Ricerc@Sapienza

Since the end of the 1930s, surrealism has spread its principles throughout the Arab world. In each place, it has never remained isolated and completely anchored to its original historical dimension, but the association and interaction with the local forms of literary, cultural and even religious expression have transformed it. One of these forms is the Islamic mysticism, i.e. sufism, and it is surprising that the association with surrealism took place even in contexts that were not related to each other.

Racchiuso in una ormai rara copertina rigida, Reading across Modern Arabic Literature and Art fa parte della pregevole serie Literaturen im Kontext. Arabisch – persisch – türkisch edita da Reichert Verlag e curata da Verena Klemm, Angelika Neuwirth e Friederike Pannewick. Il volume è una versione ridotta e rivista della tesi di dottorato dell’autrice, difesa all’Università di Oxford nel 2005. È suddiviso in cinque capitoli, preceduti da un’Introduzione e seguiti da una Conclusione e un’Appendice contenente 15 pagine di immagini a colori.

The present contribution gives a complete overview of the surrealist contents promoted in the Lebanese magazine "Shi'r", which can be classified into three categories: original texts and translations of French surrealist poetry, critical studies of French surrealists and critical studies of Arabic poetry influenced by surrealist theories. As we shall see, a large diversity of voices contributed to the enrichment of these contents.

With its revolutionary principles in art, literature, politics and life as a whole, surrealism has also conquered the Arab world. The first country in which it bore fruit was Egypt, where in 1938 Jūrj Ḥunayn (Georges Henein), together with Ramsīs Yūnān, Anwar Kāmil, Kāmil al-Tilmisānī and others, gave birth to the surrealist group al-Fann waʾl-Ḥurriya (Art and Liberty). In the same period, surrealist ideas spread to Lebanon and Syria.