Is this truly the new young writer?
The writer may pass, at the beginning of his literary life, through a period in which he imitates what the great thinkers have produced; and this stage — the stage of imitation — is the period in which he gathers his strength so as to create afterwards, and to be original in his creation. It is the stage of his formation and the beginning of his taking flight.
The young fledgling writer, at the beginning of his literary life, is an echo of divergent intellectual notes and a meeting place of artistic models which he himself polishes; his is the merit of adapting and coloring them according to the reality of his society and the demands of his life. And the great writers — all writers — cannot but submit to those influences: "Shakespeare," at the beginning of his writing for the stage, went along with the artistic conceptions current in his age.
And "Shaw" bowed for a time under the influence of Shakespeare.
As for "Beethoven," he set out to imitate Mozart in his first symphony.
We conclude from this that the young writer cannot but submit to the law of development. He cannot but pass through the successive stages of growth, in order to grow up and for his stem to harden.
He passes through emotional agitations in which he sees, in the dirty water running down the middle of the street, a limpid, sweet river; in the scolding of the winds and the pouring of the rain, melodies that lull his feelings and quiet them; and in the color red, blood and revolution and revenge.
Then, after this ferment, he pauses a little, to live for a short while still — neither thinking, nor producing, nor reading; and this stage is the turning point in his literary life.
In some of the advanced countries of the world there are "special editorial desks of great writers," whose function is to study the production of the new writers, so that if they detect genius or innovation in the writing of one of them, they help him materially and morally, that he may emerge and soar in his emergence.
For literature is the effective instrument in the building of man's life and in the forming of his individual and social self. And literature performs this grave mission of its only if it keeps pace with the dress of the age and the customs of society — completing the deficiency of which the nation complains, healing the disease that gnaws at the being of the state, and slipping into the unexplored regions of human thought, searching for the secrets of the soul and for new artistic methods, for life and for art, more splendid and loftier than the known and current methods.
And the reality of today is the reality of the rising generation — now that individual freedom has completed its growth in the nation, now that colonialism and oppression have passed away, and social consciousness has at last spread between the two sexes. It is necessary, then, to open the field to the rising generation to voice its opinion. It is necessary to encourage all their production, be it literary or artistic; and it is necessary to criticize this production, following in this modern foundations in method and in aim, taking into account the time and the atmosphere in which the writer lives. For every age has its writers, just as every age has its dress. If we wish to make certain of this, we observe that the writer who visited Lebanon a quarter century ago and wanted to write memoirs — what might he set down? What might he write in
his notebook? What — other than phrases like these:
"The roads are rugged in most of Lebanon's summer resorts — oh, this donkey! It truly annoys me with its continual braying, and distracts me from enjoying the splendor of the still nature before my eyes."
"Today I went down to Beirut, the capital, and moved about its narrow streets in one of the carro carts."
"No trace of woman in the streets — I shall return to my room in the 'hantour,' for I am tired."
As for the writer of today — what do you suppose he sets down in his diary?
Does he mention the stillness in our famous summer resorts—?
Does he dare name the "Cadillac" and the "tram" and the "carro" or the "hantour"? And if we asked the old its opinion of woman, what would it answer, and what might it write? How would it try to accept the revolution of the new woman, when until the recent past she was well-nigh nonexistent — were it not for the increase of offspring in our Arab countries?
And of love we find in Arabic literature only one kind — the love of woman, as I said before — and the fault is not the writer's, for social consciousness had not completed its growth. But now this word has branched out in its meanings, and behold, we feel — love of the family — love of children — love of the homeland — and love of humanity entire.
Just as the old literature did not know — or, more correctly, did not "dare" — to show the truth naked. Whether from political pressure, or from a deficiency of refinement in the mentality of the people, or from weakness in the personality of the writer himself.
When it spoke of sin, it portrayed it alluringly