Contemporary Arabic Literature and World Literature

Magdi Youssef

A Methodological Proposition*

In memoriam Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)

Whereas the acculturation and culture contact theories(1), which are so ‘popular’ in academic circles today, attempt to trace the mechanisms of the infiltration of an emitted cultural element (or of more than one) into another culture and society, mostly starting from a Western model as received in Non-Western, previously colonised countries, my theoretical proposition is to start from the receiving socio-cultural context instead. However, I do not propose to reverse the hitherto prevailing hierarchy of cultural ‘maturity’ of the emitted cultural elements vs. ‘less mature’ receiving socio-cultures as suggested in said theories. This hierarchy might be best illustrated by the fact that Western literatures, or those written in Western languages, were considered identical to World literature during at least the last two centuries.

On the contrary, according to the theoretical model suggested by me, we should regard the transmitted cultural element as being equal to the receiving socio-cultural context in which it is often remoulded according to the different living conditions, value systems and practices of the receiving culture in a specific phase of its history. However, when this remoulding process takes place in a way which is less aware of the objective difference between the received model and the relative specificity of the receiving context, I suggest to call it “socio-cultural interference”(2) by drawing on the concept of interference in linguistics. This concept is borrowed again from physics and biology. While using it to designate socio-cultural interference(s), I intend to describe and follow up the less conscious mechanisms related to the process of receiving an alien cultural element or model. This might remind us of the approach of imagology in Comparative Literature (3) or to some extent even, of the ‘horizon of expectation’ (Erwartungshorizont) of Hans Robert Jauss. However, my model is different, as it suggests to trace the mechanisms and forms of socio-cultural interferences at work on the receiving side, in order to establish an objective picture of the structural difference between the receiving and the transmitting socio-cultures. Once this contrastive ‘map’ (with its different subjective self-images and hetero-images) is set up and becomes familiar to the receivers of the transmitted cultural model, the objective prerequisites for a more sane and productive interaction between both cultures – the receiving and the received one – are, I would say, indeed given.(4) This is a general postulation which is of an epistemological nature. And I argue that it would be as valid with regard to immaterial as well as material cultural exchange, as has been shown, for instance, in the case of Pharmacology.(5) If I am to apply this general approach to Arabic vs. World Literature from the perspective of Comparative and General Literature, divergences will not only emerge with regard to René Wellek’s ahistoric “Theory of Literature”(6), but also regarding the good will if not militant endeavours of the recently deceased René Etiemble, to “decolonise” and thus emancipate the concept of World Literature from its sheer Eurocentricité in modern times.(7)

Needless to say that Etiemble’s heroic stance, not only in criticizing the new provinciality of a Western club asserting their canon of “world literary standards” but also in trying to widen their limited scope by stressing the importance of the cultural contribution of non-Western literatures in the framework of the Encyclopedia Universalis (for which he was responsible with respect to the section on World Literatures), deserves our deep appreciation. However, his grand endeavours were marred by his purely philological approach drawing on Mallarmé’s tenet: la litterature n’est que des mots. In this, he did not differ much from René Wellek’s ahistoric maxim: literature is one and all (even though Wellek’s “one and all” is confined to Western literatures or those written in Western languages); the approach is unfortunately the same.

Unlike Wellek who subscribed to exactly the Neo-Kantian apriories – asserted by Carl Friedrich Krause and his school – that were to underpin the main cosmopolitan tenets propagated by Ortega y Gasset in Spain during the early decades of the last century, I suggest an alternative approach based on what I call the relative socio-cultural specificities. To define what I understand by socio-cultural specificity ( I suggest, here, to introduce the English term specificity, a neologism designed to connotate the abstract quality of the French category specificité), I refer to Mohamed Dowidar, especially a passage in his book L’économie politique: une science sociale(8), which I would like to quote extensively:

En ce qui concerne les faits sociaux, le processus social se présente dans l’ensemble des activités des individus et des groupes dans leurs répétitions perpétuelles dans les circonstances données des développements historiques d’une société donnée. Ses activités se répétent d’une manière particulière devenant ainsi une caractéristique de l’étape de développement de la société en question. Cette manière particulière de la répétition des activités sociales leurs donnent une sorte de régularité. Grâce à cette régularité, on peut distinguer des relations qui se répétent sans cesse entre les différentes activités. Ce qui dessine pour chaque société, et même pour chaqune des phases historiques du développement d’une seule société, ses lois objectives de fonctionnement et de développement. Et même quand il s’agit des sociétés différentes connaissant des lois objectives communes (comme celle de la circulation monétaire, par example), le mode de fonctionnement de ces lois peut être différente d’une société à l’autre, une différence qui émane des conditions spécifiques à chaque société : dans le cadre de l’histoire de la société humaine, chaque société a sa propre spécificité historique.

I am well aware, of course, of the similarities among the various socio-cultures that assert themselves, especially today, and that are also revealed by empirical comparative research (though this must not make us oblivious of the differences between them, in terms of systems of values and visions of the world).(9)

That is why I am critical of the all too harmonising theories trying to stress the common in human literatures and cultures by subtly or overtly equating it with the hegemonial Western standards. Mustafa Badawi marginalizes, for instance, the role of the still living legacy (turath)(10)– not only its learned discourses, but also its folk variations – and focuses instead on Western influences and models. (See his work: A Short History of Modern Arabic Literature, Oxford 1993, as well as his articles, among which I want to point out as representative: The Father of the Modern Egyptian Theatre: Ya`qub Sannu`, in: Journal of Arabic Literature, Vol. XVI, 1985, pp.132-145). Similarly, Pierre Cachia, after a discussion of the various forms and ‘shades’ of explicit and implicit religiosity in modern Arabic literature, describes Mahfuz’ mysticism as ‘questing’, even though the questing attitude is a trait of the mystics. Amalgamating it with Western renaissance ideals, he comes to the following conclusion: “Egypt’s modernists – like those of many other climes – [note this insertion ! M.Y.] have Man very much at the center of the universe.” (See his book: An Overview of Modern Arabic Literature, Edinburgh 1990, p. 150.) In the case of Mustafa Badawi, the motivation behind his attempt to minimise if not suppress the role of various ‘shades’ or types of religiosity in the imaginative realms of contemporary Arab writers could be taken to reflect a kind of socio-political defence mechanism against the often discriminating tendency in the West to stigmatise Arabs as “fundamentalists”. In fact, it is necessary to reveal to what extent international financial capital has, in its present predicament (while making use of scientific and technological achievements), a vested interest in veiling the mechanisms of its own conflict of interest with ordinary direct producers worldwide, thus replacing the perception of this conflict by a purposely alleged ‘war of religions’, even though it does not have any religious beliefs itself, except in the form of a dedication to its enormous profits. Therefore, we see it today directing its war efforts against the Arab as well as the entire Islamic region, while trying at the same time to ‘integrate’ it into its globalising commodity-geared hegemonic world order. (See, for instance, its policies as represented by the statutes of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organisation.) By this, it resists scientific rationality according to which its hegemonial claims are not justified.

It is noticeable, though, that the religious traits in recent Arab literary productions were amply discussed in the context of the cultural activities of the Cairo International Book Fair, held in January 2002. This, however, has nothing to do with the image propagated in the Western media under the heading of so-called “religious fundamentalism”, as even an author like Nagib Mahfuz who figured prominently in this context, is deeply imbued with a religious vision of the world, perhaps a certain ‘questing’ one, as Cachia chooses to call it, or an agnostic mysticism, as I would put it.

In contemporary Arabic literature, one encounters a wide range of religiosity, ranging from piety to open denial of religious values. However, the majority can be located in the middle spectrum of the scale. Wasatiyya (moderation) is regarded to be a main characteristic in the Islamic religious realms of Arab writers today. As it were, Arab intellectuals living in the West as well as Western Arabists, who would easily be influenced by them, such as Cachia, often take the shortest route by suggesting that it is most of all a prevalence of modern ‘Western universal values’ that can be noticed in contemporary literary production today. This aprioristic view is, however, asserted without ever researching the objective differences extant, which would show a wide spread of attitudes and world views, reaching from Al-‘Aqqad’s or ‘Abdel-Tawwab Youssef’s religiosity to Sun’alla Ibrahim’s scientifically oriented literary realm. However, I would maintain, and so would Mahfuz probably see it, that what is at stake here is a kind of ‘surpassing’ [‘Aufhebung’, in the Hegelian sense] of the religious system of values, which is thus being ‘lifted up’ to a higher, more rational level. This is an approach that is altogether different from the fabricated dichotomy between the image of modern Western societies, vested with science and technology, and that of the traditional ones, allegedly overwhelmed by ‘fanatic fundamentalism’. This much publicised dichotomy would in fact be a suitable subject for imagological research. Meanwhile, a sound scientific attitude towards reality does not necessarily preclude the existence of a variety of cultural approaches, among them, the contemporary Arab one. Nothing could be more impoverishing for humanity, I guess, than a uniformity of its cultural inventions. This levelling uniformity is de facto, however, a necessary effect of the propagated commodified values of the world market, the various national and international institutions and organisations, their system of ‘reward’ and ‘punishment’ (meted out according to alleged ‘human rights’ categories), and their corresponding ideology that is succinctly summed up in the following tenet: Man is Man everywhere and at every moment in history. According to this ideology, texts can ‘travel’ indiscriminately from one place to another, and from one era to another as well, by means of the vehicle of translation, and this basically without saying anything significantly different (or else, it is claimed, they would not even be translatable!).

This leads us to a methodological discussion of the issue of

The circulating myth of an unchangeable universality of literary production and reception:

If we are to assume that each literary text endeavours to communicate a certain wish or concern via its imaginative realm in a given society, we have to admit that, once emitted, the text undergoes modifications, changes and additions on behalf of the recipient(s) confronting it in one and the same language and country. But how would the text and its reception be affected if it were to travel to other languages and countries? This displacement, if we are to borrow the term from psychoanalysis, might best be illustrated through an extreme lack of ‘proper’ communication as illustrated in the following dialogue between a ‘normal’ person and a ‘schizophrenic’:
“Hey, Conrad, I am Hans. Shouldn’t we go out for a walk together?”
“Ah, Maria, too many people in the sky. Where are my reading shoes? [Then he stops talking for 30 min., after which he resumes:] Tea blue knee like red sea.”
This involvement of the ‘schizophrenic’ in his own world of fantasies illustrates, even though in an extreme way (for the sake of clarity), what literature undergoes in its reception processes. The specific socio-cultural context (in which the recipient is embedded) alters, at times even significantly, the originally emitted literary message. This is, even more so, the case with translations in the socio-cultural sense of the word. As an example, let me refer to the performance of Alfred Farag’s play, Ali Ganah At-Tabrizi wa Tabi`uh Quffah, performed by the Maybach company for almost a year between 1985 and 1986 in Germany (FRG), Austria, and several German-speaking Swiss cantons under the title At-Tabrizi und sein Knecht. The play was a huge success as it provoked laughter on the part of the German-speaking public while presenting one of its main scenes in which the actors appear to be eating the air as if it was a delicious meal.

The play borrowed in fact from three stories of the Arabian Nights, and the scene giving rise to laughter in a ‘German’ context showed a cobbler named Quffa who hoped to have a lovely meal for free at the house of His Excellency, prince Ali Ganah at-Tabrizi. He becomes instead an assistant and valet to the bankrupt prince. Both of them set out on a long journey around the world. When they arrive at a kingdom somewhere, they pretend to be rich merchants awaiting their caravan of luxurious goods in that town. Ali, the exotic prince, soon distributes the whole savings of Quffa among the people of the town. From there on, all the wealthy or at least modestly affluent merchants in town attempt to get in touch with him. The king even offers his daughter as a bride, thus to get hold of the wealth of the caravan. Ali and Quffa, therefore, live in abundance at the king’s palace. However, the caravan never arrives. And on top of it, the king’s wealth soon has vanished, as well, as Ali has distributed it among the ordinary folk and the poor. A kind of oriental Robin Hood! Reluctantly, the previously rich to whom Ali is now indebted, decide to hang him, after having given up their hope of ever seeing his caravan. As Ali is led to the gallows, a stranger with a glamorous turban arrives to announce the arrival of the long awaited caravan. It is none other than Quffa himself, who has disguised himself as a wealthy stranger. And thus Ali is freed and while pretending to make a quick dash in order to be the first to receive his caravan, he takes flight with Quffa, joined by the princess, who is glad to accompany them.

