4 | The intellectual revolution that is flowing so powerfully1
through our veins2
prompts us to fight against everything old and makes us look forward in joyful anticipation to an overall renaissance/upswing to happen in Egypt.
Having seen veiled, segregated Egyptian women [p. xi] leave home [to go] to work and participate in demonstrations, alongside with Egyptian men, demanding boldly and with determination their country’s rights –
The revolution that we expect [to happen] in contemporary Egyptian literature will aim to do away with the static, obscure, and hackneyed old literature.
AR: ṯawraẗ, ʔadab, ʕaṣrī, miṣrī (Miṣr / Miṣriyyaẗ), qadīm, ǧāmid (ǧumūd), mutašābih (tašābuh), mubtaḏal (ibtiḏāl) EN: do away with the static, obscure, and hackneyed old literature
فتكون أشبه بالثورة التي قام بها "فيكتور هوجو" ضدّ الأدب المدرسي ،
If we take an innocent, disinterested look at the literature of our present days, as an investigator who analyses causes and effects would do, it will become evident that the revolution has actually already infected dramatic arts.
For that obscene, sick and licentious type [of plays that we see today on our stages] is actually nothing but a demonstration or a semi-revolution against the old and trite,
[But not all of them did so.] Those, however, who refused to replace the [foreign] pieces with Egyptian ones and insisted, in stupid and naive stubbornness, [to continue] to stage foreign pieces, far removed from our taste, opposed to our mentality,9
If these two should decide, some day in the future, to return to theatre-making in Egypt, they will be able to do so only on the condition that they stage contemporary Egyptian plots.
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 pieces10
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.
My intuitive keenness of analyzing drives me to immerse myself in the study of the innermost depths of our psychology to describe it as it is, reliably and faithfully, and not the way it should be.
We will not dare to study this delicate topic in further detail now [p. xiv] to find out whether they are right or wrong, as we will dedicate an extensive chapter to its study in our book Observations and Perspectives on Art / Aesthetic Contemplations.12
For art, as we understand it, is the ability to arouse [in us] a strong and noble feeling that we enjoy feeling creep into us, producing in our hearts a drunk, capturing pleasure. It takes control over us and refines our morals / makes us civilized.
AR: fann, ʔīǧād, ʔiḥsās, rāqin, qawiyy (quwwaẗ), laḏḏaẗ, qalb (qulūb), nufūs (nafs), tahḏīb EN: pleasure, refines our morals / makes us civilized
ولا شيء خليق بإيجاد هذا الإحساس سوى الحقيقة لأنّها تهز أليافاً دقيقة في أعماق قلوبنا ،