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Walt Whitman's Early Arab Reception

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Walt Whitman's Early Arab Reception Ameen Rihani: Walt Whitman’s Early Arab Reception Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung des Grades des Doktors der Philosophie in der Fakultät Kulturwissenschaften der Technischen Universität Dortmund vorgelegt von Bilal Souda Dortmund 2021 Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Walter Grünzweig Zweitgutachterin: Prof. Dr. Randi Gunzenhäuser 1 Acknowledgments I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to my advisor Prof. Dr. Walter Grünzweig for the continuous support of my PhD study and related research, for his patience, and motivation. His guidance helped me during all of my research and writing of this thesis for the last five years. I could not have imagined having a better advisor for my PhD study. He consistently allowed this paper to be my own work but steered me in the right direction whenever he thought I needed it. I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Randi Gunzenhäuser, Dean Prof. Dr. Gerold Sedlmayr and all the rest of the staff and PhD candidates of the American Studies department of TU Dortmund University. With a special mention to Dr. Sibylle Klemm, Dr. Blake Bronson- Bartlett, Dr. Terence Kumpf, Dr. Behnam Mirzababazadeh Fomeshi, Dr. Sina Nitzsche, Yöntem Kilkiş, Iris Kemmer, Dilara Serhat-Sawitzki, Hanna Colleen Rückl, Timo Weidner, Maria Rosaria Tulimiero, Michal Calo, Orsolya Karácsony, Dr. Johanna Feier, and Jessica Sniezyk for their unfailing support and assistance. I would like to thank all the Whitman’s experts whom I met and learned so much from in the Whitman’s events, with special mention to Prof. Dr. Ed Folsom and Prof. Dr. Betsy Erkkilä. I would also like to express my gratitude for my students from the undergraduate seminar “Walt Whitman and the Arab World” I have taught during the winter semester 2016-17. I have learned so much from their passionate participation and input. 2 I feel absolutely privileged to have been awarded with a full scholarship from KAAD (The Catholic Academic Exchange Service). I am very much grateful for KAAD for funding my PhD research. I would like to thank all of the staff and my colleagues from KAAD and Dortmund KHG (The Catholic University Community) for their support, with a special mention to Prof. Dr. Eberhard Schockenhoff, Dr. Hermann Weber, Dr. Christina Pfestroff, Dr. Nora Kalbarczyk, Santra Sontowski, Prof. Dr. Thomas Eggensperger, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Engel, Dr. Heinrich Geiger, Dr. Thomas Krüggeler, Dr. Marko Kuhn, Markus Leimbach, Fernanda Hulverscheidt Fagundes, Dr. Peter Jochem, Claudia Bussmann, Anette Quarterman, and Caroline Müller. Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents and siblings, who have provided me moral and emotional support in my life. I am also grateful to my other family members and friends who have supported me along the way. Thanks for all your encouragement! Bilal Souda 3 Abstract Walt Whitman’s reception in Arabic language and literature is starting early, just a few years after the death of the author. This thesis investigates the fascinating story of Ameen Rihani’s critical and creative reception of Walt Whitman’s work. As such, this research finds its place in the fields of American studies, Arab-American studies, and comparative literature. Whitman’s reception in different contexts and countries is an enormously well studied area of literary studies and specifically poetry studies. There have been many comprehensive studies of his international reception such as Walt Whitman Abroad (1955), Walt Whitman and the World (1995), Whitman East and West: New Contexts for Reading Walt Whitman (2002) as well as studies covering individual countries. So far, little research exists covering the Arab world. I intend in this thesis to prove otherwise that Whitman’s early reception, and especially that by Ameen Rihani, changed the course of Arabic literature. The Arab-American critic and poet Rihani, also considered the founding father of Arab- American literature, was the first Arab author to write English essays, poetry, novels, and art criticism in the English language. He perceived Whitman's important role for breaking both the ‘chains’ and ‘conventions’ of traditional poetics not just in English and European literatures but also in Arabic poetry. In response to Whitman, Rihani published many essays and poems criticizing themes, diction, style, and techniques used for the traditional Arabic poetry, “qaṣīdah”. Rihani called for banishing these old poetic forms and themes which restricted the poet's creativity and freedom of thought, and ultimately his poetry 4 naturalized Whitman’s poetics and thoughts. Rihani earned him the title as father of free verse in Arabic poetry. In this study, I will show how Whitman, through Rihani’s mediation, influenced modern Arabic literature in general and its emerging free verse in particular. 