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EXPLORATIONS IN EXILE AND CREATIVITY:

THE CASE OF ARAB-AMERICAN WRITERS HALIM BARAKAT And hence an exile am I, and an exile I shall remain until death lifts me up and bears me even unto my country.

Gibran, from The Tempests Phoenix, your banishment and mine are one. Adonis This inquiry into the life and works of Arab-American writers is part of a much broader attempt at free exploration into the nature of an intricate process of inter-relationships between creativity and exile.

In a previous unpublished work in Arabic, I originally conducted such an inquiry focusing on literary creativity associated with a pecu- liar form of migration (hijra) akin to alienation and uprootedness.

At the time I envisioned this form of hijra as intertwined with profound and enduring feelings of exile as a result of a continuing identification with and a lasting nostalgia for one's native country in contrast to another form of voluntary hijra that ends in self-fusion or immersion into and adoption of the identity of the host country.1 For sometime since then, I have been trying to develop my views in this area benefiting from related works in the fields of sociology of literature and sociology of knowledge and cultural studies in gen- eral, focusing more specifically on comparative studies of literature of exile.

I benefited as well from the experiences of my generation of Arab writers currently residing in Europe and America and my own personal experience as portrayed in my novel Ta'ir al-Howm (The Crane, 1988). Throughout this search, I began to formulate some general observ- ations about broader conditions contributing to creativity in Arabic 1 Halim Barakat, "Tasa'ulat hawla al-cAlaqa bayn al-Ibdac wa 1-Hijra" (Inquiries into the relationship between creativity and migration), a presentation at Assila cul- tural festival on Arab intellectuals abroad (al-mufakkirun al-carab fi l-mahjar), Morocco, August 24-27, 1987.

This presentation was further developed and delivered at a seminar for the Middle East section of the Library of Congress celebrating its 50 years of service, Sept.

29, 1995.

Tradition, modernity, and postmodernity in Arabic literature : Essays in honor of professor Issa J. Boullata, edited by K. Abdel-Malek, and W.B. Hallaq, BRILL, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bmcc/detail.action?docID=253466.

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EXPLORATIONS IN EXILE AND CREATIVITY 305 literature:

the severity of exile, Ovidian banishment, encounters of civilizations, cultural pluralism, and sanctuaries that provide safe dis- tances from centers of political and social-cultural authorities in home countries.

With this task in mind, I began to wonder about the secrets behind the rich innovativeness of the Abbasid and Andalusian Arabic writ- ings and the role they played in the development of new forms of cultural expressions. Hence the preoccupation of Arab literary crit- ics with social and cultural diversity in the Abbasid period and con- tinuity and change in Andalusian poetry.2 This has led me in turn to broaden my observations by examining those peculiarities of his- torical periods which witnessed special cultural innovativeness as dur- ing the Abbasid era—an era characterized by decentralization of political and social authority, emergence of pluralism and fermenta- tion of inter-cultural exchange between the dominant civilizations at the time.

Two other periods—those following the weakening and collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the second half of the twenti- eth century which witnessed several crises leading to the develop- ment of acute consciousness and critical thought bent on re-examining Arab reality.

I must point out that I have been encouraged to pursue this inter- est of mine in exploring the nature of relationship between exile and creativity because of its acute relevance to the understanding of the lengthy transitional modern period through which Arab society has been undergoing severe crises. Throughout this century, there have been constant Arab intellectual migration to Europe and the Americas.

Here, I am referring in particular to the migration at the turn of the century and subsequent appearance of literary circles and works which contributed to the modernization or even the revolutioniza- tion of Arabic writings.

The founding in 1921 of al-Rabita al-Qalamiyya (Pen League) by Gibran Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), Mikhail Nu'aymah (1889-1988), Iliya Abu Madi (1890-1957), and a few oth- ers represented the maturity of the mahjari cultural movement which constituted the first significant wave of literary modernity in con- temporary Arab life.

It is this movement in my opinion which is most illustrative of my argument with respect to the existence of a positive relationship between creativity and exile.

Before I attempt 2 Salma Khadra Jayyusi, "Al-Shi'r al-Andalusi:

al-cAlaqa maca al-Mashriq," Nadwa.

no. 3 (June 1995).

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306 HALIM BARAKAT to develop this thesis, however, I feel obligated to define both con- cepts with some elaboration.

My definition of exile is not restricted to forceful banishment by political authorities.

