Al-Ahram: A Diwan of contemporary life (508)
The summer the poets departed
Egypt's two leading modern poets, Shawqi and Hafez, died in 1933, within months of each other. In this week's Diwan, Professor Yunan Labib Rizk* reviews Al-Ahram's marking of the twin tragedies and the various eulogies of the poets the paper published
"What a dismal summer it has been for Arabic literature! Its three blazing months drove the twin stars from our literary firmament and sundered two solid pillars of our poetic edifice. Hardly had the summer sun entered Leo than it unleashed its blaze against the letters, striking down the knight in mid-field. By the time it had settled in Libra, at the end of the season, it had loosed all havoc on poetic criteria and balance.
"No sooner had Egypt dried its tears of grief over Hafez than it shed them again over Shawqi. Hardly had Arab literary societies completed their solemn obsequies over the late Hafez than the telegraph brought them the grievous news of the Imam of Poetry and the Prince of Poets.
"Ten weeks ago, or thereabouts, Arabic literature vaunted two poets, under whose long sway flourished one of the most splendid eras in its history. Today, it stands stunned by their passing, one immediately after the other, and mourns its twofold loss. There is no power but unto God!
"With the poetry of Hafez and Shawqi, Egypt stood perched at the literary forefront of the Arab world, where it stood as the sentinel of Arabic literature. By virtue of these two poets, Egypt boasted a third of a century long literary florescence reminiscent of the great poetic flowerings of Baghdad and Andalusia."
Thus opened Al-Ahram's editorial of 15 October 1933, following the death of "Prince of Poets" Ahmed Shawqi. As the article indicated, this loss occurred even as the Arab world was paying its last respects to the "Poet of the Nile" Hafez Ibrahim. It was only appropriate that the newspaper seize the occasion to provide a brief biography of these two literary luminaries.
Mohamed Hafez Ibrahim, it writes, "was the son of Mohamed Ibrahim, police commissioner of Girga at the time when Mahmoud Soliman served as chief of this directorate. Hafez was brought up in the military academy, sponsored by his uncle, Mohamed Niyazi Bek, an engineer in the Department of Public Works. Having trained in the military, when called up for service in the Egyptian campaign to suppress the Mahdist insurgence in 1898, he was stationed in the infantry division in eastern Sudan."
Hafez entertained his colleagues at the barracks with verses and frequently enclosed poems in his letters to his friends and relatives back home. "His verses thus became widely disseminated and his reputation as a poet and prose writer soared among men of letters and scholars." Eventually, Hafez's regiment was relocated to Khartoum from where he dedicated the following poetry to the famous religious reformer and nationalist figure, Sheikh Mohamed Abduh:
"Mind seared by a heat that would melt a lizard's brain,
Stunned and dazed, I called out the name of the Sheikh.
Then I was in a shaded meadow by a spring
Where gentle breezes blow and nightingales sing."
The next moment of note in Al-Ahram's biography of Hafez occurred when the occupation authorities discovered a secret letter from a group of officers to the Khedive Abbas Helmi offering their support against Lord Cromer, British consul-general in Egypt. Hafez was among the 18 officers who were brought to trial and discharged.
It was in fact Al-Ahram that had lent a hand to the dejected Hafez, offering him a post as an assistant editor. The newspaper explains that Ahmed Shawqi, who at the time was already court poet, had interceded with Al-Ahram's editors on Hafez's behalf, although not specifically to engage him "to entertain our readers with his letters and poems". That, however, would come later as the relationship between Hafez and Al-Ahram "evolved to the level of brotherly affection", as the author of Hafez's obituary put it, adding, "From 1890 until his passing, Hafez never once betrayed this spirit of brotherhood or violated the covenant of loyalty, whether he had supported or opposed Al-Ahram policy." Perhaps it was not surprising, therefore, that it was again Al-Ahram that dubbed Hafez the "Poet of the Nile", a title unreservedly endorsed by other Arab poets and writers.
Introducing its obituary for Ahmed Shawqi, Al-Ahram wrote: "He was born a poet and thus he remained from his cradle unto his grave." If the Latin saying, "One becomes an orator but a poet is born a poet," applied to anyone it applied to Shawqi, according to the newspaper. As proof, it related an episode from his childhood: "He was a poet since the age of three, when his grandmother presented him to the Khedive; so nervous was the young Ahmed that he fixed his gaze skywards. The khedive ordered a cupful of gold, which he poured onto the carpet at his feet. Shawqi dropped down on all fours and began to collect the gold and play with it. The Khedive told Shawqi's grandmother, 'Keep doing this and he will quickly get used to looking at the ground.' 'That sort of medicine can only be found in your pharmacy,' she said, to which he answered, 'Then bring him to me whenever you want. I'm the last person in Egypt who scatters gold.'" Thus it appears that the precocious Shawqi enjoyed royal favour from an early age.
