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Overview

The foundations of the emotional (romantic) direction, its origin, and its stand on old poetry.
Khalil Mutran’s leadership and the criticisms he made of his predecessors, as stated in the preface to his diwan.
The poet, the occasion of “The Evening”, the ideas of the verses with explanation, vocabulary, imagery, style and values.

"The Evening" (Mutran) and the emotional direction
├── The emotional (romantic) direction: what it rests on · origin and development
├── Its poets' stand on the old poetry
├── Mutran's leadership · the 1908 preface (traits · his criticisms)
├── The poet: Baalbek 1871 · Paris 1900 · Egypt 1902 · theatre 1935 · 1947 · died 1949
├── Occasion: failed love · illness · al-Maks · nothing cured him
├── Idea 1, verses 1-4 (exile and its three-stage ladder)
├── Idea 2, verses 5-10 (the sea, the rock, the waves, the horizon)
├── Idea 3, verses 11-19 (sunset as farewell · the last tear)
├── Vocabulary · Imagery and devices · Style and school · Values

Lesson 2: The Evening by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional Direction · 1 / 14

The emotional (romantic) direction and its foundations

What does it rest on?

Discovering the individual self and working to raise it up.
The individual’s pride in his new culture and his social awareness.
Reaching after the highest human ideals freedom, human dignity, justice and equality, love, brotherhood and communication.
Passion for beauty and rejection of ugliness and backwardness.

The Revival poets returned to Arabic poetry something of the personal emotional touch it had lost.
It developed with the movements of renewal whose leader was Mutran.
It flourished from the third decade of the twentieth century through the school of al-Diwan, the school of Apollo and the Mahjar (emigration) school, imitating Western Romanticism.
It began to recede after the Second World War before the new current of realism.

Lesson 2: The Evening by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional Direction · 2 / 14

The stand of the emotional poets towards the old poetry

After the Revivalists they took care to escape the captivity of poetic patterns repeated across the ages.
They wanted a modern poetic form in which heritage and contemporaneity are blended.
In it words acquire modern meanings and a new power of suggestion.
In it the poetic image rests on a modern artistic concept that benefits from the new theories in literature, art, music and language.
In it the artistic image proceeds from inner feeling (wijdan).

Lesson 2: The Evening by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional Direction · 3 / 14

Khalil Mutran’s leadership and the preface to his diwan

What Mutran did to develop Arabic poetry is acknowledged in the critical movement.
He declared his poetic doctrine in the preface to the first part of his diwan in 1908.

Modern poetry that is proud to belong to its own time.
Its maker is not a slave to the demands of metre and rhyme, so he does not say other than what he intends.
In it the correct meaning is expressed by the eloquent word.
The poet looks at the beauty of the whole poem in its structure, ordering and harmony of meanings, not only at the beauty of the single verse.
It expresses free feeling and strives for precision of description.

Turning away from the self and the feelings that occupy it.
Caring for occasions and compliments at the expense of meaning, thought and feeling.
No care for artistic unity the poem was several disconnected units with no scheme and no organic or psychological system holding them together.

Lesson 2: The Evening by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional Direction · 4 / 14

Introducing Khalil Mutran

A Lebanese poet born in Baalbek in 1871, of an Arab Christian family called Al Mutran, tracing itself to the Ghassanids.
He studied in Zahle and Beirut, then left for Paris in 1900, fearing Ottoman oppression and its plots.
He migrated to Egypt in 1902 and took part in editing the Ahram newspaper and other papers.
In 1935 he was given the management of the national theatre company, and in 1947 he was titled “poet of the two homelands” (Egypt and Lebanon).
Among his works translations of Shakespeare’s plays (Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet), literary and economic writings, besides his diwan.
He died in 1949.
He is the pioneer of the romantic tendency in modern Arabic poetry, and his poetry is a transitional stage from conservative Revivalism to the emotional direction.

