Introduction:

  “Sea-life goes beyond human imagination in view of diversity, abundance, beauty, strangeness, oldness, and fierceness, and is unmatched by any other kind of natural life. Sea-creatures range from millions of billions of micro-creatures, roaming in the blue water of the sea, to the blue whales of the Antarctica, thirty meters long and one hundred and thirty tones of weight. Such creatures include the most beautiful species, the like of which nature has never yielded: magnificent silver fishes, sea-animals that bloom like flowers, bright coral reefs, worms 27 meters long, and fish that assume eight different colors. If we consider the largest of all creatures, namely the whale, we find out that it needs four tones of fish to satisfy its appetite; and its baby needs 300 kilograms of milk at a time.
 While devouring its meal eight tones of blood flow in the body of the whale; and there are twenty-five tones of fat, fifty tones of flesh, and twenty tones of bones in his body. Its internal parts weigh three tones; its tongue weighs two and a half tones; and more than 120 barrels of oil can be extracted from its body. A whale can drag a whole ship whose engines work at full power in the opposite direction for eight and a half hours at a speed of 5 knots per hour.”
 The above paragraphs are taken from a scientific essay about sea-creatures of “Life” scientific collection; and I have introduced my article about the art of essay-writing with them for exemplification and explanation.

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Definition of the Essay:

 As defined by Edmond Johnson, the Essay is “an art of literature, and a piece of writing of a medium length written in prose and includes the external features of the topic in a quick easy way. It deals only with the aspect that closely touches the writer.”
 The Essay can also be defined as “a piece of prose, of medium length, that deals with a certain topic in a quick way from the view-point of its writer. It is the daughter of press, it came into existence and flourished with it.”
 The words “a certain topic” in the above definition mean that the essay is one of the most comprehensive and all-embracing kinds of literary arts. Topics such as financial inflation, methods of advertisement, or acupuncture can be carried neither by the wings of poetry nor events of the novel or dialogues of drama. The essay alone accepts such, or any other, topics that it can clarify and display well.
 The words “in a quick way” in the above definition mean that the writer only records his contemplations, conceptions or observations dominated by quickness and spontaneity. In other words, if it depended on careful empirical and statistical study, it would be scientific research rather than literary essay.
 If we read in a scientific journal that the blackpolls fly off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean in Autumn on an incredibly long flight over the seas to South America, a journey of four thousand kilometers, non-stop, during a period of 86 hours and 6000 meters high. This piece of information is the result of a great many years of observation, experimentation and data-analysis. This is part of scientific research and not literary essay.
 The words “from the view-point of its writer” mean that the essay expresses the mind of its writer more than its own topic, because the writer of an essay sees things through his own self and the different feelings and emotions dwelling therein.
 Let’s read what one writer wrote about the plane: “A small bird I have loved for long months sang to my loneliness and filled it with delight; it whispered to my solitude and entertained it; it sang to my heart and made it dance; and it caroused with my privacy and filled it with tunes.”

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The Essay is a Modern type of Art:

 On the cover of a magazine of international publications: “More than a million people read this magazine in one hundred and eighty countries and in fifteen languages.” But what is the secret behind the large number of readers of the different articles in the newspapers and magazines in all countries of the world?
 In our modern age, where materialism dominates over values, where the human mind has grown at the expense of the mind, where life-lines have varied and their requirements have multiplied, where earning one’s living has consumed most of people’s times, where everything has been summed up, even months have been summed up in hours and years in days, where an urgent need has emerged for light quick readings, and, therefore, people looked forward to newspapers and magazines, and were attracted by booklets and journals. It is as if people desired to sum up the ocean in a bottle, the garden in a bunch of flowers, sunlight in a spark, thunderstorm in a song. They have looked for a type of literature that goes round with them wherever they go, that accompanies them wherever they travel, that remains with them in their settlement and travel, weal and woe, fun and seriousness, to express their mental activity and psychic disorders. Also, books have been summed up in articles and become the healing for modern illness, and the cure for shortness of time, and, hence, the essay became the most widespread type of literary arts, because it is the least complicated, clearest, most embracing of all of the topics, and easiest for both writer and reader.

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Aspects of the Essay:

Subject-Matter, Style, and Plan:

Subject-Matter:

 The subject-matter of the essay is the ideas, opinions, facts, knowledge, theories, contemplations, conceptions, scenes, experiences, feelings, emotions, and expertise included in the essay. The subject-matter should be clear and not ambiguous or vague. It should be realistic and contain no contradiction between premises and results. It should be deep enough to attract the reader, condense enough to make its reading a mere waste of time. It should serve the purpose so that the reader is not disappointed. It should contain enough novelty and originality so as to be free from immature notions, common knowledge, or vulgar ideas. It should be interesting enough so as to provide entertainment and spiritual enhancement.
 The writer’s job is not to weaken people’s morale but rather to stir their minds. In other words, a writer who does not stir his readers’ minds to think or give them new incentive and creative ideas that improve their lives or provide them with spiritual enhancement, a writer who provides his readers with low superficial frivolous feelings, fake comfort and peace of mind, mere trivialities and amusement, such a writer destroys human values and hinders social development.

