Lesson 2: "The Evening" by Khalil Mutran and the Foundations of the Emotional (Romantic) Direction

01The 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.

Origin and development

• 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.

02The 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).

03Khalil 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.

Traits of poetry as he set them out

• 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.

His criticisms of those before him

• 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.

04Introducing 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.

05The 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.

06The 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 cause: love (yearning, sabbabah).
• The effect: gloom (ka'abah).
• The result: toil and exhaustion (ana).

07The second idea (verses 5-10): nature mourns his case

Simplified explanation

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Ideas drawn

• The poet's union with nature: it is the mirror of his soul.

08The 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.

09The vocabulary of the poem and its meanings

10Figurative imagery and rhetorical devices

Simile (tashbih)

• "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.
• "A heart like this deaf rock": the heart likened to a rock, showing his wish for numbness.
• "Waves like the waves of my sorrows": the pressing of waves likened to the pressing of sorrows.
• "The sea... like my chest": the sea's narrowness likened to the chest's narrowness.
• "Like the dark colour of clouds", "like a red tear": the sun and the twilight likened to blood and to a tear.
• "Mourning-halls of the lights": the light of sunset likened to a funeral gathering.

Metaphor (isti'ara)

• "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.

Metonymy (kinaya)

• "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.

Sound and balance devices (badi')

• Good division (husn al-taqsim) in the fourth verse.
• Antithesis (Tibaq): I lodged / exile · sickness / seeking cure · complaining / answering me.
• Imperfect paronomasia (jinna naqis) in ibrah and 'ibrah — with the open and the broken first letter.
• Synonymy (taraduf): stripping-off / striking-down.
• Repetition: "illah" repeated because the kinds of pain differ, and "alone" repeated to confirm the solitude and the grief.

11Traits of Mutran's style and of his school in the text

• A clear personal emotional current: he pictures his sensations and feelings.
• 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.
• Words that suggest pain and loneliness: exile, fires, sickness, banishment, gloom, toil, violent, cramped, grief.
• Artistic unity: one emotional stance and one subject, with connected ideas built on a progression from exile to nature to sunset.
• The title "The Evening" expresses the content of the poem.
• Unity of metre and rhyme is preserved.
• Diversified styles: statement and non-statement (interrogation, exclamation, wonder) to express confusion and regret.
• Emphasis with "lahad" and "kad".
• The verbal sentence with the present tense shows renewal, continuance and the making-present of the image; the nominal sentence shows steadiness and emphasis.
• Ornamental devices are few, unforced, and do a musical or semantic job.

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".

Romanticism set against Revivalism

• 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.

12Values 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.

13Exam traps and key takeaways

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• His three criticisms of predecessors: neglect of the self · occasion and compliment over meaning · absence of artistic unity.
• 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.
• He is a transitional stage between conservative Revivalism and the emotional direction — do not place him wholly inside either school.
• 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.
• Idea boundaries: 1–4 exile · 5–10 nature mourning · 11–19 sunset and farewell.
• The three-stage ladder is love → gloom → toil; the triple repetition of "alone" marks it.
• Key distinctions: the sea's air heals the body but not the heart's fires; "a sickness upon a sickness" adds exile to separation.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Criticisms of the text itself: "my inward parts" imprecise, and two rhyme-driven unpoetic words that add nothing after "before my eyes".
• Comparison line: Revivalism = heritage, old patterns, occasions; emotional direction = self, nature, unity of the poem.