Five writers of shi'r manthūr in modern Arabic literature

Abstract

The success of Gibran's poetry in prose shi'r manthiur and his poetic prose nathr shi'ri and the vast activities of Amin al-Rihani in spreading his shi'r manthiur through his books, lectures, visits and travels in the Arab World, his speeches in which he recited much of his poetry in prose, his discussion of the genre, and his friendly relations with Arab poets, writers and journalists, the collections of shi'r manthiur published in Egypt and Lebanon all this gave a great boost to the new genre in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and later on in Egypt also. The direct influence of these activities was twofold: firstly, it revived the Islamic rhetorical virtuosity with its conventional highly polished style, and use of similes and parallelism, among Muslim scholars of conventional education; and secondly, it created a new style, simple, direct and personal among young writers of secular education in modern schools who studied Western literature at the expense of classical Arabic rhetoric and who did not master the Arabic metres. Under the influence of French literature and Arabic translations of Western literatures the first group, distinguished by Mustaf Lutfi alManfaliti and Mustafa $ddiq al-Rafi'i had some success in making Islamic prose a medium for spontaneous expression of inner emotions and poetic ideas for their Romantic subject matter. These Muslim writers termed their writings nathr shi'ri or fannt and refused the term shi'r manthiur. The second group used its simple style to express their emotions or their 'philosophical' thoughts, their escape from or love of nature, their abstract sorrows, in an imaginative and contemplative manner blended with a melancholic touch, and choosing self-centred subjects. They also set the lines of their writing in a different way. Their sentences were short, compact and arranged in separate and independent lines. They used reiteration and parallelism, with exclamations, interjections, and rhetorical questions to express their emotions or ambiguous sentiments. Moreover, they arranged their writing in stanzaic form. Their pieces of shi'r manthiur were generally short, and dealt with one subject. Even when these pieces run to tens of pages in length, as is sometimes the case, the unity of subject and emotions is still observed. The style is invocational, suggestive, connotative with a subjective attitude, showing the influence of Gibran (1883-1931), al-Rlhani (1876-1940), yet sometimes the direct influence of the Bible and even of the Qur'an is obvious. The catalogues of printed Arabic books published from the 1920's onwards such as Mu'jam al-taanif al-baditha,2 by Yiusuf Ilyan Sarkis, show an increasing number of books described as written in shi'r manthuir or nathr shi'ri, by young and unknown writers, some of whom were still in their teens. Of those writers, the following are the best representatives of the various