The literature in this area of research has often distinguished between involuntary and voluntary forms of exile.

In the former case, as stated by Bettina L.

Knapp, a person is "ban- ished or expelled from one's native land by authoritative decree" in comparison to the latter situation where "one escapes persecution, evades punishment or stressful circumstances, or carves out a new existence for oneself."3 Knapp also distinguished between exoteric and esoteric forms of exile.

By the former, she referred to "banishment outside country"— a form which "may be identified with extroverted behavioral pat- terns" whereby "meaning and value are applied mostly to external objects rather than to inner subjective matters."4 An instance of exo- teric exile, according to Knapp, is the flight or Hijra of Prophet Muhammad to Yathrib. "Esoteric or private exile", on the other hand, "suggests a withdrawal on the part of individual from the empirical realm and a desire to live predominantly in the inner world."5 Thus, to live inwardly or in the subliminal realms is to exile oneself from outside relationships.

An instance of this esoteric expe- rience is represented by Islamic mystics who preach spiritual and emotional exile.6 To illustrate her views, Knapp refers to Voltaire, Heine, and Hugo who exiled themselves from their native land. During Hugo's eighteen- year exile (1852-70) from France, he wrote some of his greatest poems.

For Proust who considered true life to exist only in the cre- ative process, esoteric exile became a way of life.

Joseph Conrad knew both exoteric and esoteric exile.

His Heart of Darkness (1902) was written after his journey/exile to Central Africa.

Similarly, James Joyce chose exile from his native Ireland. Several other most inno- vative writers such as Henry James, Ezra Pound, Henry Miller, T.S.

Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passes, W.H. Auden, and Aldous Huxley were displaced from their native lands.

There were also Latin 3 Bettina L.

Knapp, Exile and the Writer:

Exoteric and Esoteric Experiences in A Jungian Approach (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), 1.

4 Ibid., 1-2.

5 Ibid, 1-2.

6 Ibid, 6.

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EXPLORATIONS IN EXILE AND CREATIVITY 307 American writers including Carlos Fuentes, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez who had the same experiences producing some of the best literary works of this century.7 It is in Knapp's view that "to retreat into the transpersonal inner recesses of the psyche, defined by C.G.Jung, as the collective uncon- scious ... is to penetrate a world inaccessible for the most part to conscious understanding."8 Thus it is from the collective unconscious and mythical layers that great writers draw their best materials.

That may explain why ships and sea voyages, symbolically viewed, involve passages through space and time, suggesting an unconscious need on the part of travelers to recast their life experiences in the most creative forms.

This is embodied in Noah's Ark, Buddha's role as "the great Navigator", Osiris' "Night Sea Crossing", and Gilgamesh's voyage to the ocean of death. Hence the view of exile as an art.

In the first century A.D., the poet Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) was banished to a remote village of the Black Sea.

Inspired by this experience of exile from his native Latin tongue, novelist David Malouf wrote an unusually poetic and moving work of fiction enti- tled An Imaginary Life, a metamorphosis of the poet Ovid in exile.

Hence the stirring of new life and painful transformation in the midst of aimless wanderings in lands of fables.

By seeing the world through the language of the other, he began to see it differently.

Yet in this timeless place, his past reoccurs in all its fullness.

Establishing close contact with the other has come to mean re-establishment of con- tact with an enriched self.

Beyond boundaries, his mind ventures freely in land of mystery. Thus, his childhood began to return to him discovering his humanity at last.

By undergoing these changes, a whisper is heard:

"I am the border beyond which you must go if you are to find your true life."9 There are those Arab writers who chose exile from their native land and they continue to do so in waves. Some, not unlike Odysseus, wandered about the seas of the world hoping for return.

There was also those who knew both exoteric and esoteric exile the way Joseph Conrad did.

For others, as for Proust or Joyce, exile became a way of life discovering in it a true precondition of creativity.

In exile, they wrote their greatest works.

This must have led to what is called 7 Ibid, 11-12.

8 Ibid, 13.

9 David Malouf, An Imaginary Life (Vintage International, 1996), 136.

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308 HALIM BARAKAT in Arabic adab al-mahjar (emegre literature) as distinct from literature produced within the native country.

The same is true of what is called literature of exile on world wide level which is often produced during a prolonged separation from one's country.

One may also identify a special form of exile whereby writers may refrain from publishing their works inside their native countries or resort to the use of symbols and metaphors in an attempt to escape state censorship and persecution.