In addition to the obituaries in Al-Ahram a good source for the biography of the Prince of Poets is Arthur Goldschmidt Junior's Biographical Dictionary of Modern Egypt. Shawqi, the historian writes, was from a wealthy family of mixed Kurdish, Turkish and Greek origins, with close ties to the Egyptian monarchy. Born in Cairo in 1868, he received his elementary education in a kuttab, before going to primary school and the Royal Secondary School, after which he enrolled in the School of Administration and Languages, later known as the Royal College of Law. Between 1889 and 1891, he completed his studies in Montpelier and Paris at the expense of the Khedive Tawfiq. These two cities, as well as London, which he visited during this period, made profound impressions on him. Upon his return to Egypt he was appointed to the Foreign Affairs Department in the Royal Cabinet under the Khedive Abbas Helmi II. He received considerable encouragement for the poetry he composed during this period from his sponsors, whom he eulogised in verse, and from educated youth. In the International Orientalist Conference in Geneva in 1894 he recited one of his works, which met with considerable acclaim.
It is not difficult to imagine why Shawqi's poems appealed to other members of his generation. According to Goldschmidt, in 1904, the young poet lashed out against Riad Pasha for supporting the British occupation, in 1908, he attacked Cromer, the British consul-general whose term in Egypt had ended that year and two years later, he aired his dismay over the deposition of Ottoman Sultan Abdel-Hamid II.
Following the outbreak of World War I and the deposition of the Khedive Abbas II in 1914, Shawqi was exiled to Barcelona, where he toured the vestiges of Islamic civilisation in Andalusia and continued his study of traditional Arabic poetry. In 1919, Shawqi returned to Egypt where his poetry acquired widespread repute, and in 1923 he was elected to the Senate. Four years later, Goldschmidt writes, Shawqi's colleagues elected him Prince of Poets, "although many of his critics dubbed him the Poet of Princes, while they dubbed his rival, Hafez Ibrahim, the Poet of the Poor".
Al-Ahram had also been on hand during the last moments of the lives of the two literary luminaries. Hafez, in his final days, was frail, "but as is his custom he refused to remain confined to his home and bedridden". The newspaper continues, "On the evening of his death (21 July), he invited Mohamed Rateb and another friend for dinner. Unable to eat with them, he laid down on the couch, while assuring them, as was his custom, that he suffered no more than a mild cold and that his doctor had prescribed a medicine that would remedy this brief spell. After his friends left, he asked his servant to bring his medicine, but discovered it was finished. Then, when his symptoms grew more acute, he told the servant to fetch a doctor. The servant called Abdel-Hamid El-Bannan, whom he knew to be a good friend of his employer. El-Bannan hastened to call a doctor and together they rushed to Hafez's home in Kubri Al-Qubba, only to discover that Hafez was in his dying throes, not even strong enough to bid farewell to his friend before departing this life." Hafez Ibrahim died at the age of 60.
Unlike Hafez, Shawqi, four years Hafez's senior, had been in fairly good health towards the end of his life. His only complaint was a loss of appetite, and "when he was finally examined by a well-known physician, it was determined that his general health was fine, apart from the fact that he needed nourishment."
On 13 October, the Prince of Poets began to feel remarkably better and wolfed down his lunch with a voracious appetite. After lunch, he went for a drive around Heliopolis and later that evening, at 9.00, he had dinner at a restaurant in downtown Cairo. After dinner, he spent a short time at Dar Al-Gihad after which he drove back to his house in Giza. He was in bed by 11.00.
Al-Ahram continues that "He woke up suddenly at about 2.30 in the morning, rang the bell for his servant whom he instructed to fetch two physicians and then to wake up his wife and children. He then told his servant, 'I feel my time is over. Send my regards to my friends.' When his family members came into his room, he was in his dying throes and by the time the doctor arrived, he had surrendered his soul to heaven. At 4.00am that morning, that bright light that had lit our horizons was extinguished."
