Khalil Mutran

Khalil Mutran (July 1 1872—June 1 1949) also known by the sobriquet "Sha’ir al Qutrayn" (the poet of the two countries) was a noted Arabic poet and journalist.

He was born in Baalbek in Lebanon to a Palestinian father. He attended the Greek Catholic School in Beirut, where one of his teachers was Nasif al-Yaziji. Here he learned Arabic and French languages. In 1890, he left Lebanon for France. Although he planned to immigrate to Chile, he actually settled in Egypt in 1892. Here, he found his first job at "Al-Ahram". He also contributed to "Al-Mu’yyad" and "Al-Liwa". In 1900, he founded his own fortnightly magazine, "Al-Majalla al-misriyya" (1900-2, 1909). He published some of his own works and also of Mahmud Sami al-Barudi in this magazine. In 1903, he started publishing a daily newspaper "Al-Jawaib al-misriyya" (1903-5), which supported Mustafa Kamil’s nationalist movement. He collaborated with Hafez Ibrahim in translating a French book on political economy. He translated a number of plays of Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine, Victor Hugo and Paul Bourget into Arabic. In 1912 he translated Shakespeare’s drama "Othello" into Arabic as "Utayl", which is the most celebrated and best-known translation of the drama into Arabic. His translation was not based on the original, but on a French version of it by Georges Duval. Other dramas of Shakespeare translated into Arabic by him are "Hamlet", "Macbeth", "The Merchant of Venice", "The Tempest", "Richard III", "King Lear" and "Julius Caeser". He also translated Corneille’s "Le Cid", "Cinna" and "Polyeucte" and Victor Hugo’s "Hernani". He later took a post as secretary to the Agricultural Syndicate and helped to found Banque Misr in 1920. In 1924, he made a long journey through Syria and Palestine, after which he claimed himself as a poet of the arab countries. After the death of Ahmed Shawqi in 1932, he chaired the Apollo literary group till his death. In 1935, he became director of the "Al-Firqa al-Qawmiyya" (National Company) of the Egyptian theatre.

Works

An anthology of his poems, the "Diwan-al-Khalil" was published in four volumes during his lifetime, the first volume of which was published in 1908. In his poems, Hourani feels, “traditional forms and language were used not for their own sake but to give precise expression to a reality, whether in the external world or in the author’s feelings” [Hourani, A. (1991). "A History of the Arab Peoples", Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, p.305]

References

Persondata
NAME=Mutran, Khalil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Sha’ir al Qutrayn (the poet of the two countries)
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Egyptian poet and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH=July 1 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH=Baalbek, Lebanon
DATE OF DEATH=June 1 1949
PLACE OF DEATH=Egypt