In the early 1980s, a new genre of literary prose emerged. According to them, politics was not the only issue at stake and they advocated a reconsideration of traditional, pre-war patriarchal values. The Decentrists tried to demystify Lebanese society by identifying the controversies underlying the political crisis. New names rose to prominence, notably Emily Nasrallah, Hanan al-Shaykh and Hoda Barakat, who would soon become known as the ‘Decentrists of Beirut’. The war featured in everything that was written, be it the political novels of Suhayl Idris, the prophetic novels of Tawfiq Yusuf Awwad or the surrealistic stories of the political activist and writer Elias Khoury.Īmong female writers, the war seemed to function as a catalyst and a source of inspiration. The Arab defeat in the 1967 conflict with Israel and the subsequent civil war (1975-1990) in Lebanon deeply affected Lebanese society, including the cultural and literary scene. In 1968, Layla Baalbakki published her autobiographical feminist novel Ana ahya (‘I live’), which made her famous not only in Lebanon but across the Arab world. In the second half of the 20th century, female writers began to gain ground. Others, such as Suhayl Idris, were drawn to the existentialist movement of Jean-Paul Sartre and his group. Tawfiq Yusuf Awwad, Maroun Abboud and Yusuf Habashi al-Ashqar published their first novels and short story collections, heavily influenced by European and Russian naturalism. In the same period, modern narrative prose began to take shape.
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Poets from all over the Arab world settled in Beirut, attracted by the free press and the relatively tolerant intellectual atmosphere that reigned at the time. The first signs of a new cultural movement became apparent in 1957 with the foundation of Shir, a magazine for experimental poetry established by the Syrian poet Adunis (the alias of Ali Ahmad Said Asbar) and others. The Nahda: a New Cultural Movement and the Shaping of Lebanese Literature
From the 1990s, Lebanon has witnessed a wave of artistic expression, but also the founding of various festivals such as the Salon du Livre, the Beirut International Film Festival, or al-Bustan (music) Festival Moreover, years of violence and destruction left the Lebanese people with a deep hunger for beauty, creativity and artistic ways of expression. Many artists want to remember and document these events and their aftermath, or to fight against the political and religious divisions that led to the war.
In present day Lebanese literature, but also in Lebanese music, film or fine arts, the Civil War (1975-1990) and its aftermath are recurrent themes. Damascus and Cairo and, further away, Paris, London, New York, and Rio de Janeiro are thus also minor Lebanese cultural centres, especially for Lebanese literature and cinema. Hence, the Lebanese arts developed not only in Lebanon itself – where Beirut is probably the most important cultural centre – but also in the countries where émigrés found a second home. Each period of violence, each wave of repression by the then occupying power, each (civil) war was followed by a wave of emigration. Many intellectuals and artists have left Lebanon over the centuries.
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