The Influence of Shelley's The Epipsy chidion on the Love poetry of Abdul – Rahman Shukri

Abstract

Shelley enjoyed a considerable influence on the diction, imagery and themes of Arabic poetry . The Arab critics and poets Knew their Shelley through the publication of the Victorian thesis Which was the nucleus round which the Arabs built their image of him . The thesis is fully expressed by Stopford A. Brooks in the "Preface" to his Poems of Shelley , a selection published in 1880 . For Brook , Shelley's nature and work were "twofold" , that “he lived and thought in two worlds, one was the world of mankind and its hopes, the other was the world of his own heart ." 1 Brooke's distinction is between what be called a politically and socially committed Shelley ,who was inspired by moral aims and wrote in the hope of a regeneration of the world ,and a non- committed shelley, who wrote without any ethical and absolutely apart from humanity .2 In fact, Palgrave's The Colden Treasury (1861), the anthology which introduced the Arab romantics to English Poetry ,is a mirror in which is reflected the victorian idea of lyrical poetry in general and of Shelley as a lyrical devotee in particular . for E.W. Edmunds, writing in 1911, the panorama of Shelley's theories, fancies, visions, speculations,fall headlong in melodies confusion through his poems, he adds “Turn to Palgrave's Golden Treasury and we see how high a place Shelley holds in lyric poetry .