pulpit her throne, marking her rank and her command of speech.
• "Her two planets": a metaphor — she is likened to a planet in height and fame; the thing likened to is dropped and its attribute kept.
• "A shining face", "sweet speech", "a moving melody": sensory images embodying her virtues.
• "All of this in the dust": an image that personifies the dust and sets the greatness of her qualities against the narrowness of the grave.
• "Approved and painless" and "sacred beauty": images carrying her station without strain.
• The images come in their right places, unforced, reflecting the poet's regret and pain.

Music

• Al-Aqqad varied the rhyme — one of the marks of development in music — and his rhyme suits the psychological state.
• The opening verses end on a near-identical rhyme series (companions · decisive word · dignity · answered) producing a continuous sad cadence suited to the bereavement.

10The coherence of the text and its artistic unity

At the level of wording

• A spread of different styles across the text — interrogation and command — diffuses the sense that its parts hang together.
• The interrogation is repeated in its own words: "where in the assembly is Maya?", "where is Maya?", "where did they go?", "where have they vanished?"

At the level of meaning

• The succession of questions voices the shock of loss: as if he cannot conceive her death and only asks where she is.
• The predicate after "where" changes and moves towards the inevitable truth: they went, they vanished.
• The cry ends in resignation to the truth and complaint of it at the same moment.
• It joins weakness and acknowledgement of defeat with the spirit of resistance and revolt against death.
• Result: clear interconnection and a coherent structure out of unity of thought, unity of feeling and one sad psychological atmosphere — so the poem attains the artistic unity the school of al-Diwan wanted.

Traits of al-Diwan in the text

• Sincerity in expressing real grief.
• Organic unity and the coherence of the passages.
• The language of the age without strange words, and unforced imagery.
• Contemplation of death and immortality — one of the school's reflections on the secrets of existence.
• A touch of sadness together with a leaning towards defiance.

11Values drawn from the text

• Loyalty to the people of thought and letters, and valuing their role in cultural life.
• The immortality of the trace: works and ideas outlast bodies.
• Sincerity in the feelings of elegy, away from hypocrisy.
• Patience and defiance in the face of loss, and faith that merit is not lost.
• Respect for the role of the educated woman and her contribution to the literary movement.

12Exam traps and key takeaways

• Three poets, two cultures: al-Diwan joined the Arabic heritage with English literature (Mutran's link was French) — a common wrong option pairs Mutran with English Romanticism.
• Dates: group members Shukri 1886–1958 · Aqqad 1889–1964 · Mazini 1889–1949; publicising of their views from 1909; Aqqad's summary in the preface to al-Mazini's first diwan 1913; the book "al-Diwan in Literature and Criticism" 1921 — the naming book, and not the first appearance of their ideas.
• Their conditions: colonialism's disorder, ignorance and poverty → no room for personal growth → flight into dreams, imagination, nature and contemplation of the universe.
• The quarrel that ended the school was Shukri attacking al-Mazini, with al-Aqqad siding with al-Mazini — not a quarrel with the Revivalists.
• Fates: Shukri stopped after his seventh diwan "Flowers of Autumn" · Mazini gave up poetry after his second diwan (1917) for story and article · Aqqad remained alone and later ranked poetry second.
• Their criticisms of the Revivalists: old rhetorical models as ideal · rhetoric over content · exaggerated and insincere panegyric · surfaces not essences · excessive imitation · no artistic unity · exaggeration and lack of sincerity — and remember Aqqad exempted sincere panegyric.
• Traits to match exactly: organic unity = a living body with functions and places for its parts; thought before feeling; they avoided occasional, political and social subjects; they titled whole diwans, not just poems.
• Text facts: genre elegy; the mourned woman Maya Zaydah (1886–1941), of non-Egyptian origin, famous for her literary salon; the poem has four passages separated by points.
• Progression: shock → lament → revolt against death → defiance and immortality; passages 1–2 mix rank (pulpit-throne) and physical beauty, passage 3 turns to moral qualities then "all this in the dust?", passage 4 addresses the dust directly.
• The many questions are not asking for an answer: purpose = wonder, denial, showing the shock; the instrument is mainly aina, hal once, and one tool-less question. "Ask the elite" is a command joined to interrogation; "her two planets" is a vocative/elegiac call with the particle dropped.
• Imagery: throne-pulpit = concise simile · two planets = metaphor (thing likened-to dropped, attribute kept) · "all this in the dust" personifies the dust and contrasts greatness with the grave.
• Music: variation of rhyme is a mark of their development; the opening near-identical rhyme series creates a continuous sad cadence.
• Unity evidence: repeated "where" questions, the predicate shifting towards the inevitable truth, and the closing cry that joins resignation with revolt.
• "Waih" = wonder, rebuke and threat; "ahi" = pain, grief or complaint — do not swap their functions.