Falling into Pieces, or Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq and Literary History: A Love Letter

Abstract

This paper reads Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq's al-Sāq ‘alā al-sāq fī mā huwa al-Fāriyāq (Paris, 1855) in relation to the reflection on language he offers in a later, lexicographical text, Sirr al-layāl fī al-qalb wa al-ibdāl (Istanbul, 1867). Focusing on al-Shidyāq's discussion of language and the body, it argues that his text solicits an anthropocentric privilege that it also places in question. al-Sāq ‘alā al-sāq—a text said be radically new and modern—is already bereaved. Relating this text of Arabic literary modernity to the death of al-Shidyāq's brother, As'ad al-Shidyāq, this paper underscores the unfinished and iterated relation of language to loss and death. Declining to be what it is, and rather than exemplifying the coherent form of the literary work, language, in al-Sāq ‘alā al-sāq, falls into pieces. In al-Shidyāq, finally, language already stalls and interrupts itself, confounding the historical and historiographical categories called upon to read it in the disciplines of literature studies.

Notes

1 De Man, ‘Literary History and Literary Modernity’, 142.

2 ‘Prior to any generalization about literature, literary texts have to be read, and the possibility of reading can never be taken for granted.’ De Man, Blindness and Insight, 107.

3 Al-Shidyāq, al-Sāq, 138. All citations from al-Sāq refer to the 1855 edition. On As‘ad al-Shidyāq, see Buṭrus al-Bustānī, Qiṣṣat Asʿad al-Shidyāq (Beirūt, 1860). A discussion of Asʿad in relation to the American missionaries in Beirut in the early decades of the 19th century—and in terms of a ‘fundamental break,’ al-Bustānī's writing on al-Shidyāq is said to have remarked—is presented in Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 202 et passim.

4 Al-Shidyāq, al-Sāq, 371.

5 Al-Shidyāq, Sirr al-layāl, 111.

6 I have tried to offer a reading Arabic literature studies in relation to its desire to install an object of literary history, and in relation to its attachment to and love for that object. See Sacks, ‘Futures of Literature.’ The argument I offer here learns from the compelling discussion of love, and the love of colonized for the phantasy of her or his sovereignty in language, to which the formation of a literary object in Arabic also points, offered in Tageldin, Disarming Words.

7 Ṭarābulsī and al-‘Aẓama, ‘Introduction,’ 8.

8 Consider the readings of al-Shidyāq and al-Sāq as ‘new’ and belonging to ‘modernity’ offered in ‘Abbūd, Ṣaqr Lubnān, 111; ‘Awaḍ, Tārīkh al-fikr al-miṣrī, 304; Khalaf Allāh, Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq, 95; Masʿad, Fāris al-Shidyāq, 43; Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism, 153; Jubran, ‘Function of Rhyming Prose,’ 148; and elsewhere. For readings of al-Shidyāq as unclassifiable, and from which I continue to learn, see Alwān, ‘Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq and the West,’ 132; Rastegar, Literary Modernity, 103; and Sheehi, Foundations of Modern Arab Identity, 123.

9 Al-Shidyāq, al-Sāq, 518.

10 De Man, ‘Literary History and Literary Modernity,’ 151.

11 Al-Shidyāq, al-Sāq, 371.

12 Al-Shidyāq, Sirr al-layālī, 112.

13 Muḥammad al-Hādī al-Muṭawwī, following ‘Imād al-Ṣulḥ, explains that the translation ‘was published in its entirety “in 1857 at the William Watts Press in London. The Psalms had been published separately in 1850 and the New Testament in 1851”.’ Al-Muṭawwī, Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq, 1:286. Also see al-Ṣulḥ, Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq, 150.

14 Al-Shidyāq, Mumāḥakāt, 19.

15 Al-Shidyāq, al-Jāsūs; al-Shidyāq, Kitāb ghunyat al-ṭālib. Selections from al-Jawā’ib have been published in Ṭarābulsī and al-‘Aẓama, al-Kitābāt al-majhūla.

