In order to rationalize our cultural concepts
Nabil Odeh
Some of the babbling poets and critics accused me during a dialogue in a cultural program on the radio, that I had lost the compass, and that I no longer kept up with my modernity, hence my resentment against modern creations, especially poetry .. which fills our press.
It offended me that I was not given the opportunity to understand my accusation and present my defense… I had participated in a short intervention over the phone, in which I criticized the use of terminology that did not establish the material base to become part of our culture, especially the term modernity, which has become an explanation due to its frequent use without understanding the cultural and social reality from which this term originated. , and launching it on every literary text is unclear and disjointed. One of them accused me that my problem was that I did not comprehend modernity and its interactions in modern literature, and all that I succeeded in conveying to the two colleagues, the two hidden consciences, is that their concept of modernity is sterile, and if modernity means severing communication between the reader and literature, then the misery of such modernity … and I will not vote for it in the elections!!
I admit that the two colleagues spoke to me calmly and calmly, and I do not want to reveal the names because what interests me is not people, but the intellectual and cultural side of the issue. …
Except for a few creative people, there is an almost complete absence of fruitful literary works on the pages of newspapers… And I admit that when I worked as deputy editor-in-chief and literary editor in “Al-Ahali” newspaper, I strongly refused to publish any literary work of what the two colleagues behind the ether called literary or poetic modernity.
Read, for example, this passage:
I will hold your love a little secret
My sad, broken heart comforts
do you accept,
With my broken heart
Is he crowned in your hands as a prince?!”
This is one of the poems of the poet Hussein Muhanna (from the Galilee village of Al-Baqi’a) published in the third issue of “Al-Mustaqbal” magazine (a monthly intellectual and cultural magazine issued and edited by Nabil Odeh in cooperation with the well-known writer and thinker Salem Gibran).
Who can say that it is not poetry?!
In another poem we read this passage:
“And you will die
On your good marble
Your cheeks will bloom
And speak silence
beyond words
And the pigeon coo
And the whisper of the rain..”
These passages, if I obeyed myself, I would publish them in full to prove what I understand of modernity, and what they do not understand .. Read with me this manifestation of Hussain Muhanna:
“I asked you: Do not deliberately kill your hair
length of wish
And yet please
And don’t leave me captive to your sweetness tonight
And every evening
Come, there is still some greenness in the heart
Will bleed
Brings back to love what paths have lost
Poetry has the harp of love and pride.”
This poetry carries more of modernity in its literary sense than all metaphysical poems in terms of language and content. The most important thing is that it does not need the experts of criticism to analyze it, because it is poetry that flows like water without noise, and its beauty and splendor penetrates into the awareness and feelings of the reader. And he, and this basis, does not need a genius intellectual (the genius of his time) to understand it and explain it to the poor readers, because what is the value of poetry when reading it becomes like solving a crossword puzzle?…
I wanted to use some of the “jewels” with which “literary phantoms” bombard us with “the mother of bombs”, but I do not intend to defame, and I am afraid that my comparison between a real poet like Hussain Muhanna and rhymes without poetry will seem defamation of them, or an underestimation of the value of Hussain’s poetry. Mahana. Comparison is not permissible except between types of the same value, and leave the comparison to the reader who still dares to venture … if we have such readers left and they have not yet “exhausted”.
The stream of modernity or the stream of post-modernism… are currents that are used in our culture outside its path. Modernity is essentially a process of social, cultural and intellectual enlightenment. Our society, and all Arab societies in general, are still on the shores of modernity, and with the exception of some intellectuals…and a few creative writers, we still live socially and intellectually in societies under the control or influence and control of extremist fundamentalist thought. Even on the political level, our societies are controlled by forces that lack political, intellectual and cultural balance. The control, unfortunately, is not for the Arab reform and enlightenment movement, but for the dark forces… We are still discussing and fighting about allowing women to drive… We do not accept the other who is different, we blow it up if we can, and we suffer from the backward intellectual censorship of literary works, and the matter reaches the imprisonment of creators and the confiscation of their works, and we are still We teach our students in engineering that “two parallel ones do not meet except with God’s permission” (even with His permission, they do not meet!!
