BEIRUT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE MAY 1, 1985, Vol. IV, No. 32 CONTENTS EDITORIAL Women and Literature (Rose Ghurayyib) ... ............................. 2 PIONEER Thorayya Malhas - Jordan - ......................... 3 ARTICLES Arab Feminine Literature Between 1980 and 1950 ................... .. 4 - 5 POEMS - Liban (Amal Saleeby) .................... ... .. ....." .... 6 - Un mal d'Enfance (Andree Chedid) ............................ ..... 6 - Where is Thy Sting, 0 Death (Lamia Abbas Amara) . .... ....... ....... 7 PROFILES I ) Alifa Rifaat (Egypt).... ...... .. .. ........... .. .. 8 2 ) Dr. Mariam Bagdadi (Saudi Arabia) .. ........ 9 3 ) Souad Abou Sabbah (Kuwait) ................ 10 4 ) Leila Abou Zeid (Morocco) ................... 11 REPORTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD I ) Claire Gel>eyli awarded Edgar Poe Prize ....• 12 2 ) French Minister Feminizes Language ........ 12 ,3 ) New Women's Journal in Sudan ............. 12 LECTURE Contemporary Lebanese Women Writers (;-./aiik Saba Yared) ....................... \3 - 16 ( Editorial ) Women and Literature The «gift of the tongue» has been generally them a unique means for claiming their rights and acknowledged as one of women's chief aptitudes. In expounding their demands and their needs. Literary world mythology and history, women performed several production has the possibility of travelling, of spreading roles requiring eloquence and fluency: those ofpriestess, far and wide and reaching every corner of the world. prophetess, mourner, poetess, sorceress, soothsayer, Through literature women are able to emerge as a world singer, mourner and story-teller (for ex. Scheherazade). power, as a «global sisterhood». In this respect, they may We read that Maysoun, wife of the first Omayyad Caliph, strive for improvement and reform in every field and Mu'awia, longed to return to her Bedouin tent in the claim the instauration of justice and the elimination of desert, which she preferred to the sumptuous Damascene exploitation not only in their own spheres but also in those Palace. She expressed her longing in a famous poem of men. After all, those who commit or permit injustice which so moved the Caliph that he decided to grant her toward women also do it in their dealings with men. It is wish. Another woman poet from Andalusia was commonly accepted now that a really developed country immortalized by a verse which she improvised as a is one which has a single, not a double, standard of complement to an improvised one by King Al-Mutamid justice. of Sevilla. The King was so delighted by her witty As a conclusion, I find it convenient to quote from response that he decided to many her. Robin Morgan, a dedicated feminist, poet, andjournalist, the following paragraph which ends the preface of her A well - known saying warns against indulgence in masterly compilation: «Sisterhood is Global»(*) speech, by quoting a fable attributed to Esop, which says that the tongue is the source of all evils; but those who «Male-led revolutions, so often and so tragically mere quote it forget that part of the fable which affirms that the power exchange in a basically unaltered structure, have tongue is equally the source of all blessings. left dramatic accounts of their crises and heroism .... If such revolutions sometimes seem to have been based on Women of to-day, like those of the past, have been the concept of dying for a cause, woman-conceived using their literary skills for self - expression and self - transformation seems more about daring to live for a assertion, but on a much wider scale. In Third World, as cause, a heroism more difficult because it is daily and in First and Second World, countries, women have ostensibly less dramatic». distinguished themselves as poets, novelists, journalists, Rose Ghurayyib lawyers, educators, lectures, actresses, politicians and other professionals who depend on language and literature for handling their arts. The literary field offers women of "* R. Morgan (ed), Sisterhodd is Global, Anchor Books, today unprecedented opportunities for work. It also gives N.Y. 1984. 2 ( Pioneer Thorayya Malhas a Pioneer from Jordan Thorayya Malhas is widely regarded as the first ambition culminated in a collection of English free verse, Jordanian woman writer to declare her rebellion against «Prisoners of Time», which she published in 1958. While obsolete ideas, and to attack, through her way of life and she took teaching as a career, her love for knowledge led her writings, the «cave-dwellers» who cling to tradition her to continue her study and research in ancient and as a means of preserving their privileges or justifying modem literature. After years of investigation in Arabic their wrong acts. linguistics, she decided to make a historical study of Kushagem, one of the lesser renowned Abbasid poets, When she was still a student preparing a master'! and, for that study, she abtained in 1978 a Ph.D. degree