Style:

The style is the linguistic and literary coining of the subject matter of the essay, or the literary mold in which its ideas are cast although writers differ as regards their styles according to diversity of cultures, differences of moods, variety of methods of thinking, variance of the ability of expression and depiction. Nevertheless, there must necessarily be a minimum of the stylistic standard that makes the essay a kind of literary art.
 The style of the essay must be clear and understandable, powerful and effective, beautiful and interesting. Clarity of thinking conduces to clarity of expression. Knowledge of delicate differences between words, and then the accurate use of the proper and adequate words are causes of clarity and accuracy of expression. Clarity of the relationships between words and expressions conduce to clarity and accuracy of linguistic and rhetoric structures. Much use of antithesis or juxtaposition of contrasting ideas makes meanings clearer. The use of metaphors and similitude contributes to clarification of abstract ideas and notions. The following text is an example: “Literature today is a stick in the hand of mankind whereby they walk, and not a pencil whereby they smear their eyes with kohl (antimony). It is a bright light that opens the eyes and not a static beautiful adornment put on the chest.”

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Power of Style:

 Power of style makes the essay more effective and causes more convincement on the part of readers. It brings about a certain “attitude” on the part of readers. Power of style comes from vigor and accuracy of ideas, coherence and cohesion of sentences, suggestive words and expressions, eloquent rich words, rhetorical expressions, metaphors and similitude, verbosity and brevity, summarization and redundancy, putting forward or backward, emphasis and attribution, attachment and detachment.
 An example:
If we really desire to live happily, we have to observe wheat in its growth and flowers in bloom. We have to breathe fresh air, read, think and share Charles Taylor in his feelings when he says, “The robbers took everything from me, but they left me a bright sun, an illuminating moon, the life with a silver surface, a sincere wife who takes care of my interests and brings up my children, and friends who help me in case of need and distress. So what did the robbers take from me, after all that?! Nothing! Here is my face smiling, my heart laughing, my conscience clean and pure.”

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Beauty of Style:

 If clarity is for understanding, power for effectiveness, then beauty is for pure literary entertainment. And when a writer has delicate literary taste, a musical ear, rhetorical abilities, he can avoid rough words, incoherent sentences, monotonous tones. And when he harmonizes words and meanings together and creates from his own imagination the relevant expressive images, his style becomes beautiful.
 An example:
The ivory ethical tower: is to elevate oneself above materialistic desires and personal interests. It is not the right of a modern intellect to keep his thoughts aloof from problems of his time. In fact, it is his duty to keep away from trivialities and errors of his time. To me the ivory ethical tower is mental clarity and moral purity. It is the rock on which the writer should dwell above the ocean of trivialities that overwhelm people of his time. There is no good, in my opinion, in an intellect who does not set out of himself an example of every noble, sublime and beautiful thing.
 The third aspect of the essay is the Plan, which some people call “the secret style”. It is the mental course along which the essay runs. And if notions, ideas and opinions do accumulate in the mind of a writer, and he desires to communicate them to the readers, and if he has a style that brings his meanings to the light, he should not rush to tackle the topic right away without preparing any plan according to which he directs his topic.

Plan:

 The Plan is made up of an introduction, exposition and conclusion.
 The introduction is an introductory part of the essay that paves the way for the writer’s opinions. The ideas of the introduction should be self-evident and indisputable. It should need no evidence of its validity; and it should be brief, dense, clear and closely relevant to the topic.
 As for the exposition, it constitutes the main body of the essay and the essence of its topic. In the exposition ideas are exposed in a proper, clear, balanced, coherent, and successive way. It is better that the writer should introduce each new idea, link it with the previous one, mention its importance, explain it, compare it to other ideas, mention its origin and development, provide relevant literary or historical evidences. It is better that each idea should be exposed in a separate paragraph.
 The conclusion sums up the results that the writer reaches in the exposition; and it should be clear, frank and decisive.
 It is also relevant in this concern to speak about kinds of Essay:
From the view-point of subject-matter, there are the social and political essays. From the view-point of style, there are the scientific and literary essays. From the view-point of length, there are the long essay and the short thought. From the view-point of artistic form, there are the narrative essay, symbolic essay, travel essay, and message essay. From the view-point of the writer’s attitude, there are the subjective and objective essays. From the view-point of ways of its communication to the audience, there are the written, the heard and the watched essay.

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Types of Essay:

The Scientific Essay:

 Its topics are scientific; and it is meant to simplify and communicate scientific facts to people. Qadri Toqan says, “The Sun is the nearest star to us. It is 93,000,000 miles from us. If a train traveled to it at a speed of 50 miles per hour, it would get there in 220 years. And if the radio waves, which travel round the earth seven times in one second, were sent to the Sun, they would reach it in eight and a quarter minutes. If they were sent to the nearest star to us beyond the Sun, they would reach it in four and a half years.”
 The direct style of the scientific essay depends on accuracy in the use of words and expressions, easiness in coining sentences, staying aloof from verbosity or adornment. And the scientific essay assumes the most delicate literary forms.

The Literary Essay:

 It is a piece of prosaic poetry that reflects the writer’s inner self and expresses his feelings. It comes from the writer’s imagination and depicts features of his character. Its style is purely literary, and it contains whatever you like of ardent emotions, vast imagination, abundant images, and an elegant style. Abdul Aziz Al-Bishri says about Sayed Darweesh:
 “As soon as Sayed Darweesh composes a tune, the meanings become strong by his tunes, because he solidifies its corners and strengthens by his work its text so that you hear something like the rattling of arrows when the fight is furious or like the roar of lions when they pounce on their prey. And when the words tend to be lenient, his tune will be more delicate than the colors of the rainbow or the breeze of a summer dawn.”

The Thought:

 It is a very short type of essay that occupies corners in the newspapers and magazines. It depends on the style of flashback in tackling issues and is characterized by being subjective and full of irony. It has a sweet taste in the reader’s mind and is very much like caricature.