Böcker av George Nicolas El-Hage

Myth! It is such an incredible phenomenon. It is also the playground of the human heart and the entertainment of the human soul. Myths have accompanied man since his early beginnings and still do and will continue to occupy him until God reclaims His inheritance of this earth and everything on it. The human soul needs mythology in as much as the human body needs nourishment because human life is essentially based on these mythical tales. Nevertheless, no myth, ancient or modern, is exclusively national or belongs to one particular nation over another. Instead, they are a wide open field that is the property of all nations, regardless of their beliefs, race, or habitats. Myths constantly migrate among nations and peoples carrying on their wings the dust of ages and the additions and mounds of consecutive days and events. Among the most ancient myths that man created were undoubtedly those which related to the formation of this world and the story of the flood. Since I began to show serious interest in Phoenician and Arab mythology, I wanted to collect a select number of myths in a small book that will entertain, amuse, and inform the reader and transport him to a world of fantasy and adventure after a hard day of dull work in a closed office. I spent a considerable amount of time researching and reading books of historians and poets whether Greek, Arabs, Romans, French, and British, and basically I selected the myths whose central arena was the East. I re-wrote them in a way that is both entertaining and beneficial.... In most cases I used the Roman names of the gods and heroes because of their popularity and familiarity. Needless to say, this book demanded tireless effort and endless time to collect these myths from various sources and re-write them in an easy and accessible way that pleases and informs both the scholar and the average reader alike.Karam al-Bustani

What do you give a woman who herself is a gift to this needy world? What do you give a woman who has everything: beauty, love, peace, tranquility, contentment, faith, goodness, and kindness? If you were chosen to be in her company and loved by her, you may only give her your everlasting love and devotion, and address her in the language of prophecy, the language of the gods, which is poetry, poetry made of eternal words, dipped in perpetual feelings, and forged in faithfulness and constant loyalty because the Word was in the beginning, and the voice of God descended into the Word and became flesh, and because true feelings are the breath of the gods, and loyalty is the essence of friendship and love. Only a woman like her can command the stars, calm the oceans, teach the birds to sing, the strings to quiver, and the human hearts to bow in worship. Admittedly, some of these poems were written even before I met Mary Ann in person. They were conceived in anticipation of that first encounter with my soulmate. She was always a part of me because she existed within me: first, as an idea, and then, as an inspiration that filled my mind and my soul. Other poems were envisioned after we had met and after we were united in eternal love. Why poetry and love? Because love is the poetry of life, and everything else is prose. Because poetry is the language of prophecy spoken by the angels and gods when they populated this earth before the fall. Hence, the poet is the offspring of that divine race that has since departed our planet to the lofty skies. Man will never regain his divine status until he embraces his spirituality. Consequently, we must use language differently. We have to say less and mean more before we can communicate effectively. Words should be spontaneous and timeless. They are meant to be charged with emotions and to embody visions that illuminate experience and communicate nothing but the truth. The poet is not a prophet if prophecy is understood to be the prediction of future events, but the poet should be viewed as a seer, if instead, prophecy is meant to be a warning that if man continues doing such negative deeds, then the end result will be dire. Although poetry can be national or regional, nevertheless, it shall never be divorced from its universal message and concerns. Man and humanity are the concerns of poetry. Of course, this implies love, emotions and feelings, both spiritual and physical. True, the spiritual is divine, but also the physical is important because "energy is eternal delight." It is within this context that I wrote these poems to Mary Ann, and I hope that they will help make our world a better place, one word at a time.

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.

This book is an existential drama; it is an intellectual dramatization of certain events, which brilliantly depict the struggle of man and his existence in a triangular relationship with Time and Place. The book addresses the interrelation among three formidable entities that physically and rhetorically share this endless universe or at least the known part of it that we may comprehend. It is a brilliant dramatization of the hitherto mysterious yet inevitably interconnected relationship among the trio of Time, Place, and Man. They obviously cannot exist independently even though each one is unique in his identity, qualities, and characteristics, and ultimately, they fulfill each other. In A Train and No Station we are in the presence of a difficult text where every word is replete with infinite meanings and loaded with colorful symbolism. We are in the company of a challenging trialogue composed by an experienced navigator, a persistent author who is obsessed with the meaning of time. He is saturated with the anxiety of existence, inundated with existential tension, and is preoccupied with the mystery of man and with the question of human pain and the eternal search for the ultimate truth as he strives to find acceptable answers to these impossible questions. This book is also about a brave author who dared to challenge himself, to ask the difficult questions, and probe the unyielding responses to eternal riddles that have preoccupied man since time immemorial. These are questions that were only posed by those unusual thinkers who bumped their heads against the rock of eternity in their attempt to extract from the heart of the universe answers regarding the validity of time, the importance of place, and about man's place in the universe. They dared to probe the divinity of man and to explore the reality of history and the comfort of belonging. They asked about life and death and about traveling in time and in place. They pondered existence, the continuity of life, the origin of life, and man's relationship to others, to place and to time. They mused about the homeland and people's history and dreamt about the giant and the dwarf embedded in each of us and about physical, rhythmical, and spiritual places and times. And they contemplated man's ultimate destiny and his ability to choose, and whether man was entitled to free will or not, and whether the joy was in the journey and not in the destination, and in the trip itself instead of being in the outcome or in the final moment of arrival. In this unfolding epic, our author addresses this topic without forgetting to present us with a dose of historical reality that sheds light on the unfortunate present of his own beleaguered country. He offers a sober recommendation regarding the healing of his wounded land and how it can be redeemed, its history saved, and its politics mended and retold. Ameen Albert Rihani also shows us how to reconcile those irreconcilable differences by reversing Sartre's existential dilemma, which stated that "hell is other people." Instead, he teaches us that "the other" is not the enemy. Ameen invites us to come down off our high horse and embrace the other, to accept him, and to share with him, and to learn from him as well because diversity and humility are the spice of life and the absolute ingredient that greases the wheels of human civilization.