In fact, my interest in the inter- play of creativity and exile can best be understood in the context of discussing the marginality of Arab writers in their own native land.

That may explain why Arab writers who reside abroad have often been told that they can better serve Arab cause by being outside rather than inside. While this exile at home may be among the most severe forms of alienation, the scope of this paper and limited time will not allow me to give it more than a passing reference.

For Edward Said, himself banished from his native country and tongue, exile "is predicated on the existence of love for, and a real bond with one's native place; the universal truth of exile is not that one has lost that love or home . .

."10 In the same context, he notes that exile "far from being the fate of nearly forgotten unfortunates who are dispossessed and expatriated, becomes something closer to a norm, an experience of crossing boundaries and charting new ter- ritories . .

."11 On the other hand and with his own experience as a Palestinian in mind, Said perceives of exile as "the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home.

The essential sadness of the break can never be surmounted."12 In this respect, he adds that "exile is fundamentally a discontinuous state of being. Exiles are cut off from their roots, their land, their past."13 Having perceived of exile as "one of the saddest fates" and "a condition of terminal loss," Said then wonders why is it that exile has been "transformed into a potent, even enriching, motif of mod- ern culture," and concludes that exile "means that you are always 10 Edward W.

Said, Culture and Imperialism (N.Y.: Alfred Knopf, 1993), 336.

11 Ibid., 317.

12 "The Mind of Winter: Reflections on Life in Exile," Harper's Magazine (Sept., 1984):

49-55.

13 Ibid., 51.

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EXPLORATIONS IN EXILE AND CREATIVITY 309 going to be marginal, and that what you do as an intellectual has to be made up because you cannot follow a prescribed path."14 In Representations of the Intellectual, Said draws our attention to the transformation of exile during the twentieth century from exquisite punishment of special individuals into a cruel punishment of whole communities and peoples.

In this category he places Armenians, Palestinians and others who have been victimized by widespread ter- ritorial rearrangements. Because of this condition which he describes as metaphorical, he focused on exiled intellectuals who will not make the adjustments required by living in the host country, "preferring instead to remain outside the mainstream, unaccommodated, unco- opted, resistant."15 This way the exiled intellectual leads the life of an unyielding and marginal outsider who resists prescribed ways of life.

This metaphorical condition of marginality is what I consider a basic source of creativity as I would like to demonstrate later when I address myself to the works of mahjari writers.

Here, however, I would point out that Arab-American writers cannot be considered as transplants the way the term was used by Conrad who defined a transplant as someone who is "uprooted" and whose "state of exis- tence" is "unnatural".16 Conrad himself "turned to writing to tran- scend his transplantation turning the art of seamanship into the art of imaginative literature which became for him the means of sur- viving the hardships of his exile and coming to terms with his own transplanted existence."17 In fact, he "was constantly haunted by feel- ings of guilt and remorse for leaving behind his trouble-ridden coun- try."18 We are further told that one of the many paradoxes in Heart of Darkness "conveys Conrad's view of exile:

if a transplant fully identifies himself with the past, he is to die; if the complete identifica- tion is with the newly acquired present, the same fate awaits him."19 The exile's condition as defined by Edward Said generates feel- ings not only of sadness and nostalgia but also of wanting to explore 14 Ibid., 49, and Representations of the Intellectual (N.Y.: Pantheon Books, 1994), 62.

15 Ibid., 52.

16 Asher Z.

Milbauer, Transcending Exile (Florida International University Press, 1985), xi.

17 Ibid., 4.

18 Ibid., 8.

19 Ibid., 21-22.

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310 HALIM BARAKAT uncharted horizons. Such are the exact feelings of exile expressed by Mahmud Darwish, the most celebrated of the Palestinian poets.

His poetry conveys the feelings of sadness experienced by Palestinians living in a state of uprootedness or under occupation:

Where should we go after the last frontiers, Where should the birds fly after the last sky?20 Such feelings are also as vividly expressed by Fawaz Turki, another exiled Palestinian writer who has lived a vulnerable condition of mar- ginality unable to accommodate the demands and norms of both the native and the host countries:

If you have not met Palestinians in exile, you are fortunate .... They live inside the belly of the whale . . .

waiting for the beast to spit them out.21 These feelings—as expressed by Darwish, Turki and others are not unlike those expressed in the Psalms of David during the Hebrews' captivity:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

By the rivers of Babylon, there lived a Palestinian in exile.

