On the Problem of the Lebanese Writer

There has been much discussion lately of the problem of the Lebanese writer and the slump in the literary market. It has been asked why we complain of literary stagnation and do not complain of scientific stagnation, and of the absence of a single Lebanese institution for scientific and medical research. Is science of any less consequence than literature in this scientific age?

Yet Lebanon's brilliant past in literature directs its inhabitants especially toward literary culture, though its geographical position fits it to foster culture in both its branches, the scientific and the literary.

I shall confine my remarks in this brief article to the literary side, and mention a few deep-seated causes of the literary stagnation which perhaps others have not touched upon in what has been written on the subject.

Lebanese literature never flourished at the hands of the Lebanese people or its government. The writers of the nineteenth century—the likes of Butrus al-Bustani, Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, Sulayman al-Bustani, and Ibrahim al-Yaziji, and after them Hubayqa, al-Shartuni, and Dumit—produced their literature under the patronage of the foreign missionaries, or thanks to the venture that enabled some of them to occupy high posts in the Ottoman state. At the opening of the twentieth century the most famous Lebanese writers appeared outside Lebanon: Zaydan, Sarruf, Mutran, Mayy, and others in Egypt, and Gibran and his colleagues in the Mahjar.

This spirit of dependence accompanies us to this day: we still rely on foreigners to establish our institutes and institutions, to develop our vital utilities, and to encourage us to produce anything, scientific or literary. And we still count on the Lebanese of the Mahjar to supply us with money and to raise Lebanon's name abroad by their letters and their learning.

Second: if we suppose, by way of estimate, that the number of readers in Lebanon comes to some twenty thousand, we must suppose that ten thousand of them read nothing but the news sheets and the like, and ten thousand read books and other things. But of this latter group we find only a thousand—perhaps two thousand—who read Arabic books, while the rest confine their reading to foreign books. The reason for this is that most secondary schools are foreign, or foreign in effect, and the language of instruction is French or English; no wonder, then, if the student, boy or girl, adopts it in place of the mother tongue and confines his reading to it.

And since the sale of books depends in the first place on the home market, not on the outside—on the family and the nearest inhabitants, who taste the literature of their own milieu and relish it before distant neighbors and friends do—it becomes clear to us that a thousand readers of Arabic cannot guarantee the existence of a Lebanese literature in the true sense. And I apologize to the Bureau of Statistics for these approximate figures.

Third: though I believe literary talent exists in Lebanon, and though I respect its present writers, it must be said that the instrument of expression—I mean the language—stands as a barrier to excellence of production and to its reaching the summits. For it is still a language remote from life; writing in it, you feel yourself forced into artificiality. It does not bend easily to ordinary everyday writing, nor to the phrase of story or stage, and it therefore seldom tempts the writer or the reader. To test the truth of what I say, you have only to translate an Arabic paragraph precisely into a foreign language, and you will feel how much padding and how many trailing appendages this language carries at its very core. Egypt strives, and succeeds, in encouraging authorship, publishing, and distribution; but how many are the Egyptian books that deserve immortality?

Tawfiq al-Hakim in Egypt, and Tawfiq Awwad and others in Lebanon, tried to write in a language close to life, and the wrath of the conservatives rose against them, as it had risen against Gibran before, until they forced them to retreat.

Some champions of literature think the Lebanese writer's position should be to hold out a begging hand to the government and demand that it supply him with financial aid. This solution of the problem is nothing more than a kind of patchwork and temporary sedative, for it does not touch the deep causes and does not treat the root. What is the use of publishing books when they find no readers? What is the use of a grant that lasts a while and then stops? It is of the kind of efforts charitable societies make to combat poverty.....

Lebanese literature will flourish when a new spirit runs through Lebanon, compelling its people to reform and to change on a broad scale—and likewise in the Arab countries around it. Then these countries will be able to cooperate among themselves and exchange books as they exchange all other products; and to turn to reforming their language, unifying the two languages of speech and of writing, strengthening their literature, and raising its level.

And literature will flourish in Lebanon and in the Arab countries when each of these countries becomes a homeland in the modern sense of the word,

not a collection of clans and rival religious and sectarian blocs. Then its new government, sprung from the people, will be able to take command of its culture and take over the administration of its schools and institutes; it will shake off the garb of the Middle Ages and dare to abolish the privileges of the chieftains, the foreigners, the holders of religious endowments, the clergy, and all the other overlords—privileges of the kind France abolished as long ago as the eighteenth century.

Most of the country's wealth is in the hands of the privileged classes, who make up no more than two percent of the population. As for the people, who number some ninety-eight percent, their whole concern is the pursuit of a mouthful of bread—how, then, can we expect them to read?