고전과 낭만의 ‘경계 시인’ 칼릴 무뜨란(1872-1949)

Abstract

Khalil Mutran played a part as a transitional figure between neoclassicism and romanticism in Arabic literature. And he was called “the poet of the two (Arab) countries”, Egypt and Lebanon. In an attempt to free himself from the strict rules of the Arabic Qasidah, Mutran sometimes used the narrative poem, the Andalus-Arabic form(Muwashshat), a long prose poem, and the form of the five-lined(Mukhammas). But in spite of these efforts to break away from the Qasidah, and in spite of his personal lyrical notes, his works as a whole make a neoclassicist impression. And thematically for poems of profound personal introspection, there are numerous panegyrics, lampoons, elegies, social and political occasional poems. So he was not called the romantic poet, but the neo-romantic poet. His reaction to the limitations of classicism was an expression of a much wider movement towards Westernization. Mutran was a highly conscious artist who introduced into Arabic poetry a number of attitudes and assumptions and so he can be regarded as the true father of the new or modern school of poetry in Arab world. The most important of these assumptions are the unity of the poem, the belief in the freedom and independence for self-expression, and the uncommonness of the imagination and the strangeness of the subject.