Now, the context in which Farag wrote this play, in 1968, was that of the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli war of June, 1967. His play was a disguised critique in a slave language, as Brecht would say, of the failure of the Arab regimes to fulfil what they kept promising all the time: namely to liberate the Arabs of Palestine from the Israeli colonisation they are suffering from since 1948.

The most exciting scene in the play, that of Quffa eating the air at Ali’s house, symbolized a self-deception implied in his way of giving credence to the empty promises of Ali, and at the same time a tendency to imagine that one’s dreams had been fulfilled. This is the production and reception context of the play in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world, in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967, whereas its reception context in the FRG, Austria, and Switzerland, during the mid-80s of the last century is quite different. The audience’s exhilaration, in response to the scene of Quffa devouring the air, was one of airing a repressed feeling of ‘living’, or ‘being truly alive’, otherwise suppressed in a formally rationalistic society, as Max Weber might have put it(11), or a society reigned by instrumental reason, as Horkheimer would have maintained.(12) Derrida might add to this the virtually of their sense of being alive.

It is clear that we are not dealing here with the case of a society dreaming of abundance, as a certain degree of welfare has been achieved in all three German speaking countries in which Farag’s play was performed.(13)

From the point of view of the native Germans or Swiss citizens of the mid-80s, therefore, devouring the air might also be taken to embody a critique of the promises of the “consumer society” as propagated by greedy business people, bankers and politicians, while the needs of many ordinary people in their own countries are not satisfied and those in the Third World are starving – a reproach comparable to the one formulated by the students protesting against their societies in 1968 in Germany and France. Their protest against a consumption oriented society during the relative economic boom of the late 60s in Central Europe is altogether different, however, from the students’ revolt of the same era in various Arab countries like Egypt and Morocco, directed against a society of deprivation.

This example illustrates, I hope, the fallacy of the claim of so-called literary invariables in all world cultures, as maintained by such a leading comparatist as René Etiemble (in his famous book: Essais de littérature (vraiment) générale, ibid.), or of the strange claim made by Edward Said, when he argues for instance in his book Culture and Imperialism that Beethoven belongs to the Africans as much, as seemingly, he does to the Germans.(14) Such sweeping statements, despite their naively noble intentions, sever the literary and artistic works from their concrete production and reception conditions and thus mystify them.

This very point leads us to the second issue of this intervention, namely, the question dealing with the

Canonization of literature in Arabic as well as World Literature.

Needless to say, we are still encountering that dominating fiction on a worldwide scale, as already stated at the outset of this paper, which identifies World Literature with European literatures, or at least literatures written in European languages. This often subtle understanding has been clearly voiced by Horst Rüdiger, the late German professor of Comparative Literature, in an oft-quoted statement of his:

World literature is not a General Assembly of the UN where the vote of a previous colony, that has been recently given its independence, being itself void of any intellectual or economic resources, would be equal to that of a Super Power, or of a population looking back on a cultural legacy encompassing thousands of years [sic!].(15)
However, it is not only by way of such Eurocentric statements that we are to demonstrate the irrationality of the dominating canon. In an even more subtle way, it is reflected by the ahistoric literary standards implied in the lists of ‘important writers’. Such a list usually starts with Sophocles, Euripides, leading via Dante and Goethe to Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Balzac, Zola, and Brecht, thus to name only a few. It is true that the late René Etiemble added to this list the eminent writers of Africa and Asia who were for a long time excluded from World Literature as they did not write (nor were they published!) in any European language. Or else they were not sufficiently translated into any of these, supposedly decisive languages. However, the canon, even though widened now, to encompass all the literatures of the world, or most of them, is still arbitrary (in the pejorative sense of the word), as long as it abstracts literature from its specific production and reception contexts. This easily leads to a mystification of the literary phenomenon, whereas the recognition of its specific conditions of production and reception (and of its direct or indirect position with regard to either the dominating or dominated aesthetic ideologies) demystifies clearly enough the quality of its contribution and thus helps elucidate the reasons for having recourse to it and receiving it in a variety of different socio-cultural contexts. This is not only valid with regard to politically – and socially – committed literary works; it is also true in the case of apparently apolitical literary productions seen to be void of any social dimension as they ostensibly deal with the satisfaction of specific human needs in a given socio-economic and cultural context, be it by ‘entertaining’ or by ‘distracting’( see, for instance, Bachtin’s studies on the phenomenon of carneval).

The Nobel Prize in Literature and international recognition

It is by now a well-known fact that non-European literatures get access to readers (and viewers!) the world over once awarded such a prize as the Nobel Prize. However, the committee awarding this prize is not merely influenced by literary considerations in its choices. This has been clearly documented in a book commissioned by said committee and entitled: The Nobel Prize in Literature – A Study of the Criteria behind the Choices, by Kjell Espmark, first published in English in 1991 by G.K. Hall & Co., Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Its copyright is in fact held by its author since 1986, as it was first published that same year in Swedish as part of a series celebrating the bicentennial of the Swedish Academy. It is quite clear, however, that the English version of this book, on which the author worked together with an English native speaker, contains substantial additions regarding the Nobel laureates in literature awarded the prize after 1986, among them Nagib Mahfuz (laureate in 1988), who is mentioned on several occasions in the English version of this book.
In 1982, I delivered a paper entitled: Literary and Social Transformations: The Case of Modern European and Arab Literatures, at the Tenth Triennial Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA), held at the time at New York University. My paper, which was published at the very end of the first chapter of the proceedings of said congress by Garland Publishers (New York, N.Y.), was critical of the mystic idealism in the generational novels of both Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks and Nagib Mahfuz’s Trilogy. I concluded, with regard to what I called the dichotomy of human life in Mahfuz’ literary realm, that

In the center of this very realm we find the individual in quest of his salvation – but on his own, instead of looking for the appropriate consciousness and organization of the class he adheres to. He stays in this situation torn between his prosaic instincts and metaphysical aspirations; the first pull him to the Earth and the second to Heaven. Human life appears thereafter reduced to the biological processes and wasted on metaphysics. The individual differences are just the result of the differences in the portion of eternal characteristics a human being is blessed with or not. Therefore justice in this utopia of Nagib Mahfuz is nothing but the possibility to realize these eternal values with regard to a dichotomy of people classified as good and evil. Indeed, this very idealistic value system determines the apparently very realistic, but in fact highly naturalistic, narrative technique in Nagib Mahfuz’ trilogy...(16)

Now let us compare this critical assessment which happened to stand alone in the whole literature on Mahfuz published in European languages so far (until 1985), with the criteria of the committee awarding the Nobel Prize in literature as revealed in the book published by its member, Kjell Espmark, and commissioned by the committee.
We read the following in the first chapter, entitled A Lofty and Sound Idealism ( p. 9):

The Nobel Prize in literature was not primarily a literary prize; the literary prize of a work is weighed against its contribution to humanity’s struggle ‘ towards an ideal’ [put in inverted commas in the original].

The main tenet regarding the criteria underlying the choices involved in awarding said prize stresses (on p. 9 of said book) an

[...]emphasis on ‘idealism of conception’ and of ‘idealism of life’[the inverted commas are again in the original].

Now, I will end my intervention with these two quotations, the first published in 1985, in which I presented my criticism of the mystic idealism of Nagib Mahfuz and Thomas Mann, and the second published a year later (1986) in which the author (Kjell Espmark) asserts the special concern of the Nobel prize committee about supporting this very conservative idealism. There is another question looking for an answer: why did the committee decide at last to choose Mahfuz instead of Adonis, even though the latter was warmly supported by some members from the very outset of the deliberations of the committee, as stated in the English version of the book?(17) Even though the author stated that the committee opted at last for the epic form, the reasons for this decision may well remain partially in the dark. We do not learn for instance whether the committee got hold, in the course of its successive sessions, of the only criticism of Mahfuz’ literary realm published so far in any European language.(18) And if so, was this critical account (although not intended to have this effect) rather ‘useful’ to the committee, as it presented a parallel criticism of Mahfuz and Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, a work for which that author had been awarded the same prize, in 1929?

Whether or not it did or did not have this effect (which is not the real issue here), there is one thing we can be assured of, namely, that the choice of the committee with regard to Nagib Mahfuz did not contradict the criteria which constitute the social policy underlying the prize (as officially stated in the book commissioned by the committee). As it is a well known fact that once an author is awarded this prize, his work gets translated into most of the widely spoken languages (symptomatically called Weltsprachen, universal languages, in German), this means a worldwide propagation of a certain aesthetic ideology. While the committee has been complying with the Nobel Prize criteria, in the case of Mahfuz, the widespread publication this entails helps in turn to reproduce the dominating social relations on a worldwide level by indoctrinating an ideology of mystic idealism which obscures reality, thereby neutralizing any materialization of a real emancipation of mankind from the reigning World Market mechanisms.

Unlike the Global Village ideology of the World Market, my methodological proposition is one of working out the objective differences between the various socio-cultures worldwide on the basis of real equality and openness towards each other. As they are objectively equal to each other while differing with regard to production and reception processes, and especially with respect to their specific reception contexts, this anti-hierarchical approach would not only help curb the leveling and unifying effect of World Market mechanisms, but also enhance today’s intercultural relations by supporting a new trend of positive cultural and literary exchange on a worldwide scale. In the context of such a demystified and unprejudiced cultural exchange, contemporary Arabic literature would be (happily) inserted among the endless varieties of socio-cultural literary inventions of mankind. In order to make this posssible, our world is in need of other international literary prizes and of another UNESCO: of a cultural institution of really democratically united Socio-Cultures worldwide that would be interacting on the basis of an equal enhancement of each of their indigenous contributions to World Literature and culture. Such an institution (or such institutions) should be organized and subsidized by the ordinary populations of the various socio-cultures the world over and run by their democratically elected representatives. I know it is a dream, as it jumps over so many existing obstacles in the reality of our world today, which is reigned by hegemonial interests and by mechanisms of the World Market. And yet, how many dreams of the past became reality today, except for one dream so far, which is that of rendering humanity genuinely humane and rational.(19)

Magdi Youssef President, International Association of Intercultural Studies (IAIS)

Footnotes:

* I am most indebted to my friends and colleagues, professor Mohammed Dowidar of Alexandria University, Egypt, and Andreas Weiland of Aachen University, Germany. Their critical discussions of my text were of great value while I was working to give it its present form.

(1) See the influential works of the main founders of these theories: Herskovits, M.J.: Acculturation: The Study of Culture Contacts, New York 1938; Malinowski, Bronislaw: A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays, Chapel Hill, NC (The University of North Carolina Press) 1944.

(2) See my essay: Preliminary Reflections on the Congress Theme: The Socio-Cultural Interaction Processes Between the Arab World and the West in Modern Times, in: Intercultural Studies, Yearbook of the International Association of Intercultural Studies (IAIS), Bochum 1983, pp.11-47 – [Def.: Socio-Cultural]

(3) Cf. Fischer, Manfred S.: Nationale Images als Gegenstand vergleichender Literaturgeschichte. Untersuchungen zur Entstehung der komparatistischen Imalogologie. Bonn 1981 (253pp.)

(4) See, with regard to this approach, my books (among other publications): Min al-Tadakhul ila al-Tafa’ul al-Hadari, Cairo 2001 (391pp.); Al-Tadakhul al-Hadari wa’l-Istiqlal al-Fikri, Cairo 1993 (199pp.)

(5) Even though this might look far-fetched, at a cursory glance, consideration of pharmacological research in its intercultural context has added a significant dimension to my contrastive socio-cultural model, namely that of “praxis”. Almost parallel, though independently from my first writings outlining my intercultural, interactive model (1983), Mohamed Raouf Hamid, at the time lecturer of pharmacology at al-Fatih University in Libya, found out, along with his research team of undergraduate students that the regular consumption of hot pepper (capsicum) with each meal (a culinary Libyan custom), affects the absorption of medicine. They found out as well that, contrary to the internationally prevailing pharmacological assumptions at the time, this regular hot pepper consumption lessens the likelihood of contracting peptic ulcers. This discovery, springing from an experimental approach based on a presumed validity of socio-cultural specificities, has lead to a considerable modification in general medical theories and pharmacological practice on a worldwide scale. It is noteworthy that said discovery, which was receiving due recognition during international pharmacological conferences from Japan (1981) to Austria (1982) and Switzerland (1983), and was subsequently drawn on by the pharmaceutical industry in many parts of the world, was originally accomplished by Libyan undergraduate students along with their supervisor, Professor M.R. Hamed, based on their sovereign questioning of Western-led norms, by taking into consideration their specific socio-cultural difference and treating it on an equal footing with those experiences from which the previously internationalised norms had sprung. - Cf. Hamed, M.R. / El Zarouk, K. / El-Makhzouni, A. / El-Bishty, W. / Metwally, S.A. / Gundi, M.B. / El-Naas, F.: The Influence of Cepcaicin on Drug Transport Across Biological Membranes, Abstract No. 141, p. 213, Fédération Internationale de Pharmacologie (FIP) abstracts, The 43rd International Congress of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Montreux, 5-9 September 1983.

