Issue No. 591
Culture
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20 - 26 June 2002 Issue No. 591 Culture |
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Obituary
Abdel-Qader El-Qutt (1916-2002)
The celebrated literary critic Abdel-Qader El- Qutt died on Sunday at the age of 85.
Born in Bilqas in the Delta province of Daqahliya, El-Qutt received his PhD in Arabic literature and criticism from the University of London in 1950. He went on to spend most of his academic career as professor of Arabic literature at Ain Shams University, where he became dean of the Faculty of Arts in 1972. He was editor-in-chief of a number of literary periodicals including Al-Shi'r (Poetry) in 1964 and Ibdaa (Creativity) in 1983.
El-Qutt's reputation within the literary field was secured decades ago. In publication after publication he gained a certain celebrity for daring and controversial views, seldom shying away from the established literary canon. In his first book, Contemporary Egyptian Literature, published in 1954, he directed criticism at the works of Youssef El-Seba'ie and Mohamed Abdel-Halim Abdallah, two bulwarks of the Egyptian romantic movement, arguing that the protagonists in their works were "passive characters with no life of their own, mere puppets in the hands of their creators."
The introduction to his anthology of poetry published in 1958 under the title Youthful Memoirs also stirred controversy. Expressing fascination with free verse, he argued it "combined the romantic tendency with a realistic one to create a new form". This he considered "a big leap forward in Egyptian and Arabic poetry."
His prolific writings in criticism notwithstanding, poetry remained El-Qutt's abiding passion. His last published book was an anthology of 20th century Arabic poetry. As an early proponent of free verse he published work from across the gamut of contemporary trends and movements when he was editor of Al-Shi'r to the extent that he was attacked for ignoring classical poetry in favour of contemporary poets. In Ibdaa he was to introduce a special experimental section dedicated to the work of young poets, even those poems, especially those, which as editor he did not particularly appreciate. His position was to be nuanced over the years with an emerging belief that contemporary poetry had given expression to mostly "incoherent abstractions and symbolism, clichés, and stereotypical expressions which lack real creativity... We now have very few genuine poets, who write metered poetry using contemporary expressions and terminology; most poets today are merely distorted imitators of the more classical poets." He came to be wary of both free verse and poetic prose, believing that the latter, while possessing the spirity of poetry, is "a failed attempt to become poetry because poetry is rhythm and in prosaic verse no rhythm exists... I do not object to the absence of [traditional] poetic rhythm, but the text should have certain elements of poetry that make it worthy of the name prose poem." It is a debate that is resuscitated regularly in the Egyptian cultural scene.
He has also contributed to the translation of Western literature into Arabic, translating such works as William Shakespeare's Richard III, Pericles and Hamlet, in addition to plays by Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder, William Saroyan and others.
El-Qutt received numerous awards and honours throughout his lifetime including the King Faisal Prize For Literature in 1982 for his book The Sentimental Trend and Arab Poetry, the State Merit Award in Literature in 1985, and just last week, the Mubarak Award for Literature.
Abdel-Qader El-Qutt is survived by his Austrian wife and two children.
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