• 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

• 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.

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.

• 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.