"From a Talk into the Microphone"
...I wonder — why does it please me tonight to speak to this broadcasting instrument about people... when the broadcasting service invited me to speak to people through this instrument?
Where did this splendid idea come to me from? Truly it is a splendid idea: to speak to this rigid, dry thing mouth to mouth, eye to eye... just the two of us... And what do I care whether anyone among the people of this country is listening tonight to this talk... No — it would please me rather if all those magic knobs on the radios were shut against my voice, so that its tones reached not a single house... Then my voice would rise as I please... in the melody that comes into my head, and the tune that none composes but I...
So, O microphone, from tonight there springs up between me and you an affection. And you are now mine alone; I do not care to talk to anyone but you, and my talk to you is about the people whom we are invited here to address... Have you understood, you dry heart? And will you keep the secret, you long tongue?
And let the words of this night stay engraved within your ribs, like a whisper, or something fainter than a whisper, in the ear!!
As for those upon whose ears my voice is knocking from you now — leave them, some at gambling and at trade, at cup and bowl, in quarrel and squabble... in din and clamor...
Spare yourself them, O microphone, and spare me; for in the heads of these people are minds drier than your iron, and in their hearts an emptiness turning within emptiness, and their lives are the worst of all the kinds of life that have crept upon the earth... What use is speech to them?!
And the stupidest of people are the writers of this country, who have spoken from here and still speak — in that they supposed, if only once, that anyone among the people was listening to them, and that their voices rose beyond the sides of this
small hall closed in upon itself... And this generous station, innocent as we are, invites us
to speak to these people of art, and taste, and beauty, and of everything useful and lovely and good... and burdens its shoulders with payment, be it little or much; and in its innocence, if it but knew, it could spare itself all this, and spare the writers and thinkers of this country — or those whom in its innocence it takes for writers and thinkers — this humiliation of the spirit which they suffer at the hands of the people of this country.
Let me speak plainly, O microphone, for you may take my meaning ill — and a wrong done to the sincere writer is a wrong done to the truth — so do not be hasty...
In my country and yours, O microphone, here in Lebanon, there are writers: some of them dwell in the world of letters, at the highest and purest that letters know, and some drag their wings trailing in the dust; and these men, as things actually stand, are called, whether they will or no, to write in the newspapers and to speak over the broadcasting stations. And in their wretchedness, when they bend over the paper, they melt, and melt again; they tint the letter with their own blood, so that it may go out to people elegant, graceful, fragrant! In his wretchedness the writer among us kills his night over letters and syllables and wears out his heart on the word and the idea and the rhyme... and gives as the good give — and no one among the people reads it but the newspaper. The newspaper alone is read in this country, and the announcer alone is heard in this country... and the writer alone dies of deprivation in this country... Who among the writers of the world dies of deprivation but the writer of this country?...
And no writer in this country complains of the deprivation of scarcity and want of money; for
money, to the writer, is dust, dust — its gold is dust; and no one on earth has so humbled the dominion of money as the writers have humbled it... dust which they have all shaken from their feet... turning away from it as the chaste turn away.
It is rather a deprivation of the spirit that the writers of this country complain of — that too little is taken from them. They give, and giving with them is life; if they do not give, their souls die, like the tree that does not give and dies, and the spring that does not give and runs dry... But the people of this country alone will not take. And this is the worst folly there is in miserliness: the generous
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