There is a strong tendency toward the liberation of Arabic poetry from meter and rhyme. It is justification enough for this liberation that it is a faithful image of the spirit of the age, and of its children's repudiation of every fetter that curbs the release of the human powers in man to create what is better.
The first condition of excellence is creativity — the making of what is new and fresh in matter and form — and music... And how fitting it is for our poet to touch suggestion with a gentle touch, with the utmost simplicity and art, and to paint poetic canvases with the utmost skill, so that the reader smells the fragrance of the blossom, feels the prick of the thorn, and delights his ear with the song of a nightingale..
Society never lacks, from time to time (1), some problem that engages the attention of literary, artistic, or social circles; they turn it over, as problems are turned over, with study and analysis and an exchange of views. And there is a literary problem which has lately been ringed with a question mark, around which debate has raged, and which has been the subject of inquiry in the literary gatherings of Lebanon.. The problem is this:
"Will Arabic poetry be freed from the bonds of meter and rhyme?" What, then, are the principal views on the subject, and what is our position toward them?
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Some have said: the Arabs, by their nature, are a conservative people; the old captivates them, and the chanting of meter, with its plaintive strain, stirs them and carries them into regions of rapture and ecstasy that are not to be had in prose speech, however sweet its cadence, however wide its imagination, however brilliant its images...
Hence their definition of poetry stipulates meter and rhyme; and it is difficult to make them yield this opinion or to persuade them of its contrary, for it is part of an authentic tradition of theirs — they cling to its very hide, champion it with a stubborn faith, and will not suffer its pillars to be pulled down..
Others objected, saying: on the contrary, in classical rhymed poetry there is an artificial
atmosphere that rarely possesses the constituents of poetry in its accepted modern sense — robust speech, delicate feeling, and music... As when the poet devotes his consciousness — all his consciousness — to keeping the measures exact, and expends grinding effort so that all the conditions of al-Khalil may come right for him. In this there is a turning away from the spirit of poetry to its skeleton: the word comes to rule the meaning, the fabric of the poem falls into discord, and the poet is driven against his will to use the hollow, the jarring, and the intractable word — of which true poetry is innocent — and all this in obedience to the stern rule of rhyme... Thus the poem rarely comes forth except by way of that barren versifying with which the bellies of the diwans, old and new, have been stuffed to no purpose...
And there are those who rest assured that this eruption of prose poetry is only temporary; that it has spread by contagion, as fever spreads; that it is perhaps merely one of the manifestations of artistic incapacity, and no more; and that it will not be long in dwindling, and will vanish with the passing of this age.
These are the chief opinions on the subject before us; there are still others that prefer moderation and decline to plunge into the battle... We pause here, to pass to a second branch of the inquiry.
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Since the opening of the century our poets have registered a palpable departure from the standard meter. Some did so with reserve, keeping implicitly to rhymed prose, like Rihani; others wrote prose poetry in absolute freedom, like Gibran and others besides. The poetry of these men was accounted a revolution in literature to which the eyes of readers were opened: some attacked the pioneers violently and accused them of unbelief and of literary recklessness, while others saw in this new species of poetry a curious novelty deserving a pause for reflection... And this latter party grew with the years, until it now counts scores of poets in the Arab world, each with his own artistic manner and his own poetic measure...
What, then, is the standing of this poetry, and