His name was Jabra Ibrahim Jabra (whose name always resonated in my mind the name of Gibran Kahlil Gibran).

Jabra told us (in a paper entitled"The Palestinian Exile as Writer")22 that the "Palestinian may still be an exile and a wanderer, but his voice is raised in anger, not in 20 Edward W.

Said, After the Last Sky:

Palestinian Lives (N.Y.: Pantheon Books, 1985), 2.

21 Fawaz Turki, Poems From Exile (Washington, D.C.: Free Palestine Press), 16-17.

22 Here it may be appropriate to mention that Jabra wrote this paper upon my request at a time when Hisham Sharabi and I agreed to prepare a special issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies on Palestinian society and culture.

The project never materialized, but by reading Jabra's letters to me (including two letters dated October 23, 1978 and November 21, 1978), I was reminded of the episode which I totally forgot.

By going back to old issues of the Journal of Palestine Studies, I discovered to my amazement that the article mentioned in his letters was indeed published in issue 30 no. 2, vol.

7 (winter 1979):

77-87.

The article was reprinted in a collec- tion of works by Jabra entitled A Celebration of Life:

Essays on Literature and Art (Baghdad:

Dar Al-Ma'mun, 1988), and in Jusoor, no.

7/8, 1996.

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EXPLORATIONS IN EXILE AND CREATIVITY 311 lamentations", and by losing Palestine, he further tells us, Palestinians began to realize they "had confronted a ruthless modern force with an outmoded tradition. Everything had to change.

And change had to begin at the base, with a change of vision.

A new way of look- ing at things.

A new way of saying things.

A new way of approach- ing and portraying man and the world."23 This sense of loss in exile, according to Jabra "is a sense of hav- ing lost a part of an inner self, a part of an inner essence.

An exile feels incomplete even though everything he could want physically were at his fingertips.

He is obsessed by the thought that only a return home could do away with such a feeling, end the loss, rein- tegrate the inner self."24 The sense of loss and wandering was both collective and personal, deeply rooted in their dispersal.

To demon- strate that each Palestinian was an exile after his own fashion, Jabra recalls that Tawfiq Sayigh, a poet in exile no matter where he lived, had a famous dictum: "Worse than exile abroad is exile within one's own homeland", meaning by homeland the Arab world.

The dom- inant theme of his poetry was alienation in exile.

So was the story of his life as told by Jabra.

He died as an exile at Berkeley, California, and was buried there in a vast cemetery, with a Chinese man on his right and a Japanese on his left:

a stranger to the bitter end.

What is more closely pertinent to my exploration in exile and cre- ativity is the conversation Jabra had with Arnold Toynbee in Baghdad back in 1957.

Toynbee, Jabra says in the above paper, likened Palestinian expulsion from their country "to the expulsion by the Turks of Greek thinkers and artists from Byzantium in 1453; these thinkers then spread throughout Europe and were a major factor in ending the European dark ages and bringing about the Renaissance.

The Palestinians, he told me, were having the same seminal influence on the Arab world.

It was their fate to be the generators of a new age, the heralds of a new civilization.

. . .

Palestine had released into the world a force of radical change".25 In his introduction to an edited book on Latin American litera- ture of exile, Hans-Bernhard Moeller similarly points out that "Exile 23 Jabra I.

Jabra, "The Palestinian in Exile As Writer," Journal of Palestine Studies, issue 30, no. 2, vol.

7 (winter 1979):

82.

24 Ibid., 83.

25 Ibid., 85.

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312 HALIM BARAKAT literature is produced during a prolonged separation from one's coun- try by stress of circumstances."26 This applies both to Palestinians as well as to other Arab migrants to the Americas whether forced to leave their countries or voluntary exiles.

John M.

Spalek stated in this edited volume that the general char- acteristics that cut across national boundaries and are common to all exile literatures include: preponderance of lyric poetry, prolific output of autobiographies, diaries, and autobiographical fiction which dwells on the past and childhood and confrontation with home coun- try.

He also speaks of a sort of liberating experience of exile imply- ing the presence of closeness between exile and existential experience of being a stranger.

In this sense, exile acts as a precondition of freedom.

This in turn is inseparable from the exile's experience of time as a dilemma of living in the past and the present.