(6) Formulated together with Austin Warren, and published in 1949

(7) See for instance, his book: Essais de littérature (vraiment) générale, Paris 1974; as well as his opus: Quelques essais de littérature universelle, Paris 1982, that he dedicated to Moenes Taha-Hussein, the son of Taha Hussein (‘Amid al-Adab al-‘Arabi).

(8) Paris 1973

(9) Cf. Leenhardt, Jacques / Josza, Pierre: Lire la lecture. Essai de sociologie de la lecture, Paris 1982

(10) See, contrary to this approach: ‘Ayad, Shukri: Al-Qissa al-Qasira fi Misr: Dirasa fi Ta’sil Naw’ Adabi, Cairo 1997; see also my critical review of Philip C. Sadgrove’s Eurocentric approach in his book The Egyptian Theatre in the Nineteenth Century, 1799-1882, Berkeley (Ithaca Press) 1996, in: Theatre Research International [Oxford University Press], Vol. 24, No. 2, Summer 1999, pp.215-6.

(11) See: ‘Formaler Rationalismus’, in his main opus, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Koeln / Berlin 1964, Vol. 1, p. 65. - What is meant here is that it is necessary to oppose real (non-artificial and non-virtual) rationality to that kind of formal rationalism that dominates most so-called modern Western societies today. ( Cf. Materialer vs. formaler Rationalismus, in: Weber, Max, ibid.)

(12) In his: Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft, 1947

(13) This dream of abundance seems to have constituted another, additional connotation of the scene in question, as of the entire play, in the Near East context.

(14) Introduction, p.XXVIII

(15) “Weltliteratur ist keine Vollversammlung der Vereinigten Nationen, in der die Stimme einer soeben in die Selbstaendigkeit entlassenen frueheren Kolonie, ohne jegliche wirtschaftlichen und geistigen Ressourcen, mit derjenigen einer Grossmacht oder eines Volkes, das auf eine mehrtausendjaehrige Kultur zurueckblicken kann, gleichzusetzen ist.” This revealing passage is included in: Horst Rüdiger, Europaeische Literatur – Weltliteratur. Goethes Konzeption und die Forderungen unserer Epoche, in: Rinner, F. / Zerinschek, K.: Komparatistik. Theoretische Ueberlegungen und Wechselseitigkeit. Heidelberg 1981, p. 39. Indeed because of the clarity of this racist statement, Rüdiger became ‘famous’, as it is often quoted to unveil what other, more subtle racists try to disguise in their discourses!

(16) p. 56 of the proceedings of said ICLA congress

(17) Cf. Skjell Espmark, ibid, p.143

(18) This contribution was also referring to Ibrahim Fathi’s essay, Al-‘Alam ar-Rawai ‘inda Nagib Mahfuz (Mahfuz’ Literary Realm), Cairo, n.d.

(19) I am well aware of the utopian character of this claim, as the present world economy tends towards a containment of the production process in the opposite direction, namely a further alienation of direct producers from their concrete and specific socio-cultural contexts, through a dismemberment of the production of commodities for the World Market, so that in each of the countries a part of the product gets manufactured and then the whole is assembled in a different country. However, what constitutes the real crisis of the world today is that, through the computerisation of the production process, most of the direct producers become not only redundant on the labour market, but also, once and for all, (totally) excluded from the production process. What ensues is that, given the progressive shortening of their social security schemes in the Western countries themselves, they become more and more unable to purchase the commodities offered by the market. In this lies the core of the present economic crisis on a worldwide level, a dilemma from which the financial capital, especially in the USA, tries to find an escape route by focusing on the militarization of the world, and the creation and support of conflicts worldwide, especially by means of replacing the real social relations through ideological and religious allegations, as represented in the theory of a Clash of Civilisations. All this leads to an ever increasing demand for arms on the World Market, and thus, to a monumental enhancement of this sector of production and a sophistication of its destructive techniques. In this respect, Mohamed Dowidar is right when maintaining that at present, world financial capital is trying to impose its hegemonial domination over the globe by having recourse to scientific and technological achievements while hunting after religious clashes, even though said capital has no real regard for any religious values that are the product of human wisdom throughout the course of history. The supposed (and in fact instigated) religious conflicts are veiling the real conflict, which is a conflict between the ordinary direct producers and the maximization of profits on the World Market; whereas scientific rationality goes against a perpetuation of a further hegemony of financial capital over the world’s populations. Needless to say that without accounting for this background, a precise recognition of the factor’s behind the mechanisms of marginalisation of so-called Third World literatures and cultures, including contemporary Arabic literature, won’t be lucid enough, especially in its precarious relation to the – so far – Western oriented ‘World literary canon’. (See in this regard my essay: Towards a Real Decentralization of the Literary Canon: The Arab Contribution, in: Horwath, Peter et al. (eds.), Humanism and the Good Life, Proceedings of the Fifteenth Congress of the World Federation of Humanists, New York (Peter Land) 1998, pp.381-9)

Source: http://www.arabworldbooks.com/Literature/youssef.htm

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The "Absurd" in Naguib Mahfouz's plays

By Mustafa Riad

In the late sixties and early seventies, Naguib Mahfouz tried his hand at a number of one-act plays that were widely regarded as experiments in the tradition of the absurd. Mahfouz, who wrote his major novels in the realistic tradition, seems to have undergone a turning point in his career by the late fifties. Awlad Haritna (1959) was a far cry from his realistic masterpieces that had preceded it: Bayn El Qasrain (1956), Qasr El Shouq (1957), and Al-Sukariya (1957). This controversial novel, cast in an allegorical form, was followed by works still swerving from the technical ideals of realism in the more concentrated form of the short story in his collection: Donya Allah (1963), Bayt Sayi’ Alsum’a (1965), Taht Al-Mazala (1969), Khamarat Al-Qot Al-Aswad (1969) and in his politically disguised novels: Al-Shahaz (1965), Al-Lis wa Al-Kilab (1961), Tharthara fawq Al-Nil (1966).


A more audacious step was Mahfouz’s adaptation of the tradition of the absurd in a number of one-act plays published side by side with his short stories in Taht Al-Mazala and Al-Garima (1973).1


Taht Al-Mazala opens with the title short story that sets the key to the other short stories and plays of the collection. While a number of pople stand silently in the shade of a bus stop, some waiting for the bus, others sheltering from the rain, they witness a series of outrageous events that take place right before their eyes: chasing and beating up a thief who turns later to be a talented orator and an agile dancer who wins the admiration of his pursuers, a fatal car accident, a couple over the body of the dead man who minutes earlier crawled out of the broken car. A policeman is watching the scene but does not interfere in any way and is heedless of the demands of the people that he act.

A tomb is then quickly erected to inter the bodies of the car casualties as well as those of the lovers. A judge appears on top of the tomb and reads out some rulings while men and women dance around the tomb. A murder is committed and the severed head of a man rolls down the street. The bystanders appeal to the policeman again who finally addresses the audience of these terrible events, holds them responsible for the murder and proceeds to shoot them all.

Fatma Moussa asserts the key position of “Taht Al-Mazala” in the collection and looks upon it as a guide to the understanding of the one-act plays. According to Moussa2, the short story evokes a strange, irrational world vision/universe dominated by violence and misunderstanding (29).

Al-‘Alem also sheds light on the power of this short story to present the human predicament focusing on the role of the passive policeman who only acts when the equally passive bystanders get involved with the crime they witnessed. Ironically, he turns against them and destroys them all (20). Such an irrational scene involves the reader himself who shares “the bystanders’ consternation and amazement at the developing events … their apathy and non-involvement, which leads ultimately to their common destruction” (Mikhail 84).

Absurdist elements may be traced in the prevalent mood, plot and character of “Taht Al-Mazala”. Firstly, it presents a world that lacks “central explanation and meaning” (Esslin 389), where the tableau presented by Mahfouz reaches a climactic point that brings together the conflicting threads of action and emphasizes the senselessness of the scene:
(11) æÇÔÊÏ ßá ÔÆ æÈáÛ ÛÇíÊå. ÇáÞÊá æÇáÑÞÕ æÇáÍÈ æÇáãæÊ æÇáÑÚÏ æÇáãØÑ


All actions intensified and reached a climax. Murder, dance, love, death, thunder and rain]3.
Secondly, this senseless world gives rise to the two contradictory facets, positive and negative, whose description can be traced in Esslin’s analysis of the absurd milieu in drama: “on the one hand there is the feeling of deadness and mechanical senselessness of half unconscious lives” (390) that is the target of satire. On the other hand, the tradition of the absurd is concerned with “the ultimate realities of the human condition, the relatively few fundamental problems of life and death, isolation and communication …


[in such a way as to make] its audience aware of man’s precarious and mysterious position in the universe” (392). This is made possible by focusing on the position of universal man deprived of any certainties (391). The action of “Taht Al-Mazala”, accordingly, is limited neither by a particular time nor place. The participants in action as well as non-action face up to the aforementioned issues in their precarious world.

However, an Egyptian local trait intrudes on the setting of this universal tableau: the presence of a policeman, first watching passively then engaging in the scene in quite an unpredictable manner, introduces a common scourge in authoritarian police-run states. Mahfouz presents the figure of a policeman, who is not only a law-enforcing official but also a figure vested with almost absolute authority. The Bystanders are cruelly and senselessly murdered by the policeman who stands aloof from the crowd watching the chaotic scene without intervening, then directing his suspicions at the bystanders:

ãÖì íÊÍÞÞ ãä ÔÎÕíÇÊåã æåæ íÈÊÓã ÇÈÊÓÇãÉ ÓÇÎÑÉ ÞÇÓíÉ Ëã ÓÃáåã
- ãÇÐÇ æÑÇÁ ÇÌÊãÇÚßã åäÇ ¿
ÊÈÇÏáæÇ äÙÑÇÊ ÅäßÇÑ æÞÇá ÃÍÏåã:
- áÇ íÚÑÝ ÃÍÏäÇ ÇáÂÎÑ
- ßÐÈÉ áã ÊÚÏ ÊÌÏì
ÊÑÇÌÚ ÎØæÊíä … ÓÏÏ äÍæåã ÇáÈäÏÞíÉ. ÃØáÞ ÇáäÇÑ ÈÓÑÚÉ æÅÍßÇã. ÊÓÇÞØæÇ æÇÍÏÇð Ýì ÅËÑ ÇáÂÎÑ ÌËËÇð åÇãÏÉ (16) .

He proceeded to check their identities with a cruel sarcastic smile. Then he asked ,
- What is the purpose of this gathering ?
The bystanders looked at each other in an attempt to deny a charge. One of them spoke,
- We do not know each other.
- A useless lie.
The policeman took two steps to the back, aimed his rifle and shot them quickly and efficiently. They fell lifeless one after the other].
The plays that follow the title story vary in their share of realistic and non-realistic elements as well as their presentation of ultimate universal realities and local colour. However, they are, according to Rasheed El-Enany, “a substantial departure from [Mahfouz’s] habitual way of recreating external reality in his work up to that time” (201). Even when setting and characterization promise a realistic handling, there emerge certain surreal and expressionistic techniques in some of these plays such as “Al-Tarika”) and “Yumeet wa Yuhyi”.