And we talk about modernity… and postmodernism?! We fill our press with poetry that does not contain poetry and criticism that does not contain criticism… This is not evidence of modernity, but evidence of cultural schizophrenia with our society. Instead of stopping it, we increase it in breadth with “unique geniuses” that overwhelm publishing. The culture of modernity, dear writers, does not come with a few poetic, prose, or critical scribbles. Rather, it is a battle of enlightenment that we are still on the banks of… Europe took hundreds of years of conflict with medieval Christian fundamentalism, yet the West is still suffering from a crisis of the meaning of life and the meaning of existence, which It means that economic development, eating and drinking, and bodily pleasures are not everything, and it is a problem that differs from the problem of the Arab person who is still looking to satisfy his hunger first.
The attempt to advance without understanding the importance of the era of enlightenment (the Renaissance), which liberated man from social and scientific backwardness and dark forces, placed his future in his hands, changed the priorities of his life, liberated him from restrictions on the development of thought, science, economy and culture, and doubled his leisure time and consumption capabilities of all kinds, is a futile attempt. and doomed to fail.
The term modernity has become a justification for the ambiguity of many literary texts and the absence of their contents, and ambiguity has become a fad on which we hang all our dirty literary laundry and all our creative defects and justify our literary crisis with the term modernity.
What does modernity mean? Why did it develop in Europe and not in our miserable east?
Modernity is the result of a developed human society economically, culturally, philosophically and scientifically, which did not have a material base in our culture and society, and modernity would not have arisen without the bourgeois and liberal revolutions, and without the revolutionary thought launched by Karl Marx..
Culture does not only mean literary creativity, but also the production of material goods that man needs. Please do not enter into modernity while you are ignorant of its origins, the material and social base that formed its contents, and the philosophical thought and theories from which it was launched.
The concepts of modernity are not unique to literature only… This is what we must understand before we gossip and add modernity to immature works!!
nabiloudeh@gmail.com
In order to rationalize our cultural concepts
Nabil Odeh
Some of the babbling poets and critics accused me during a dialogue in a cultural program on the radio, that I had lost the compass, and that I no longer kept up with my modernity, hence my resentment against modern creations, especially poetry .. which fills our press.
It offended me that I was not given the opportunity to understand my accusation and present my defense… I had participated in a short intervention over the phone, in which I criticized the use of terminology that did not establish the material base to become part of our culture, especially the term modernity, which has become an explanation due to its frequent use without understanding the cultural and social reality from which this term originated. , and launching it on every literary text is unclear and disjointed. One of them accused me that my problem was that I did not comprehend modernity and its interactions in modern literature, and all that I succeeded in conveying to the two colleagues, the two hidden consciences, is that their concept of modernity is sterile, and if modernity means severing communication between the reader and literature, then the misery of such modernity … and I will not vote for it in the elections!!
I admit that the two colleagues spoke to me calmly and calmly, and I do not want to reveal the names because what interests me is not people, but the intellectual and cultural side of the issue. …
Except for a few creative people, there is an almost complete absence of fruitful literary works on the pages of newspapers… And I admit that when I worked as deputy editor-in-chief and literary editor in “Al-Ahali” newspaper, I strongly refused to publish any literary work of what the two colleagues behind the ether called literary or poetic modernity.
Read, for example, this passage:
I will hold your love a little secret
My sad, broken heart comforts
do you accept,
With my broken heart
Is he crowned in your hands as a prince?!”
This is one of the poems of the poet Hussein Muhanna (from the Galilee village of Al-Baqi’a) published in the third issue of “Al-Mustaqbal” magazine (a monthly intellectual and cultural magazine issued and edited by Nabil Odeh in cooperation with the well-known writer and thinker Salem Gibran).
Who can say that it is not poetry?!
In another poem we read this passage:
“And you will die
On your good marble
Your cheeks will bloom
And speak silence
beyond words
And the pigeon coo
And the whisper of the rain..”