To this effect, the Spanish writer Francisco Ayala describes the exiled writ- ers as living in parentheses, i.e. between a frequently idealized past and a hope for return imparting their own awareness of time to their characters, and transforming such an experience of time into poetic metaphors.27 Furthermore, encounters or collision with host country may oscillate between the extremes of rejection and acceptance, withdrawal and immersion.

In this way, exiled writers may live fragmented lives feel- ing certain obligations both to their native and host countries and creating their own sub-cultures, pending how much they have in common with adopted country.

On the other hand, they may be enriched through the development of a universal vision as in the case of Amin al-Rihani and Gibran in spite of traumatic dislocations. David Bevan also pointed out in an introduction to an edited book on literature and exile that "both theorists and exiles themselves.

. .

have long debated whether the experience is predominantly one that invigorates or mutilates.

For some, the sense of release, of critical distance, of renewed identity, of fusion or shock of cultures and even of languages, is interpreted as productive, generating a proposition that originality of vision must almost necessarily derive from the transgressing and transcending of frontiers.

However, for others, phys- ical displacement means rather rejection, alienation, anguish and, 26 Hans-Bernhard Moeller (ed.), Latin America and the Literature of Exile (Heidelberg, 1983), 9.

27 Ibid., 82.

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EXPLORATIONS IN EXILE AND CREATIVITY 313 quite possibly, suicide."28 But he adds that both Henry James and Joseph Conrad left their countries for England, and "both seem to have adopted British customs and traditions with the peculiar inten- sity of religious converts", but then adds that "both remained some- what ambivalent and unresolved about this decision."29 Having outlined what is meant by exile, I must make a similar attempt at defining literary creativity.

Here creativity is defined in terms of an unusual mental and emotional capacity, combined with special talents and strong motivation, to "uncover previously unknown interconnections between things".30 In other words, it is something we are not used to seeing and relating to.

C.R. Rogers also defined the creative process as "the emergence in action of a novel relational product, growing out of the unique- ness of the individual on the one hand, and the materials, events, people, or circumstances of his life on the other".31 He further elab- orates that "the mainspring of creativity appears to be ...

man's ten- dency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities."32 In order to identify some of the basic elements of creativity, ref- erence may be made to Freud's observation that a "child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own or, rather, rearranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him."33 He adds that the "creative writer does the same thing as the child at play.

He creates a world of phantasy which he takes very seriously that is, which he invests with large amounts of emo- tion."34 Furthermore, we are told that the motive forces of phan- tasies are unsatisfied wishes. Hence the relation in his opinion of phantasies to dreams, and the comparison of the imaginative writer with the dreamer in broad daylight, and of creations with day dreams. Arab writers have their own share of the attempts at defining cre- ativity, which may prove more relevant to my task in exploring the nature of its interrelationship to exile. cAbd al-Kablr al-Khatibl argues 28 David Bevan (ed.), Literature and Exile (Amsterdam-Atlanta, GA:

Rodopi, 1990), 4.

29 Ibid.

30 Georg Lukacs, Studies in European Realism (N.Y.:

The Universal Library, 1964), 114.

31 C.R. Rogers, "Towards a Theory of Creativity," in E.

Vernon (ed.) Creativity (Penguin, 1970), 137-151, 139.

32 Ibid., 140.

33 S.

Freud, "Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming." P.E. Vernon (ed.), Creativity, 126-135, 126.

34 Ibid., 127.

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314 HALIM BARAKAT that the question of the Maghribi heritage is very likely to escape those who inhabit it.

Hence his call for detachment from the familiar meaning of heritage.35 Hence also is his resort to memory which represents collective unconsciousness in writing his book Tattooed Memory (al-Dhakira al-Mawshumd) and other imaginative works. Perhaps more relevant to my task here is Khalida Sa'id's analy- sis of the relationship between Arab modernity and the crisis of iden- tity as reflected in the creative works of a number of innovative Arab writers.

She says that a general survey of Arab texts of modernity reveals personalities that are rebellious, tense, torn between con- trasting worlds, disjointed, alienated, intrigued between the sane and the insane, the Godly and the human, the tragic and the comic, the religious and the heretic, the sacred and the falling.

. .

,"36 Over a decade earlier, Khalida Sa'id defined creativity in Gibran's view in the following terms: "Creativity ... is what constitutes human adventure in search of the unknown, the astonishing, and the unusual.

