Lakhasly

This article, however, does not portray Eliot in a particularly flattering light.So, beyond the fact that it madea selection of Eliot's poetry available in Arabic for the first time, one is still compelled to ask the question: why Eliot?

This article, however, does not portray Eliot in a particularly flattering light. So,
beyond the fact that it madea selection of Eliot's poetry available in Arabíc for the
first time, one is still compelled to ask the question: why Eliot? Although it would be
unwise to discount the simple vagaries of historical circumstances or such magical, if
somewhat imprecise, evocations as "the spirit of the age," it is true that Eliot's work
spoke to different occupations already highlighted in the work of Arab poets just
emerging from the experience of World War 2: first, by an interest of innovation on
the level of form, whether generic or metrical (which manifested itsef most
insistently and immediately), and second, through a somehow related thematic concern
(though the poets were not easily able to articulate at the time exactly how the
relation between form and theme could be mapped) with narratives of death and
rebirth, especially as this theme applied to cultural rather than personal rejuvenation!
Arab poets in the 1950s certainly saw their society on the verge of enormous changes
following the shifts in world power brought about by the war, changes which, they felt,
could portend either rebirth or disaster: and their poetry reflected this awareness.
Eliot's poetry could offer them a vision of how personal and cultural narratives of
salvation could be seen
as intertwined, while Tennyson's intensely subjective lyrics, for
example, could not. (Mike Tolson - page 5)