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

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 . 3