The significance of the Gibranian legacy is its emergence in the midst of stagnation and the dominance of inherited conceptions which perceived of the ideal model in past accomplishments ... so much so that the creative process was rendered a process of imitation, con- formity and memorizing, instead of being an adventurous search and transcendence."37 In Gibran she saw one of those protesting revolutionaries who challenged the past, the establishments, and traditional views.

He represented the "wind that flows against the current", the "truly visionary" writer whose "contact with universal culture excluded what is mainstream and customary".38 Almost equally eloquent has been the appraisal of Adonis who stated in his Muqaddima li l-Shi'r al-cArabi that "with Gibran starts in Arabic poetry the vision that aspires to change the world . . .

with him . . .

starts modern Arabic Poetry . . .

Gibran was not only the first reformer in Arabic poetry.

In addi- tion, he was the first model for the poet and creative poetry in its modern sense."39 35 Abdelkabir Khatibi, "Al-Maghrib: Ufuqan li 1-fikr," Mawaqif, no. 32 (Summer 1978):

14.

36 Khalida Sa'id, "Al-hadatha aw 'iqdat Gilgamesh," Mawdqif, nos. 51/52 (Summer/ Fall, 1984):

15.

37 "Nahwa la-Nihaya ma," Mawaqif, no. 9 (May/June, 1970):

5-6.

38 Ibid.' 39 Adonis, Muqaddima li l-Shi'r al-'Arabi (Beirut:

Dar al-'Awda, 1979), 79-82.

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EXPLORATIONS IN EXILE AND CREATIVITY 315 In short, creativity does not come easy.

It requires among the constituent elements open-mindedness, critical analysis, free reflection and search, tolerance and respect for difference, questioning the obvi- ous, confronting historical challenges, cultivating readiness to explore the unknown, the urge of discovery, imaginative and independent thinking, swimming against the current, overcoming restrictive inhi- bitions, liberation from fears of ambiguity, pluralism, inner direct- edness, future orientation free from the ingrained and inherited frames of references, artistic and moral courage, insistence on the rights of freedom of choice regardless of the anxieties it may bring about, intuition, inspiration, vision, sensitivity, adventurous spirit, openness to new experiences, and social psychological readiness to deal with conflicting facts or views. Creativity comes about freely and natu- rally through the cultivation rather than the suppression of the rest- lessness of the heart and mind. With these definitions of exile and creativity in mind, it becomes clearly obvious why the two notions are perceived in the present study as being intimately interrelated, particularly in the mahjari literature.

Exile proved to be an invigorating force and a source of origi- nality in case of the Arab-American writers.

In a previous study of mine on Gibran,40 I identified in his works several features of what I called then counter-culture and that can be considered in the pre- sent context as basic elements of creativity.

One of the features I detected in his works was transcendence of traditional dualities that permeated Arab dominant culture such as mind/heart, soul/body, evil/goodness, light/darkness, belief/heresy. Another feature was his depiction of society as being in a state of disequilibrium, struggle, conflicts, contradictions notwithstanding the unity of being.

A third feature was demystification of relationships of conquest in family and religion. Finally, he clearly rejected many aspects of the dominant or mainstream culture by exploding the traditional structure of lan- guage, and by revolutionizing relations.

Here I would like to make a few additional remarks about Arab emegre writers and their writings as emanating from the new real- ity they relived and benefited from in North America during the first three decades of the twentieth century.

40 Halim Barakat, 'Jibran al-mutatarrif hatta al-Junun:

Buzugh al-thaqafa al- mudada," al-Katib al-'Arabi, vol.

1, 1 (October/November, 1981):

53-56.

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316 HALIM BARAKAT It seems to me that their creativity stemmed from an unusual mental and emotional ability to combine artistic and rational cul- tures, a sort of making for intermarriage between mind and free imagination.

They did see some contradictions between these two inclinations but they made special efforts to resolve them each in his own peculiar way.

They clearly rejected those forms of ration- ality that restricts free imagination. Instead, they developed an inquis- itive and imaginative mind.

This is true of Gibran as much as of Amfn al-Rihani (migrated to America 1888 at the age of 13), Mikha'il Nucaymah, and Iliya Abu Madi (migrated to Egypt at 11, and then to the USA in 1911 at the age of 21). Arab emegre writers did realize and appreciate the fact that they belonged to an ancient and rich culture, but they also knew they must make a break with the past and reorient themselves and the society towards the future.

