On the nature of the Said Akl debate

I often try to avoid taking part in debates surrounding well-known literary figures, especially those that take place following their deaths.

In such discussions, eloquent tributes and the usual enumeration of the feats of the deceased combine with attempts to say something new and different on the back of the flurry of eulogies filling the newspapers in the few days that follow the deceased's departure, before the column inches give way to other matters that preoccupy the public.

However, the debate about Said Akl caught my attention, not only because I am a fan of his poetry - a poetic genius rarely matched among his contemporaries - but also because some of the issues raised in the course of the discussions are intellectually significant, in a way that goes beyond the customary division that begins and ends with "us and them", without real interaction or dialogue.

Some people who took part in the debate projected their political attitudes onto the man's work with their assessments of his poetry, and their judgment of him as a racist - and he was, indeed, by any definition.

By their logic, a racist person cannot be a poet at the same time, because poetry, by its very nature, they say, is too noble to be produced by someone marred by bigotry, and because a poet, by their very nature, should be sensitive and gentle, and good-natured by birth. 

In truth, this thesis falls into two traps. First, it assesses creative activity based on the criterion of its creator's political attitudes, rather than aesthetic, literary, or artistic criteria. Second, this thesis subjects mortal human beings to a mythical narrative that portrays poets as having a supernatural character.

Furthermore, the same proponents of this view fail to apply it to some of the poets who happen to belong to their own political camp, and who also "enjoy" a copious amount of qualities such as vulgarity, narcissism, and personal and political opportunism.

Advocates of the metaphysical nature of poets allow a projected mythical persona to supplant the mortal nature of human poets.

Projection of persona

The advocates of the metaphysical nature of poets allow a projected mythical persona to supplant the mortal nature of human poets, and use this same persona to judge poets they dislike because of their attitudes or affiliations to rival camps, or to judge those they dislike personally.

On the other hand, some of the voices engaged in this debate put the poet along with his poems on a pedestal, dismissing his racism and crudeness - though sometimes the explicitness of this bordered on obscenity - as features of the poet's "lovable madness". These voices even praised the poet's abhorrent racism, and the cruelty and violence hiding behind it. Some did not even dispute the slurs he had made from time to time against Palestinians, and explained them away as gaffes that we are supposed to tolerate.

This debate exposes a real problem in taste and intellectual depth. It happens to conflate artistic and literary creativity with the persona of the creator, who is subsequently either hallowed or demonised, and his output dismissed. The whole matter smacks of a populist penchant to reduce people to either gods or villains.

Such conflation is unheard of when scientists, their work, and their fields of specialisation are involved, because in their case, the separation is structural and clear. We rarely interrogate the personality of the inventors of penicillin or aspirin, or who discovered the physical laws that led to the jet engine, as a condition of using and benefiting from their creations.

Such people did not (and will not) become stars. We are often ignorant of the names of these scientists, in contrast to the names we know too well, of criminals, murderers, and politicians of moderate intelligence; idiots of all types; or men and women whose qualifications are purely physical - the exposure of which being often the only condition for their fame.

Futile confusion

One source for this confusion in judging cultural activity is our expectation that the intellectual has to be committed to the issues of their society and fellow humans. The sad thing, however, is that this commitment could turn into totalitarian and extremist attitudes, where good easily turns into evil.

It would be futile to deny the value of a literary work of genius because the author is racist or an extremist affiliated to a rival faction.

It would be futile to deny the value of a literary work of genius because the author is racist or an extremist affiliated to a rival faction. The flip side for this would be to aggrandise the value of a given literary work, because its author belongs to "our own faction", where the negative personal and social qualities of the author are ignored and covered up.

There is no theoretical proscription against judging any work to be high-quality literature even if there is collision with its author over the struggle against injustice, just like there is no need to excuse his or her behaviour and not condemn him or her morally when the author sides with a bloody dictator committing mass murder, only because this person is a poet.

Nevertheless, it is the right of anyone not to enjoy the work of a given writer, if the work evokes the author's nauseating attitudes, as long as this person does not consider their sensitivity to be tantamount to an objective literary critique of the writer's work.

So what should we do? There are writers and poets who have espoused right-wing and left-wing fascist positions (the right does not have a monopoly on fascism). Some of them produced classical works, while others produced propaganda that no one describes as literature - except their comrades who share their affiliations.

In my opinion, Said Akl belongs to the first category, in that he was a small person who produced great literature. This category of literati is rife with vulgar opportunists and racists who produced beautiful and classy literature. They are small people, but they produced great works.

It is not entirely rare for creative people to be small, and to have narrow interests or immature whims and attitudes, emotionally and intellectually, like all other people. It is a rare occurrence for many of them to be exceptionally virtuous, in fact. In this sense, they are giants only in the legends woven around them, if not by them.

It seems in the end that people, in spite of everything, tend to think in terms of celebrities' industries producing myths of angels and demons. This is a religious tendency, or a compensatory tendency among secularists in search for myths and rituals to replace religion. 

Rescuing the standards by which literature, art, aesthetics and creativity in general are assessed from the stars and celebrities' industry of angels and demons is a difficult task indeed.

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of al-Araby al-Jadeed, its editorial board or staff.

This is an edited translation from our Arabic edition.