The stage in “Yumeet wa Yuhyi” seems to be expressionistically divided between life and death as it is divided into two areas:

ÇáãÓÑÍ ãäÞÓã Åáì ÞÓãíä. ÞÓã ÃãÇãì æåæ ÍæÇáì ËáËì ÇáãÓÇÍÉ æåæ ãÖÇÁ æÇÖÍ ÇáãÚÇáã. Ýì æÓØå äÎáÉ ãÛÑæÓÉ¡ æÝì ÌÇäÈ ãäå ÓÇÞíÉ ÕÇãÊÉ. ÇáÞÓã ÇáÎáÝì ãÑÊÝÚ ÏÑÌÇÊ Úáì åíÆÜÜÉ ãÕØÈÉ¡ ÊÛÔÇå ÇáÙáãÉ¡ æÊáæÍ Èå ÃÔÈÇÍ ÑÇÞÏÉ¡ äíÇã Ãæ ãæÊì. (131).

The stage is divided into two areas: the front area which takes up nearly two thirds of the total space is brightly lit and clearly visible; in the centre of it stands a palm tree, and on one side we see a silent waterwheel. The back area which lies in the shadow is occupied by two steps resembling the Pharaonic mustabas; there we dimly detect the silhouettes of recumbent figures suggesting sleep or death (Seleiha 123)

Ironically, the action of the play torn between the elemental forces of life and death, does not present a simple conflict. The action apparently revolves around a young man (unnamed as all other characters in Mahfouz’s experimental drama are) who reels under the blows of an unseen mocking enemy. He is supported and comforted by an unnamed woman and then confers with three nameless characters: a doctor, a giant and a beggar. The Doctor finds out that the Man is victim of the plague that spreads throughout the country. The Man is shown to have all the symptoms: uncertainty, beating about the bush, indecision, fanaticism, inability to face truth, exaggeration and a feeling of helplessness.

The Man next meets the Giant who manipulates him in order to coerce him into accepting an alliance with him. It is an alliance that allows the Giant full domination over the young man and his homeland. The Giant’s proposition is rejected; however, the young man’s helplessness mounts as his attempt to communicate with the ancestors fail. The Blind Beggar’s encounter with the young Man discloses another facet of a corrupt world. The institution from which the Blind Beggar escaped is run by a dictator; the beggar describes him as,

ßÇä ÚÇÏáÇð æÃãíäÇð æÑÍíãÇð æáßäå ãÛÑã ÈÇáäÙÇã áÏÑÌÉ ÇáåæÓ¡ æíØÈÞå ÈÏÞÉ ÝáßíÉ¡ æáÇ íÞÈá ãÑÇÌÚÉ (165).

He was honest, fair and kind, but he was also too damned fond of discipline. Almost an obsession with him. And he enforced it with astronomical precision and no questions asked. (Seliha171)].
The Blind Beggar, therefore, runs away for revolting, according to him,"ÎíÑ ãä Ãä Êßæä ÍÌÑÇ" (165)
[is better than being a stone (Seliha 172)], and freedom "ÃÝÖá ãä ÇáÃãä äÝÓå" (164).[is better than security itself. (Seliha 170)].

The woman claims to have the ability to offer the young man the only real solution to his problems,
"áíÊß ÊÞäÚ ÈÕÏÑì ãáÇÐÇð áß ãä ãÊÇÚÈ ÇáÏäíÇ" (133) .
[take refuge in my bosom from the troubles of the world and be content (Seliha 136)].
On the other hand, the young man seems to be in the middle of a fight which he intends to pursue to the end while invoking his ancestors, lying dead in the background and drawing up ideals of dignity, courage and pride. He brushes aside the love offered by the woman and prepares for another round of fighting.

The aftermath of the June 1967 war might have misled the critics who commented on this play. Al-‘Alem, for instance, extols the heroism of the young man who refuses to compromise and is determined to make war and breathes life into the dead who rise to stand by him in a decisive battle (23).

Similarly, Al-‘Ashry offers a simplistic interpretation in which the young man has nostalgia for heroism, sacrifice and laying down his life for the sake of his country; whereas the woman has nostalgia for love, fertility and reproduction (20). The plot yields easily to this interpretation and all the other characters may be allegorically explained thus offsetting the character of both the young man and the woman. To quote Nehad Seliha,

The Giant is a transparent symbol of the USA, or simply, the Western Powers; the aggressive mocker in the wings is an embarrassingly obvious theatrical objectification of Israel, the 'Plague' is a metaphor in the tradition of Camus' La Peste of Nasser's dictatorship, with Nasser himself as the ironically doubtful benevolent dictator. (13)

However, the transparency of these characters does not necessarily offset the characters of the man and the woman. Actually, these two characters are far from heroic. The woman does not feature as the traditional female figure who inspires the hero with courage and audacity. Instead, she opens the play, amidst the din of battle, with lines that call for peace not war,

ÇáÝÊÇÉ: íÇ ÑÈ ÇáÓãÇæÇÊ .. ãÊì ÊÎÊÝì åÐå ÇáÃÕæÇÊ ãä ÇáæÌæÏ .. ãÊì ÊÔÑÞ ÔãÓß Úáì ÃÑÖ äÇÚãÉ ÇáÈÇá¡ ÞÑíÑÉ ÇáÚíä ¿ (131)

[God in heaven ! Will these sounds never be still ! Will your sun never shine on a tranquil contented earth ! (Seliha 133)]. On the other hand, doubts are cast on the integrity and efficiency of the man; he is a jester and a braggart who provokes his enemy without taking proper precautions,


ÇáÝÊÇÉ: áÞÏ ÃÔÚáÊ ÛÖÈå ÈãÒÇÍß.
ÇáÝÊì: ÇáãÒÇÍ ãä ÂÏÇÈ ÍíÇÊäÇ ÝßíÝ íßæä ÌÒÇÆì ÖÑÈÇð ÃáíãÇð ãæÌÚÇð !
ÇáÝÊÇÉ: ØÇáãÇ ÍÐÑÊß ãä ÇáãÛÇáÇÉ Ýíå.
ÇáÝÊì: æáãÇ ÃÑÏÊ ÇáÏÝÇÚ Úä äÝÓì ÎÐáÊäì íÏÇì. (135)

[Woman: It was you who kindled his anger with your jest.
Man: I thought jesting was an acceptable aspect of human dealings. Why should I be savagely beaten for it then ?
Woman: I often warned you not to overdo it.
Man: When I asked to defend myself, my hands failed me (Seliha 135)].

The woman has insight into his character and she can see that nothing other than his wounded pride motivates him.

These first impressions cleverly inserted by Mahfouz gain in strength as the man meets the doctor, the giant and the beggar. Through these characters he learns about the corrupt system of which he himself, a braggart jester, forms part. Still, he ignores the current problems that call for his attention; rather, he takes refuge in his pride in a glorious past and falls back on the support of the dead lying in the shadows behind him. It is ironic that his address to the dead is always echoed back to him denying him any satisfactory answer (136-137).

The play ends in a tableau that features a march of the dead walking like zombies led by the man in the direction of the enemy. Doubtful of the wisdom of such action, the young woman listens sadly one more time to the din of war and looks far away (167).

It is interesting to note that such an anti-heroic interpretation is supported by insights into the characters of the Man and the Woman. Fatma Moussa volunteers an observation that confers upon the action of the play a meaning that makes it rise above a limited local milieu. Moussa observes that "the man and the woman play their age-old roles: the woman is after love while the man is after ancestral glory, dignity, liberty and adventure" (29). This interpretation coincides with Saad Abdelaziz's observations on the setting, The lonely palm refers to the character of the Man who stands alone and indifferent to any outside influence which may budge him from his position.

He is entrapped by qualms that dominate his senses and thoughts … His world only contains a silent waterwheel that stopped bringing in water and the mastabas where he takes refuge in his crisis. These mastabas represent the power that pushes him into regression and alienation … On the other hand, he pays no attention to the girl that pulsates with love and beauty (101).

Thus, an inefficient victim of the plague leads the shadows of the past in a doubtful attempt that fails to take into consideration the problems of the present. The march of the young Man and the dead follows as the young Man learns nothing at all from his encounters but remains isolated from the challenges of the real world around him. His brave march against his enemy, therefore, does not seem to be the final solution to this conflict.

“Al-Tarika” and “Al-Nagaa” are two other one act plays in Taht Al- Mazala that share in the creation of the sense of doom and evoke in varying degrees the atmosphere of certain absurd plays where characters are tied down both literally and metaphorically while cut off from a threatening outside world.

The settings of both plays, however, are dramatically opposed. The action of “Al-Tarika” takes place in an ancient house. It is the house of a holy man who dies on the day his prodigal son responds to his call to come back home and brings along his to pass her off as his wife. The action of “Al-Nagaa”, on the other hand, takes place in the living room of a modern apartment where a single gentleman receives a surprise visit from a woman who flees an unknown danger and rushes uninvited into his apartment.

A claustrophobic atmosphere created on the stage in both plays (cf. Samuel Beckett’s Endgame), failure (the legacy is stolen, the fugitive woman commits ) together with a sense of mystery surrounding the outside world are common factors in both plays. In “Al-Tarika”, the prodigal son and his return home. Beyond the alleys, there is only “the open” where, the audience is told, the Old Man used to pray and eventually met his death. (181).

The legacy of the Old Man is presented by his servant: a pile of books and stacks of banknotes together with the Sheikh’s condition,

ÇáÛáÇã: Åäøóå íæÕíß ÈÃáÇ ÊäÝÞ ãäåÇ ãáíãÇð æÇÍÏÇð ÞÈá Ãä ÊÓÊæÚÈ ãÇ Ýì åÐå ÇáßÊÈ (179)

[He urges you not to spend a penny of [the money] before you fully absorb the contents of those books (Seliha 35)].

The couple carelessly ignore the Sheikh’s will, trample the books and help themselves to the money. As they dream of a carefree life they are surprised by the appearance of a “detective” who, under the threat of arresting the Man on the charge of murdering his father, the Old Man, swindles them of some of the money and robs them of the whole sum when the Man offers resistance. Both Man and Woman are left in the dark, tied to their chair. Rescue takes the form of the arrival of an officer accompanied by an architect for the purpose of examining the house which the Architect intends to buy, pull down and build a factory in its place. The Architect, however, is recognized by the Man and Woman as the Detective who swindled them of their money.

In “Al-Nagaa”, the cosy atmosphere of a living room in a modern apartment with the main character, another unidentified Man, clashes with the external threatening world and consequently renders the setting claustrophobic. We never know the nature of the crime the unidentified woman, who took refuge in the Man’s house, committed. We never learn the nature of the political activities of the man nor do we understand his worry about compromising evidence in his possession (221). Feelings of fear and guilt mount in both the Man and Woman as a police cordon surrounds the building. The predicament is echoed in the Woman’s words,

ÇáãÑÃÉ: áÇ ÃåãíÉ ááÊÝÇÕíá¡ ÍÓÈß Ãä ÊÚÑÝ ÃääÇ ãØÇÑÏæä¡ æÃä ãä ÍæáäÇ æÝæÞäÇ æÊÍÊäÇ ÃÚÏÇÁ ãÕããæä. (231-232).

[Details are not important. It’s enough to know that we are hunted, and that on every side, overhead and underneath, we are surrounded by implacable enemies (Seliha 91)].

However, both feel the attachment of a common bond cemented by crime, a fight followed by sex, and an attempt to while away the time. As the police forces get ready to storm the building, the woman, unnoticed by the Man, commits . The play ends on a violent note as the police forces rush into the man’ s apartment to engage in a fight with an unidentified, unlocated enemy. The Man flees the apartment carrying the dead Woman, believing they are both safe.

Themes of guilt and condemnation run into two more plays by Mahfouz, “Al-Muhema” and “Al-Mutarada”. In both plays the sense of time plays an important role.

The action of “Al-Muhema” is a bare desert rocky spot. The setting does not bear any local colour, nor does the plot which tells the story of a Young Man who is closely pursued by a middle-aged Man all day long and ends up with him in that desert area. The fact that certain localities, where the two characters cross paths, are identified (Midan El Qal’a, The Egyptian Museum), does not give local colour to the action of the play which consists in a conflict of wills between both characters. The Young Man objects strongly to this senseless pursuit that takes its extreme form when the Man openly plays the role of a in the Young Man’s date with his girl friend. The Man shamelessly admits his practice and pleads his good intention. It is only when the Young Man, deserted by his girlfriend, feels a shooting pain in his knee that resulted from a fall earlier in the day and is incapable of walking, that the Man refuses to help him and leaves him as the night sets in.