These passages, if I obeyed myself, I would publish them in full to prove what I understand of modernity, and what they do not understand .. Read with me this manifestation of Hussain Muhanna:
“I asked you: Do not deliberately kill your hair
length of wish
And yet please
And don’t leave me captive to your sweetness tonight
And every evening
Come, there is still some greenness in the heart
Will bleed
Brings back to love what paths have lost
Poetry has the harp of love and pride.”
This poetry carries more of modernity in its literary sense than all metaphysical poems in terms of language and content. The most important thing is that it does not need the experts of criticism to analyze it, because it is poetry that flows like water without noise, and its beauty and splendor penetrates into the awareness and feelings of the reader. And he, and this basis, does not need a genius intellectual (the genius of his time) to understand it and explain it to the poor readers, because what is the value of poetry when reading it becomes like solving a crossword puzzle?…
I wanted to use some of the “jewels” with which “literary phantoms” bombard us with “the mother of bombs”, but I do not intend to defame, and I am afraid that my comparison between a real poet like Hussain Muhanna and rhymes without poetry will seem defamation of them, or an underestimation of the value of Hussain’s poetry. Mahana. Comparison is not permissible except between types of the same value, and leave the comparison to the reader who still dares to venture … if we have such readers left and they have not yet “exhausted”.
The stream of modernity or the stream of post-modernism… are currents that are used in our culture outside its path. Modernity is essentially a process of social, cultural and intellectual enlightenment. Our society, and all Arab societies in general, are still on the shores of modernity, and with the exception of some intellectuals…and a few creative writers, we still live socially and intellectually in societies under the control or influence and control of extremist fundamentalist thought. Even on the political level, our societies are controlled by forces that lack political, intellectual and cultural balance. The control, unfortunately, is not for the Arab reform and enlightenment movement, but for the dark forces… We are still discussing and fighting about allowing women to drive… We do not accept the other who is different, we blow it up if we can, and we suffer from the backward intellectual censorship of literary works, and the matter reaches the imprisonment of creators and the confiscation of their works, and we are still We teach our students in engineering that “two parallel ones do not meet except with God’s permission” (even with His permission, they do not meet!!
And we talk about modernity… and postmodernism?! We fill our press with poetry that does not contain poetry and criticism that does not contain criticism… This is not evidence of modernity, but evidence of cultural schizophrenia with our society. Instead of stopping it, we increase it in breadth with “unique geniuses” that overwhelm publishing. The culture of modernity, dear writers, does not come with a few poetic, prose, or critical scribbles. Rather, it is a battle of enlightenment that we are still on the banks of… Europe took hundreds of years of conflict with medieval Christian fundamentalism, yet the West is still suffering from a crisis of the meaning of life and the meaning of existence, which It means that economic development, eating and drinking, and bodily pleasures are not everything, and it is a problem that differs from the problem of the Arab person who is still looking to satisfy his hunger first.
The attempt to advance without understanding the importance of the era of enlightenment (the Renaissance), which liberated man from social and scientific backwardness and dark forces, placed his future in his hands, changed the priorities of his life, liberated him from restrictions on the development of thought, science, economy and culture, and doubled his leisure time and consumption capabilities of all kinds, is a futile attempt. and doomed to fail.
The term modernity has become a justification for the ambiguity of many literary texts and the absence of their contents, and ambiguity has become a fad on which we hang all our dirty literary laundry and all our creative defects and justify our literary crisis with the term modernity.
What does modernity mean? Why did it develop in Europe and not in our miserable east?
Modernity is the result of a developed human society economically, culturally, philosophically and scientifically, which did not have a material base in our culture and society, and modernity would not have arisen without the bourgeois and liberal revolutions, and without the revolutionary thought launched by Karl Marx..
Culture does not only mean literary creativity, but also the production of material goods that man needs. Please do not enter into modernity while you are ignorant of its origins, the material and social base that formed its contents, and the philosophical thought and theories from which it was launched.
The concepts of modernity are not unique to literature only… This is what we must understand before we gossip and add modernity to immature works!!
nabiloudeh@gmail.com
