Frameworks and Presuppositions of Mahğar Literature

Abstract

Mahğar literature (the literature of Arab immigrants in the U.S.A.), was writ- ten mostly between the two World Wars, and is an indispensable phenome- non in the study of modern Arabic literature. Written in a crucial period of the development of Arabic literature, it was to a certain extent marked by the time in which it was written, as well as by the influence of Western literature and culture.

The mahğar writers were Arab Christians, who emigrated to the U.S.A. from the Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine and founded there a well-known movement that substantially enriched Arabic literary had been exposed to powerful Euro-American and Russian influbeen motivated by the spread of Christianity. That was the reason why numerous religious missions founded churches and churchboarding schools, where religious and secular subjects were studied. Such education was accompanied by the intensive development of printing and publishing acrtivity in Arabic.

Owing to the intensive activity of French, American and Russian mission- aries, the above mentioned countries of the Near East had become genııine centres of cultural revival. The missionary institutions produced a series of Arab intellectuals who spread the špirit of revival not only in their own countries, but throughout the Arab East, creating a climate which was to enable the generations that follovved immediately to realize great achievements in the fıeld of the humanities, Creative literature, and literary theory.

This generation includes also the mahğar writers, who were well-acquainted with their own literary tradition, but who also knew European and American literature. Being educated emigrants, they gained knovvledge in America of certain fundamental differences between the Oriental and Westren mentality, and they most often observed them through the different prevalence of imagi- nation and ratio, which affected their understanding of art very greatly.

The homogenous group of Arab emigrants, drawn closer together by the feeling of dislocation in a foreign environment, and with their similar atti- tude to art, formed the literary association al-Rabita al-qalamiyya in New York City in 1920, which very strongly influenced literature in the Arab countries in the course of its 10-year long activity. Two members of the association became especially prominent - Mihail Nuayma and Ğubran Khalil Gubran who influenced other members of the association a great deal.

One of the reasons whieh contributed to the comparatively radical attitude of the mahğar vvriters towards tradition, was the considerable publishing activity they organized in the U.S.A. Independent of traditional-minded editors, from the Arab countries, these writers published their work freely in the U.S., for in the first half of the 20lh centurv about 30 magazines and papers were published in Arabic.

When in 1913. Gubran - the founder of al-Rabip al-qalamiyya - died, the organized activity of mahğar vvriters stopped, and most of them returned to their respective countries.

In order to understand fully the literature and literary theory of the mahğar. it is necessary to learn something of their philosophy, influence, and contacts with certain philosophical systems.

In their work, the most easily recognizable influence was that of American transcendentalism, and of Emerson as its main representative. Emerson’s transcendentalism especially attracted mahğar vvriters because it propounded belief in imagination, as a basic cognitive instrument, an idea in any case close to them. With such a starting point mahğar vvriters shunned rational perception, and putting imagination vvell to the fore, they placed the poet in “the centre of the vvorld” - a being vvho, on account of his extremely devel- oped imagination, could reach fundamental truth most fully. Accordingly, the prophetic role of the poet vvas emphasized.

Dravving their inspiration from Emerson, mahğar vvriters paid special at- tention to pantheism (w a Ma al-wuğüd). Hovvever, Emerson himself vvas inspired by the Oriental religions and pantheism, so that the philosophical sources of mahğar literature represented a peculiar mixture of East-vvest influence.

Mahğar vvriters vvere also very close to Islamic mysticism (taşavmuf) vvhich suited their pantheistic acceptance of the vvorld, as vvell as their belief that only through imagination could certain fundamental truths be reached. Since literature vvas understood as a special kind of interplay betvveen imagination and vvords, the vvriters emphasized its gnoseological function. Starting from certain philosophical positions, the value of literature was in the last resort situated in the sphere of ethics.