The Positive View of the Other Among Syrian Poets in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

This research monitors the positive view of some Syrian poets towards 
the other; that is, towards what is not Arab, where a duality arose that the 
long history of humanity - with its different nations, multiple cultures, 
and divine laws, and the conflict that arose between those nations, 
kingdoms, and empires - loaded with many negatives represented in 
preconceived positions and ready-made judgments about the image of 
this or that nation, or followers of a religion or intellectual school, and 
looking at it in a way that carries a lot of distortion and misrepresentation 
of the image of the other. This image may have turned into a fanatical 
tendency that nullifies the other and does not recognize him and may even 
be hostile to him simply because of his ethnic or religious affiliation. 
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, poets in various Arab 
countries have lived through a period full of difficulties and sharp 
transformations in the history of Arab countries. Political anxiety and 
unrest were great during the last stages of the Turanian rule, which 
resulted in a cognitive, civilizational and cultural decline in the entire 
Arab region. This decline and setback did not stop with the advent of 
Western colonialism, but rather its pace accelerated more than before, so 
that ignorance and backwardness prevailed, and Arab countries became 
a breeding ground for colonial powers and their growing influence. Here, 
unfortunately, the image of the other was often poorly reflected, but the 
concept of humanity in all its comprehensiveness and breadth began to 
oscillate in the minds - the minds of intellectuals and the public - between 
the image of the advanced person who should be emulated and the image 
of the colonial occupier who plundered the land and stole the goods, and 
developed some of the countries he occupied for his own benefit. It was 
natural for poets to defend their nation and to mobilize the Arabs to revolt 
against tyranny, However, despite this deteriorating situation that the 
Arab countries experienced, the poets of Arabism in general and the 
Levant in particular did not express any discriminatory positions or 
tendencies tainted with racism towards other peoples, but rather 
acknowledged the human unity that unites all people.