American poetry.
A — I do not say that... What I hold against most of this poetry at the present time is its immersion in mechanical verbal craftsmanship at the expense of feeling and spirit. And this tendency, of which we find a counterpart in the art of painting, reflects the monotonous industrial-human current
that is sweeping over modern societies.
Q — And Arabic poetry — where does it stand in all this? Do you sense in it a new direction that promises well?
A — Arabic poetry is still half a century behind contemporary world poetry. It has stopped at the Romantic movement that reigned over Europe in the last century, and at the symbolist-pictorial movement that arose in France with Albert Samain, Mallarmé, and Verlaine. Yet I do sense a new direction, at its most prominent in Iraq. It is influenced by the modern current launched by T. S. Eliot a quarter of a century ago. And like every new movement, it is not free of shortcomings, nor is it spared obstacles. The shortcomings are reflected in the movement's lack of poetic talents of the first rank, capable of carrying it out of the stage of anxiety and perplexity into the stage of concentration, stability, and deep, authentic experience. The obstacles have their source in the difficulty of bending the rules of classical Arabic and training them to deep, vital, existential expression, and in the obstinacy of al-Khalil's meters and their resistance to the breaking of the unity of the single verse and its replacement by the unity of the poem.
Q — Does this new direction have representatives among the
poets of Lebanon? And is it a sound direction, destined to succeed?
A — Yes. And I think this direction is on the road to success. It is destined to reign over Arabic poetry in the next ten years, for it reflects the yearning to break loose from the fetters of the old poetic manner and to express human experience with realism and authenticity. Its bitterest enemy is the hollow, formal, romantic, oratorical strain that has characterized Arabic poetry down to this day. And I believe this direction is blessed, in that it is a necessary stage, within the frame of the rules of classical Arabic, toward reaching the true stage we seek — the accommodation of those rules to the development that life has wrought upon the tongue of the people.
Q — It is said that you are devoting yourself these days to a large poetic work. May we know its subject? And is it in the poetic manner we came to know in "Herodias," for instance, or have you found your way to a new manner?
A — What is said is true. But permit me, madam, not to disclose the subject to you now. Suffice it to say that it turns on an ancient Sumerian epic that preceded the Iliad by at least fifteen hundred years. That ancient epic is among the foremost literary masterpieces of all ages and all nations.
As for the manner I have followed in composing it, it differs from my known manner in its freedom from rhyme, from the unity of the single verse, and from the formal oratorical strain that rests on the stringing of epithets and synonyms and the multiplying of conjunctions and all the other rhetorical connectives whose effect is to
prevent the meaning from standing directly before the mind.
Q — I have now a personal question, one that must be turning in the minds of many of your acquaintances. It concerns your return to Lebanon despite the material and moral success you had achieved. Will you tell us the reason that moved you to return?
A — With pleasure. The reason is simple. I did not find there the soil in which it would be given me to realize myself — that is, to be my own self, with all the dreams and hopes and desire to create that are in it. Man is a rational being, and the material environment does not suffice for his happiness, however laden with blessings. He stands in urgent need of settling and centering himself in the environment of his heritage and of interacting with it. Hence we see the emigrant communities taking care, for the space of a generation or two, to cluster together in the lands of their emigration, as though they were trying to carry the old homeland over into their new one.
Q — I had meant to touch on other aspects — your experience at the United Nations, your opinion of the American woman and the American man, the standing of the Arabic press in the Mahjar... and perhaps also the literature of the Mahjar. But space runs short. Until another time, then, God willing.