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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 - 31 March 1999 Issue No. 422 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 - 31 March 1999 Issue No. 422
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters In the millennium
of sleeping insomniaThe translation of Mohamed Afifi Matar's Quartet of Joy, first published in 1990, by Arabic and English literature scholar Ferial Ghazoul and American poet John Verlenden, is a winner of the University of Arkansas Press Award for Arabic Literature in Translation. A spin-off is the very elegant and more recent university publication, with a cover graphically designed to convey poetic fancy entwined with Arabic calligraphy.
Mohamed Afifi Matar In a heartwarming introduction, the initial undertaking is described by the translators as one of "sheer madness". It may very well have been true; not only is poetry -- that most esoteric of literary genres -- extremely difficult to translate, but this particular poet and this particular poem are a generous portion of the opaque, at times even of the inscrutable.
The blithe title Quartet of Joy is bound to usher in a din of bells which would immediately ring out Eliot's "Four Quartets". Afifi's poem -- like Eliot's -- is as primal and elemental as earth, water, air and fire. It also echoes the English bard's ambiguity and his stunning turn of phrase. It is a poem about life writ large: creation and procreation, love, war, art, mortality and immortality. In spite of strong links with Eliot, it is poetry which also claims other ancestors. It is Whitmanesque in its scope and in its ability to internalise and personalise the poetic experience. Moreover, Matar winces at no function of the human body, regarding everything as part of the organic whole. Although the poem is quite earthy, it is never down to earth.
Despite such links, Quartet of Joy is unmistakably Arabic. It discards classical metre, but bears a hallmark of Arabic poetry: linguistic sophistication, which, in this case, is orchestrated to the nth degree. This is a tribute not only to Matar's dexterity but to his early upbringing, for he -- like Taha Hussein -- was raised in village Qur'anic schools. In diction, which at times the translators cleverly choose to transliterate, rather than translate, there is every attempt to capture the distilled language of the tribe.
There are repeated references to 'tent', 'kohl', 'gazelle', not to mention one of the most viable of Arabic tropes, the ubiquitous steed, but also repeated references to qasida, fasil and howdah. The poem is definitely Islamic in its mysticism and in its allusions to the Prophet and the Qur'an, but it is provokingly pre-Islamic in its immersion in sensual intoxication. It is mutely pompous, metaphorically brandishing traditional sources of Arab pride: lineage and progeny as well as feats of the poet-warrior.
While foregrounding the Arabic, Quartet of Joy does not ignore the Egyptian, the Greek or the Christian. The persona very aptly refers to himself as "I who am born of forty women". The poem -- which was written between 1975 and 1988 in sections which were later re-shuffled -- is interlocked with cultural, religious and aesthetic allusions. The imagery is almost inextricable in its complexity. Compact and multi-layered, it unravels itself very gradually and slowly, if at all. The obscurity of the style is a subtle comment on the complexity and intractability of life. The four-fold structure imposes itself, but the symmetry is without rigidity and does not preclude variations in the subdivisions. Nor does the quartet paradigm, with a felicitous selection of three preludes, refute the weaving in of drawn-out mawwals, both as theme and symbol.
Paradox being a commonplace of poetry, this poem is a happy marriage of opposites: the parochial and the universal, the specific and the general. It acknowledges -- in fact, superimposes -- polarities: ancient and modern, theoretical and divine, temporal and external, self and other. A poem which maintains a lofty tone throughout, Quartet of Joy soars to great heights while knitting the celestial with the terrestrial. The embracing of such contradictions amounts to a poetic defiance of a prosaic delimiting of the universe.
The poet's words "the millennium of sleeping insomnia" are an extremely elegant and original epithet not only for our era, but for every era of human existence, with its highs and lows of achievement, frustration and disillusionment. Certain poets express themselves in the world of the commonplace. Not so Matar: he is more of a visionary than a writer, a magician rather than a poet.
The appendices are an enhancement of the whole. They provide the reader with a glossary, informative notes and biographical facts. Such data are essential for a poem which is not only a knot of references, but is also written in language which -- even for the native speaker -- is far from transparent. Throughout the explanatory section, the translators maintain a warm and chatty tone which earmarks the whole project as a labour of love. Quite astutely, the Arabic text is included.
The translation more than vindicates the translators. Far from demystifying the text, the English translation provides the rapture of an original work -- the transliterations providing neither detraction nor distraction, but rather exoticism and further mystique. Winner of the Cavafy Prize among other prestigious awards, both national and international, Matar is a poet of a stature which merits the meticulous attention he received from his renowned translators. Quartet of Joy is brilliant poetry, brilliantly translated.
Reviewed by Nazek Fahmi