The character of that mysterious Man does not lend itself to realistic interpretation. He seems rather to be an objectification of the wasteful life the Young Man is leading. To quote the Man,

ÇáÑÌá: áÇ ÎÈÑÉ áì ÈÔÆ. ÃÚÑÝ ßíÝ ÃÓíÑ Úáì ÛíÑ åÏì¡ æÃÚÑÝ ßíÝ ÃÓíÑ Ýì ÃÚÞÇÈ ÅäÓÇä ÃÍãÞ¡ æÃÚÑÝ ßíÝ Âãá ÏæãÇð Ýì ÚáÇÞÉ áÇ ÊÊÍÞÞ ÃÈÏÇð (312).

[I know nothing. I only know how to walk aimlessly. I know how to follow a stupid bloke. I know how to always hope for a relationship that never materializes].

His pursuit coincides with the Young Man’s destinations throughout the day. Both are apparently wandering in an aimless manner. In their last destination, however, the Young Man meets his beloved while the Man is watching the sunset, a premonition of the imminent downfall of the Young Man. This downfall is effected in the play’s finale cast in the scene of a morality. The stage becomes set for the final scene:


ÇáÔÇÈ íäÙÑ ÝíãÇ Íæáå ÈÎæÝ, ÇáÙáÇã íåÈØ ÑæíÏÇð ÍÊì íÎÊÝì ßá ÔÆ¡ ÊãÑ ÝÊÑÉ ÞÕíÑÉ Úáì Êáß ÇáÍÇá¡ Ëã ÊÊÑÇãì ÃÖæÇÁ ãä æÑÇÁ ÇáåÖÈÉ. æíÓãÚ æÞÚ ÃÞÏÇã ÞÇÏãÉ ãä íãíä ÇáåÖÈÉ æãä íÓÇÑåÇ íÌÆ ÑÌáÇä ÍÇãáíä ãÔÚáíä¡ íÑÊÏì ßá ãäåãÇ ÓÑæÇáÇð æÕÏÇÑÇð ÃÍãÑíä. íÞÝÇä Úáì ãÈÚÏÉ ãä ÇáÔÇÈ Åáì Çáíãíä æÅáì ÇáíÓÇÑ æíáÇÒãÇä ÇáÕãÊ ØæÇá ÇáæÞÊ. … Ëã íÊÈÚåãÇ ÑÌáÇä Ýì ÃÑÏíÉ ÓæÏÇÁ íÍãá ßá ãäåãÇ ÓæØÇð æÍÈáÇð ãÚÞæÏÇð. íÞÝÇä Úä íãíä ÇáÔÇÈ æíÓÇÑå åãÇ íÍãáÞÇä Ýì æÌåå¡ íæËÞÜÜÜÇä íÏíÜÜå æÞÏãíÜÜå ÈÅÍßÇã Ëã íÚæÏÇä Åáì æÞÝÊåãÇ ããÚäíä Ýíå ÇáäÙÑ(313-314)

[The Young Man looks around in fear. Darkness slowly descends and envelops everything. After a short while lights are seen coming from beyond the plateau. Footsteps are heard to the right and to the left of the plateau. Two men holding torches, and dressed in red vests and trousers come on stage. They stand to the right and left of the Young Man at a distance and remain silent throughout.

They are followed by two men in black clothes each carrying a whip and a knotted rope. They stand to the right and left of the Young Man staring at him. They tie up his hands and feet tightly and return to their former position staring at him].

The two Men in Black set up a trial for the Young Man, find him guilty of wasting his life senselessly and sentence him to death. The two men/angels – modelled on Nakir and Nakir, in the Islamic tradition, question the Man and demand a record of his past life. Failing to satisfy their answers, he is taken away and is apparently doomed to damnation.

Despite the moral tone, the play possesses in hindsight echoes of the absurd. The Young Man, found guilty, is tried on insubstantial accusations from a strictly legal point of view. His accusers put his wasteful absurd existence on trial and inflict a harsh punishment on him. It is the Man who earlier drew attention to such a situation,
ÇáÑÌá: ÚÌíÈ Ãä äÑÊßÈ ÌÑíãÉ æáÇ äÏÑì. (291)
[It’s amazing that one commits a crime without knowing it].
The feelings of fear, guilt and imminent punishment are further magnified in Mahfouz’s last play inspired by the tradition of the absurd. In “Al-Mutarada”, two characters: The White and the Red – names based on the colour of their shirts – appear in a series of six scenes playing different roles that span the different stages in their development: childhood, early youth, manhood and old age.

The two characters are poles apart. The Red is given to emotional outbursts while the White is given to careful thought and contemplation. This duality recalls Beckett’s Estragon and Vladimir in Waiting for Godot. Judith Rosenhouse associates the Red with “the physical aspect of life including anything associated with the fight for survival and man’s natural and voluptuous lusts,” and the White with “man’s purer side, which is usually also weaker, more passive and refined” (106).

Contrary to Waiting for Godot, however, the Red and the White, unlike Estragon and Vladimir, flee from, rather than wait for, a mysterious character who chases them throughout the scenes of the play. Although the Man in Black does not take part in the action of the play, he features in the background marching and cracking his whip. He may represent authority or the dominant cultural and political restrictions on life. The Red and White fear his presence as children in the playground, and as adults at work and even at home. Rosenhouse sees in him the figure of Death:

His external appearance does not change in time (in contrast with the Red and the White), but his vigour (speed of pacing) certainly increases. He seems to be a driving force throughout the play – he impels people to hide from him, to disguise themselves so that he will not recognize them … The Red is annoyed by him and challenges him, the White tries to ignore him in youth but later on tries to think out his role in life. All these effects, in addition to the symbolic colour of his clothes add up to present the figure of Death in a modern way. (107)

Notwithstanding the real nature of the Man in Black, it is his continuous presence in the life of both the Red and the White that weighs heavily on their lives in all its stages. They feel watched and threatened. The play ends with the final defeat of the Red and the White whose legs will not support them. They fall and crawl on all fours to the exit until they disappear completely. The Man in Black slows down his pace, resumes his march in steady steps watching the dancing of a bride that both Red and White had earlier married in an attempt on their part at rejuvenation (54).

A graduate of the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, Mahfouz is familiar with existentialist concepts that provide the starting point for the theatre of the absurd. In an interview with Mohamed Barakat, Mahfouz reveals his admiration for Becket and Ionesco among other European and American writers (209).

Mahfouz’s plays, discussed above, display in varying degrees the sense of absurdity defined by Albert Camus. For according to Camus:
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost hope or the hope of a promised land. The divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting is properly the feeling of absurdity. (18)

Mahfouz comes closer to this definition when he investigates the predicament of disillusioned man in such a setting. To quote Mahfouz,

ÃãÇ Ííä ÊÊÍæá ÇáÍíÇÉ Åáì ãÔßáÉ¡ áÇ íÕÈÍ ÇáÅäÓÇä ÔÎÕÇð ãÚíäÇð¡ Èá ãÌÑÏ ÅäÓÇä áíÓ åæ ÔÎÕ ÈÇáÐÇÊ íÊãíÒ Úä ÓÇÆÑ ÇáäÇÓ ÈÊÝÇÕíáå ÇáÎÇÕÜÜÉ æÐÇÊíÊå¡ æáåÐÇ ÊÎÊÝì ÇáÊÝÇÕíá æíÎÊÝì ÇáÓÑÏ (22) .

[When life becomes a problem and man ceases to be an individual and turns to be a figure devoid of personal traits and identity, then the details and narration disappear].
The world of Mahfouz’s plays is accurately described by Nehad Seliha who looks upon it as a world that “cannot be explained realistically and rationally by either good or bad reasons; it raises questions which are never answered, expectations which are never fulfilled, leaving us in the end with characters who are only identifiable by their anguish, despair and utter perplexity” (21).

Mahfouz’s protagonists, however, stand at varying distances from this world of absurdity described by Camus. In “Yumeet wa Yuhyi”, “Al-Tarika”, “Al-Nagaa”, the respective roles of soldier, pimp and political activist, interact with a thinly-disguised world of absurdity. Local colour underlie the absurdity in tacit criticism of the intellectual, political and social conditions after the June 1967 defeat. The protagonists in “Al-Muhema” and “Al-Mutarada” come closer to the universal figure of the absurd hero. Traces of local colour disappear and the characters stand alone
in a world devoid of meaning. The finale of “Al-Muhema”, however, is inconsistent with the absurdity of the main action as it imposes a moral framework whereby the Young Man is punished on moral grounds.
Though Mahfouz introduces certain features of existentialist philosophy and the theatre of the absurd in his plays, his achievement is far from being purely universal as it is closely linked with a historical moment: the June 1967 defeat. In an interview with Fouad Dawara, Mahfouz gives an account of the effect of that severe shock on him,
ãÑøóÊ Èì ÍÇáÇÊ ÝÞÏÊ ÝíåÇ ÊæÇÒäì ÝßÊÈÊ ÃÚãÇáÇð ÙÇåÑåÇ ÇáÚÈË¡ æáßä ÍÑÕì Úáì ÇáÇäÊãÇÁ ÃÝÓÏ ÚÈËíÊåÇ… æíÈÏæ Ãääì áã ÇÓÊÓáã ááÚÈË Èá ÕæøÑÊå æßáì ÑÛÈÉ Ýì ÊÌÇæÒå (240).
[I passed through certain circumstances when I lost my balance. I wrote a number of works that were apparently absurdist. However, my commitment to a sense of belonging ruined their absurdity. It seems that I have not completely surrendered to the absurd; I rather presented it while fully desirous of going beyond it].

He gives a fuller statement on the impact of the defeat which he equated

with absurdity to Ragaa El-Naqash in an interview in 1998,

ÚäÏãÇ ÙåÑ ÊíÇÑ ÇááÇãÚÞæá Ýì ÇáÃÏÈ ÇáÃæÑæÈì æÇÒÏåÑ Ýì ÝÊÑÉ ÇáÓÊíäÇÊ ÌÐÈäì¡ æÃÚÌÈÊäì ÇáÃÚãÇá ÇáÊì ÚÈÑÊ Úäå¡ ÎÇÕÉ ßÊÇÈÇÊ íæäÓßæ æÓÇÑÊÑ æÃáÈíÑ ßÇãì. ßÇä ÓÈÈ ÅÚÌÇÈì ÈåÐÇ ÇáÊíÇÑ åÜÜæ ÇäØÈÇÞ ÇáÔÜßá Úáì ÇáãÖãæä¡ ÝÇáÔßá ÇáÑæÇÆì íÏÎá Ýì ÅØÇÑ ÇááÇãÚÞæá ÃæÇáÚÈËì æßÐáß ÇáãÖãæä. æÚäÏãÇ ÞÑÃÊ ãÓÑÍíÉ "äåÇíÉ ÇááÚÈÉ" áÕãæíá ÈíßÊ¡ ßÊÈÊ Ýì ÌÑíÏÉ "ÇáãÓÇÁ" ãÞÇáÉ äÞÏíÉ ÃÔÑÍ ÝíåÇ ãÇ íÞÕÏå¡ æÃÝÓÑ ÇáãÓÊÛáÞ ãäåÇ . . . æÃäÇ áã ÃÍÇæá ÇáßÊÇÈÉ Ýì åÐÇ ÇáÇÊÌÇå¡ áÃäì áÇ ÃÍÈ ÇáßÊÇÈÉ áãÌÑÏ ÇáÊÞáíÏ. Ëã ÌÇÁÊ åÒíãÉ 5 íæäíæ 1967¡ ÝÔÚÑÊ Ãääì ÝÞÏÊ ÇÊÒÇäì¡ æÃä ÇáÔßá ÇáæÇÞÚì ÇáÈÓíØ áÇ íÕáÍ ááÊÚÈíÑ Úä åÐå ÇáÍÇáÉ¡ ÇáÊì ßÇäÊ Ýì ÑÃíì ÃÞÑÈ Åáì ÇáÚÈË. æÝì ÇáÝÊÑÉ ãä 1967 Åáì 1970 æÌÏÊ äÝÓì ãÏÝæÚÇð áÊíÇÑ ÇááÇãÚÞæá¡ áÃääì æÌÏÊå ÃßËÑ ÊÚÈíÑÇð Úä ÇáÍÇáÉ ÇáÊì ßäÇ äÚíÔåÇ. (336)

[I was attracted to the trend of the absurd when it first made its appearance in European literature and flourished in the sixties. I admired the works of Ionesco, Sartre and Albert Camus. The reason for my admiration was that form and content coincided. The narrative form is as absurd as the content. When I read Samuel Beckett’s Endgame I wrote a review in Al-Misaa newspaper to explain the aim of the playwright and interpret the difficulties of the play. … [However] I did not adopt this trend because I do not write imitations. Then there was the June 1967 defeat and I felt that I lost my balance and the simple realistic form was not fit to give voice to this condition which, to me, was very close to the absurd. From 1967 to 1970 I felt overwhelmed with the trend of the absurd as I found in it the best expression of the condition we lived through].
Drawing inspiration from the theatre of the absurd while remaining deeply

rooted in his environment, Mahfouz is seen to be true to his general view of modern Arabic literature


ãÇ ãä ÊíÇÑ ÃÏÈì æõÌøöÏó åõäÇ - Ýì ÇáãÓÑÍ Ãæ ÇáÑæÇíÉ Ãæ ÇáÞÕÉ ÇáÞÕíÑÉ – ãä ÃíÇã ÚíÓì Èä åÔÇã æÇáÏßÊæÑ åíßá ÅáÇ æßÇä Úáì ÕáÉ ÈÊíÇÑ ããÇËá Ýì ÇáÎÇÑÌ. æáßä ÇáÊÃËÑ ÈÇáÎÇÑÌ áÇ íãäÚ ÇáÃÕÇáÉ¡ ØÇáãÇ æõÌÏÊ Ýì ÇáÈíÆÉ ÇáãÍáíÉ ãÇ íÏÚæß Åáì ÇÓÊÒÑÇÚ åÐå ÇáÔßá Ãæ ÐÇß (ÏæÇÑÉ 239-240).

