Said Akl: When Lebanon Speaks

Said Akl is considered one of Lebanon's, as well as the Arab world's, most prominent modern poets who tremendously contributed to the advancement of Modern Arabic Poetry and thought. He was widely known, read, celebrated, and respected not only in Lebanon, but across the Middle East and the world. He was a self-taught poet, educator, storyteller, playwright, philosopher, historian, theologist, lecturer, and linguist. His command of the classical Arabic language was superb and unparalleled, and his knowledge of classical Arabic poetry and prosody, ancient history, the Holy Quran, and the Holy Bible, in addition to ancient mythology and religions, was encyclopedic and qualified him to speak about such matters with authority and credibility.

Said Akl formed a school of thought that distinguished his poetry and earned him many followers and disciples. He certainly created a new movement and a unique and influential trend in Modern Arabic Poetry.

Said Akl lived for more than a century, and until the end of his life, he remained in control of his intellectual faculties and of his graceful personality. He was born in 1911 in the beautiful town of Zahle, also known as the bride of the Beqaa Region. He died in Beirut in 2014 and was given a formal as well as a popular funeral attended by thousands of admirers including politicians, dignitaries, singers, poets, men of letters, and ranking clergy. He loved his hometown and wanted to model Lebanon after it, and he also wanted to model the world after Lebanon, the Lebanon that he envisioned and portrayed in his poetry and in the book at hand: "When Lebanon Speaks."

Throughout the pages of this book, you are transported into a world that oscillates between fact and fantasy, reality and lore, and truth and mythology; it is an enchanted world inhabited not only by ordinary people but also by geniuses, inventors, discoverers, scientists, poets, gods, heroes and heroines, nymphs, worriers, and monsters. You learn that in Lebanon, the country that dates back six thousand years before Christ, women were respected and cherished as political leaders, mighty worriers, mothers and founders of nations, and intellectual thinkers and advisors to emperors and kings.

Said Akl is a brilliant storyteller, a dedicated student of history, and a master teacher of men. Consequently, his book is an amazing amalgamation of ancient and modern stories continuing the tradition of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Odyssey, the Iliad, the Aeneid, and the Old and New Testaments. He is similar to the majesty of Aeschylus and other masters of the Greek tragedies. He takes us to a world where nymphs live yearning to communicate with humans and where the interaction between men and gods and the transformation of humans and objects is clearly reminiscent of Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Fables of Aesop, but the framework of the stories, the setting and the backdrop remain the land of Phoenicia, where the immortal Cedars that are as old as time itself were planted by the hand of God, and where God's descendants live and speak the language of the gods. This is where history was made by those who shaped its events and facilitated its narration, not by those who later re-recorded it and twisted it to suit their narrative and their plot.