16 On ‘modernization,’ ‘simplification,’ and ‘renewal,’ see Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 99–100; Abu Lughod, The Arab Rediscovery of Europe, 77; and Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut, 225. Also compare the reading of al-Shidyāq in relation to ‘the print revolution’ pursued by Geoffrey Roper, ‘Fāris al-Shidyāq,’ 214. Roper underlines al-Shidyāq's participation in ‘a new culture based not only on a new means of transmitting texts, but also on a new approach to selecting, writing, and presenting them, aimed at a new kind of reader. In the process, it contributed to a demystification of language and literature, a revival of the classical heritage, and a new self-awareness.’ Ibid., 210. This demystification is read in relation to al-Shidyāq's ‘realization’ of a necessity in relation to language. ‘There is no doubt that he was steeped in the old classical norms and usages, and he also showed himself to be, in many of his writings, quite fond of obscurity and recondite verbiage. But he nevertheless realized that the new patterns of readership created by the print revolution necessitated a new, simpler, and more direct style, geared primarily to the communication of knowledge and ideas rather than to preserving the mystique of a literary elite.’ Ibid., 219. The reading I offer learns from Roper's work, to ask how, in relation to the violence imparted to language in the Arabic, Ottoman 19th century—through a privileging of historicist categories, the reorganization of ‘naḥw’ (‘grammar’) in formalist, instrumentalist terms in a privileging of ‘communication,’ and a colonial anthropocentrism. (Roper also underlines that al-Shidyāq's work points to ‘a new role for the author, and a new sense of self-awareness and autonomy for writers’ [ibid., 222])—language was reorganized, an event remarked and displaced in al-Shidyāq.

17 The violence I point to here is discussed in the path-breaking work offered in Mitchell, Colonising Egypt; and Muhsin J. al-Mūsawī's discussion of the privileging of the categories tamaddun (civilization), irtiqā’ (progress), and ‘ilm (knowledge). Al-Mūsawī, al-Istishrāq fī al-fikr al-‘arabī, 61. And see also the compelling readings pursued by Samah Selim, Stephen Sheehi, Kamran Rastegar, Joseph Massad, Elliott Colla, Omnia El Shakry, Jens Hanssen, Lisa Pollard, Michael Ezekiel Gasper, Wilson Chacko Jacob, Shaden Tageldin, and Samera Esmeir. The reading I offer here hopes to contribute to this work, to ask how language is devastated in relation to the violence this scholarship newly teaches us to read. Language, I wish to argue, is not only a site at which a devastation in the terms for the giving of sense occurs, but may be said, in discrete textual instances, to be the iteration of that devastation.

18 Al-Shidyāq, Sirr al-layāl, 113.

19 Ibid., 114.

20 Ibid.

21 I read this sentence as it has been edited by Darwīsh Juwaydī in al-Shidyāq, al-Sāq, 24.

22 Al-Shidyāq, al-Sāq, 10.

23 Ibid., 15.

24 Al-Shidyāq, Sirr al-layāl, 172.

25 Ibid., 177.

26 On al-Shidyāq's relation to an older linguistic tradition see al-Zarkān, al-Jawānib al-lughawiyya, 65–107. Further discussion of the reflection on the origin of language is offered in Weiss, ‘Medieval Muslim Discussions;’ and Vasalou, ‘Their Intention was Shown.’

27 Al-Zarkān, al-Jawānib al-lughawiyya, 72–73.

28 An illuminating discussion of the privileging of an anthropocentric understanding of language in relation to the juridical practice of the state is offered in Selim, ‘Fiction and Colonial Identities.’ And consider also the reading of the law pursued in Fahmy, ‘Justice, Law and Pain;’ Fahmy, ‘The Anatomy of Justice;’ and Esmeir, Juridical Humanity.

