This essay discusses the main theme of the above-entitled book by Fouad Ajami, the conflict between the intellectual content of Arab nationalism and the realities of the Middle East in modern times and the resulting disillusionment and alienation of many Arab intellectuals. The main focus of the essay is Chapter One, The Suicide of Khalil Hawi: Requiem for a Generation, with reference to excerpts from other chapters and other sources with respect to the period leading up to Hawi's death on June 6, 1982.
Intellectual Origins of Arab Nationalism
Hawi was a Christian Arab of Greek Orthodox origins who was born in December 1919 and grew up in mountainous areas east of Beirut, Lebanon. He was exposed at an early age to the ravages of the Turks and the hardships of post-World War I Lebanon. He became well-known as an Arab poet and as a professor at the American University in Beirut (AUB) and at Cambridge University in England. Ajami uses his life and the development of his thought to trace the disenchantment and despair his generation of Arab intellectuals felt toward the directions Arab nationalism had taken since the days of his youth.
In the late 19th century as the Ottoman Empire disintegrated and its hold over the Middle East weakened, a new generation of Arabs, largely centered in Damascus and Beirut and in Cairo, struggled to shape a new identity for the indigenous peoples in the Middle East, which came to be known as the Arab Awakening. As education spread through the region, Lapidus said "Arab nationalism was born before World War I in the literary revival of the Arabic language, the revival of Arab identification with the glories of the Islamic past, and the anti-Turkish political ambitions of Arab intellectuals" (665). According to Hourani, "the nationalism of this period was secularist, believing in a bond which could embrace people of different schools or faiths, and it was . . . constitutionalist" (343). Christian ...