25 - 31 October 2001
Issue No.557
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 25 - 31 October 2001 Issue No.557 |
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Plain talk
The Comparative Impulse is an adequate title for a book reflecting the emphasis now placed on comparative literature. A collection essays by three university professors, the book proves that academic scholarship in Egyptian universities is flourishing after all.
In fact the three contributors, Dr M M Enani, Dr M S Farid, and Dr M S El-Komi, can be regarded as the contemporary representatives of that chain of English scholarship among the forerunners of which Louis Awad and Rashad Rushdi can be counted.
Enani is, in my opinion, the theorist of the three. Hence his inspiring introduction in which he explains his approach to the inter-relation of languages, in this case Arabic and English. He believes that reading English in an Arab country, in this case Egypt, "must involve comparisons with Arabic, no matter how purely foreign the approach appeared to be, or whether the language used in the study was Arabic or English." In other words, one cannot get rid of the influence of one's mother tongue or of the native culture.
Enani is a distinguished translator, especially of poetry, and has published a number of English translations of such famous Egyptian poets as Salah Abdel-Sabbour, Ahmed Abdel-Moeti Hegazi, Farouk Shousha, Farouk Guweida and others. These translations are each accompanied by an analysis of the poetry and the background of the poets.
M S Farid represents another genre of scholar. Apart from producing an excellent Arabic translation of T S Eliot's poetry, he is a regular contributor to the Arabic press. His contributions vary from book reviews, of both English and Arabic publications, to articles about Western men of letters. He is also interested in Afro-Asian literature and was a regular contributor to Lotus, the magazine of the Afro-Asian writers' bureau. In fact this book, too, contains a number of essays dealing with African and Asian novelists, poets and short story writers. Farid can be regarded as an academic link between world literature and Egypt.
M S El-Komi is yet another scholar covering the field of European literature. But following two academic articles -- "Alienation and Disintegration of Identity in Kafka's The Trial and Pinter's The Birthday Party and "Pater and Eliot" -- El-Komi writes about Naguib Mahfouz's The Search. He laments the fact that in spite of the "great bulk of material on hand" there is a paucity of academic criticism devoted to the Nobel laureate's literary work. El- Komi's essay here attempts to fill this vacuum.
He tries to explain "the mystic archetype in The Search" , one of Mahfouz's earlier works. The aim of this study, he maintains, "is to show the essential parallels which exist in the mythical adventure of the hero and the journey of the hero in The Search." Before he throws himself into this task El-Komi presents his readers with a surprising statement. To approach a work of art, he insists, the reader should become aware both of its uniqueness and its family resemblances. He must respond to it directly.
"We must be able to enjoy before we can learn to discriminate," he writes, formulating a simple truth that too often remains unacknowledged.
El-Komi cites heavily from the novel to support his contention that it establishes a theme that would remain a constant in Mafouz's fiction: that morality operates independently of power, or, to put it rather more cosily, "it is not enough to have the might, one must also have the right."
This collection by the three professors, varied as the essays are, is proof of the globalism of research, and the importance of comparative studies as a means of furthering international understanding.
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