Plain talk

Egypt is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Tawfiq El-Hakim, one of Egypt's great writers. I do not intend to write an obituary of this leading playwright, novelist and short story writer. What I would like to do is to remember some of the words of wisdom which I had the opportunity of hearing from him.

It was in 1956 that I first met Tawfiq El-Hakim. Prior to that I had read all his works and, furthermore, translated one of his short stories. All members of my generation had been brought up on his masterpiece Return of the Spirit. We viewed it as a manifesto about Egyptian identity. We knew by heart the discussion between Mohsen and the French archeologist about the soul of Egypt, and we came to look to Isis as the symbol of Egypt.

I met Tawfiq El-Hakim at the Higher Council of Arts and Literature where I was an employee. He was one of the high-ranking members of the Council, together with such luminaries as Taha Hussein, Abbas El-Aqqad, Hussein Fawzi, Hussein Moenes and Yehia Haqqi.

I used to sit with him under the shade of a tree in the Council garden which came to be known as Tawfiq El-Hakim's tree. I spent hours listening to him recounting his past experiences, his love for the theatre and his adoption of writing instead of the law for which he had trained.

When he went to Paris in 1925, he told me, he spent most of his spare time at the Comédie Française, where he watched plays by Molière, Corneille, Musset and Beaumarchais. He saw great actors and actresses performing on the stage of the Comédie and would never forget, he said, De Verodi in Molière's L'Avare. His stay in Paris sowed the seeds of his future creativity. But, he said, "I was already fond of the theatre, and in fact had already written plays before coming to Paris."

It was in 1918-19 that he wrote An Unwelcome Guest, a play about a man who visits his lawyer friend, supposedly for a day, but winds up staying for months. The play, an allegory of the British occupation, was performed, like most of his plays, by the Okasha Troupe. Then followed a series of plays: The Bridegroom, Anomosa (set in Pharaonic times), Ali Baba, New Woman and others.

Recalling some of the reviews his plays received he smiled before adding that he had been forced to reply to critics like Mohamed Abdel-Meguid Helmi, Mohamed El-Tab'ei and others. There was, then, a real dialogue between author and critic, a camaraderie which today is missing.

Criticism, said El-Hakim, should be like a verdict in court, logical and cohesive. It should not merely consist of praise and attack, but should be based on rules and canons of criticism.

Listening to him, an enjoyable process which I tried to extend, I could see the difference between his generation of writers and those who came after. Writers of that period were all avid readers. Most, if not all, had travelled or lived abroad and were in touch with what went on in the literary world outside Egypt. This gave their writing a high-brow, elitist tone, in spite of the fact that they dealt mostly with common issues.

I always remember what my London lecturer on creative writing used to tell us. "Before writing, ask yourself 'has any one written about this subject before me?' If the answer is no, then go on. If, however, the answer is yes, ask yourself another question: 'can I deal with the subject differently?' If the answer is yes then start, if it is no, then give up and look for another subject." It seems that through their immense readings writers were asking themselves, albeit unconsciously, those questions. This gives their writings a certain originality and authenticity which is, sometimes, lacking in later generations of writers.

I listened to many of this great writer's ideas. One thing El-Hakim said that I will never forget is: "Art should produce what is beautiful and the moral lessons people are looking for these days should be secondary".