Write a Poem, Virgil

The ancient literatures and culture — poetry, story, philosophy, and the arts — are the first source of the intellectual wealth that man has known through the various ages of history, and the spring from which modern civilization has drawn the foundations of its philosophy, its letters, and its arts. The modern nations that carry a brand of civilization and refinement, and from whose bosom the lights of culture and progress have dawned, drew and still draw from their literatures that light and that happiness. Ancient and modern literatures are nothing but sweet, gushing springs and refreshing watering places, sought out by the thirsty and the laggard. If we take Arabic philosophy, for example, we find it built upon foundations and sayings uttered long ago by the elders of the Arab mind — Zuhayr, Tarafa, al-Mutanabbi, Ibn al-Muqaffa', al-Jahiz, and others. Arabic philosophy has one principal source and highest reference, the Holy Quran; this Quran, with all it contains of inimitable verses, current proverbs, and wise sayings, was the cornerstone of Arabic philosophy and Arabic culture, whether ancient or modern. And since nations one and all are shaped by their culture and their philosophy, they are shaped on a wider scale still by their literatures and their sciences, for that philosophy and that culture are but one tributary among the tributaries of letters and learning.

We have all heard of Voltaire, of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and of other French men of letters, and of the effect their writings had upon the French state when France, under the yoke of her king Louis XVI, was a platform of greed and despotism and a stage on which every kind of savagery, injustice, and cruelty was enacted — when the poor man had become forgotten, and the two classes of the nobles and the clergy swooped down and tore at his rights with sharp, whetted fangs; and of Lord Byron, and the effect of his writing upon the hearts of Europe in the cause of the independence of modern Greece.. Who is worthier than the man of letters to be the leader of his nation and its guide toward the good, and the most perfect repository of the virtues of the blood of fathers and forefathers — by displaying the beauties of the earth kneaded with the sweat of those forefathers and fathers, and by urging men to hold fast to the heritage of that landed wealth which gathers the family together and builds up the homeland?

In the last century of the old era, Augustus summoned the poet Virgil and said to him: 'The life of the cities has seduced the Romans, and they have turned away from the land to amusement and idleness. Write, then, a poem in which you sing the virtues of the Roman earth; the return of my people to the plow and the mattock is in your keeping, Virgil.' These words, than which no man of letters ever spoke more eloquently, are the plainest proof of the greatness of the responsibility laid upon the conscience of him who has a word in his mouth and a pen in his hand. They are the plainest proof of the extent of literature's influence upon nations and peoples; these words show us how weighty is the mission laid upon literature toward the nation.

The utmost we could wish is that upright men of letters should arise among us, nourished on that ever-renewed vitality which issues from nature, and that we should bring literature out a little into the open air, so that it may right itself of its own accord in its natural rank and fulfill its longed-for mission.

If we cast a glance at the old Arab culture, we find it overflowing with science, letters, philosophy, and art; it built up an intellectual, spiritual, and literary wealth which no nation situated as we are can do without. And so calls and cries have gone up from every quarter of the Arab world, their echoes answering one another across its sky, for the preservation and revival of Arab culture and letters. At every moment we see the civilized nations most jealous of anything where their past history, their bygone culture, and their literatures, ancient and modern, are concerned; a single glance at the material, scientific, and other efforts they expend is enough to kindle in us at least a faint spark of the importance and influence of this culture and these letters.

Our policy today in the Arab lands is the forming of national unity and the planting of national feeling in the souls of the rising young generation; our policy is the education of character and of manhood, and that can be accomplished only by means of scholarly curricula and literary books, and by whatever scholarly and literary atmosphere prevails among us aiming at pride in the national personality and the national glory. Truly, in the Arab cultural and literary heritage there are treasures worthy of being raised up again, and glorious deeds deserving to live. This profound esteem which the West has shown, and still shows, for our literature and our ancient heritage, this keen jealousy over it and diligent pursuit of it, ought to awaken us to the importance and effect of both in building our existence, exalting our standing, and unifying our homeland — so that we make of the nation a living nation, one that has drunk in the essence of its past, received the inspiration of its history and its letters, and grasped the core of its present,

and known the substance of the world within it and the world around it; a nation that has won independence and so learned the meaning of independence; a nation pierced through by the rays of liberty, which did not stop at matter and body but passed beyond them to soul and spirit; a nation whose people's hearts have been filled with a faith of which every grain moves mountains, and upon whose men's and women's brows a light has risen, every spark of which guides the generations.