ON LITERATURE, ART AND HISTORY
The Non-Fiction Writing of Naguib Mahfouz, Vol. I
Naguib Mahfouz; translated by Aran Byrne
Speaking Tiger
154 pages; Rs 348
As protestors dug their heels into Tahrir Square, Cairo, chanting "Go Mubarak!" and demanded the eponymous liberation that their chosen site promised, Arab Spring arrived in Egypt, in 2011 - quite appropriately, the birth centenary of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. Perhaps the best known writer of the Arab world, Mahfouz was the prolific chronicler of the troubled modern history of his ancient nation, leading to the popular uprising against the dictator, Hosni Mubarak. His works are also a desperate yearning for democracy and social justice that sparked the revolution - and decades after they were first published, the novels continue to inspire those seeking social justice.
Now, this slim volume - purportedly the first of his collected non-fiction - brings to us some of his earliest writing: Essays and newspaper articles penned mostly as an undergraduate student of philosophy at the Cairo University in the late 1930s. In the Introduction, Rasheed El-Enany, professor of Arabic and comparative literature at the Doha Institute of Graduate Studies, writes: "Mahfouz... was indifferent about the essays... and had routinely declined propositions to collect and publish them." The reasons are quite obvious to any reader: These are mostly juvenilia - in thought and style, and not yet a shade on the future writer.
Between its two covers, the book collects 21 short essays, mostly on philosophical subjects, some on literature, art and society, a book review or two, and some profiles of contemporaries. For a general reader, the philosophical essays are bound to be disappointing. They have neither any original thought, nor any startling research. Mostly, they seem content reproducing - in simplified language - the concepts and philosophers Mahfouz would have studied in class. Their original purpose and the motive for translating and reproducing are lost on me. A scholar is unlikely to glean any new insight into Mahfouz' writing and other readers will find no pleasure in these trite pieces.
The translator writes how he remained faithful to the original texts, and his reason for doing so: "the thought and writing in these early essays lack sophistication... the importance of these essays... lies more in their value as historical documents... rather than... as informative pieces." Yet, one wonders if the time and effort used in translating and publishing these pieces, which would have no worth if not for their author's future success and fame, could not have been better utilised? Describing his writing process in a 1992 Paris Review interview, Mahfouz said: "I make frequent revisions. I cut out a lot... Then I tear up all the old reworkings and throw them away." It would have been good if someone had thrown these away, too.
The book is, however, not wholly without merit. In some of the profiles of his contemporary writers and artistes, we do get a glimpse, albeit a hazy one, into the vibrant intellectual life of Cairo in 1930s. In "Three of Our Writers", Mahfouz profiles Abbas el-Akkad, Taha Hussein and Salama Moussa, whom he describes to be the "representatives of our Nahda" - the cultural renaissance in the Arab world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After a few general comments on their work - without any analysis - Mahfouz writes: "el-Akkad is the spirit of the literary Nahda, Taha Hussein is its rational mind, and Salama Moussa is its will." Sentimental stuff!
In the essay "I Have Read (Part 2)", we get a glimpse of a future Mahfouz, who would defend Salman Rushdie's right to write The Satanic Verses, inviting a fatwa on himself and a murderous attack. In the essay, he defends el-Akkad's choice of subject in A Compilation of Islam's Geniuses, against an anonymous correspondent's attack: "it is reprehensible and tyrannical that someone would demand of a writer that he takes up subjects that accord to their taste - the writer is free to write what he likes and reader is free to read it or not." This is a tad simplistic but has reverberations of his later defence of Mr Rushdie. Making no bones of the fact that he found The Satanic Verses offensible, Mahfouz told The Paris Review: "I consider Khomeini's position dangerous. He does not have the right to pass judgment - that's not the Islamic way."
Besides these few gems, the slim volume would not be worth reading at all. In her essay on Mahfouz' Children of the Alley, Nathaniel Greenberg writes it is impossible to read the master's novel "as anything but an aesthetic anticipation of the future"... a touchstone in Egypt's long struggle for democracy." Mahfouz did not always display a great insight as a political thinker. In the Paris Review interview quoted earlier, he said: "Hosni Mubarak? His constitution is not democratic, but he is democratic." By the 2011 revolution, Mr Mubarak had lost whatever democratic credentials he might have had. But, one suspects, Mahfouz would not be too unhappy to see the last of him; nor of the essays in this book.