degree at the American University of Beirut, she with honors from the University of St. Joseph. published, in 1949, a collection of free verse, «An-Nasheed-ut-Ta'eh» (The Meandering Song), in Thorayya Malhas's writing is characterized by a which she condemned both traditional forms of writing spontaneous expression of feeling and thought, and by and reactionary ways of thinking. Like many Arab little polish and embellishment. She is one of several intellectuals who chose to live outside their countries, in contemporary women writers who have devoted a spot where they could move and speak-out freely, themselves to so called «committed writing», thus she Thorayya decided to settle in Lebanon where she joined stands out by virtue of her unusual vehemence and hands with a number of socially conscious writers, poets frankness . and journalists; she participated in their efforts to R. G. modernize Lebanon and make it a center point of cultural radiation in the Arab world. While many of her Wonder colleagues and associates quit and went each in a If I could reach the sky different direction, she remained faithful to her ideal. Her I wonder if I writings echoed her interest in social justice, in national My hands will move the earth freedom, in loyalty, but not enslavement to the Arab But If I heritage. If I could find a seed Her keen sense of right and wrong made of her a born A seed of peace feminist, a strong advocate of sexual equality, and she I wonder if I succeeded in inculcating this attitude in her women My heart will weave students at B.U.C. and at the Lebanese University. When Garments of delight president Muammar GadhafI of Libya delivered his But if I speech in which he announced the «Era of Liberation» of the Arab woman», in 1982 she was so entusiastic that she If I could plant a seed published an article in the paper in which she hailed him A seed of love as the awaited hero of woman's freedom. Hatred will be abolished From eyes Her sympathy with suffering Lebanon has inspired her But if I with a number of elegies in which she deplored in highly A sting I felt emotional tones the tragic fate of this country. One From tiny tiny souls example is «The Seagull and the Pen», Published in My strong strong palm A1·Adib magazine, (nos. 8-12, 1983). Stretched like mountains She has written literary research, «Spiritual values in I could not see the tiny Arabic literature» and «Nu'aimy the Mystic Writer»; she Tiny souls also produced numerous collections of lyrical and satirical A chorus sang poems in free verse. In some of those works we can But if I. detect a strain of romantic or mystic longing for ~nion Thorayya Malhas with the Absolute, with nature or with man. Her literary From «Prisoners of Time», p. 149. 3 Article Arab Feminine Literature Between 1850 and 1950 May ~~~~===::::::~~~~~~ Ziadeh The period between 1850 and 1950 covers the era of appeared a few women writers who were more or less Arab Awakening; it can be broken down into two phases: influenced by the new ideas. Zainab Fawwaz emigrated the earlier one, 1850-1900, and the later one, 1900-1950. from South Lebanon to Egypt where she made herself The signs of awakening were more evident in the later known by corresponding with papers and magazines, than in the earlier phase. Those signs were: publishing poems and compiling a biographical work on famous historical women. 1. A pioneering literary activity which includes the study and revival of ancient Arabic literature and the Marianna Marrash, from Aleppo, Syria, contributed promotion and reinstatement of classical Arabic. to magazines, opened a salon for the literary figures of 2. A rising influence of Western culture, particularly as her city and published a collection of traditional poetry. represented by French and English literatures and The women writers of this group, in spite of their other modem subjects taught in the foreign schools relative emancipation, deviated little from traditional which blossomed in Lebanon, Egypt and Syria. lines. 3. The impact of foreign literatures on the Arabic language, leading to the evolution of its prose and the Between 1886 and 1950, a second group of women appearance of journalistic writing, modem fiction and writers flourished in the three countries of early Arab drama. Awakening: Lebanon, Egypt and Syria. May Ziadeh, 4. The use of literature in its various forms to spread Malak Hafni Nassef, Marie Ajami and Salma Sayegh modernism in life and thought, such ideas as freedom fell under the direct influence of Western culture. They of expression, liberal attitudes towards love, marriage, expressed themselves mainly in prose, which was earlier women, government and religion. to evolve than poetry. They contributed to papers and magazines and practiced public speaking, which was at The general revival attracted women and aroused the time a popular art and an efficient tool for the spread interest in their emancipation. The few women poets of of cultural change.