Lesson 2: The Evening by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional Direction · 5 / 14

The occasion of the poem and its general atmosphere

The poet fell ill after a love that failed, and the illness prolonged.
His friends advised him to go to al-Maks, a suburb of Alexandria: the refreshing sea air, the dry desert breeze and the quiet of the suburbs.
There he did not find a cure; he found the loneliness of distance on top of the pains of love and illness.
This spread sadness in his heart and dyed the world in his eyes with a dark colour.
Out of that he wrote his poem “The Evening”.
General atmosphere gloom, pain, exile and confusion, and he makes nature share his feeling.

Lesson 2: The Evening by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional Direction · 6 / 14

The first idea (verses 1-4): exile, its motive and its results

Simplified explanation

He says he lingered at the pretext of hopes, idling away with wishes; they said: “a place of exile will be my cure“.
He asks in indignant interrogation “does the sweetness of its air soften fires?” — and so distinguishes the healing of the body from the healing of the soul.
The air of Alexandria may heal the body, but he doubts that it heals the fires of the heart.
He describes his circling through the lands as futile, and as “a sickness upon a sickness”: he adds the malady of exile to the malady of separation.
Then he describes his solitude by repetition alone in my yearning, alone in my gloom, alone in my toil.

The three-stage ladder

The causelove (yearning, sabbabah).

The effectgloom (ka’abah).

The resulttoil and exhaustion (ana).

Lesson 2: The Evening by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional Direction · 7 / 14

The second idea (verses 5-10): nature mourns his case

Simplified explanation

Comparison aspect	Main idea	Keywords
Complaining to the sea the unrest of his thoughts	he takes the sea as a friend to whom he pours out his grief and it answers him only with its violent winds	takesfriendwhompours
Abiding on a deaf rock	he settles on a rock that does not feel and wishes for a heart like that mute rock so that he would not feel pain	settlesdoesfeelwishes
Waves like the waves of my sorrows	the sea’s waves press upon the rock as his pains press upon his heart and this affects his whole body	pressuponrockpains
•	The sea fluttering in its skirts cramped with grief like my chest at evening: the sea seems to narrow with what is in it as his chest narrows at the fall of evening	flutteringskirtscrampedgrief
The waste is covered with dullness	a sad brown haze lies over the land so that it seems to have risen from his own inward parts	brownhazeliesland
The horizon darkened, its lid wounded	the horizon is dim as if the poet’s eyelid is wounded by the grit and hardships that cover it	poeteyelidgrithardships

Ideas drawn

The poet’s union with nature→it is the mirror of his soul.

Lesson 2: The Evening by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional Direction · 8 / 14

The third idea (verses 11-19): the panel of sunset and farewell

Simplified explanation

“Oh, the sunset!” is a call of wonder and contemplation in it lies a lesson for lovers whose love is intense.
He likens sunset to the stripping-off of day and the striking-down of the sun: a scene resembling the parting of the soul and the meeting of death.
He remembered his beloved while the day said its farewell, and his heart stood between awe and hope: fear of the ending and hope of a new meeting, like a new day.
His thoughts appear before his eyes agreeing, in their sadness, with the image of the sunset.
Tears flow from his eyelid, sparkling with the light of sunset; likewise the sun in the twilight — its golden radiance flows.
The rays of setting pass between two clouds and scatter over the crowns of the black mountains, so the sun between the two clouds appears like a red tear.
He closes by making this the last tear of the universe, mingled with his last tears mourning his wound.
“As if I had seen my passing day“ in the mirror of the evening he sees how his own end will be.

Lesson 2: The Evening by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional Direction · 9 / 14

The vocabulary of the poem and its meanings

Word	Meaning
ta’llah	Idling and occupying oneself with something
abath	Futile, of no use
istishfa’	Seeking a cure
sabbabah	Yearning, love-longing
ka’abah	My sadness, gloom
ana’	My toil, exhaustion
khwatir	Plural of khatir: thoughts, musings
al-hawja’	Violent, fierce (plural huj)
al-thaawi	Abiding, settled
kahffa	Flapping, fluttering, restless
kamad	Deep, suppressed grief
taghsha	Overcomes, covers
al-mu’takir	Dark, turbid
al-kareeh	Wounded
al-ghamrat	Plural of ghamrah: hardship, distress
al-aqdh’	Plural of qadah: what falls into the eye and hurts it
al-mustaham	Deeply smitten in love
kalmi	My wound

