Does Lebanon Have a Mission?

I do not wish, in my previous subject, to stop at the limit of negative criticism; rather, I consider it my duty to pass on to certain practical views, in the setting forth of which there may be some benefit.

Every patch of earth has its distinctive merits and its possibilities, just as every person in existence has particular qualities and talents which he can discover and turn to account if he is of sound constitution. So too Lebanon has its merits and its qualifications which, despite its small size, it can exploit to the utmost; and without this exploitation Lebanon can neither prove its existence nor atone for the sins of its propagandists and its bearers of drums and trumpets.

Lebanon enjoys an excellent climate and a surpassing natural beauty that has inspired the poets from the days of the Torah down to our present age. It stands alone among all the lands around it in its lofty mountains, which embrace the clouds on one side and stretch down to shake hands with the sea. Age-old rocks that once brought forth the cedars and the eagles, and that still beget strong-armed young men in whose faces we perceive that overflowing energy, which they spend in pursuit of the penny — when some of it might have been directed toward an ideal higher than the penny.

And Lebanon, being a coastal country, has since ancient times — since the days of Phoenicia — looked toward the West and carried on a cultural exchange with it; among the Arab countries it remains the one in most direct contact with the Westerners, not only because of its natural position but also by means of that unbroken stream of emigrants who form a continuous bond between it and the West, whether by their return to the homeland or by their letters and their material and moral support.

There are other factors that distinguish Lebanon and make it readier than others to carry the banner of the movement of liberation: in its present condition it is newly formed, close to nature, less affected by traditions and by the conditions of the ages of decadence, and less enslaved to the past and its shackles. In its mountain villages clinging to the rocks there grew up the modern idea of independence alongside the old idea of isolation, which does not keep pace with the demands of the present age. Then the foreign schools and their like spread through it in extraordinary numbers, and these schools — alongside their well-known faults — had their merits in spreading Western ways of living among the inhabitants, together with something of the manifestations of Western liberty and Western ways of thinking.

All this — in addition to its central position among the Arab countries — fits it to undertake a mission begun at the hands of the leaders of the renaissance in the last century and the writers of the Mahjar at the opening of this one: a mission of building and reform which Lebanon, in its era of independence, is expected to take up and carry forward, making of the works of its forerunners a foundation on which to build.

1 — Lebanon and the Linguistic Revival

We cannot speak of the existence of a movement of liberation, or a true renaissance, in any of the countries of the East so long as we do not perceive in that country the first signs of a constructive movement that prefers demolition to patchwork and that rests upon the shoulders of the people and the government, apart from foreign leadership.

What kind of building is going on among us on a broad scale? Economic? Social? Cultural? There may be slight steps along each of these paths, but the fact is that we see no clear trace of them. And while building in its three aspects must proceed all at once, given the difficulty of separating its different parts, I wish to point to the cultural building for which we find Lebanon particularly prepared, if it will profit from its natural and social advantages and from the foundation handed down to it by the leaders of its awakening mentioned above.

Every intellectual reform must begin with the reform of the language, for language is the instrument of thought in all its aspects. I still remember a phrase with which a Frenchified Lebanese poet prefaced his book, as though it had come from the depths of his soul: "How wretched is a people that has no language!" A phrase which the hotheads may regard with anger and contempt, accusing its author of Shu'ubism. But the thoughtful observer sees in this phrase the despair of the rising generation over a language that cannot impose itself upon its own people — not only because it finds no one to teach it in a modern, attractive, or practical manner, neither in the schools nor in the books nor in the teaching bodies, but also because the language itself — in its grammar, its manner of writing, the deficiency of its vocabulary, and the vast gulf between its literary and its spoken forms — does not keep pace with the present age and does not constitute a fit instrument of expression.

Lebanon was the cradle of the linguistic revival. In it appeared the first movement to liberate the language and to renew and simplify composition, at the hands of al-Yaziji, al-Bustani, al-Shidyaq, Zaydan, Dumit, and al-Shartuni — men whose achievements may be verified by consulting their works. And modern Lebanon, with all its manifestations of emancipation, and being less bound than others to the methods of the ages of decadence and the advocates of linguistic rigidity, is worthy to carry on its linguistic mission and to take the second step toward the liberation of the language, calling upon the rest of the Arab countries to share in the project.