[There is not a single literary trend that made its appearance in the our theatre, novel or short story from the time of Eissa Ibn Hisham and Dr. Heikal but was related to a literary trend abroad. However, foreign influence did not hinder originality as long as the local environment provided the need to adopt these trends].
Naguib Mahfouz turned his back on realistic techniques and has experimented with various technical methods since the late fifties and early sixties.

Mahfouz’s understanding of the relationship between modern Arabic literature and European literary and critical trends, his awareness of developments in the field of European literature, together with his philosophic studies turned him into a pioneer who broke new grounds in Arabic literature. His employment of certain traits of the theatre of the absurd was well-adapted to his one-act plays which recreated the conditions Egypt went though in the sixties particularly after the June 1967 defeat.

His statements in these plays may be clouded with the mystification of novel techniques, some of which are drawn from other sources as widely diverse as expressionism and the morality play; however, a closer look reveals a true involvement in and frank expression of the worries of his society. Mahfouz’s ‘absurd’ theatre reformulates absurdity and emerges as quite meaningful.

*************************
*************************
Courtesy of the author.
Previously published : Sixth International Symposium on Comparative Literature: Modernism and Postmodernism; East and West, Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, 2001


NOTES
1 Naguib Mahfouz wrote eight one-act plays included side by side with his short stories in three compilations: “Yumeet wa Yuhyi” (The Resurrection), “Al-Tarika” (The Legacy), “Al-Nagaa” (The Rescue), “Mashru’ Lilmunaqasha” (Project for Discussion), “Al-Muhema” (The Task) in Taht Al-Mazala (Under the Shade of the Bus Stop) (1967); “Al-Mutarada” (Harassment) in Al-Garima (The Crime) (1973); “Al-Gabal” (The Mountain) and “Al-Shaytan Ya’iz” (The Devil Preaches) in Al-Shaytan Ya’iz (1979). Only five of these plays come closer to the tradition of the absurd and are consequently discussed in this paper: “Yumeet wa Yuhyi”, “Al-Tarika”, “Al-Nagaa”, “Al-Muhema” and “Al-Mutarada”.

2 Translation of material drawn from Arabic secondary sources is mine.
3 Translation of quotations from Naguib Mahfouz’s short stories and plays is mine except those from “Yumeet wa Yuhyi”, “Al-Tarika”, “Al-Nagaa”, which are translated by Nehad Seliha. (Trans.) (1989). One Act Plays by Naguib Mahfouz. Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organization.


WORKS CITED
Camus, Albert. (1955). The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Trans.
Justin O’Brien. New York: Alfred A.Knopf.
El-Enany, Rasheed. (1993). Naguib Mahfouz: The Pursuit of Meaning.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Esslin, Martin. (1968). The Theatre of the Absurd. Revised and enlarged
edition. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Mahfouz, Naguib. (1989) One Act Plays . Trans. Nehad Selaiha. Cairo:
General Egyptian Book Organization.
Mikhail, Mona. (1993) “Existential Themes in a Traditional Cairo Setting.”
in Beard and Haydar (eds.) Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to Global Recognition. New York: Syracuse University Press.
Rosenhouse, Judith. (1978). “Harassment, A Play by Najib Mahfuz,”
Journal of Arabic Literature, IX: 105-137.
Selaiha, Nehad. (1989). “Introduction,” One Act Plays by Naguib Mahfouz.
Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organization.

Source: http://www.arabworldbooks.com/Literature/absurd.htm

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Nights At the Circus: Reading The Semiotics of A Title

by Saleh Razzouk

This is a reflection on : Nights At The Circus , Novel by Angela Carter , 295p.,
Cover desighned by : Dominic Davies, Vintage Books , UK.

If the title is not the cork-plug of the text, is informative, and the whole piece must be oriented in, moreover focused on it. It is the first utterance of the narrative space. After we drop the auxiliaries, we get there with only two big items : Nights ( plural ), and Circus ( singular ), where the first letter of each appears to oppose the other, rather negate it.

phonetics proves that :

S = voiceless - affricates - continuant - strident - tense ╫ ╫ N= voiced - nasal - sonorant

only the consonantal, anterior and coronal features put both initials in one chain.
Two of these distinctive features, which bind the two entries, are spatial ; all the others posses temporal orientation. So that what keeps the sides of the title apart is changeable or fading with time, while what binds them is, no doubt, irreducible; and the whole weight of the theme, that prevails in the form of complex fixation and ill tempered views, deeply stamped, if not coined, with phallic value, which is literally a space element.

It is another upheaval that maintains horror and opposition between space as such and time as a signifier in a series, which lacks attachment, but can not attain signified value unless comes to terms with what it lacks. In this way, Angela Carter pressed on with her myth or epic.

The value of sound ( voice in phonetics ) is sustained once again in the first ever line of the text, which began with :
“ Lor’ love you, sir!” Fevvers sang out in a voice that clanged like dustbin lids “. and followed with the self narration :
“ As to my place of birth, why, I first saw light of day right here in smoky old London, didn’t I ! “ .[ p. 7 ] .

The opening statements are, in fact, intertwined with the title, so that both elements construct a conversation that reassure the valuable and remarkable coherence between the temporal act of the title ( first lexical item of the narrative space ), and the spatial value ( place of birth , which is the second item of the very same narration ).

The semantic value of the title is some how short sighted, for meanings of the meaning do not go far enough as semiotics do. in semiotics the two major words may swap places, so as to re-pose “circus” in the first place ( in the body of the text ), then “night” to follow . That is “circus” ( as Oxford dictionary states ) is - in ancient Rome - round or oval place with seats on all sides for public games, but ( in modern usage ) is a travelling show, ultimately ( as a proper name ) is an open space where number of streets converge . Then, it is ( in short ) a circle or a circular space, i.e. a ring, the position of desire, which could be oral or anal or sexual . It is really of multiple value that bring the subject about the oedipal triangle, keeping in mind that the desired is alienated from the desire itself, since playful acts are awakened and noticeable. while “Night” ( in Oxford as well ) is two sided expression :

a- dark hours which assure the temporal value as such,
b- an object which lacks the sense of period. But when after leaving out the last letter, the “ nigh” entry indicates ‘ near to’ . i.e. a distance, place.

The multiplicity of the word “ night” brings to mind the fact that it is plural with ( s ) at the end, which indicate a repetition of experience, and this again pursue the double value ( place and time, or object and subject ).

The traditions, however, of the text are not extracted from Hardy’s, nor are recovered in Dickens’s; rather are committed themselves in Poe’s deep structure., where horror and visions replace the sight and the visible world altogether.

Horror, then, looks like the cause behind pushing what is inside ( the psychological depth and thinkable power ) towards the lines of light, where the familiar shapes are doubled with a shadowy presence initiates in the intimate perception, so that mental process drives the contents into an outsider stand, or a little other ( in Lacan’s terms ), which can be explained as follows :

Self <> Outsider ╫ being <> other ╫ verb to be<> fragmentation

The figure demonstrates the notion of fragmentation of the structural intactness.
Wars, crimes, sexual offence and sexual acts on their own are the semiotic elongations in every assault against the circularity ( or the ring, the vagina...) of our orbit ( complete structure ).
Similarly, the title submits this hypothesis, where the entry “ circus” when is coupled with its counterpart “ nights” bring together danger ( horror ) and playful action ( estrangement). It is a declaration of the ultimate divorce or end-breakage between reality and fantasy, or the real and the imaginary, where the real subject is aware of the estrangement and un-expounded entity of the ever-deep and long-last stage he stood on.


Angela Carter:

was born in 1940, and from 1976 – 8 was fellow in creative writing at Sheffield University. Her first novel , Shadow Dance, was published in 1965. she is a feminist writer with a sense of Cruelty as adopted by Artaud.

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Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006)

Egyptian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988, and was the first Arabic writer to be so honored. Many in the Arab world saw the prize as somewhat ironic, not least because the work for which Mahfouz received the prize had been published at least three decades earlier. In spite of millions readers in the Arab world, the author's books are still unavailable in many Middle Eastern countries on account of his support for President Sadat's Camp David peace treaty with Israel in 1978. Mahfouz wrote some 40 novels and short story collections, 30 screenplays, and many plays.

"Zaabalawi!" he said, frowning in concentration, "You need him? God be with you, for who knows, I Zaabalawi, where you are?"
"Doesn't he visit you?" I asked eagerly.
"He visited me some time ago. He might well come now; on the other hand I mightn't see him till death!"
I gave an audible sigh and asked:
"What made him like that?"
He took up his lute. "Such are saints or they would not be saints," he said laughing.
"Do those who need him suffer as I do?"
"Such suffering is part of the cure!"
(from 'Zaabalawi,' 1965)

Naguib Mahfouz was born in Gamaliya, Cairo. The family lived in two popular districts of the town, in al-Jamaliyyah, from where they moved in 1924 to al-Abbasiya, then a new Cairo suburb; both have provided the backdrop for many of the author's writings. His father, whom Mahfouz described as having been "old-fashioned", was a civil servant, and Mahfouz eventually followed in his footsteps. In his childhood Mahfouz read extensively. His mother often took him to museums and Egyptian history later became a major theme in many of his books.

The 1919 revolution in Egypt had a strong affect on Mahfouz, although he was at the time only seven years old. From the window he often saw English soldiers firing at the demostrators, men and women. "You could say," he later noted, "that the one thing which most shook the security of my childhood was the 1919 revolution." After competing his secondary education, Mahfouz entered the University of Cairo, where he studied philosophy, graduating in 1834. By 1936, having spent a year working on an M.A., he decided to become a professional writer. Mahfouz then worked as a journalist at Ar-Risala, and contributed to Al-Hilal and Al-Ahram. The major Egyptian influence on Mahfouz's thoughts of science and socialism in the 1930s was Salama Musa, the Fabian intellectual.

Before turning to the novel, Mahfouz wrote articles and short stories, 80 of which were published in magazines. His first published book was a translation of James Baikie's work on ancient Egypt. Mahfouz's first collection of stories appeared in 1938. In 1939 he entered government bureaucracy, where he was employed for the next 35 years. From 1939 until 1954, he was a civil servant at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, and then was appointed director of the Foundation for Support of the Cinema, the State Cinema Organization. In 1969-71 he was a consultant for cinema affairs to the Ministry of Culture. After marrying Atiyyatallah Ibrahim in 1954, he moved from the family house in al-Abbasiya to an apartment overlooking the Nile in Jiza.

Most of Mahfouz's early works were set in al-Jamaliyyah. ABATH AL-AQDAR (1939), RADUBIS (1943), and KIFAH TIBAH (1944), were historical novels, written as part of a larger unfulfilled project of 30 novels. Inspired by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) Mahfouz planned to cover the whole history of Egypt in a series of books. However, following the third volume, Mahfouz shifted his interest to the present, the psychological impact of the social change on ordinary people.

