Al-Ahram Weekly | Culture

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 9 - 15 August 2001 Issue No.546
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Plain talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
On the 10th anniversary of Youssef Idris's death a great deal has been written and will be written about his short stories, novels and plays. But there is another side of Idris which very few know, but which, thanks to the fact that Youssef and I shared a page in Al-Ahram titled "From the Diary of...," I had the good luck of knowing intimately, namely, Idris the art and literary critic.
Few would imagine Idris reviewing a film. But review Amadeus, the film about the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Youssef Idris did. In that review, published in the literary magazine Al- Shumou', brainchild of Lotus Abdel-Kerim, Idris not only displayed his deep knowledge of Mozart's life and music, but, as usual, Idris did not miss the opportunity of criticising the contemporary literary milieu of Egypt and the Arab world. Commenting on the jealousies with which Mozart met and which contributed to his death, Idris writes that Mozart's death was "a strange story, but from what I have seen in our literary milieu, I do not find it so strange. We have hatred against the talented by the half- and quarter-talented; it is hatred resulting from envy."
Idris was also a literary critic who wrote about the genre in which, as a creative writer, his talent was revealed at its best. In the same way that one cannot define the atom, he wrote in one of his articles, the modern short story defies definition: "It is an artistic form and content beyond precise definition, and all the efforts to define it are to no avail." Idris then goes on to give what in his opinion are the bases of a short story: "First there must be a story to tell. The story (al-qissa) began as a tale (al- hadoota) which still has its magic, even to grown ups. The tale changed into an anecdote which is a very short short story, very sharp and lashing. The effect of an anecdote," he asserts, "is no less than that of a novel."
Idris's erudition in both Arabic and Western literature is clearly displayed in this article when he traces the development of the written short story from the Arabic Al-Hariri's Maqamat and the anecdotes of Al- Jahiz, to the Italian tales of Boccacio, and then, with Maupassant, Poe and Chekhov, to modern times. The real art of the short story, Idris expounds, was created by Edgar Allen Poe and Anton Chekhov, and until the end of the second world war, the art of the short story unfolded in their shadow. After the war, however, there was a revolution in the short story, a revolt against the poetic naturalism of Chekhov, one that seemed necessary to writers of that time in order to confront "a rough and violent world."
Idris introduced new short story writers in Al-Shumou' magazine. In one of his articles, he introduced a Saudi woman writer, placing her within the context of women's writings in the Gulf and the Arabian peninsula. "The Arab women in that region," Idris wrote, "are almost isolated from social life. There are may of them working as doctors, teachers, and in banks, but they exist in some kind of separate, independent milieu, marginalised both politically and socially. These women are cultured human beings, throbbing with all human feelings and aspirations, but they are restricted within certain limits."
Neither stories nor poems, these writings constitute a newly invented form by Arab women prevented from social participation, and are intended to prove that they are living human beings. The result is that their writings are like puzzles: the Arab woman wants to say and not say at the same time, to confess without revealing anything.
In spite of his deep interest in the complexities of his own culture, Youssef Idris had an international attitude. If opening up to world culture is cultural invasion, I remember him saying, then let us be invaded. "I used to go out in demonstrations denouncing Britain during the day," Idris once said in a BBC interview, "and in the evening I went to the British Institute to learn English language and literature."

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