29 Al-Shidyāq, Sirr al-layāl, 114.

30 Al-Shidyāq, al-Sāq, 401.

31 Ibid., 434.

32 Ibid., 22.

33 Ibid., 12–13.

34 Al-Shidyāq, Sirr al-layāl, 184.

35 Ibid.

36 Al-Shidyāq, al-Jāsūs ‘alā al-qāmūs, 4.

37 Al-Shidyāq, Kashf al-mukhabbā ‘an funūn Ūrūbbā, 190.

38 Al-Shidyāq, al-Sāq, 365.

39 Ibid., 72.

40 Ibid., 601.

41 Ibid., 702.

42 Ibid., 703. A reading and translation of this passage is presented by Rastegar, Literary Modernity, 116–118. I have learned from each in the reading and translation I offer here. Rastegar has underlined both a relation to writing and authorship (‘This act—of writing—is what defines the book's creation, and his authorial role in its production’; ibid., 117), and to the legitimacy and legitimation of these language practices ‘within the new social and institutional formations emerging at this time’ (ibid., 124).

43 Al-Shidyāq, al-Sāq, 703.

44 Peled, ‘al-Sāq ‘alā al-Sāq, 31.

45 ‘Āshūr, al-Hādatha al-mumkina, 66.

46 Zaydān, Tarājim mashāhir, 2:110.

47 Al-Sulḥ, Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq, 169.

48 Al-Shidyāq, al-Sāq, 10–11.

49 Ibid., 61.

50 Ibid., 463.

51 ‘Uṣfūr, Zaman al-riwāya, 99.

52 ‘Āshūr, al-Hādatha al-mumkina, 36 and 133.

53 Al-Shidyāq, al-Sāq, 597.

54 Ibid., 599.

55 Ibid., 598.

56 Al-Baghdadi, ‘Cultural Function,’ 390.

57 Al-Shidyāq, al-Wāsiṭa fī ma‘arifat, 190.

58 Al-Shidyāq, al-Sāq, 411.

59 Ibid., 602.

60 Ibid., 603.

61 Ibid., 603.

62 Ibid., 602–603.

63 After completing this paper I read and learned from the stunning discussion of the body in al-Shidyāq offered in El-Ariss, Trials of Arab Modernity: ‘It is thus necessary to read al-Shidyāq's body in various environments and in relation to other bodies and objects, thereby treating it as a sign, a narrative, and a site of inscription for external stimuli and new meaning’ (ibid., 63). El-Ariss underlines that the body in al-Shidyāq is a site of ‘collapse’ (ibid., 62) and points to an obsessive dimension of al-Shidyāq's language: ‘Through these affects, al-Shidyāq enacts a violent purging of the body from its ailment. His anger, which comes through in his obsessive return to the site of disgust and contradiction—namely food—rids al-Shidyāq from the ill and shakes off the ache with which he struggled throughout’ (ibid., 83). Yet if al-Shidyāq is to be read as a subject ‘refusing’ or ‘rejecting’ an ‘epistemological model’ (ibid., 83) and ‘colonialism's homogenizing and hegemonic practices’ (ibid., 85), and if his text is to be read through a privileging of that subject's modernity—‘al-Shidyāq decenters modernity and civilization as fixed and coherent narratives and produces his thoroughly modern text’ (ibid., 78)—this would compel one to ask into the time of that text and its interrupted confounding.

64 Al-Shidyāq, al-Sāq, 604.

65 Ibid., 357.

66 Ibid., 357–358.

67 Ibid., 357–358.

68 Ibid., 329.

69 Ibid., 370.

70 ‘Akkāwī, al-Fāriyāq, 110.

71 Rastegar, Literary Modernity, 108 and 109.

72 Al-Shidyāq, al-Sāq, 371.

73 Ibid., 372.

74 Ibid., 371.

75 Ibid., 372.

76 Ibid.

77 Ibid., 373.

78 Ibid., 438.

79 Ibid., 430.

80 Ibid., 431–432.