written in the language of life, wants studies written in the analytic language of science or in the language of the press, close to the colloquial, and leaves to poetry alone the attribute of poetic elegance — an age dominated by the literature of the story and the play, of which May has nothing.
For this reason we saw Mikhail Naimy, in his book “The Sieve,” attack some of May's writings, while granting her a rare gift for writing. He regrets the time she wasted in translating Max Müller's tale of German love — in his judgment a story unworthy of attention because of its artificial delicacy and a softness that brings it near to “sentimentalism.” Likewise he blames her for plunging into philosophical subjects that the great philosophers dare not confront, such as her lecture on “The Aim of Life,” which she cast in an elegant style and polished phrase, but in which the idea is bewildered, groping its way: it is “like a statue of marble, but its soul is buried in its stony heart.”
While we believe the writer was right in his criticism, it is fitting that we recall two things. First, that Romantic literature in the manner of Max Müller was the latest fashion in May's day, as I noted above. Second, that scientific writing, which treats philosophical and social subjects with the strict method of science and its precise analysis, was not yet known in an age in which the literature of the word ran riot. May did not go beyond the methods of her age when she took up the subject of “The Aim of Life.” All we hope today is that we have been freed from the fashion of sentimental literature with its artificial delicacy, and have passed beyond the stage of the literature of the word to the literature of meaning, so that there remains among us no one to applaud an article or a lecture from which he has understood nothing but the ring of the words.
In May's age woman began for the first time to stir in her seat and push aside the curtains of her seclusion, attempting emancipation and revolt against tradition. Through May's mouth we hear one girl's complaint against her family, who open her letters, and another girl's complaint against her family, who wish to marry her to a man she does not want; so she strives to win the sympathy of her younger brother, who represents the rising generation, and to wrest from him approval of her position and endorsement of her plan of keeping company with the young man toward whom she inclines.
In May's age there was not in the Egyptian University a single Egyptian girl; there were the French student, the English, the Russian, the Greek, the Italian — and May, of Lebanese origin — girls of every nation except the Egyptian. Today, when the universities of Egypt and Lebanon are crowded with Egyptian and Lebanese girls, we may rightly say that woman has covered, in a brief span, a long stretch on the field of her development.
And yet — despite this — Arabic literature has not presented us with a new May. Why? Have the springs of inspiration and genius dried up in our lands? Not that; but in my opinion, since May's day no girl has been granted what May was granted: two parents who
confined to her all their tenderness and care; a circle of the writers of Egypt and Syria surrounding her with every solicitude and encouragement; a broad learning embracing all the branches of knowledge current in her age, tended in this by the great teachers, Eastern and Western, who then resided in Egypt or at the Egyptian University; and a total devotion to study and writing, with no social occupations to distract her from them, and no profession or post or labor she was forced into to earn her bread. She is the only woman of letters who was granted to sit at the table of literature morning and evening, moving the pen without interruption, her hair loosed and lightly clad, drawing inspiration from the muses of poetry and eloquence, with no one to trouble her serenity; and she is the only one who was able to renew the age of Sukayna and of Madame de Rambouillet, and to revive in her house the salons of literature, frequented by the famous writers of Egypt, who had the greatest part in directing her and spurring her to production.
The age of May is the age of the flowering of Lebanese literature outside Lebanon: the age of Zaidan, Sarrouf, Gibran, Rihani, and Mutran. And it is an age that has passed, or nearly so, since nothing remains to the Lebanese writer today for refuge but his mountains and his shores. And I do not know what will become of him now, after this falling back, this return to the homeland. Will his country embrace him with a mother's embrace, and prepare for him the means of activity that were prepared for his forebears in the lands of emigration, which have begun to shut their doors in his face? Or will it leave him to himself, wrestling with fate and hammering at the rock, until the struggle fells him and the flowers of his literature wither while they are still buds unopened and embryos that have never seen the light?