Claiming modernity in Egypt: decadent orientalism and Mayy Ziyādah’s Fleurs de rêve

ABSTRACT

In the Western decadent imagination, Egypt has been figured as the site of Orientalist fantasy, a land of sphinxes, pyramids, and mummies having little to do with modernity. For a modern Arab writer in Egypt to write in a decadent mode would be to risk recapitulating Europe’s Orientalizing vision. And yet, for the poet and feminist intellectual Mayy Ziyādah (1886–1941), to write in such a mode is also to assert one’s experience of colonial modernity. In her 1911 volume Fleurs de rêve, written in French, Ziyādah ironically undercuts the Orientalist vision of European writers such as Alphonse de Lamartine, Charles Baudelaire, and Pierre Loti with a picture of the modern female Arab subject as a full participant in the drama of modern consciousness. Ziyādah sets this performance against the backdrop of Cairo, a city freighted with Europe’s belated imperial presence. Ziyādah’s playful and ironic approach to decadence asserts Egypt’s modernity, reterritorializing a decadent sensibility to Cairo and rendering her speaker a subject prone to the tumults of ennui, violent mood swings, and the horrors of living death.

KEYWORDS:

• Decadence
• orientalism
• nahda
• Egypt
• Baudelaire
• Ziyādah

Acknowledgments

My deepest thanks to Stephanie J. Brown, who talked through Ziyādah’s poetry with me over Zoom, carefully read and commented on the manuscript, and provided invaluable assistance in matters of translation. Any faults in the translations are mine. Thanks too to Dennis Denisoff for his many helpful suggestions. Further thanks to the staff of The Florida State University Library, who helped track down difficult to access sources during a pandemic.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Whitely, “A Memnon Waiting for the Day,” 140.

2 Ibid., 141.

3 Ibid., 148–54. See also, Flaubert, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 179–83; Huysmans, Against Nature, 88–9; Wilde, “The Sphinx,” 541–7.

4 See Chopin, “An Egyptian Cigarette” and Cross, “Theodora: A Fragment.”

5 Culler, “Introduction,” xxix–xxxi.

6 Lowrie, “Spleen and the Monumentum,” 42–58.

7 Said, Orientalism, 180. Said draws on Mario Praz’s The Romantic Agony.

8 Ibid., 176.

9 Gérard de Nerval, quoted in Said, Orientalism, 100.

10 Said, Orientalism, 101.

11 Budasz, “Erotics of the Ruins,” 134.

12 Fabian, Time and the Other, 31.

13 Ziyādah’s name is sometimes transliterated as Ziyāda or Ziadé. She was known by Mayy (sometimes given as May) but was born Mary or Marie. For biographical background, see: Khaldi, Egypt Awakening in the Early Twentieth Century, 4–5; Khaldi, “Mayy Ziyādah (1886-1941),” 393–4; Khaldi, “The Ambivalent ‘Émigrée’,” 261–3; Ziegler, “Al-Harak Baraka! The Late Rediscover of Mayy Ziyāda’s Works,” 103–15.

14 Khaldi, Egypt Awakening in the Early Twentieth Century, 5.

15 Khaldi, “The Ambivalent ‘Émigrée’,” 264, 266.

16 Ibid., 260–77.

17 Khaldi, Egypt Awakening in the Early Twentieth Century; Booth, “Biography and Feminist Rhetoric in Early Twentieth-Century Egypt,” 38–64; Dakhli, Une géneration d’intellectuels arabes, 42–8 and 214–16. The penname “Isis Copia” invokes the Egyptian goddess Isis and the Latin word for “abundance,” a translation of “Ziyādah.” See Saliba-Chalhoub, 2–3.

18 “hommage d’un jeune coeur qui l’aime.” Copia (Ziyādah), Fleurs de rêve, 3. All translations from Fleurs de rêve are mine, with help from Stephanie Brown.

19 Ibid., 5.; Lamartine, “L’Isolement,” 3–6.

20 “fleurettes sauvages.” Copia (Ziyādah), 29–30.

21 “fille d’Orient, née aux vents du désert.” Lamartine, “À une jeune Arabe,” 198. See Hill, “Arguing with Europe,” 407–8.

22 Said, Orientalism, 179.

23 Ziyādah’s volume might be compared to Khalīl al-Khūrī’s 1860 translation of Lamartine’s Voyage en Orient, which provides wry commentary on Lamartine’s cultural ignorance. As Peter Hill comments, for Khūrī, Lamartine’s “exoticism becomes a springboard for poetic invention: an autoexotic reappropriation, by a civilized East, of the distorted representation of that East.” Hill, “Arguing with Europe,” 410.

24 Ziyādah’s Francophone poetry might be compared to that of Chucri Ghanem or Jean Dagher. See Anhoury, Panorama de la poésie libanaise d’expression français, 33–43.

