"The Woman's Voice" Asks the Leaders of Thought... With Mr. Said Akl

To introduce Said Akl is like introducing the sun: the very coming of its radiance!

Shall we say: he is authentic literature, his letters living proud and unheeding, his brow — the eagle's brow — upon the summits?

Or shall we say: he is the teacher of the generation of fine character, raising up the young — the hope of tomorrow — with a devotion beyond all devotion, and with a stubborn faith beyond all faith?

Shall we introduce him as the author of "Cadmus" and "The Magdalene," or content ourselves with "Rindala"... wherein love and woman are a glow of beauty and the completion of a prayer?!

Said Akl, then, is of the chosen elite, one of the leaders of thought in our world. What, we wonder, will be his opinion on the questions of youth, of literature, and of woman?

Q — In your capacity as one of the leaders of thought, are you satisfied with the directions our youth are taking today, and what is your word to them?

A — Our youth are a part of the nation — but the part that is still at the age of heroism; hence, the battalion that can be assigned to the great causes, to the changing of destinies. And the nation, in my view, is on the verge of becoming aware of the extraordinary role that awaits it. Will the youth, one wonders, truly be youth, and answer the call?

Their directions, on the whole, are the daughter of the nation's flabbiness; but I believe that in a handful of them there may be candidates to receive the spark. I trust certain individuals among the youth with a trust without limit; were it not for them I would feel a stranger in my own country — though it has never crossed my mind but that I dwell in my country amid a warmth and an encircling love I do not deserve. My word to these youth is threefold.

First: that they be aware that we are a people — by our position, our past, and above all by our resolves — possessed of a mission we shall not renounce and shall fulfill.

Second: that we are in a state of danger such as has never before threatened a nation — the danger of effacement.

Third: that the youth, the youth and none other, will awaken before everyone else and will lead our country to the rank of a great power, the least of whose work is to be one of the dense patches of civilization, and the utmost of which is to lead — small as it is — the call to the unity of the human family.

Q — What do you mean by saying that we are a people with a mission?

A — I mean that Lebanon will continue in a role traditional to it: carrying the torch of knowledge and love under whatever sky and in whatever circumstance — that is, however dark the sky of destiny may grow. And that it has a role in awakening the Arabs which it will not renounce and will not cease to play — richer, this time, and more giving.

But the part of Lebanon's role that gleams new is this: it will reveal what has been forming within it of love, of passion for knowledge, and of a fine readiness to serve everything connected with beauty — all of which will entitle it to have a word to speak even to civilization.

Q — You indicated that we are able to carry out this unique work because of our position, our past, and above all our resolves. What did you mean by this emphasis on the resolves, more than on position and past?

A — Our position — it is beyond question that it is truly the gift of a God who wished us well (and I believe there is nothing above our resolve except God's love for us). As for our past, however ignorant of it we may be, we still have leaders who know it well enough to make up for its failure to resound in everyone's conscience, and from these leaders' awareness of it everyone catches enough of the spray to conceive of this past, in some small or large measure, as resembling the past of the Greeks. (Among these leaders — who are the conscience of our nation as it is theirs — is the learned Charles Corm.) But neither our position nor our past comes anywhere near what we want our resolve to be. I believe that the six thousand years behind us — of love, of thought, of turning toward heaven, of giving, of adventure, of scattering across the face of the inhabited world — constitute no more than the beginning of our existence in the world. That is what I meant by saying that our resolve is the greatest of all.

Q — And woman — what is her share in all this?

A — The role of woman in Lebanon is a role of which any awareness might almost be thought exaggerated, so abundant is the awe I find in her! She will enter the fray — I am confident — with two spirits:

The first arises from the fact that the mere existence of woman is a wealth and a power of another order (the personality of Joan of Arc is, without exaggeration, half the history of France).

The second: that since woman will be touching the fire of responsibility for the first time, and with this immaculate past of nothingness behind her, she will not consent to work merely tinting its whiteness; she will work only with a vitality and a might that will explode the nothing into a something — novel because it is feminine, and rich because it is novel...

It is as though the mind of man, worn thin from so much friction with utilitarianism, will never return to its generous innocence unless woman's great heart replenishes it from its own self!

Q — While we are on the subject of woman: are you satisfied with the activities of the heart in Lebanon — by which I mean the fine arts?

A — If we except poetry and painting, we find that all Lebanon possesses of the elements of art is a shiver. In the field of poetry we have behind us a heritage that places our poetry, from the second third of the twentieth century onward, at a Western classical level — whether it is written in Arabic, in Lebanese, or in French. Painting comes immediately after poetry; but the wonderful thing in Lebanon is that it is becoming a region of artistic density, and it seems that not much time will pass before it is said, "Every Lebanese is an artist," as it was once said, "Every Lebanese is a poet." For artistic activity among us is supported today not only by Lebanon's natural beauties and by its sons' acquaintance with the renaissances of Europe, to which they travel every year, but by thought itself. Those who labor in philosophy, and the men of theology, have begun to insist that the Supreme Being, in the Eastern mind, has been wanting in one of His three concomitant attributes — beauty; that all our institutions in the East have been affected by this gap; and that it falls to Lebanon to fill it. Thus we find that it is part of the mission of the Lebanese, also, to reconsider — for the sake of the East and of faith — even the conception of God.