Lesson 2: The Evening by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional Direction · 10 / 14

Figurative imagery and rhetorical devices

Simile (tashbih)

Comparison aspect	Main idea	Keywords
•	“An exile that will be my medicine“ “the futility of my circling“ “my banishment is a sickness“: exile and circling are pictured as medicine and as malady	exilewillmedicinefutility
“A heart like this deaf rock“	the heart likened to a rock showing his wish for numbness	likenedshowingwishnumbness
“Waves like the waves of my sorrows“	the pressing of waves likened to the pressing of sorrows	pressinglikened
“The sea… like my chest“	the sea’s narrowness likened to the chest’s narrowness	narrownesslikened
“Like the dark colour of clouds“, “like a red tear“	the sun and the twilight likened to blood and to a tear	twilightlikenedblood
“Mourning-halls of the lights“	the light of sunset likened to a funeral gathering	sunsetlikenedfuneralgathering

“The sweetness of its air heals this body“, “does it soften fires?“: fires stand for the pains of the heart.
“Complaining to the sea… it answers me“, “the sea fluttering and cramped“: personification of the sea.
“Stripping-off of day and striking-down of the sun“, “the day bidding farewell“: personification of day and sun.
“The horizon darkened, wounded in its lid“ the horizon personified as a man wounded in the eyelid.

“The heart between awe and hope“a kinaya for unsettlement and confusion.

“As if I had seen my passing day“a kinaya for the poet’s end and the nearness of his term.

Comparison aspect	Main idea	Keywords
•	Good division (husn al-taqsim) in the fourth verse	Gooddivisionhusntaqsim
Antithesis (Tibaq)	I lodged / exile · sickness / seeking cure · complaining / answering me	lodgedexilesicknessseeking
Imperfect paronomasia (jinna naqis) in ibrah and ‘ibrah	with the open and the broken first letter	openbrokenfirstletter
Synonymy (taraduf)	stripping-off / striking-down	strippingstrikingdown
Repetition	“illah” repeated because the kinds of pain differ and “alone” repeated to confirm the solitude and the grief	illahrepeatedbecausekinds

Lesson 2: The Evening by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional Direction · 11 / 14

Traits of Mutran’s style and of his school in the text

Comparison aspect	Main idea	Keywords
A clear personal emotional current	he pictures his sensations and feelings	picturessensationsfeelings
Nature is living and speaking and unites with his soul	what is in it echoes what is in him and what is in him echoes what is in it	whatechoes
Words that suggest pain and loneliness	exile fires sickness banishment gloom toil violent cramped grief	exilefiressicknessbanishment
Artistic unity	one emotional stance and one subject with connected ideas built on a progression from exile to nature to sunset	emotionalstancesubjectconnected
•	The title “The Evening” expresses the content of the poem	titleEveningexpressescontent
Unity of metre and rhyme is preserved
Diversified styles	statement and non-statement (interrogation exclamation wonder) to express confusion and regret	statementinterrogationexclamationwonder
Emphasis	with “lahad” and “kad”	lahad
•	The verbal sentence with the present tense shows renewal continuance and the making-present of the image the nominal sentence shows steadiness and emphasis	verbalsentencepresenttense
•	Ornamental devices are few unforced and do a musical or semantic job	Ornamentaldevicesunforcedmusical

Criticism directed at the poem

The use of “my inward parts (ahshai)” is imprecise, since he means the inner self.
The words “facing me” and “the appearing vision” are unpoetic and forced by the rhyme, and add nothing new after “before my eyes”.

Revivalism proceeds from the heritage, the old patterns and occasions.
The emotional direction proceeds from the self, from nature, and from the unity of the poem.

Lesson 2: The Evening by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional Direction · 12 / 14

Values drawn from the text

Sincere expression of human feelings.
Contemplating nature and taking a lesson from it.
Patience under pain , and that exile has a psychological effect which a place by itself cannot cure.
The importance of artistic unity in a literary work.