25 Ziyādah did translate some of the pieces in Fleurs de rêve into Arabic and, as Marilyn Booth’s translation of Ziyādah’s 1922 poem “Guard your Heart Carefully” illustrates, the notion of ennui persisted in her Arabic poetry: “Behind restless boredom and ennui, an incandescence blazes in you, a paroxysm of light!” See Booth, “Guard your Heart Carefully.”

26 See Hanssen and Weiss, 1.

27 Fieni, Decadent Orientalisms, 36.

28 Ibid., 13.

29 Ibid., 20.

30 Ibid., 5.

31 As far as I can discover, this work remains the only substantial published collection of Ziyādah’s Arabic poetry translated into a European language, though Marilyn Booth has discussed having translated Ziyādah’s poetry into English for her unpublished B.A. thesis. See Booth, “Marilyn Booth on What Should Be Obvious (But Isn’t) About Translating Arabic Literature.”

32 Gabrieli, The Arab Revival, 9.

33 Ibid., 35.

34 Gabrieli, “Introduzione,” 7. All translations from Gabrieli’s “Introduzione” are mine.

35 Ibid., 11.

36 Loti, Egypt, 27; Gabrieli, “Introduzione,” 7.

37 As Sarah Budasz has noted, while “Loti laments the combined effect of colonisation and industrialisation” on Egypt, his antagonism to Westernization “willfully overlooks the existence of forms of non-Western modernity in Egypt.” Budasz, “Erotics of the Ruins,” 139.

38 Ziyādah, “Loti al-rāhil al-bāki (Loti, departed yet present),” 433–8. See also Khoury, Mayy Ziyāda, 99–100.

39 Golley, Reading Arab Women's Autobiographies, 27.

40 Ah ! c’est l’heure crépusculaire

 Qui faisait frissonner Rousseau,

 Où songeait aux morts Edgar Poe,

 L’heure où méditait Baudelaire … [.] Copia (Ziyādah), “Crépuscule,” Fleurs de rêve, 84.

41 Potolsky, The Decadent Republic of Letters, 7–8.

42 Lasse du pâle ennui, j’erre sur la montagne;

Et les heures s’en vont sans dessein, sans pourquoi;

L’esprit vide et le cœur très lourd; et la campagne,

Les bois, le lac, les fleurs me taisent leur émoi.

Tout se tait au dehors, tout se tait dans mon être.

Et pour tromper l’ennui je me lève  … en chantant

Des romances d’amour, quand je sens, sur ma lèvre,

Passer un rire amer, peut-être insignifiant … [.] Copia (Ziyādah), “Ennui,” Fleurs de rêve, 83.

43 Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil, 6–7.

44 Quand le toit des maisons s’efface,

Que l’oeil, inquiet, perd la trace

Du Moukattam dans le lointain;

Quand à l’entour tout, calmé, rêve,

Du coeur un cantique s’élève

Au Dieu du soir et du matin[.] Copia (Ziyādah), “Balance-toi,” Fleurs de rêve, 61.

45 See Day, “Allamistakeo Awakes,” 20–3.

46 Dans les planches d’anatomie

Qui traînent sur ces quais poudreux

Où maint livre cadavéreux

Dort comme un antique momie. Baudelaire, “Le Squelette laboureur,” Flowers of Evil, 188–90.

47 See Tilby, “Poetry, Image, and Post-Napoleonic Politics.”

48 Donnelly, “‘The Digging Skeleton after Baudelaire,’ Seamus Heaney,” 247–8.

49 Loti, Egypt, 46–7.

50 Ibid., 56.

51 Ibid., 56–7.

52 Ibid., 58.

53 For further background, see Cécile Meynard, “Splendeur et vertige,” 229–30.

54 Chopin a murmuré son coeur

Dans ses valses lentes et tristes,

Et sur les gammes pessimistes

Il a déversé sa douleur.

Aux accents doux et nostalgiques

De sa Marche, ami du cercueil,

J’ai vu frissonner un linceul

Sous les bouquets mélancoliques.

C’était un rêve, un pâle rêve

Non exempt de suavité,

Où, dans ton sépulcre habité

J’ai vu ta forme qui se lève … 

À tâtons, tes doigts desséchés

(Tes doigts fins jadis, doigts de femme,

Remplis de vie et de douce âme …)

Ont caressé les nœuds cherchés … 

Et tu croyais toucher la corde

De ton adorable instrument,

Mais tu tombas éperdûment

Après ton pitoyable exorde … [.] Copia (Ziyādah), “Spectre,” Fleurs de rêve, 65–6.

55 Fantôme, à ton cercueil! couche-toi, couche-toi!

Abrite ton squelette, ô fantôme, il fait froid!

Rêve les yeux fermés dans leur cave hideuse,

Songe à tes jours passés, à ta nuit ténébreuse;

La terre n’a plus de lieu pour te recevoir,

Et l’oeil humain, craintif, ne veut plus t’entrevoir. Ibid., 66.

