Plain talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

---

Our colleague and friend David Tresilian has just published a book with the title A Brief Introduction to Modern Arabic Literature. Though only 184 pages it is a comprehensive presentation of modern literature in the Arab World avaliable in English translation.

Apart from his analysis of fiction and poetry, the author gives his reader a key for understanding what Arabic writers have produced. He starts the book with an introduction which sums up the modern Arabic literary scene. English speaking readers, interested in modern Arabic literature, argues the author, "have sometimes not been well served". Due to the dearth in translated Arabic works, there was little chance for the English- speaking reader to know about a literature that is rich both in fiction and poetry.

However, this situation has recently been changed. This change came with the winning of Naguib Mahfouz of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. But even then the situation, in Tresilian's opinion has not improved much. Arabic literature "is often not well- known outside the Arab world; much of the literature produced in the twenty two countries making up the Arab League; not being translated into European languages and therefore remaining inaccessible except to those able to read Arabic."

While the book aims to discuss literature produced across the Arab world without emphasising any one "national literature" the literary production of modern Egypt is given greater space than that of other countries. The reason for this is that "Egypt is the largest and oldest of the modern Arab states and possesses what has historically been the most influential literary and intellectual milieu."

The author then explains the date of the advent of modernity in the Arab world. In spite of controversy over the date, there is still some justice in supposing that the French invasion and occupation of Egypt in 1798 was a crucial event "both in the development of Egyptian society and in that of Middle Eastern and Arab societies more generally." The 19th century in the author's opinion, was the period of "the Arab rediscovery of Europe."

As a result of this rediscovery a certain argument started. It resulted in a polarised society, part of which was modern and looked towards Europe and part of which remained traditional and distrusted the new, foreign ways. By the 20th century this argument had become "the common currency of Arab intellectual debate." The author gives Taha Hussein as an example who combined a treasure of popular love and traditional sciences absorbed during his study at Al Azhar, with his falling under the spell of Europe.

The emergence of a new intellectual class, educated at European-style institutions, resulted in a desire to create a literature in Arabic on the European model. Hence the role of the so-called "Modern School" in the 1920's. Members of this school included Mahmoud Teymour, a short story writer, Yehia Hakki with his masterpiece "The Lamp of Umm Hashim." Tewfik El Hakim, novelist and playwright, famous for "Return of the Spirit" and "Diary of a Country Prosecutor."

Works of Hussein, Hakki and Hakim are, in the opinion of David Tresilian "among the classics of modern Arabic literature." These three have written in prose and this "can obscure the fact that poetry and drama of the time were also concerned with questions of identity and with the renovation of Arab society and the building of national consciousness.

Unlike prose fiction, poetry was not a recently developed form or one of foreign origin. It is always called "The Diwan of the Arabs" and is sometimes referred to as "the form of writing that best expresses the literary genius of the Arabs." The author then discusses the poetry of Ahmed Shawky and Hafiz Ibrahim. Both played an important role in giving new subject matter to Arabic poetry, "introducing social and political themes, with marked nationalist component."

Then we come to the "Romantic" and "Mahjar" poets who took a different view of modern Arabic poetry. But I leave this and other issues to my next column.