What Has Lebanon to Boast Of?

A bold word from a bold woman of letters. Arab pens, among the women writers of the Arabs, have only rarely dared to confront bitter reality as boldly as this deeply cultured Lebanese writer has dared. Nor is this the first time that the pen of Miss Rose Ghorayeb has penetrated to the depths of our life and brought it out for us naked, all of a piece in its weakness and its human orphanhood; but it is the first time we have heard such a strong voice, among the voices of women, halting us thus before our truth and our reality.

And though we may have a word of our own to say about the word of the writer Rose Ghorayeb, we cannot but honor this bold pen in the hand of a Lebanese woman of letters, knowing that great sincerity and noble humanity have always been among the aims of this pen.

Among the marks of weak souls is that when a habit, an idea, or an emotion gains mastery over them, it monopolizes and enslaves them and makes of them a subjugated instrument, incapable of thought or discipline. An example is the habit of smoking or of drink, which rules certain people and makes them unable to do without the cigarette or the glass for a single day — nay, for a single hour.

Among these morbid phenomena are opinions and delusions that take hold of a portion of our young men and our elders and become in them a kind of mania whose manifestation is confined to talk and agitation and never passes beyond them to tangible action. And that is natural, for energy is then wasted in emotional chatter instead of productive work, and because emotion, in the view of the psychologists, when it takes possession of a man, blinds his reason and his insight, shackles his hands, and stands between him and useful work.

Alas for words! How fiercely they toy with our minds, and how many victims they have among us! How many a bloody battle has broken out because so-and-so cursed so-and-so's religion, or insulted him and his mother, or called down curses upon him. Empty words that work upon our souls like magic, kindling in us empty enthusiasm and inflaming our emotions. And what lies behind the emotion? Quarrel and strife, and then nothing.

Words. Whisper into the ear of some among us such magic words as circulate in our midst: Lebanon — the Arabs — Communism — the Nationalist Party... and watch the change of features produced by the quickening of the pulse, the disturbance of the endocrine glands, and the rise in the rate of their secretion in the body. Then try to stir up a discussion of the subject, and you will find torrents of words pouring down on you from every side; the debate flares up, the blood rises to the heads, the gestures multiply, hands are raised in threat, and the battle of words may turn into a battle of daggers and sticks. But what lies behind all that? What organized work? What result? Nothing.

I want to take as an example those who, among the varieties of mania, have been seduced by the mania of "Lebanonism," and whom the creed has possessed that Lebanon is the axis of the world, the pole of the circle, and the wellspring of the lights of learning and culture in East and West. If we counted up the number of poems and zajals and articles, and the quintals of speeches and essays, that have dealt with this subject, we would grieve for the ink spilled, the paper wasted, and the time lost. And I would wager that among those who brag of their Lebanonism, and who stand ready to shed their blood for Lebanon's sake, are some who will be the first to sell its land to the Zionists when they turn their faces our way.

They have said Lebanon is the center of culture and the home of progress. And I went about asking: where is this progress? What has Lebanon to boast of? Its universities? It has only two foreign universities, each of which imposes on it the color of culture and the kind of learning it wishes, so that it can only accept it with all its faults, chaff and grain alike — the leavings of the West's sciences and the crumbs of its tables.

The same thing holds true of its higher schools, most of which are foreign and perform a mission that serves their owners more than it serves us.

What has Lebanon to boast of? Its men of letters? It is today incapable of producing men of letters. For the true man of letters

is he who can give himself over entirely to his literature or his art, practicing no other work and turning aside to no other art; without this devotion he cannot soar, nor reach the summits. Whereas we see the men of letters of Lebanon are employees or merchants, running after their livelihood, given no chance to go deep into culture — and depth is the foundation of creation — nor to live for their art and for their art alone, which is the condition of artistic creation and the production of genius.

Lebanon has so far been unable to produce the likes of Taha Hussein and Tawfiq al-Hakim, both of whom were given the chance for depth and for total devotion to literature. By this alone — not by Egypt's leadership — were they able to impose Egypt's literature upon all the Arab lands.

What has Lebanon to boast of? Its scholars? We find no trace of them. Or its magazines and newspapers, which struggle to stay alive, and among which not one scientific journal is to be found that specializes in the science of education, or psychology, or medicine, or sociology, or any other of the modern sciences that open our eyes to new horizons, teach us scientific thinking, and straighten the crookedness of our souls, afflicted as they are with literary chatter?

Lebanon has had two eras of which it had the right to boast in times past. The first was when there dawned in it, at the hands of the missions, the first signs of a linguistic and literary renaissance in the age of al-Yaziji and al-Bustani and the others who roused Arabic from its slumber and laid the foundations of renewal in language and composition. The second was when the Lebanese men of letters of the Mahjar carried the torch of linguistic, literary, and spiritual liberation and spread through the world of the Arabs the lights of a liberating mission which, alas, did not last long, for it died down with the remains of Gibran and the withdrawal of Naimy.

As for today, what remains? Hollow words. Words repeated by the advocates of Lebanonism and the advocates of Arabism and nationalism and the other tendencies and parties. If they prove anything, it is our submission to emotion and our being duped by talk; and if they bear any fruit, they bear confusion, division, and quarrel.