Elias Abu Shabaki

Who was Elias Abu Shabaki?

Elias Abu Shabaki was a Lebanese writer, poet, editor, translator and literary critic, he was one of the founders of the literary League of Ten and is considered as one of the leading figures of the Arabic Nahda Movement.

Born into a well-to-do Lebanese family, Abu Shabaki became interested in poetry at a young age. The son of a merchant, he was left fatherless in his youth, an experience that would mark his earlier works. Elias worked as a teacher, translator and _in addition to publishing several volumes of poetry_ as a journalist writing for many Arabic newspapers and literary magazines. Being an adherent to the Romantic school, Abu Shabki believed in inspiration and denounced conscious control in poetry. His poems were gloomy, deeply personal and often contained biblical overtones centering around his internal moral conflicts. Some of Abu Shabaki's work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Serpents of Paradise which was regarded as obscene due to its overt sexual content. The poet's obsession with the spiritual consequences of carnality that was manifested in his writings was attributed to the guilt brought upon by his sexual escapades with various women when he was married and until his death from leukemia in 1947.