In one of the suburbs of Baghdad, in an atmosphere of deep, dreaming stillness, stands a small house, shaded by the boughs of oleander and eucalyptus trees, drooping here and there like the wings of angels, hovering over that quiet spot of the city of al-Rashid...

In this enchanting atmosphere lives the Iraqi poetess Nazik al-Malaika, and with her in this green house lives a family of poets, every one — there is the mother, an excellent poetess; there is the second sister, who composes verse; there is the youngest sister, for whom they foretell a brilliant poetic future; and there is the brother, whom you always see in the shade of the garden trees, reading or writing.

In Iraq today there is a phenomenon worthy of study and reflection: in this country you find a women's poetic renaissance that has no parallel in the other Arab lands. Nazik al-Malaika is not the only Iraqi poetess; there is a fresh bouquet of poetesses which has begun to scatter its fragrance in every corner of Mesopotamia. The cause of this may lie in the violent social repression which the educated woman suffers there, finding no outlet but poetry. Poetry is the one window through which the soul breaks free, expressing its feelings, its sensations, and its natural emotions.

I said that Nazik al-Malaika is not the only Iraqi poetess; rather, she stands at the head of this bouquet of poetesses. Two collections of hers have appeared so far: the first, the diwan "Lover of the Night," and the second, "Splinters and Ashes," which is the one I shall discuss.

In the introduction the poetess attacks the meters of al-Khalil, and calls for liberation from these heavy fetters which, through all these generations, have kept Arabic poetry from taking a lofty place in the literatures of the world..

And as she sets forth her theories, she springs with enthusiasm to their defense, pointing gently, through the poems of the collection, to the plain differences between the fettered old and the free-moving new... And as she raises the problems of poetry and plunges, in treating them, into the depths of feeling and the tremors of the human soul, she makes you feel that she speaks from knowledge and from wide reading in Western literatures and their new directions in psychological analysis, and in the developments that have come over meaning and over the word... She leads you by the hand to the far-stretching shores of poetry, and applies herself to

the arts of poetry as the true artist applies himself to his canvases and his colors..

Nazik al-Malaika has her own views on language and her own conception of poetry. She holds that the Arabic language has not yet acquired the power of suggestion, because its writers and poets did not, until recently, accustom themselves to exploiting to the full the powers latent behind words. Perhaps that — says Nazik al-Malaika — is the reason for the Arab public's strong inclination to condemn the poetic schools that rely on the suggestive power of words, such as symbolism and surrealism, on the ground that these schools load the language with burdens of symbols, hidden dreams, obscure stirrings, and the tendencies of the unconscious — and the like of that can be borne only by a language that has reached the summit of its maturity.

And obscurity is an essential part of the life of the human soul, the poetess says, for this soul is not clear; it is closed behind a thousand veils, and it may happen that the self expresses itself in obscure and winding ways, suggested by the inner self while the conscious mind is unaware.

In the poem "The Thread Tied to the Cypress Tree" the poetess shows a surpassing power in drawing poetic pictures of the emotions and thoughts that seized a young man surprised by the news of his beloved's death. It will be noticed that the love story in this poem is of secondary importance beside the thread tied to the tree, and its close connection with the distraction of the stunned young man and the state of inner delirium that came over him: — the lover knocks at his beloved's door after a long absence, and her little sister tells him that she has died:

And two moments pass! You, still, as though you had not heard the stirring voice, Frozen, eyeing the corners of the place, Distracted, your gaze fastened to a little thread Tied to the cypress — you do not know when?

And why? For it was not there two months ago.. And your lips almost asked the sister about the little thread, and why they hung it? And when? And the voice rings in your ears: "She died.."

"She has died..." And you gaze on coldly And see the thread as ropes of ice Knotted by arms that have vanished, that death has hidden away Thousands of centuries ago, and you see the sorrowful face Swollen by clouds of terror before your eyes "Died..."

In the collection "Splinters and Ashes" there are thirty-four poems, bound together by an all-embrac-ing unity, and the feeling that takes hold of the reader may be summed up thus: the poetess is trying in these poems to dispel this anxiety and this pain. And we feel, too, that the soul within the poetess, for all its richness, its culture, and its freedom of movement, still lies under a bitter repression that wants to burst out in the face of everything; and this