The funeral procession of the Poet of the Poor was nowhere near as grand and well-attended as that of the Prince of Poets several months later. Although, there were a number of prominent figures in the short procession from Kubri Al-Limun to Awlad Annan Mosque, not least of whom was Wafd Party leader Mustafa El-Nahhas Pasha, Hafez's most telling epitaph came from his relatives. Al-Ahram relates that Ibrahim Mohamed Ibrahim and Ahmed Mohamed Ibrahim, residents of Alexandria, had written to the governor of Cairo to explain that they were the sons of the late poet's sister and, therefore, the only surviving heirs. They went on to say that Hafez Ibrahim had always provided them financial support and that now in the wake of his death they were compelled to throw themselves at the mercy of the government. With such destitution in his own family, Hafez was the Poet of the Poor in more than name.
Shawqi's funeral, in contrast, began in Ismailia (now Tahrir) Square, where a huge pavilion had been erected for the throng of writers, poets, civil servants, students, dignitaries and journalists who came to pay their last respects. At 4.00pm, Al-Ahram relates, the pallbearers, all members of the Apollo literary society, lifted the coffin on their shoulders. "The procession was headed by two ranks of infantry soldiers and flanked by several cavalry officers. Behind the coffin marched the condolers, foremost among whom were the deputy of His Royal Highness King Fouad and His Excellency the Minister of Education."
On the occasion of Hafez's death, Al-Ahram featured a few memorial compositions submitted by its readers. Ahmed Mohamed Hanafi, an employee in the Ministry of Awqaf (religious endowments), penned the following:
"Your body dies, Hafez, but you remain in soul
Preserved, in love, in the pure waters of the Nile,
Your home, where people thirst for your poems, your thoughts,
And countless writers owe their thoughts to your poems."
Another contributor submitted the following verses:
"Poet of the Nile, where have you gone? Far away.
Could you not have waited, prolonged your stay?
Did you tire of fame, grow fond of decay,
Succumb to illness so that you might waste away?
Poet of the Nile, did you not for a moment
Realise that death had unsheathed its sword abhorrent
And would strike our hearts regardless of your intent.
Poet of the Nile, I cry to you in torment."
For Ahmed Shawqi, the newspaper clearly felt that much more was required. Indeed, its edition of 16 October 1933 could be called the "Imam of Poetry and Prince of Poets" edition. Its front page headlines read, "The entire country mourns. Impact of the grievous news on sister Arab nations. Heads of state and princes send condolences. Epitaphs by poets and writers."
In Shawqi's home, the newspaper relates, "a vast number of personages gathered to pay their last respects, foremost among whom were princes and nobles of the royal family, the prime minister and the members of his cabinet, heads of political parties, members of the senate and chamber of deputies, religious officials, senior civil servants, notables, journalists, men of letters and merchants." Elsewhere in Egypt, "in the provincial capitals and cities, words cannot express the ubiquitous grief and profound sorrow over Shawqi's passing," the paper related.
Al-Ahram's "Prince of Poets" edition was also filled with letters of condolence from prominent political and cultural figures to the poet's son, Ali Shawqi. Prince Omar Touson wrote: "The lofty pinnacle to which your great father rose, alone, by virtue of his genius and his everlasting poetry, will not be lowered by so much as a hair's breadth by his death. Indeed, his death has rendered this pinnacle all the more exalted." From the president of the Republic of Syria came: "I express my most profound regrets over the death of my friend and companion, the Prince of Poets." Youssef Wahbi, who at the time of Shawqi's death was with his theatre company in Sohag, was, true to his calling, more dramatic: "The Egyptian theatre grieves its loss, Dear Shawqi, Prince of Poets and paragon of eloquence. The collapse of your towering edifice resounded as would the fall of entire nations."
Al-Ahram could not help but observe that all other Egyptian newspapers, representing every shade of the political spectrum, from the pro-government Mu'ayyid to the opposition Wafd and Liberal Constitutionalist newspapers, were united in their grief over Shawqi's death. In its obituary for the poet, Kawkab Al-Sharq wrote, "When His Royal Highness the Khedive Abbas awarded him the title 'Poet of the Prince', Shawqi thought he had attained the highest honour. However, he lived until his fellow poets paid homage to him in a special ceremony five years ago and dubbed him the Prince of Poets. The prince's poet had become a prince himself."
Al-Jihad observed that the meaning of Shawqi's greatness would become clearer after his death. This was because "the heirs to his profession among this and future generations will now pay closer attention to his peerless poetic talent. It will no longer be what the poet eats, drinks or wears that will concern them, but rather that invaluable treasure that his literary genius bequeathed to us."
