or under the influence of foreign literature, which we have been forced to study in order to learn from it the secrets of genuine advanced art / sound sophisticated technique and to adopt its pillars, rules and style.
Egyptian-authored pieces1
are namely – what a pity! – [often/generally] Arabized versions of foreign drama, and our fiction is taken from foreign fiction!
فتعدمها المسحة الطبيعية التي هي سرّ من أسرار الفنّ الحقيقي .
fa-tuʕdimu-hā ’l-masḥaẗa ’l-ṭabīʕiyyaẗ allatī hiya sirrun min ʔasrār al-fann al-ḥaqīqī.
and that their Western features clearly leave such an imprint on an author’s [lit. his] piece that it will lack the natural touch that is one of the secrets of real art.
Therefore, it is our duty as writers to give our contemporary Egyptian literature lively and colourful features, peculiar to it and by which it is identifiable as unique.
We must strive to free our minds from the influence of Western literature
AR: ḏihniyyaẗ, taʔṯīr, ʔadab, ġarbī EN: …
بألا نتّخذ (م) من الروايات الأجنبية قاعدة لرواياتنا التي يجب أن تشاد على أساس الملاحظة الصادقة المستخرجة من أعماق حياتنا اليومية ، وعلى التحليلات الاجتماعية والنفسانية ،
by avoiding taking [p. xiii] foreign narrative [traditions] as the pillars on which to erect our own. These must [instead] be built on faithful observation, extracted from our daily lives, as well as on social and psychologicalanalyses.
If we achieve this, we will have added something new, something writers from the West are incapable of doing because of their inability to study our psychology and the way we organize our lives.
There will then come the day when they will begin to translate our stories and plays into their languages, as they have an ardent desire for everything Egyptian,
Then, and only then, will it be possible to count the Egyptian nation among the [world’s] independent advanced nations, no matter what political system it will have; for literature/ culture is the criterion for a nation’s progress(iveness).
A nation that has achieved such a degree of progress and early, promising maturation as the Egyptian nation has achieved, is indeed worthy of an independent, artistically advanced literature/culture bearing its [sc., this nation’s] own distinctive features.