Mahfouz's central work in the 1950s was The Cairo Trilogy, a monumental work of 1,500 pages, which the author completed before the July Revolution. The novels were titled with the street names Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street. Mahfouz set the story in the parts of Cairo where he grew up. They depict the life of the patriarch al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad and his family over three generations in Cairo from WW I to the 1950s, when King Farouk I was overthrown. With its rich variety of characters and psychological understanding, the work connected Mahfouz to such authors as Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Galsworthy. Mahfouz ceased to write for some years after finishing the trilogy. Disappointed in the Nasser régime, which had overthrown the monarchy in 1952, he started publishing again in 1959, now prolifically pouring out novels, short stories, journalism, memoirs, essays, and screenplays.

The Children of Gebelaawi (1959) portrayed the patriarch Gebelaawi and his children, average Egyptians living the lives of Cain and Abel, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. Gebelaawi has built a mansion in an oasis in the middle of a barren desert; his estate becomes the scene of a family feud which continues for generations. "Whenever someone is depressed, suffering or humiliated, he points to the mansion at the top of the alley at the end opening out to the desert, and says sadly, 'That is our ancestor's house, we are all his children, and we have a right to his property. Why are we starving? What have we done?' " The book was banned throughout the Arab world, except in the Lebanon. In the 1960s, Mahfouz further developed its theme that humanity is moving further away from God in his existentialist novels. In The Thief and the Dogs (1961) he depicted the fate a Marxist thief, who has been released from prison and plans revenge. Ultimately he is murdered in a cemetery.

Mahfouz left his post as the Director of Censorship and was appointed Director of the Foundation for the Support of the Cinema. He was a contributing editor for the leading newspaper Al-Ahram and in 1969 he became a consultant to the Ministry of Culture, retiring in 1972. He has been a board member of Dar al Ma'aref publishing house. Many of his novels were serialized in Al-Ahram, and his writings also appeared in his weekly column, 'Point of View'. Before the Nobel Prize only a few of his novels had appeared in the West.

In the 1960s and 1970s Mahfouz started to construct his novels more freely and use interior monologue. In Miramar (1967) he developed a form of multiple first-person narration. Four narrators, among them a Socialist and a Nasserite opportunist, represent different political views. In the center of the story is an attractive servant girl. In Arabian Nights and Days (1981) and in The Journey of Ibn Fatouma (1983) Mahfouz drew on traditional Arabic narratives as subtexts. Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth (1985) is about conflict between old and new religious truths, a theme with which Mika Waltari dealt in Finland in his historical novel Sinuhe (1945, trans. The Egyptian).

"As a geographical place and as history, Egypt for Mahfouz has no counterpart in any other part of the world. Old beyond history, geographically distinct because of the Nile and its fertile valley, Mahfouz's Egypt is an immense accumulation of history, stretching back in time for thousands of years, and despite the astounding variety of its rulers, regimes, religions, and races, nevertheless retaining its own coherent identity." (Edward W. Said in New York Review of Books, November 30, 2000)

Mahfouz, called the "Balzac of Egypt", described the development of his country in the 20th-century. He combined intellectual and cultural influences from East and West - his own exposure to the literarature of non-Arabic culture began in his youth with the enthusiastic consumption of Western detective stories, Russian classics, and such modernist writers as Proust, Kafka and Joyce. Mahfouz's stories, written in the florid classical Arabic, are almost always set in the heavily populated urban quarters of Cairo, where his characters, mostly ordinary people, try cope with the modernization of society and the temptations of Western values.

Among those people, who brought early translations of his work to the English-speaking readers was Jacqueline Onassis. In Egypt he was widely considered a spokesperson not only for Egypt but also for a number of non-Western cultures. However, Mahfouz himself almost never traveled outside of Egypt, and sent his daughters to accept the Nobel Prize on his behalf.

Like many Egyptian writers and intellectuals, Mahfouz was on a "death list" by Islamic fundamentalists. He defended Salman Rushdie after the Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned him to death, but later he criticized Rushdie's Satanic Verses as "insulting" to Islam. In 1994, near his home, Mahfouz was stabbed in the neck with a kitchen knife, and two Egyptian Islamic militants were sentenced to death for attempting to kill him. Texts written after the assassination attempt for a weekly women's magazine were collected in Dreams (2000-2003). In his old age Mahfouz became nearly blind, and he though he continued to write, had difficulties in holding a pen or a pencil. He also had to abandon his daily habit of meeting his friends at coffeehouses. Mahfouz died in Cairo on August 30, 2006.

For further reading: The Changing Rhythm: A Study of Najib Mahfu's Novels by Sasson Somekh (1973); The Modern Egyptian Novel by Hilary Kilpatrick (1974); The Arabic Novel by Roger Allen (1982); Naguig Mahfouz, Nobel 1988: Egyptian Perspectives (1989) Nobel Laureates in Literature, ed. by Rado Pribic (1990); Naguib Mahfouz's Egypt by Hayim Gordon (1990); Critical Perspectives on Naguib Mahfouz, ed. by Trevor Le Gassick (1991); Naguib Mahfouz, ed. by Michael Beard and Adnan Haydar (1993); Naguib Mahfouz: The Pursuit of Meaning by Rasheed el-Enany (1993); The Early Novels of Naguib Mahfouz: Images of Modern Egypt by Matti Moosa (1994); The Cairo of Naguib Mahfouz by Gamal al-Ghitani (2000)

Selected works:

* ABATH AL-AGDAR, 1939 - Mockery of the Fates
* RADUBIS, 1943
* KIFAH TIBAH, 1944
* KHAN AL-KHALILI, 1944
* AL-QAHIRAH AL-JADIDAH, 1946 - New Cairo
* ZUQAQ AL-MIDAQQ, 1947 - Midaq Alley (trans. by Trevor le Gassick) - Midaqq-kuja (suom. Pekka Suni, Mustafa Shikeben) - film El Callejón de los milagros / Midaq Alley, dir. by Jorge Fons and starring Ernesto Gómez Cruz, Salma Hayek, and Maria Rojo, was based on Mahfouz's novel but set in Mexico City.
* IGNIS FATUUS, 1948
* AL-SARAB, 1949
* BIDAYAH WA-NIHAYAH, 1949 - The Beginning and the End (trans. by Ramses Hanna Awad)
* AL-THULATIYA, 1956-57 - The Cairo Trilogy; BAYN AL-QUASRAYN (1956) - Palace Walk (trans. by W. Hutchins and Olive Kenny) - QUAST AL-SHAWQ (1957) - Palace of Desire (trans. by W. Hutchins, Lorne Kenny and Olive Kenny) - AL-SUKKARIYAH (1957) - Sugar Street (trans. by W. Hutchins and Angele Botros Semaan) - Palatsikatu, Intohimon palatsi, Sokerikuja (suom. Pekka Suni)
* Children of Gebelaawi, 1959 - Children of the Alley (trans. by Peter Theroux)
* AL-LISS WA-AL-KILAB, 1961 - The Thief and the Dogs (trans. by Trevor Le Gassic and Mustafa Badawi)
* AL-SUMMAN WA-AL-KHARIF, 1962 - Autumn Quail (trans. by Roger Allen)
* AL-TARIQ, 1964 - The Search (trans. by Muhammed Islam)
* AL-SHAHHADH, 1965 - The Beggar (trans. by Kristin Walker Henry and Nariman Khales Naili al Warrah)
* THARTHARAH FAWQ AL NIL, 1966 - Adrift on the Nile (trans. by Frances Liardet)
* AWLAD HARITNA, 1967 - Children of Gebelawi (trans. by Philip Stewart) / Children of the Alley (trans. by Peter Theroux)
* MIRAMAR, 1967 - Miramar (trans. by Maged el-Komos and John Rodenbeck) - Miramar (suom. Pekka Suni, Mustafa Shikeben)
* AL MARAYA, 1971 - Mirrors (trans. by Roger Allen)
* AL-HUBB TAHT AL MATAR, 1973
* AL-KARNAK, 1974 - Three Contemporary Egyptian Novels
* QUAB AL-LAYL, 1975
* HIKAYAT HARITNA, 1975 - Fountain and Tomb (trans. by Soad Sobhy, Essam Fattouh, and James Kenneson)
* HADRAT AL-MUHTARAM, 1975 - Respected Sir (trans. by Rasheed el-Enany)
* MALHAMAT AL-HARAFISH, 1977 - The Harafish
* ARS AL-HUBB, 1980
* AFRAH AL-QUBBAH, 1981 - Wedding Song (trans. by Olive Kenny)
* LAYALI ALF LAYLAH, 1981 - Arabian Nights and Days (trans. by Denys Johnson-Davies)
* AL-BAQI MIN AL-ZAMAN SA'AH, 1982
* RIHLAT IBN FATTUMAH, 1983 - The Journey of Ibn Fatouma (trans. by Denys Johnson-Davies)
* AMAM AL-'ARSH, 1983
* AL-A'ISH FI AL-HAQIQAH, 1985 - Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth (translated from the Arabic by Tagreid Abu-Hassabo)
* YAWM MAQTAL AL ZA'IM, 1985 - The Day Leader Was Killed
* HADITH AL-SABAH WA-AL-MASA, 1987
* THARTHARAH ALA AL-BAHR, 1993
* ASDAA AL-SIRA AL-DHATIYYA, 1994 - Echoes from an Autobiography (trans. by Denys Johnson-Davies)
* AHLAM FATRAT AL-NAQAHA, 2000-2003 - The Dreams

Source: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mahfouz.htm

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Gao Xingjian and "Soul Mountain" : Ambivalent Storytelling

Summary: A Texas writer who listens to "Soul Mountain" while driving in his car around Houston describes Gao Xingjian's ambivalence towards the modern novel and traditional storytelling.

The Peripatetic Novel

This review is a little special: it's about a book I heard completely while driving around in my car. I recently returned to my home town, Houston, a city where people spend unbearable amounts of time in the solitude of their cars, driving from work to home and work again. In Houston waiting in traffic is synonymous with living. One passes through neighborhoods in air-conditioned comfort, cursing the red lights and slow-moving cars. The purpose of Houston life, it seems, is to wander around without having to feel the breeze or notice the trees, people or shops. The only interruption to the routine are the weekly visits to the gas station, where the traveler parks, inserts his debit card into the machine and pumps gas into his tank Then, if he is lucky, he can leave as quickly as he came, merging into the grumbling fog of traffic.

Gao Xingjian's novel, Soul Mountain, is about a similar wandering. It is about a man, an intellectual, a writer, an anthropologist, whose mission is to collect folk culture all around him. In reality, he just wanders around, traveling wherever fate sends him. He is in search of something, some answer, some mythical place he calls "Soul Mountain." In his heart he knows it does not really exist, but that does not make his pursuit any less worthwhile. His motivation is little more than pretext; he wants to find interesting people and learn about local legends. He wants to meet pretty women. But most of all, he wants the trip to help him make sense of his past tribulations.

The novel is not particularly thrilling or amazing, nor is the plot gripping. There are occasional poetic flourishes, a few self-conscious narrative interludes and several vivid characters. And, oh, yes, several sex scenes, some prurient, some detached. As I hear various tales in my car, I feel restless and uncertain about where the book (and I) are traveling. At a red light at Wilcrest and Richmond Avenue, I am listening to an intensely passionate description of sexual intercourse. On Bissonet and I-59, I am hearing several men debate the existence of the legendary "Wild Man." While stuck in morning Westheimer traffic, I learn that our protagonist is about to die of lung cancer. But wait. It was a mistake, a misdiagnosis. But wait -- I have arrived at the 51 story office building, location of my temp job for the day. I park in an underground garage, walking through a tunnel to the building elevator--never once being exposed to the searing Houston heat.
PURPOSEFUL FORMLESSNESS

After listening to the book-on-tape and flipping through the pages, I am still puzzled. It just doesn't add up. It is formless. Parts are profound or poetic; parts seem like unfinished sketches or notes jotted to oneself. There is no progression, except perhaps an inward progression toward understanding. One Amazon critic reported being so frustrated by the aimlessness of the book that he went directly to the final chapter and started reading backwards, a motive that I certainly understand. If anything, this essayistic novel is thematically arranged. The novel flows in several random directions, hitting the occasional eddy (sex, Taoism, modernism), twirling about until the protagonist can grasp for the next character or incident to push the story forward again. The current is slow and steady, and the narrator is content to stay afloat, letting his unspecified and lackadaisical quest lead him where it may.

