Arabs and the Art of Storytelling Middle East Literature in Translation Michael Beard and Adnan Haydar, Series Editors Other titles from Middle East Literature in Translation Abundance from the Desert: Classical Arabic Poetry Raymond Farrin Beyond Love Hadiya Hussein; Ikram Masmoudi, trans. The Emperor Tea Garden Nazlı Eray; Robert Finn, trans. A Muslim Suicide Bensalem Himmich; Roger Allen, trans. A Sleepless Eye: Aphorisms from the Sahara Ibrahim al-Koni; Roger Allen, trans. The Story of Joseph: A Fourteenth-Century Turkish Morality Play by Sheyyad Hamza Bill Hickman, trans. Tree of Pearls, Queen of Egypt Jurji Zaydan; Samah Selim, trans. The World through the Eyes of Angels Mahmoud Saeed; Samuel Salter, Zahra Jishi, and Rafah Abuinnab, trans. Arabs and the Art of Storytelling A Strange Familiarity Abdelfattah Kilito Translated by Mbarek Sryfi and Eric Sellin With a Foreword by Roger Allen Syracuse University Press English translation copyright © 2014 by Syracuse University Press Syracuse, New York 13244-5290 All Rights Reserved First Edition 2014 14 15 16 17 18 19 6 5 4 3 2 1 Originally published in French as Les Arabes et l’art du réc it: Une ét range familiarité (Paris: Sindbad/Actes Sud, 2009). ∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. For a listing of books published and distributed by Syracuse University Press, visit www.SyracuseUniversityPress.syr.edu. ISBN: 978-0-8156-3371-6 (cloth) 978-0-8156-5286-1 (e-book) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kilito, Abdelfattah, 1945– [Arabes et l'art du récit. English] Arabs and the art of storytelling : a strange familiarity / Abdelfattah Kilito ; translated by Mbarek Sryfi and Eric Sellin ; with a foreword by Roger Allen. — First edition. pages cm. — (Middle East literature in translation series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8156-3371-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8156-5286-1 (ebook) 1. Arabic literature—History and criticism. 2. Narration (Rhetoric) I. Sryfi , Mbarek, translator. II. Sellin, Eric, 1933– translator. III. Title. PJ7519.N25K5513 2014 892.7'0923—dc23 2014027337 Manufactured in the United States of America Contents Foreword, Roger Allen ❀ vii Preface ❀ xi Translators’ Note ❀ xv 1. The Prophetic Pattern ❀ 1 2. How Should We Read Kalila and Dimna? ❀ 18 3. Speaking to the Prince ❀ 30 4. This Verdant Paradise ❀ 49 5. The Exemplary Intruder: Hayy ibn Yaqzān ❀ 55 6. The Hostile Eye ❀ 74 7. Al-Mu‘tamid’s Dahr ❀ 84 8. The Singing of the Jinns ❀ 91 9. Portrait of the Miser as a Hero ❀ 96 10. To Lie Once a Year ❀ 112 11. Is A Thousand and One Nights a Boring Book? ❀ 116 12. The New Dante ❀ 126 13. Perec and al-Harīrī ❀ 131 14. Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of Averroës ❀ 140 Works Cited ❀ 147 Foreword T hanks to the initiative of Syracuse University Press, anglo- phone readers interested in the Arabic literary tradition have now been able to familiarize themselves with the writings of Abdelfattah Kilito, one of the most original voices in Arabic literary criticism and particularly in what may be termed its “classical” or, if you prefer a more chronological and less value-laden term, its “premodern” tradition of belles-lettres (that French term being as close as one can probably get to the semantic fi elds covered by the Arabic term adab in its premodern context). This book is in fact the third collection of his essays to be published in English translation, the pre- vious two being The Author and His Doubles (2001), which discusses the status of authorship within the Arabic cultural milieu, and Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language (2008), a similarly insightful collection of essays about language and its translatability. In the current collection, Kilito is concerned with the analysis of narratives from the Arabic tradition, and in the process he casts his net far and wide. However, as is always the case with his writings, each essay provides evidence of not merely his own intimate familiarity with the source text, but also of the sheer breadth of his readings around the text in its indigenous surroundings and, more often than not, with respect to other analogous texts from both the Arabic vii viii Foreword ❀ and European traditions. In both cases, he invokes premod- ern and modern illustrative examples. Kilito’s preferred method always involves questioning the texts, challenging long-accepted interpretations of them, and even confronting his own reactions to them (as in his thought-provoking essay in this collection on his lifetime of exposure to A Thou- sand and One Nights). The resulting analyses are never less than insightful, opening up fresh vistas through which to examine or reexamine the narrative tradition in Arabic and fascinating avenues of comparison with other examples of the genres that he selects from contiguous cultures. Thus, al-Harīrī, the renowned author of maqāmāt, “assemblies” (an intrinsically Arabic narrative genre that predates the European emergence of the picaresque), fi nds his verbal acro- batics juxtaposed with those of the French novelist Georges Perec (whose novel La disparition is written without using the letter e); the mind of the equally famous philosopher Ibn Rushd (known in the Western world as Averroës), is accessed through an analysis of Jorge Luis Borges’s story “Averroës’s Search.” The volume carries its own subtitle: A Strange Familiar- ity, utilizing an oxymoronic phrase that can be considered typically Kilitoesque in the richness of its potential. After an initial chapter in which the motivations for writing, especially narratives, are discussed, we encounter a series of analyses devoted to texts that are indeed mostly “familiar,” at least within what might be called the “canon” of Arabic litera- ture and its expression in the form of literary histories. Thus, in addition to the already mentioned al-Harīrī, Ibn Rushd, and A Thousand and One Nights (which merits two sepa- rate studies), we have the translation of Kalila and Dimna by Ibn al-Muqaff a‘ from the Persian tradition of narrative; Ibn Foreword ix ❀ Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzān; Ibn Hazm’s investigation of love and its symptoms, Tawq al-hamāmah (The Dove’s Neck- Ring); and the polymath al-Jāhiz’s renowned compilation of anecdotes concerning that most curious group within Middle Eastern society and its notions of hospitality and generosity, misers (the Kitāb al-bukhala’ [Book of Misers]). The texts themselves are thus clearly recognized as important land- marks in the history of Arabic narrative, albeit a history that has lagged far behind Arabic poetry as a stimulator for crit- ical studies. But in the present volume at least, what may be “familiar” about these works is rendered “strange” by the defamiliarization process that Kilito adopts in his essays. Rather than making any dramatic revelations here about the insights to be found in the individual chapters, I leave it to the reader to delve into them, discover the question- ing postures that they adopt, and consider the ramifi cations involved in reinserting the texts into the various phases in the development of Arabic prose and its narrative tradition. To provide just one example of the tack that Kilito follows, are there no circumstances, he wonders, under which the sta- tus of the miser within Arab-Islamic society, duly described in al-Jāhiz’s Kitāb al-bukhala’ by means of multiple (and in some cases sequential) anecdotes, might serve to illustrate the more positive character trait of “thrift”? Here then is yet another compilation in English transla- tion of Kilito’s penetrating essays on Arabic literature and its genres. Although its primary readership may lie with those who are already familiar with the texts he has selected, the refreshingly open posture that he adopts in his critical anal- yses should also be attractive to a much broader readership that may one day—in shā’ Allāh, God willing—become more aware of the riches of the Arabic literary heritage and