by Menahem Milson. Magnes Press, Jerusalem and St. Martin's Press, New York, 304 pp, 1999
Ioram Melcer
Prof. Menahem Milson belongs to a small group of Israeli scholars in the humanities, who are among the leaders in their field. Together with Professors Sasson Somekh and Shmuel Moreh, Milson is one of the foremost scholars of modern Arabic literature. And, indeed, his book on Najib Mahfuz is a gem which ought to be read by any person who loves and values literature. This book is a literary work in its own right, and is a pleasure to read.
The task which Milson has taken upon himself is not an easy one. The book explores a wide range of fields: it contains biographical elements - literary biography in particular; it touches on the political and cultural history of Egypt; it explores Egypt's history of ideas, and much more. Above all, the book maps and interprets the principle works of this prolific Nobel Prize winner, Najib Mahfuz, the greatest writer in the Arab world.
Obviously, Milson's book makes reference to theories of literary criticism, but (as the sub-title hints), the nature of Mahfuz's work obliges the researcher to refer also to philosophy and religious texts. If we add to all this the pedantry which often characterizes academic writing, particularly in the field of Arabic and Islam, we could expect the result of Milson's difficult undertaking to be heavy-footed. Yet when I reached the last page of Milson's book, I was sorry it had ended. This feeling was accompanied by a sense of profound gratitude to Milson for having followed where his heart led him: he has chosen to write about an author whom he loves, and has managed to keep his love from being crushed by the weight of academic research. So well has Milson succeeded, that the reader is left with the feeling that the subject is very simple, and was just waiting to be written about.
This is, of course, wrong. An author like Mahfuz, who, over the course of decades, has written dozens of books in a wide variety of styles, and who has single-handedly perfected a genre which combines the European novel and Islamic literary traditions, cannot easily be dealt with. Milson navigates skillfully through a sea of literary material, research, interviews and biographical and historical data, and presents us with an elegant portrayal of the intellectual and literary world of the grand master of Cairo. Patiently and logically, Milson begins by placing Mahfuz against the background of his generation and the literary activities that preceded him. He paints a portrait of the man himself - certainly an enigmatic figure - and of his intellectual background as a student of philosophy in Cairo in the 1920s and 1930s. This Cairo, steeped in Pharaonic history and in the political upheaval that rocked it throughout the 20th century, is Mahfuz's better half, his lawfully wedded wife. Hence Milson, of necessity, had also to write about Cairo, the city which Mahfuz hardly ever left and the setting for nearly all his works. Just as Mahfuz dedicated his whole life to portraying Cairo and uncovering its secrets, so Milson follows him diligently and alertly, well aware that the Egyptian author is both sphinx and phoenix and seems at times to cast no shadow; Mahfuz is as mysterious as a sealed box.
Where Mahfuz is concerned, pitfalls lie in wait for the naïve researcher. Milson manages to avoid them all, and emerges almost unscathed. He does not allow himself to be drawn into an excessive preoccupation with psychological issues, which, in recent years, have had a suffocating effect on literary research. As one reads this book, it becomes clear that Mahfuz had an ambivalent attitude to the image of the father and a profound admiration for the image of the mother. However, Milson does not impose upon Mahfuz - or upon us - too much. With subtlety, he manages to extract only what is present in the texts, never substituting Freudian hypotheses for the data. This subtlety stands him in good stead when he comes to decipher political messages in Mahfuz's works, many of which were written in Nasser's time; Mahfuz was not one of Nasser's admirers. As a result, Milson's readers will be convinced of the reliability of his findings. Everything in the book is supported with quotations; everything is transparent and presented to us from a position of deference for the writer and respect for the reader.
In this way, trust develops between Milson and his readers. This trust is an aspect of the civility that characterizes the style of the whole book.
This basis of trust is vital in a book half of which is devoted to the interpretation of hidden meanings in the names of Mahfuz's characters. This is a hazardous pursuit. Milson is well aware of the risks: he writes of them openly, and his subtle and intermittently discernible scepticism further contributes to the credibility of his findings. He reveals the delicate interplay between parallel and contrast, prediction and irony, allusion and concealment, which characterizes Mahfuz's style.
The tools which Milson acquired early in his career are of great assistance here: his knowledge of the Koran and classical Arabic literature; his systematic philological approach; and his thorough training in the construction of the evidence for what he writes. Milson possesses an enviable ability to move from the Koran and its commentaries, through classical poetry, into the dialect of the Egyptian streets to reveal how Mahfuz makes use of the connecting links between all these elements. But, above all, this is a great love story, and, reading the book, it is easy, together with Milson, to fall in love with both Mahfuz and Cairo.
As a devoted long-time fan of the Egyptian cinema, and as one who has read only a few of Mahfuz's books, I found myself, as I read Milson's book, in a familiar and cozy environment. This is evidence of Mahfuz's credibility, as transmitted by his Israeli admirer in a manner that reflects well on both of them. Milson's elegant translation of the extracts he quotes from Mahfuz's works, and the accuracy of his presentation are an added bonus. Repetitions do occur here and there, and at times Milson seems to feel the need to peg his ideas to this or that literary theory, but all in all the book not only paints a fascinating portrait of this Egyptian writer - it also presents an engaging profile of the Israeli scholar himself.
This book provides a unique encounter with the world of an Egyptian writer. Important components of Mahfuz's Egyptian identity will be an eye-opener for many Israelis who, even after 22 years of normalization of relations with Egypt, do not yet perhaps fully comprehend the epochs and transformations which still reverberate within the Egyptian soul.
Ioram Melcer is a writer, translator and literary critic.