This is clearly demonstrated most sig- nificantly in Gibran self-portrayal in "The Forerunner" (1920):

And when you were a silent word upon life's quivering lips, I too was there, another silent word.

Then life uttered us and we came down the years throbbing with memories of yesterday and with longing for tomorrow, for yesterday was death conquered and tomorrow was birth pursued.

Social psychological studies tell us that creative intellectuals tend to be introverts rather than extroverts. Generally speaking, it is hypoth- esized that the more extroverted a person and the more group— centered their daily experiences, the more likely their ideas are to be cliches."41 Members of the Pen league formed a movement that had a great impact on Arab writings since then, but they worked and thought mainly separately and managed to maintain their indi- vidual activities and distinct interests.

The distinctive works of Gibran, al-Rihani, Nu'aymah, and Abu Madi are clear testimony to this effect.

What we are talking about here is a special kind of isolation or separateness characterized by inner contemplation rather than self-centeredness.

41 Randall Collins, "A Micro-Macro Theory of Intellectual Creativity:

The Case of German Idealist Philosophy," Sociological Theory, vol.

5, no. 1 (Spring 87):

47-69, 48.

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EXPLORATIONS IN EXILE AND CREATIVITY 317 In order not to be misled by the above notion of distinct sepa- rateness, the creative explorations of Arab emegre writers may also be explained in terms of their identification with their native coun- try and preoccupation with its social and political crises. Sociology of literature tells us that there is a relationship between creativity and societal crises and transitional periods. Arabic literature and thought prospered in periods of acute national crises which gener- ated an urgent need for the development of a new consciousness and critical analytical thinking and reflection on means of transcen- dence.

One of these periods is early 20th century when mahjari lit- erature asserted itself and contributed towards revolutionizing Arab cultural life.

In transitional periods, there emerges an acute aware- ness of the need for replacing the old meanings and values with new ones so as to revitalize society and ensure its cohesiveness. Arab emegre writers benefited from the new milieu in which they found themselves. Being exposed to different cultures must have served as a source of creativity.

Under certain conditions, encoun- ters with other civilizations may lead to the emergence of a process of cross fertilization which is likely to provide the necessary condi- tion for creative thinking.

The continuing attachments of Amin al- Rlhani, Gibran, and Abu Madi to their native homeland motivated them to seek greater rather than less desire to know and benefit from the civilization of the host country. Clearly, they felt proud about serving as a bridge between cultures, and combated feeling of being uprooted outsiders to both or either of the two cultures.

By doing so and by being in this peculiar position, they enriched both cultures.

Cross fertilization among civilizations, as in this case, had its enriching rather than stifling effects on Arab-American writers.

The migration of the mahjari writers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries liberated them from the stifling fears of persecution.

They escaped both political and social-cultural repressions.

By distancing themselves from the centers of control, they felt secure to express themselves freely.

By centers of control I am referring to both the authoritarian state system that prevailed then and continues to pre- vail now, and the repressive social institutions such as religious and family authorities.

By freeing themselves from both political and social systems, they were able to experiment with new forms of writing.

In so doing, they managed to achieve their goals and desires not only for themselves but also for their people back home who were equally hungry for freedom. Hence the great lasting impact of mahjari writings Tradition, modernity, and postmodernity in Arabic literature : Essays in honor of professor Issa J. Boullata, edited by K. Abdel-Malek, and W.B. Hallaq, BRILL, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bmcc/detail.action?docID=253466.

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318 HALIM BARAKAT on contemporary Arabic literature.

It truly represented the first wave of modernity. Finally, I would say that the mahjari writers also freed themselves from preoccupation with the every day local details and concerns as well as from the frustrations and communal loyalties in their native country. Instead, they developed universalistic perspectives and ad- dressed themselves to the Arab world at large. Those who remained behind were exposed not only to state control and social and cul- tural pressures, but also to the temptations of helpless engagements in daily and secondary battles to their own detriment. Gibran and al-Rihani and other mahjari writers showed as well a strong tendency toward liberation from the traditional religious habits calling instead for religious tolerance and secularism.

In an elaborate study of the mahjari poetry, Wadl' Dib42 identified some overlapping or additional distinctive leanings.

He detected a special emphasis on the theme of al-hanin (nostalgia or yearning).

They yearned for the homeland, for family and mother, for sim- plicity away from modern life (and hence the stress on the theme of return to the ghaba or forest), and for the unknown. Another lean- ing he discovered in their poetry is reflective, poetic and philosoph- ical thinking.

