I want to thank Mr. Albert Mukhaibar, President of the AAUG, Professor Michael Suleiman, Chair of the Convention, the Convention’s co-Chair, Dr. William Haddad, and the whole assembly of the AAUG for their kind gesture to me this evening. The work I have done was carried out in the line of duty. The idea of the work was born in my mind one fine evening in the late 70s in Salt Lake City when one of my new students, hoping to study Arabic, commented negatively on what he called the poverty of Arabic culture and literature. What did he know? I have forgotten this young man’s name. Still, it was his utter ignorance and frivolous nonchalance toward something as vast and rich, and sophisticated as the Arab cultural heritage that made me realize the profound injustice that we Arabs have inflicted on our own culture. The anger this young man triggered in me was not directed at him personally or at Western neglect and ignorance of our role in human civilization, as much as at our ignorance of its value and our persistent failure to honor it and help it assert its genuine status in the world. Oh, I said to myself, the means to combat this ignorance are to put the good Arabic book on the shelves of the world library and to draw the attention of all students of culture to the treasures, still largely unexplored, that was added to the heritage of humanity by the Arab creative genius. These treasures are still being added to the heritage of humanity by the Arab creative genius.
I belong to the generation of writers who came of age after the Palestine disaster of 1948. The immediate post-Nakba period was characterized by a great negation of the Arab cultural heritage among several Arab writers and poets claiming modernity and avant-gardism. Partly out of shallow knowledge and partly out of a credulous attitude toward the negative writings of some Orientalists, it was easy for those uninspired critics, coming mostly from the Arab heartland, to malign and belittle Classical Arabic culture and literature. The Arabic language was viciously attacked, and many from my generation grew up believing the manifold myths created about the incapacity of the language to meet the prerequisites of modern expression. Classical Arabic poetry was fragmented, disjointed, monotonous, and repetitive. The old culture itself was described as static and devoid of originality. There was a great emphasis on the negative aspects of a culture that had civilized a large part of the medieval world. In contrast, the many positive and creative aspects which have stamped their indelible mark on the European Renaissance and hence on the modern world of today were overlooked. A general feeling of cultural malaise, inferiority, and non-achievement was imposed on our generation by our generation.
Some among us chose to differ, but with such an immediate background, it was challenging to find one’s way through the broken rubble of a culture whose worst enemies were its own people. I cannot overestimate the harm the detractors have done to the generations after them. It was as if you could not be modern and yet respect your heritage, or progressive and yet enjoy the old poetry and literature, and feel proud of the pinnacles which your civilization had attained, its past sophistication, its creative surge, its wisdom, and humane outlook, its open and constructive interaction with the world, its essential humanity.
However, when we began the work, trying to open the gate for our history, culture, and literature to assume their rightful place among the great world cultures, it was not the detractors who were the most significant obstacles. The most stubborn obstacles came from less sinister quarters, individuals often in positions of responsibility, who denied this culture the help it needed to disseminate. There is, I soon discovered, a general underestimation in the Arab official and business worlds, the only two worlds from which substantial help needed for this goal can come, of the importance of culture and its dissemination. To them, everything else has a greater priority. But in an age of interculturalism and vast globalization, when even people with scant histories are digging and probing to find the slightest shreds, often of invented or borrowed evidence, to build a history for themselves, how can we neglect the many treasures with which we could enter the arenas of the world with pride and dignity? How can we leave the wealth of our history and civilization to the wolves to dismantle? And what do the Arabs of today have to offer to the world if not their distinctive culture? How can a people with a culture so deeply rooted, and so variously rich, and a reputation in the world so mutilated that it needs constant vigilance to combat, how can they ever have a greater priority than to become part of the world’s vital cultural and literary life? How else can they tell this world that has lent a deaf ear to their present-day plight, combined with the two evils of internal repression and external coercion? How else can they relate the story of their struggle in modern times for justice, integrity, and freedom? This story is told repeatedly, eloquently, humanely, and movingly in hundreds of poems, plays, and fictional writing. How else can they touch the conscience of this world? What are their other sources of strength at present?
In a disintegrated Arab world at odds with itself, Arab culture defies all attempts at destroying the fundamental unity of our people, their essential harmony. From the Arabian Gulf to the Atlantic, Arab poets speak out with one voice and release the same heart-rending expression that fascinates us still. Even the Arab thinker and philosopher does not recognize the political divisions when he writes because he addresses the whole Arab audience everywhere, discussing its common problems and the issues that preoccupy its mind. Our contemporary culture is proof of the persistence of a unified, impenetrable front that is our greatest strength. If this were not true, then the AAUG itself, and the ADC and the Union of Arab Writers, could have no legitimate identity. I have never heard of people from various English-speaking countries forming an association of English speakers. It is not the language alone that makes for unity, it is the culture, a culture that is rooted deep in the earth, going back over seventeen centuries, a culture so spontaneously natural that nothing can cause it to disintegrate, a culture so rich its poets were the greatest poets of the world west of India for the first 13 centuries after Christ.
Could such a history fail to engender vigor and refinement thereafter? And how, in a modern technocratic world, needing the civilizing power of culture, perhaps as never before, can the wealth of Arabic culture, past and present, be so shamefully neglected or traduced to the impoverishment not just of the Arab world but of all mankind?
Dr. Salma K. Jayyusi delivered this acceptance speech after receiving an award from the Arab American University Graduates (AAUG) during their annual convention in October 1996.
Salma Khadra Jayyusi is a poet, critic, scholar, and anthologist. She graduated with honors in Arabic and English Literature from the American University of Beirut in 1946 and later obtained her Ph.D. in Arabic from the School of Oriental and African Studies (1970). She taught at several Arab and North American universities. Her poetry and critical writings have appeared in many journals and books. In 1980, realizing how misrepresented and ignored Arabic literature and Arab/Islamic culture were in the West, she left teaching and founded PROTA (Project of Translation from Arabic), which she directs. The Project has produced several comprehensive anthologies and single-author books. These works aim at introducing some of the best creative examples of Arabic literature to the English-speaking world. In 1987-88, Jayyusi received a Rockefeller Fellowship at the University of Michigan. Jayyusi realized that, aside from translations and the writing of critical introductions to the translated works, it was equally important to disseminate Arabic and Islamic culture and to introduce complete cultural studies to the PROTAs program. Her first edited work was a comprehensive 1100-page book written by forty-two world scholars, “The Legacy of Muslim Spain” (Brill, 1992, 1993, 1994). In 1993, she began editorial work on the book “The Culture and Literature of North Africa.” She spent the academic year 1994-95 as a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin). Aside from other cultural and historical interests, she has begun working on a Project on Human Rights issues in the Middle East.
This article appeared in Al Jadid Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 12, October 1996.
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