Beirut Blast, War Echo Through Lebanese Art And Poetry

(MENAFN- USA Art News) A 2020 explosion at the Port of Beirut and subsequent reflections on Lebanon's Civil War recently brought a writer to revisit a Moustafa Farroukh painting and a Vahan Tekeyan poem, two decades after first translating the latter. The August 4, 2020 blast killed over 200 people, injured thousands, and devastated significant parts of the capital.

During a 2026 August visit to Dhour El Choueir, a mountain town overlooking Beirut, the writer reflected on Farroukh's 1936 watercolor,“A Group of Pines in Bekfaya.” This work was painted just a few miles from the town. Farroukh, a foundational figure in modern Lebanese painting, trained in Beirut under Habib Serour before studying in Rome and Paris. His art provided a vivid vision of Lebanon's people and landscape, contributing to the country's visual language during the French Mandate.

The writer first encountered Farroukh's watercolor in 2003 in a catalog for a Sursock Museum exhibition, where it was on loan from the private collection of Emile Nasrallah. The Sursock Museum itself suffered severe damage in the Beirut Port explosion, with shattered stained-glass windows, structural harm to its historic building, and damage to dozens of artworks. The museum reopened on May 26, 2023, presenting five exhibitions, including one titled Beyond Ruptures.

In August 1937, Armenian poet Vahan Tekeyan composed the sonnet“To a Lebanese Pine Tree” while also in Dhour El Choueir. Tekeyan, born in Constantinople in 1878, was part of a generation whose intellectual and literary lives were shaped by the violence that dispersed Ottoman Armenians. By 1937, Lebanon had become a center for Armenian revival in the Middle East. Tekeyan directly participated in this movement, becoming the first editor of the Beirut-based Armenian newspaper Zartonk (“Awakening”) in September 1937. The paper, which is still published today, included“To a Lebanese Pine Tree” in its inaugural issue, alongside news of French Mandate Lebanon's parliamentary elections, Palestine's domestic politics, the Spanish Civil War, and Mussolini's visit to Germany.

The poem, despite its Armenian resonances, is distinctly Lebanese. It portrays a pine tree with historical wounds, describing a lost branch like a“severed arm” and subsequent“countless others” from a saw. Yet, the tree continues to sprout“new life,” embodying resilience without inspiring mourning. This imagery, the author suggests, offers a more nuanced understanding of Lebanon than typical Western media portrayals of hedonism or endless celebration of resilience, which can obscure the country's enduring scars.

Source: Hyperallergic

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