Lesson 2: The Evening by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional Direction · 13 / 14

Exam traps and key takeaways

Comparison aspect	Main idea	Keywords
The emotional direction rests on four pillars	the individual self · pride in the new culture and social awareness · the highest human ideals · passion for beauty — “devotion to heritage patterns” belongs to Revivalism not here	individualselfprideculture
Chronology to keep straight	Revivalists returned the emotional touch · Mutran led the renewal · flourishing from the third decade of the 20th century through al-Diwan Apollo and the Mahjar · retreat after WWII before realism	Revivalistsreturnedemotionaltouch
•	Mutran declared his doctrine in the preface to the first part of his diwan 1908 — the date is attached to the preface not to his birth or to his title	Mutrandeclareddoctrinepreface
His three criticisms of predecessors	neglect of the self · occasion and compliment over meaning · absence of artistic unity	neglectselfoccasioncompliment
Mutran’s life dates	Baalbek 1871 · Paris 1900 · Egypt 1902 (Ahram) · national theatre 1935 · “poet of the two homelands” 1947 · death 1949 his family is Christian Arab of the Ghassanids he translated Othello Macbeth Hamlet	Baalbek1871Paris1900
•	He is a transitional stage between conservative Revivalism and the emotional direction — do not place him wholly inside either school	transitionalstagebetweenconservative
The occasion	a failed love then prolonged illness the friends’ advice was al-Maks near Alexandria (sea air dry desert air quiet) the result was the loneliness of distance added to love and illness not a cure	failedlovethenprolonged
Idea boundaries	1–4 exile · 5–10 nature mourning · 11–19 sunset and farewell	exilenaturemourningsunset
•	The three-stage ladder is love → gloom → toil the triple repetition of “alone” marks it	threestageladderlove
Key distinctions	the sea’s air heals the body but not the heart’s fires “a sickness upon a sickness” adds exile to separation	healsbodyheartfires
Nature imagery	deaf rock (wish for numbness) · waves pressing like sorrows · the sea cramped like his chest at evening · haze as if risen from his own inward parts · horizon wounded in its lid	deafrockwishnumbness
Sunset panel	stripping-off of day / striking-down of sun (parting of soul meeting of death) · heart between awe and hope (kinaya for confusion) · sun between two clouds like a red tear · the universe’s last tear mingled with his last tears	strippingstrikingdownparting
Devices	husn al-taqsim in verse 4 Tibaq pairs listed jinna naqis on ibrah/’ibrah by vowel change taraduf stripping/striking-down repetition of “illah” is for the diversity of pain of “alone” to confirm solitude	husntaqsimverseTibaq
Style	artistic unity with one emotional stance metre and rhyme still single (the romantics did not abandon them) verbal present = renewal and making-present nominal = steadiness	artisticunityemotionalstance
Criticisms of the text itself	“my inward parts” imprecise and two rhyme-driven unpoetic words that add nothing after “before my eyes”	inwardpartsimpreciserhyme
Comparison line	Revivalism = heritage old patterns occasions emotional direction = self nature unity of the poem	Revivalismheritagepatternsoccasions

Lesson 2: The Evening by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional Direction · 14 / 14

Curriculum

Arabic Language

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Lesson 2: The Evening by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional Direction

Lesson 2: The Evening by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional Direction

Overview

The emotional (romantic) direction and its foundations

What does it rest on?

The stand of the emotional poets towards the old poetry

Khalil Mutran’s leadership and the preface to his diwan

Introducing Khalil Mutran

The occasion of the poem and its general atmosphere

The first idea (verses 1-4): exile, its motive and its results

Simplified explanation

The three-stage ladder

The second idea (verses 5-10): nature mourns his case

Simplified explanation

Ideas drawn

The third idea (verses 11-19): the panel of sunset and farewell

Simplified explanation

The vocabulary of the poem and its meanings

Figurative imagery and rhetorical devices

Simile (tashbih)

Traits of Mutran’s style and of his school in the text

Criticism directed at the poem

Values drawn from the text

Exam traps and key takeaways

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