5 Table of Contents Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................... 2 Abstract ........................................................................................................................... 4 Table of Content .............................................................................................................. 6 Chapter I: Introduction ..................................................................................................... 7 Chapter II: Whitman in Rihani’s English Poetry ............................................................. 22 Whitman in Rihani’s Arabic Poetry ........................................................................... 54 Chapter III: Whitmanian Themes in Rihani’s Writings .................................................... 70 Sufism and Mysticism ............................................................................................... 70 American Transcendentalism ................................................................................... 97 Life vs. Death .......................................................................................................... 117 New York ................................................................................................................ 134 Freedom and Democracy ....................................................................................... 151 The Orient ............................................................................................................... 172 Chapter IV: Conclusion & Implications ........................................................................ 195 Works Cited ................................................................................................................. 210 6 Chapter I: Introduction Walt Whitman's poetry has had a great impact on world literatures. A critic pointed out that “the new poetic realm opened up by Whitman means similarly to the poetry in Asia, America and Europe [...]” (Yeguang, 1988: 381). Whitman’s formal and thematic innovations have changed Arabic literature through his reception in the English language and Arabic literary works of such early Arab-American writers as Ameen Rihani (1876- 1940) or Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883-1931). Nevertheless, Whitman’s Arabic reception has received little attention in critical studies, including investigation on Whitman. For example, there is no reference to Arabic culture in Walt Whitman and the World, republished 1995, tracking many international responses and demonstrating how various cultures have received Whitman. Walt Whitman and the World is a comprehensive study comprised of 18 different chapters addressing Whitman’s reception abroad in 18 different cultures and languages, but the Arab World is not included among them. The editors of this collection of essays, Gay Wilson Allen and Ed Folsom, claim: “Today, complete translations of Leaves of Grass have been published in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, and China, and selections of Whitman's poetry have appeared in every major language except Arabic” (1995: 2). But in fact, there are two Arabic translations of selections of Whitman's poetry published before 1995; the first one is Mohammed F. Alshunaiti’s Walt Whitman: Shaeir 'Asil (Walt Whitman: A Genuine Poet) in Cairo in 1961, and the second one is Saadi Youssef’s Awraq Al-Ushb (Leaves of the Grass) in Baghdad in 1976. Moreover, there are other major Arabic translations of 7 Whitman that appeared after the 1995 edition of Walt Whitman and the World, such as Abed Ismael’s translation of Whitman’s “Song of Myself” in Damascus in 2006, Maher Al- Batoti’s translation Diwan 'Awraq Al-Eashab: Dhikraa Al-Raiys Lincoln wa Qasayid 'Ukhraa (Leaves of the Grass Collection: President Lincoln Memorial and Other Poems) in Cairo in 2006, Saadi Youssef’ second Whitman’s translation New York Qasidas in New York, USA, in 2007, and finally Rafaet Salam’s Awraq Al-Ushb (Leaves of the Grass) in Cairo in 2017. Salam’s translation is the first and only complete Arabic translation of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass to date. Before these translations, it was the Arab-American writers who came into contact with Whitman’s literary works in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth century. The pioneering Arab writer, Ameen Rihani, immigrated to New York in 1888 four years before Whitman’s death. The pioneering Arab writers in the USA, Ameen Rihani and Gibran Khalil Gibran, established the Mahjar School. This name is given to Arab émigré writers to the Americas – who emigrated from the Arab countries in Middle East and North Africa. The majority of them came from the Levant, especially from Mount Lebanon. According to the 1990
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