56 “il faut tout cela pour se compter vivant.” Ibid., 66

57 “Il faut rire et pleurer, craindre la nuit, le vent.” Ibid., 66.

58 “Le spectre a murmuré sa plainte / Dans les gémissements du vent.” Ibid., 67.

59 Ziyādah, “Loti al-rāhil al-bāki (Loti, departed yet present),” 433–4. See also Khoury, Mayy Ziyāda, 95.

60 Ibid., 434–5. See also Khoury, Mayy Ziyāda, 96.

61 “Mais elle a compris, autrement mieux que les autres intellectuels de sa génération et des auteurs de la Renaissance arabe moderne, combien cette âme endolorie, vivant un malaise d'existence, ‘un Mal du siècle,’ était porteuse de souffle génial, nécessaire à la vitalité d'un développement culturel et social.” Khoury, Mayy Ziyāda, 97. Translation mine.

62 “Mon Caire est déjà loin, pays multicolore, / Comme un rêve passé.” Copia (Ziyādah), “Good-Bye,” Fleurs de rêve, 72.

63 “Parton, partons toujours, les voiles déployées […] L’homme est partout chez lui: aux terres éloignées, / Aux coins les plus perdus.” Ibid., 73.

64 “Mon cœur ne songera qu’à ses kiefs uniques.” Copia (Ziyādah), Ibid., 73.

65 Baudelaire, Artificial Paradises, 57.

66 Ibid., 21.

67 “les crimes politiques, / Les dires des journaux, // Les sentences de mort … oh ! les horreurs humaines! / Pensant au meurtrier / Je sens mon cœur tordu de spasmes et de haines, / D’horreur et de pitié!” Copia (Ziyādah), “Good-Bye,” Fleurs de rêve, 73–4. Stephanie Brown has pointed out to me that Ziyādah sometimes use phrases that reflect English idioms, as in “Les sentences de mort,” which echoes the English “death sentences” rather than the more idiomatic “la pein capitale” or “la peine de mort.”

68 Thanks to Stephanie Brown for this observation.

69 “chaque naissance apporte un pâle spectre / Vers le gouffre plié.” Copia (Ziyādah), “Good-Bye,” Fleurs de rêve, 74.

70 “utilisez votre âme / Au service du Beau.” Ibid., 74.

71 “ … Partons, oublions tout, vivons dans le vertige / Et dans l’illusion … [.]” Ibid., 74.

72 J'ai plus de souvenirs que si j'avais mille ans.

Un gros meuble à tiroirs encombré de bilans,

De vers, de billets doux, de procès, de romances,

Avec de lourds cheveux roulés dans des quittances,

Cache moins de secrets que mon triste cerveau.

C'est une pyramide, un immense caveau,

Qui contient plus de morts que la fosse commune. Baudelaire, “Spleen (II),” Flowers of Evil, 147.

73 Assoupi dans le fond d'un Sahara brumeux;

Un vieux sphinx ignoré du monde insoucieux,

Oublié sur la carte, et dont l'humeur farouche

Ne chante qu'aux rayons du soleil qui se couche. Baudelaire, “Spleen (II),” Flowers of Evil, 147.

74 Culler, “Introduction,” xxxi.

75 Lowrie, “Spleen and the Monumentum,” 49–50.

76 Ibid., 49–50.

77 Est-ce de la voix d’Alexandre

Un écho? de Napoléon

Est-ce le sabre qui miroite?

Est-ce ta statue, ô Memnon,

Qui tombe en une vapeur moite?

Est-ce le soupir d’un soldat

Défunt? un cheval qui se cabre?

Est-ce le craquement d’un marbre

Qui depuis des siècles gît là? Copia (Ziyādah), “Capricieuse,” Fleurs de rêve, 45.

78 Non, sur vos côtes délabrées

Ce n’est plus l’Aigle Impérial

Qui marque vos terres sacrées

Des pas de son fougeux cheval;

Oh! baissez vos armes françaises

Vos drapeaux sont à peine vus … 

Et Mohamed Ali n’est plus,

Toutes les choses sont anglaises. Ibid., 46.

79 As Eric Hobsbawn has noted, though the British stayed until 1952, liberationist movements were already taking shape at this time. See The Age of Empire, 287.

80 “Muses, Beautés, Beaux-Arts aimés, / Océans, rivières, verdures.” Copia (Ziyādah), “Capricieuse,” Fleurs de rêve, 47.

81 Ibid., 48.

82 See Hext and Murray, Decadence in the Age of Modernism.

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Robert Stilling

Robert Stilling is Associate Professor of English at Florida State University. His book, Beginning at the End: Decadence, Modernism, and Postcolonial Poetry (Harvard, 2018), won the Modernist Studies Association Prize for a First Book and received Honorable Mention for the Modern Language Association Prize for a First Book. He has published in PMLA, Victorian Literature and Culture, Volupté, and the Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Poetry.