What is this novel anyway? It is not a typical Asian novel. What is it? Gao must have been influenced by the formal contrapuntal emphasis of his Parisian contemporary expatriate, Milan Kundera* . Kundera's essayistic novels impose a rigorous strict structure on plot and characters. But Gao makes no attempt to organize the anecdotes, observations and encounters that populate the book, giving the whole enterprise the aimlessness of a travelogue. Gao is dealing with vague allegory (I am thinking of J.M. Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians" or maybe Kadare). But although Gao's protagonist is obsessed with describing legends and examining their significance, in fact the novel dwells on the mundane. In one chapter, his quest to arrive at a city to learn about its legends and spiritual thought is derailed by a bus driver who has decided to stop at a cafe and not resume the journey until tomorrow. The protagonist/writer, eager to be on his way, is frustrated. Although he manages eventually to find a ride, this little episode provides a humorous and familiar example of how everyone abides by different schedules and priorities and how the narrator's lofty ambitions have no more cosmic significance than a bus driver's desire to have a good long meal.

The protagonist is clearly aware of contemporary society's problems (the novel alludes obliquely at times to the building of the Three Gorges Dam or the Cultural Revolution), but his observations are not littered with references to pop culture or political events in the way that American novels or weblogs seem to be nowadays. Instead the narrator describes his novel through hearsay; he records what people say about themselves and their beliefs and mythologies. In one scene, a woman begs the narrator to write a description of her dead girlfriend to evoke her memory. She tells a sordid story about how her girlfriend was denounced and imprisoned and how she tried vainly to track people who knew her close friend. The protagonist half-listens, feeling nauseous from the seafood the woman had been feeding him. He absorbs these kinds of stories without necessarily feeling nourished by them.

Most of the characters are haunted by something, a memory, an old love, a father that died, a mother that disappeared. Because characters make brief appearances in the novel, there is only enough time to sketch one central overriding concern: getting a daughter into college, finding a key, selling one's calligraphy. The protagonist leaves the people in the same condition in which he found them. That is, in fact, the one complaint I have of this unsettling novel. We have traveled (or driven) long enough with the novel, but by the end, we are left wondering whether we've even made any headway.
BEAUTY OR EVIL

Early on it becomes clear that the novel's central concern was victimization and sexual brutality. The protagonist encountered (and slept with) a large number of females. Some chapters are sparse exchanges between lovers about love and self and surrender. Others recount legends about zhuhuapo, the word for certain beautiful tempting women who often bring misfortune. Most of the time the protagonist relates the sexual encounters with little enthusiasm, treating them as little more than obligatory episodes in his quest.

Throughout the novel the protagonist relates his history of sexual encounters, hinting at having witnessed some unspeakable sexual victimization. He doesn't seek out female companionship, but he makes no special effort to fend it off either. He is jaded. He remembers the fires of passion, but now the endless conversation about such matters seem nothing more than the vanity of a species unwilling to acknowledge the passing of time. His participation in these unions seem to implicate him in an endless cycle of pain and victimization. His middle age sensibility warns him not to cause pain or harm. It seems he can no longer enjoy the company of a woman. Yet he longs to regain oneness with the natural world he so lovingly describes. Sex offers the opportunity to erase boundaries between self and another person. But it also is a power game in which someone always loses. In one town, the protagonist makes the acquaintance of an inexperienced girl who throws herself before him. He is attracted not by her beauty, but by her naivety and ardor. But in the middle of sexual embrace, he realizes that to continue with her would be absolutely cruel. He didn't love her; he had no intention of marrying her. In a town with traditional views on marriage, a woman who had lost her virginity would lose any hope of getting married, and the potential for pregnancy would jeopardize this girl' social standing. He refuses to consummate the act, hurting the girl's feelings, but knowing in his heart that he is performing a supreme act of kindness. Or is he? In either case, the girl would be hurt; by denying her the sexual attention she craves, he deals a blow to her confidence. He presumes that his careful avoidance of heartbreak will be in the girl's best interest. But isn't this just a rationalization for indifference?

The only people who seem to play the game well are those who treat it as just that: a game. A promiscuous woman has a fling with him without any illusions about love or marriage. She does it because it is natural. Is there anything wrong with that? She says no, and after a night of passion, the protagonist recounts the lovemaking not with passion or a sense of the woman's beauty. He merely recounts their conversation about how such a lifestyle could be justified. Clearly he is past the point of being able to enjoy such encounters. After meeting another young attractive woman, he finds the thought of passion to be more painful than pleasurable. He writes:

I would rather drift here and there without leaving traces. There are so many people in this big wide world and so many places to visit but there is nowhere for me to put down roots, to have a small refuge, to live a simple life. I always encounter the same sort of neighbors, say the same sort of things, good morning or hello and once again am embroiled in endless daily trivia. Even before this becomes solidly entrenched, I will already have tired of it all. I know there is no cure for me."

In one of the book's oddest chapters, the protagonist hears the story of a group of youngsters who had sex parties and a girl who was executed for the corrupting influence she had on other girls. The sentence is of course unjust, and the girl is deserving of pity. But the protagonist seems shocked less by the sentence than the fact that the girl organized these parties freely, without any background of victimization or exploitation. For him, it raises the question whether sexual activity was really a power game where one person always trumped another. Here was an individual who turned promiscuity into a personal choice and seemed not to have injured anyone, physically or psychologically. Yet, she is condemned and ultimately destroyed. In another episode with an attractive girl certainly too young for him, they have an innocent talk on a mountain trip, and he agrees to take a picture. The girl gives him her home address in another city and invites him for a friendly visit. But after the encounter, which the protagonist describes very objectively, he never develops the photos or bothers to keep the girl's address. Later, when he wonders "whether or not one day I'll have all this film made into print...(or) whether she will look as stunningly beautiful in the photo," he reveals that his appreciation of beauty has not faded, even as he tries to suppress it. "I can only recoil when confronted by beauty or evil," he says.
NATURE VS. BUREAUCRATS

Although Gao's sensibility is far too cerebral to concern himself with political concerns, he laments the loss of privacy, spontaneity and freedom in a society controlled by bureaucrats and officials. Characters don't rail against communism; they rail against the loss of spontaneity in life caused by their political system. In one scene, when townspeople cheer on a singer to perform some songs, an official breaks the show up because nobody had obtained the right permits. This official turned out to be the singer's son. These officials are petty and bothersome, but certainly not worth fearing. Gao's novel is truly apolitical, but he views regulation and officialism as encroaching on the natural world and even personal relationships. In one story, he tells of how elderly people with political blemishes in their past were banished to inferior retirement homes, "homes for the "solitary aged" while others stayed at "homes for the venerable aged." Later on, after the Party admitted its excesses of the period, all retired people went to a "home for the aged," leading one to wonder whether the current system was in fact an improvement over the old system. When a relative inquires about a parent who had died in a home for the "solitary aged," he discovers that the paperwork had disappeared and that barely a record existed of her incarceration. The system is both impersonal and inefficient; the book is littered with incidents of people being harmed, either directly or indirectly by zealous officials. For Gao, officials are harmful because they try to impose artificial order on the world around them. Even when the governing bodies try to amend its impunities against the natural world or society, it fails. For a while he follows a band of biologists trying to study the panda's natural habitat, a rather absurd undertaking, given that the pandas are practically extinct anyway and the habitat has changed so irrevocably. Why bother, the protagonist asks a skeptical old man. The man replies:

"it's symbolic, it's a sort of reassurance--people need to deceive themselves. We're preoccupied with saving a species which no longer has the chance for survival and yet on the other hand we're charging ahead and destroying the very environment for the survival of the human species itself. Look at the Min River you came along on your way in here, the forests on both sides have been stripped bare. The Min River has turned into a black muddy river but the Yangtze is much worse yet they are going to block off the river and construct a dam in the Three Gorges! Of course, it's romantic to indulge in wild fantasy, but the place lies on a geological fault and has many documented records of landslides throughout history. Needless to say, blocking off the river and putting up a dam will destroy the entire ecology...when people assault nature like this nature inevitably takes revenge!"

The sexual violence alluded to throughout the book is another such assault on nature. It suggests disturbance, an inability to reconcile opposing forces in the natural world. According to one legend, young girls who had been raped or treated badly would dive suicidally into the river far below. This violent, eerie reunion with the natural world was alluring not only to the townspeople, but even the protagonist's girlfriend, who liked to imagine jumping.
THE STORYTELLER'S DISCOMFORT

So where does the novelist come in? What should he do? The protagonist (and author) is not quite sure. His ostensible function is to collect cultural history from the regions. He was a storyteller, historian, photographer, social scientist, ecologist and anthropologist all wrapped up into one. Is he merely cataloging human experience? Or sifting through life for examples of beauty and epiphanies? His ostensible purpose is to collect legends and folk songs (and by the way, even the Communist Party couldn't find fault with that). Behind this straightforward task lies uncertainty about what the writer should be doing with the half-truths that are called legends. If told and retold enough times, these legends attain the status of a "social truth." The Wild Man (one of the legends retold in the novel) may be a myth, but hearing it so many times makes one no longer so sure. In a society where official versions of events are repeated over and over, to relegate the writer's role to that of "legend collector" is essentially to render him irrelevant. Gao doesn't seem interested in the political dimensions of this. The protagonist just wants to explore and take pictures and record. Still, the novel is more than that. Interspersed between descriptions of his travel, the reader will find stream-of-consciousness ruminations on the storytelling art, a sign that the writer is uncomfortable with just collecting the stories of other people. The novel records bedtime conversations with ex-lovers who are always questioning his motives, interpretations and attitudes. The feminine voice, often unnamed and unseen, is hypercritical, knowing, skeptical, needy and eager to unmask the narrator's illusions. Indeed, quite often the stories are told in indirect discourse while the narrator is doing something else. He often, for example, tells stories about old lovers while in bed with another. In such a case, a story is a rude distraction for the current woman he is sleeping with. When stories of the past flow freely from the protagonist's tongue during such private moments, it is a sign that the narrator is uncomfortable with how events are initially understood by people. Only after an event has faded into people's memories can a storyteller find the discipline and structure and distance to shed light into what the episode was really about.

The legends, while artfully told, often reveal the narrator's uncertainties about his role in capturing stories. He recounts a fascinating legend of a Grand Marshall from the Jin Dynasty who secretly watches a beautiful nun in the bathtub. As it turns out, the woman has cut open her stomach to expose her entrails and has begun scrubbing them in the same way she scrubbed the rest of her limbs. After she is finished, she sews up her stomach and proceeds with her routine tasks. After telling the story in a dramatic and convincing way, the narrator says:

This story is a political warning.
You say if the ending of the story is changed it could become a morality tale to warn people against lechery and lust.
The story could also be turned into a religious tale to exhort people to convert to Buddhism.
The story can also serve as a philosophy for getting on in society --to teach the morally superior man that each day he should investigate his own personal conduct, or that human life is suffering, or that suffering in life derives from the self. Or the story could be developed with numerous intricate and complex theories. It all depends on how the storyteller tells it.
The Grand Marshall protagonist of the story has a name and surname so a great deal of textual research, examining historical texts and old books, could be carried out. But as you are not a historian, don't have political aspirations, and certainly neither wish to become an expert in Buddhism, nor to preach religion, nor to become a paragon of virtue, what appeals to you is the superb purity of the story. Any explanation is irrelevant, you simply wanted to retell it in the spoken language.

So what is this bland pronouncement about? Is it just the usual complaint about interpretation? Is it warning people about the dangers of manipulating stories for other purposes? Is it merely professing neutrality about the storytelling art itself? No one could say for sure. In this passage, like many others, the author/protagonist is revealing his personal struggle about the nature of his art in the modern world. No one will deny that storytelling is good for its own sake, but a writer who writes with this belief will find his creative works littered with self-conscious musings, autobiographical ruminations and infusions of allegorical significance into the stories he retells. Does Gao decry this? Should the novelists instead be stripping away such personal touches just to focus on the story? Soul Mountain, as imperfect as it is, stands as an example of how easy it is for the author to become the story he tells and how difficult it is to separate the art of storytelling from the desire to explore ideas, personal emotions and metaphysical meditations.

::this article is written by Robert Nagle , Houston, Texas, September 2002.

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