On a more sentimental note, Al-Ittihad mourned: "The sound of the nightingale that had long warbled in the meadows upon the rising of the moon has vanished, and with it has gone all the joy and harmony of life." Al-Muqattam, on the other hand, was perhaps the only newspaper to touch on some of the more personal aspects of the poet's life: "He was a great film buff, sometimes spending every evening of the week at the cinema. He would always sit towards the front because of his shortsightedness. On more than one occasion he told me that the cinema had many beneficial effects, the most important of which was that it refined taste."
In the weeks to follow, Al-Ahram noted some of the effects of the passing of the Prince of Poets. Most importantly, the Ministry of Education announced that such was the debt the nation owed to Shawqi that it should hold a memorial "commensurate to his exalted status". The ministry statement added that it would shortly be forming a committee to prepare for this ceremony in which would participate "prominent men of letters, poets, writers, scholars, literary experts and intellectuals".
Impatient with the sluggishness of the wheels of government, some organisations took their own initiatives. The American University in Cairo, for example, held a memorial assembly for its students on 17 October. The main speaker on this occasion was the university's dean of the faculty of science and literature, who spoke of the great esteem with which Europeans and Americans connected with Egypt had for Shawqi's leadership in the world of poetry and prose.
Another group, the Shawqi Society, voiced several suggestions for commemorating the Prince of Poets. One was to move the poet's remains to a special tomb that would be constructed in a place immortalised by his poetry. A second proposal was to produce a commemorative radio broadcast on Shawqi's life and work. The members of the Shawqi Society also moved to wear black mourning sashes to mark the fortieth day after his death.
In the interim, Al-Ahram offices were inundated with the offerings of poets, both known and unknown. Among the contributors was a certain Abu Buthaina, who had visited Shawqi's grave with a delegation from the Egyptian "Greater East" society. One of his verses read:
"Prince of Poets, it's time for a poem
And the magic you work on our mind.
Other poets' talents have failed them
In their lament, and speakers' tongues are tied."
Finally, after much anticipation, the minister of education announced the composition of the committee charged with organising the official commemorative ceremony. As always, such decisions can never satisfy everyone. In this case, Wafd Party leader El-Nahhas Pasha charged that the Sidqi government had ignored the popular element that should prevail in a national occasion of this sort. Mohamed El-Ghuneimi El-Taftasani, a member on the committee, responded, "This is a purely literary academic committee with a limited function. It has no intention to take part in the disputes between one faction and another."
The memorial celebration itself was held on 4 December in the Royal Opera House. It opened with a recitation of elegies sent by the two famous Indian poets, Tagore and Mohamed Iqbal, which, in turn, were followed by a number of other poems and speeches: a poem by Gamil Sidqi Al-Zahawi from Iraq, a lecture on "The Life of Shawqi" by Wahib Doss, a poem by Bishara Al-Khouri from Lebanon, and a lecture on "The philosophy in Shawqi's poetry" by Mansour Fahmi. After a brief musical interval, Fouad Al-Khatib of the office of the Prince of the Trans-Jordan, gave another poetic recital, which was followed by a lecture on "Shawqi's poetic sensibility" by Anton Al-Jamil and finally The Bedouin of the Mountain, a poem recited by Soliman Al-Ahmed from Latakia.
As the programme indicates, the loss of the Prince of Poets reverberated throughout the Arab world. In the Syrian Fata Al-Arab, we read, "Shawqi has died and with him is buried the once fluttering flag of the princedom of poetry." Alif Ba', another Damascene newspaper, noted that in Egypt, which had produced Shawqi, Hafez and before them Al-Baroudi, the throne of the Empire of Poetry had vacated. Ibrahim Al-Naggar from Lebanon disagreed: the crown remains in Egypt, he maintained, and had passed to Khalil Matran, "the companion of the two late poets in immortal verse". Al-Rasid, was not so optimistic. Shawqi's death was a "catastrophe for Arabic literature". Echoing this view was the Palestinian Al-Sha'b, which wrote: "The Prince of Poets has died, the flag of fertile imagination has been folded, the beacon of the genius of Arab poetry has been extinguished and the vibrant strings of lyrical elegance have fallen silent."
The lament was heard as far away as Morocco, where students in a college in Fez held a memorial ceremony for Shawqi, the Rabat-based Al-Saada featured a lengthy obituary and Saleh Abu Rizq from Casablanca dedicated a poem to the late Prince of Poets. One conclusion to be drawn from this is that the kingdom of Arabic poetry was vast and powerful and that its erstwhile ruler enjoyed a lasting reverence that no political ruler could hope for.
C a p t i o n :
Shawqi; Hafez* The author is a professor of history and head of Al-Ahram History Studies Centre.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 21 - 27 August 2003 (Issue No. 652)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/652/chrncls.htm