Omar Fakhoury Is Dead: A Loss to Arabic Letters That Can Hardly Be Made Good

Sober, satirical letters have been bereaved of a great humanist man of letters, Mr. Omar Fakhoury, one of the imams of literature, of culture, and of nobility of character. In his person Lebanon and the Arab world have bidden farewell to one of the purest faces of letters that we have known in history, ancient and modern. And in him we have lost a friend who knew that the true human bond between people is firmer than differences of political inclination.

The late Ustad first saw the light in Beirut and shone in learning. He was one of the companions of the martyr Omar Hamad, so his soul was leavened with the national spirit and he rose up with the seekers of freedom. After the war of 1914 he set out for Paris to study in its institutes, and there obtained the license in law. Yet the spirit of letters remained dominant over the departed's mind, and he devoted himself to it as author and translator. Among what he translated were "The Life of Gandhi" by the French writer Romain Rolland, and a collection of proverbs. He gathered his articles in the book "The Guarded Door," which opened the way for him to the Arab Academy in Damascus, which seated him as an active member.

The Lebanese state chose him as registrar of the land registry, and he filled the post after having practiced law. Yet the inclination toward letters kept burning in him, and he collected the lectures he had delivered over the radio in a booklet brought out under the title "The Four Seasons." The Radio Orient station invited him to work there as director of its Arabic literature section, and he supervised the lectures given over the air. In that atmosphere he produced his book "No Quarter," which comprises Mr. Fakhoury's lectures against Fascism and the tyranny manifest in it. The society of the "Brothers of the Soviet Union" had placed him at its head, and he directed it with ardor, sincerity, and energy.

The house of "al-Makshuf" asked him for the printing of his lectures and speeches, and from them he produced two books: "The Lebanese Truth" and "A Man of Letters in the Marketplace." Satire prevailed in his writing; he was an author of solid footing after the manner of al-Jahiz and Anatole France. And if we survey the life of this striving man of letters, we would say of him that he was not among the fortunate: he did not know such success as his aspirations yearned for. Yet everything he left behind is a distinguished literary legacy that testifies to his mastery in the craft of pen and thought. Style itself is in his debt, and soundness of taste does not disown his eloquence.

We grieve most deeply over this calamity that strikes us in a writer lofty of spirit, sincere in affection, pure of soul. He lived like the violet in its meekness and its sweetness, dwelling in the corner and spreading from it a perfumed fragrance. The loss of him is universal. May God have mercy on him, and console letters and his family with the best consolation.