They rejected old certainties and raised intriguing questions about all aspects of life experiencing as a result deep anx- ieties of the heart and mind.

Abu Madi's poem "Talaism" (para- doxes or riddles) is most illustrative of such leaning:

I came—whence, I know not—but I came I saw before me a road, so I walked, and shall continue to walk, whether I will or not How did I come?

How did I see my road?

I know not Am I new, or old, in this existence?

Am I truly free, or a prisoner in chains?

Do I lead myself through my life, or am I led?

I wish to know, and yet I know not.

And my road:

what is my road?43 42 Wadi' Dib, al-Shi'r al-'Arabifi al-Mahjar Al-Amriki (Arabic Poetry in the Americas) (Beirut:

Dar al-Rlhani, n.d.).

43 Translated by Mounah A.

Khouri and Hamid Algar, An Anthology of Modem Arabic Poetry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 35.

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EXPLORATIONS IN EXILE AND CREATIVITY 319 Dib also identified a third sort of a leaning in mahjari poetry which reflected deep desire for liberation from all restrictions on their free- dom including linguistic norms.

This is particularly true of Gibran who saw the poet as being first and foremost responsible for lan- guage and its destiny.

Hence what I mentioned earlier about his determination to explode the traditional structure of Arabic language and adopting the dictum, "you have your own language, and I have my own." Similarly, Rose Ghuraib points out that the movement of mahjari literature "revolted against all aspects of the prevailing literary and social conditions in Arab countries, and called for the destruction and the recreation of the new, and laid the foundation for compre- hensive unprecedented deep rooted revolution in the Arab World."44 It is these characteristics and others which prompted the noted literary critic Muhammad Mandur to raise and address the question as to why the mahjari writers succeeded in doing what other writers could not do. No wonder then that another noted Egyptian writer Muhammed Husayn Haykal would warn his fellow writers, "The reformer and the traditionalist among us should cooperate. Otherwise the victory will remain on the side of the Americanized Syrians, and Islamic culture would be erased."45 While Arab writers in exile yearned for homeland and its people, traditional writers in the Arab world yearned for the past.

What the mahjari writers succeeded in doing is pursuing the path of creativity rather than uniformity.

For them creativity, inseparable from agonizing exile, became their way of life sustained with con- stantly renewed hopes for return. Gibran expressed it well in saying:

And hence an exile am I, and an exile I shall remain until death lifts me up and bears me even unto my country.46 At a testimonial dinner for Gibran, January 5th, 1929, Philip Hitti commented: "The influence which Gibran exercises in modern Arabic literature can be measured . . . not only by the multitude of people 44 Rose Ghuraib, "Udaba' al-Mahjar," in Masadir al-Thaqafa fi Lubnan (Beirut:

Maktabat Lubnan, 1969), 101.

40 Cited in lliyya Abu Madl:

Sha'ir al-Mahjar al-Akbar (Dar al-Yaqaza al-cArabiyya, 1963), 23.

46 The Two Voices of Kahlil Gibran (Beirut: Creative, 1984), 27, from The Tempests, translated by Andrew Ghareeb.

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320 HALIM BARAKAT who have . . .

benefited by reading him but also by the big crop of would-be Gibrans, quasi-Gibrans and Gibran imitators who have in recent years, mushroom-like, sprung up and flourished all over the Arabic speaking world.

So much so that you can hardly nowadays pick up an Arabic paper printed in Beirut, Cairo, Baghdad, Sao Paulo or Buenos Aires without finding somebody consciously trying to write Gibran-like.

. . .

through his unmatched mastery of this art, through his pure and rich imagery, through his lofty and noble ide- alism ... he has become the father of a new school of thought all of his own."47 By bearing the symbols of the homeland, mahjan writers gave exile in marriage to creativity as they gave the sea in marriage to the sun.

Arab writers produced their best works in the Abbasid period, in Andalusia, and in the mahjar where exile served as a precondition of freedom.

In all these instances, there coexisted meaningful encoun- ters of civilizations and liberation from both political and social repressive authorities. Hence the possibilities of innovative explorations and pondering transcendental themes leading to the creation of van- guardist works in each of these periods of Arab literary history.

47 From The Arabs in America, 1492-1977, compiled and edited by Beverlee Turner Mehdi, Dobbs Ferry (New York, Oceana Publications, 1978), 87.

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