ABSTRACT
Abu Al-’Ala‘ produces poetry that is like a prism: clear but cold. The truth about life is reflected through it, thus gaining color and eventually bursting into flames that light up the subjects he addresses. Al-Farid poetry is a spark of the soul that illuminates the flowers of love and the birds of eloquence chirping around a throne of secrets. For al-Farid obsession with secrets flirts with their mysteries in the same manner in which Abu al-’ala‘ was obsessed with logic and the love poems he wrote for mortality and decay. Abu al-‘Atahia was similar in his devoutness until it became synonymous with lunacy in his poetry. The theoretical background that governs al-Rihani’s conception of poetry is arguably European romanticism: its celebration of the spontaneous expression of emotion vs. the rationalism of classicism, of nature vs. craft, and of the poet’s inner life.
