Arab intellectuals have commented profusely on the gravity of 1967 as a historical juncture that redefined modern Arab thought. The collective introspection following the 1967 Arab political and military defeat by Israel has led Arab thinkers to search for the cause of the defeat within 19th century Enlightenment ideals of secularism, social justice, and nationalism, which they had incorporated into their modern critical discourse. In the Lebanese literary context, the Lebanese civil war (1990-1975) played a similar role of casting doubts on the romantic portrayal of the modern intellectual. In “Dear Mr. Kawabata” (1995) and “Learning English”(1998), the prominent Lebanese novelist Rashid al-Daif (b. 1945) began deconstructing the ideological premises that have shaped the politically engaged intellectual. Al-Daif illustrates in these two novels the disenchantment of the modern intellectual as he confronts his failure to sever his ties with traditional structures and his inability to fully embody the modernist discourse that his generation had construed. Al-Daif resumes his project of introspection in “Paving the Sea” (2011), in which he delves into the depths of Enlightenment binary structures such as tradition/modernity; superstition/science; religion/secularism; community/individual, among others. The reader accompanies Fares Hashem, a 19th century student of Protestant missionaries, in his journey to the United States as he seeks scientific knowledge, the liberation of women, and the advancement of his emerging Syrian nation. Embattled by contradictions inherent in both eastern and western modernities plagued by colonial and confessional wars, enslavement, and bigotry, Fares Hashem dies on his way back to Syria. In my examination of “Paving the Sea,” I argue that al-Daif deploys narrative techniques such as metafiction, farce, and reflexivity in order to write a requiem for both the intellectual and the Enlightenment values that he embodies. By retracing the romantic rise and steep fall of the 19th century intellectual, al-Daif completes his project of exposing the false start of Arab modernization, the pursuit of which is as futile as the act of paving the sea.