Personality of the Month — Miss Rose Ghorayeb

Miss Rose Ghorayeb

* A Lebanese woman of letters, graduated with distinction from the American University of Beirut with a master's degree in Arabic literature.

* Known for her instructive articles and her solid scholarly powers.

* She has composed for children two delightful collections: 'Songs for the Little Ones' and 'Plays for the Little Ones.'

* An able educator, she holds the post of director of Arabic studies at the Evangelical College for Girls.

* Her book 'Aesthetic Criticism and Its Influence on Arabic Criticism' has lately appeared.

* In the following radio session from the Beirut station, a glimpse of the sides of her intellectual activity.

Q — What circumstances, or what influences, inspired you to compose songs and plays for children?

A — There are deep causes and immediate causes. The first is my inclination, ever since childhood, to memorizing Eastern and Western songs; and I found myself in surroundings that strengthened this inclination in me. Then, from my early youth, I inclined toward composing light verses that go well with singing. In my view, composing poetry for children requires a musical ear, and practice in composing short-metered pieces, classical and zajal alike, and setting them to melody directly, so that word and tune are created at one and the same moment.

Q — Those are the deep causes; and you said there are immediate causes — what are they?

A — My feeling of our society's and our schools' need for children's literature. Circumstances and pressing need are the immediate cause.

Q — In your experience, what kind of song is dearest to children?

A — I have observed by experience that songs that come closer to the colloquial, drawn from the very heart of our surroundings, bearing our particular stamp and our local color, meet with a success that Western melodies and songs composed in the classical tongue never attain.

Q — What is your view of using the colloquial language with children?

A — My view is that the nearer a song or a recitation piece comes to the colloquial, the easier it becomes for the child to memorize. This shows us that among the chief causes of the difficulty of the Arabic language, and of the weakness of its spread, is this gulf standing between the language of speech and the language of writing, and the inability of speakers of Arabic to use the vocabulary of the classical tongue in their talk. They learn a language which they soon forget for lack of use.

Q — What do you propose, then, to fill in this deep gulf?

A — This is a problem worthy of the utmost attention from the men of letters and of learning in our country. I do not claim to be equipped to treat such a subject; all I can say is that there must grow up among us a language of conversation which we can use, that very same language, in writing — so that if we are obliged to improvise a speech, or write a letter, or deliver a talk, we can do it easily, without stumbling, and without carrying the paper and reading it out to the listeners. For a long time now they have been proposing to simplify the classical and to raise the level of the colloquial, so that the two languages meet on a single plane; this is still the view of many investigators, but until now no practical attempt has appeared to put this view into effect. And so our classical remains half dead, because it is used only in writing, and the colloquial likewise half dead, because it is used only in conversation.

Q — What, in your view, are the qualities of expression, and the materials, that should be offered to children?

A — The first quality is that the expression be free of abstract words whose meaning is closed to the child — such as sacrifice, patriotism, good and evil, greatness and gallantry, etc. Words like these should be put in the form of epithets attached to a human being, not an animal. Speak to the child of blueness, tallness, cleverness, and he does not understand them; but fasten them to things described — as when you say: a blue sea, a tall man, a clever boy — and he understands them at once. And children's literature must abound in examples, pictures, and little tales, and must draw its meanings from the child's surroundings, his experiences, and the things he sees.

Q — A sound view, which I have tested for myself. And now let us pass to another question. Which, in your eyes, is harder: composing songs for children, or plays?

A — Composing plays is without doubt the hardest of the literary arts, whether for the young or for grown-ups, and it requires special study and long practice, because the play embraces several arts — like a speaking picture into which enter

colors, lines, and voices.

Q — And from what is a play usually drawn?

A — The play is one of the kinds of narrative art, and it must have a narrative basis. Hence it may be drawn from a tale or from a short story; but casting the story in dramatic form requires a special skill and a sound feeling for dialogue.

Q — And what is the measure by which we judge whether a play is good or not?

A — The only measure is testing and trial. Just as a song's worth cannot be examined unless it is tried, so a play must be tested with children before it is published; then one observes what should be cut or added, and what can be staged and what cannot.

Q — And now, Miss Ghorayeb, are there difficulties that stand in your way in writing for children?

A — The difficulties are many; the chief of them are lack of time, and the fact that I do not gain my experience of children directly, but by visiting their classes and observing them. Were I a children's teacher, I could observe them continuously, work together with them, and draw from teaching them material for instruction and for composition. The children's teacher, in my view, is the one who ought to write for them.

Q — I believe we have covered our subject comprehensively. A new question: I know that 'Aesthetic Criticism and Its Influence on Arabic Criticism' is the subject of the thesis that earned you the master's degree in Arabic literature; what has delayed its publication until today?

A — Various reasons, the chief of them my desire to enlarge it and to obtain a greater number of the sources on which I built my study; and then the lack of the time needed for revision and for copying.

Q — Another question: what suggested to you the subject of 'Aesthetic Criticism and Its Influence on Arabic Criticism'?

A — My abundant reading of books in childhood gained me something of what they call literary taste, which is the first step of criticism. And I was tempted to study the subject by my sense of its difficulty and my ignorance of its principles as they appear in the books of modern Western literature; then by my need to master it through personal study, when I practiced teaching in French schools, in whose curricula this subject holds a special place. Criticism has received great attention in the modern press and magazines, and in one of those magazines I once came upon this sentence of Ahmad Amin's: 'Why do we not study literature as one of the fine arts?' So I said to myself: 'I must study criticism from this side,' and from that time I began reading diligently in aesthetics, or the science of beauty.

Q — What do you mean by saying that literature is one of the fine arts?

A — I mean that literature, poetry and prose alike, is an art that shares in its principles with the rest of the fine arts, because it has an intrinsic value separate from practical value; it conveys to the reader, or to the man of taste, some idea in a pleasing mold that stirs the mind and moves the feelings. Hence the critic, and the student of letters, must needs study the general principles of art which are contained in the science of aesthetics, or of beauty.

Q — Was this science found among the Arab critics?

A — Fragments of it were found, and general principles, not worked out in detail, in their books of criticism. What we can verify in Arabic literature is that its men of letters were infatuated with beauty of form and eloquence of expression, and made it binding upon themselves to put everything they said into a beautiful shape, until this infatuation led them into various faults — among them affectation, excess of ornament, putting the word before the meaning, and using the elegant phrase out of its place — for instance, in scientific writing.

Q — And finally, if I may intrude upon your private life, may I ask you the reason for your choosing a life of seclusion and your avoidance of social life?

A — First, because of the press of my work; and second, because I incline only to gatherings that have cultural or athletic aims. As for gatherings whose only aim is greetings and talk, I see no meaning in their existence. And experience has shown me that many of our women waste a great deal of precious time in gatherings from which no benefit comes — indeed, very often they bring them harm.

Q — I wish your words might reach the ears of those women. Even so, and though I agree with your view in principle, I still believe that your going out into society and your contact with people would be a necessary variety, with its effect on the excellence and the realism of your literary production.