In Lebanon there are a number of linguists and scholars whom the Ministry of Education could commission to make certain efforts toward the simplification of grammar and writing. But the project, for all its gravity, requires wider efforts.

A mission must be sent to Europe whose members would specialize in the branches of philology and the comparative study of the Semitic and Latin languages and the ways in which they have evolved. That would take no more than a few years, after which the members of the mission would return to work on this vital project, thereby rendering the Arab cause the noblest of services. I do not know why the Lebanese hang back from taking such a step, when among them appeared the leaders of renewal who dared to revolt in an age of rigidity — the like of Zaydan, who drew the literary and colloquial languages closer together and simplified prose style; and Gibran, who invented a new style in prose; then Naimy, who revolted against the literature of the word; and Said Akl, who carried the banner of renewal in poetry; and Nasri Khattar, who devised a method for simplifying Arabic writing; and that scholar (1) who sent to the Cultural Congress a paper on the simplification of grammar which was scattered to the winds. Perhaps I shall return to this subject on another occasion.

2 — Lebanon and Popular Art

Art in the Arab countries is poor at the present time, but in the past it passed through ages of flowering, as witness the magnificent antiquities that fill the museums of the Westerners, of which our own museums have kept but little.

Some time ago a Russian lady told me that she had sent to her daughter, who is studying drawing and advertising art in America, samples of Eastern ornament to profit from in devising the designs she creates there. I said to myself: here are the Westerners drawing inspiration from our antiquities in their artistic creations, while we turn away from them. Here is the Lebanese House of Crafts (the Artisanat) imitating Western drawings and models only, when it might have exploited the numerous antiquities, manifold in shape and figure, with which the Museum and the other houses of antiquities abound. Had it done so, the value of its production would have risen in the eyes of the people of art; it would have shown the Easterners glimpses of their own past, and rendered industry a service worth remembering.

In Lebanon there is a blessed movement to encourage zajal, or colloquial poetry, which is one single color among the colors of popular art, and one not lacking in strains of pure poetry. But there are other colors deserving of revival, for they have their importance in the world of culture. There are the old Lebanese costumes, which ought to be studied from the historical point of view; and the popular dances and the kinds of dabkeh, which ought to be sought out in the remote mountain villages, that we may perhaps profit from them in forming this popular art so neglected among us.

More important than all this is that we strive to discover and revive the old popular melodies, in which is embodied the influence of the various peoples with whom we have come in contact, and which range from the simple, merry tunes of the villagers around the springs of water to the airs of the townsfolk who lived in the luxury of the Turkish era in the shade of gardens and palaces.

There are varied melodies whose existence is denied by the zealots of Western music. But they do exist, spread through all circles; the souls of the people respond to them; every Lebanese who understands his country and its history takes comfort in them; and everyone deeply cultured in music sees in them a foundation on which to build, and a source from which to borrow modern melodies of Eastern inspiration and Western execution.

Nor do we lack the means to carry out this important work. We have three musical institutes vying with one another in teaching Western music, yet failing to spread musical culture among the classes of the people, because their students are either foreigners or members of the aristocratic class. The teaching of Western music is a duty of real importance in these institutes; but their disgraceful neglect of the heritage we possess — small though it be — and their hanging back from creating a musical foundation of local character which we could use in our schools and our concerts, and by means of which these institutes would be in closer touch with the people — this is a neglect for which we find no justification or cause save ignorance, or indolence, or that aping of the Franks with which personality vanishes.

And if the foreign musical institutes in Lebanon have their excuse for this neglect, what excuse can we find for the Lebanese Conservatory and the Lebanese Academy? Some time ago one of the delegates of UNESCO visited Lebanon, and our government wished to show him a side of Lebanon's culture: so the Academy's ensemble presented before him Beethoven's famous composition, the "Solemn Mass."

I do not know what effect the concert had upon the soul of the Western delegate, or whether he was pleased with it or not. But I do not doubt that he would have preferred with all his heart to hear something he had never heard before, and to listen to music less grand and less famous than Beethoven's, provided there were in it something of the local color, and provided there mingled in it a strain from the heritage of the East with a heartbeat of the soul of a young people in the course of formation and emancipation.

All that the delegate understood from the Beethoven piece was that we are a people skilled in imitation and eager for it; but in our imitation of the West we forget the Western maxim: "One line created by your own inventive imagination is better than a thousand volumes copied from others."

Rose Ghorayeb

(1) Whose name escapes me.