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