Tawfiq el-Hakim

Infobox Writer
name = Tawfiq el-Hakim
birthdate = birth date|1898|10|9|mf=y
birthplace = Alexandria, Egypt
deathdate = death date and age|1987|7|26|1898|10|9|mf=y
nationality = Egypt
occupation = Novelist
notableworks = The People of the Cave

Tawfiq al-Hakim or Tawfik al-Hakim (October 9 , 1898 - July 26 , 1987) ( _ar. توفيق الحكيم) was a prominent Egyptian writer. He was born in Alexandria, Egypt, the son of a wealthy judge. The triumphs and failures that are represented by the reception of his enormous output of plays are emblematic of the issues that have confronted the Egyptian drama genre as it has endeavored to adapt its complex modes of communication to Egyptian society.

Egyptian drama before Tawfiq el-Hakim

The cause of 'serious' drama, at least in its textual form, was in the process of being given a boost by one of the Egypt's greatest literateurs, Ahmed Shawqi, 'the prince of the poets', who during his latter years penned a number of verse dramas with themes culled from Egyptian and Islamic history; these included "Masraa' Kliyubatra" (The Death of Cleopatra, 1929), "Magnun Layla" (the name of a famous ghazal poet, 1931), "Amirat el-Andalus" (The Andalusian Princess, 1932), and "Ali Bey el-Kebir" (an 18th-century ruler of Egypt), a play originally written in 1893 and later revised. However, between the popular traditions of farcical comedy and melodrama and the performance of translated versions of European dramatic masterpieces, there still remained a void within which an indigenous tradition of serious drama could develop.

Plays

The publication and performance of his play, "Ahl el-Kahf" (The People of the Cave, 1933) was a significant event in Egyptian drama. The story of 'the people of the cave' is to be found in the eighteenth surah of the Qur'an as well as in other sources. It concerns the tale of the seven sleepers of Ephesus who, in order to escape the Roman persecution of Christians, take refuge in a cave. They sleep for three hundred years, and wake up in a completely different era - without realizing it, of course. In its use of overarching themes - rebirth into a new world and a predilection for returning to the past - el-Hakim's play obviously touches upon some of the broad cultural topics that were of major concern to intellectuals at the time, and, because of the play's obvious seriousness of purpose, most critics have chosen to emphasise such features.

Within a year el-Hakim produced another major work, "Shahrazad" (Scheherazade, 1934). While the title character is, of course, the famous narrator of the One Thousand and One Nights collection, the scenario for this play is set after all the tales have been told. Now cured of his vicious anger against the female sex by the story-telling virtuosity of the woman who is now his wife, King Shahrayar abandons his previous ways and embarks on a journey in quest of knowledge, only to discover himself caught in a dilemma whose focus is Shahrazad herself; through a linkage to the ancient goddess, Isis, Shahrazad emerges as the ultimate mystery, the source of life and knowledge.

When the National Theatre Troupe was formed in Egypt in 1935, the first production that it mounted was The People of the Cave. The performances were not a success; for one thing, audiences seemed unimpressed by a performance in which the action on stage was so limited in comparison with the more popular types of drama. It was such problems in the realm of both production and reception that seem to have led al-Hakim to use some of his play-prefaces in order to develop the notion of his plays as 'théâtre des idées', works for reading rather than performance. However, in spite of such critical controversies, he continued to write plays with philosophical themes culled from a variety of cultural sources: Pygmalion (1942), an interesting blend of the legends of Pygmalion and Narcissus; "Sulayman el-Hakim" (Solomon the Wise, 1943), and "El-Malik Udib" (King Oedipus, 1949).

Some of el-Hakim's frustrations with the performance aspect were diverted by an invitation in 1945 to write a series of short plays for publication in newspaper article form. These works were gathered together into two collections, "Masrah el-Mugtama" (Theatre of Society, 1950) and "el-Masrah el-Munawwa" (Theatre Miscellany, 1956). The most memorable of these plays is "Ughneyyet el-Mawt" (Death Song), a one-act play that with masterly economy depicts the fraught atmosphere in Upper Egypt as a family awaits the return of the eldest son, a student in Cairo, in order that he may carry out a murder in response to the expectations of a blood feud.

El-Hakim's response to the social transformations brought about by the 1952 revolution, which he later criticized, was the play El Aydi El Na'mah (Soft Hands, 1954). The 'soft hands' of the title refer to those of a prince of the former royal family who finds himself without a meaningful role in the new society, a position in which he is joined by a young academic who has just finished writing a doctoral thesis on the uses of the Arabic preposition hatta. The play explores in an amusing, yet rather obviously didactic, fashion, the ways in which these two apparently useless individuals set about identifying roles for themselves in the new socialist context. While this play may be somewhat lacking in subtlety, it clearly illustrates in the context of el-Hakim's development as a playwright the way in which he had developed his technique in order to broach topics of contemporary interest, not least through a closer linkage between the pacing of dialogue and actions on stage.

In 1960 el-Hakim was to provide further illustration of this development in technique with another play set in an earlier period of Egyptian history, El Sultan El-Ha'er (The Sultan Perplexed). The play explores in a most effective manner the issue of the legitimation of power. A Mamluk sultan at the height of his power is suddenly faced with the fact that he has never been manumitted and that he is thus ineligible to be ruler. By 1960 when this play was published, some of the initial euphoria and hope engendered by the Nasserist regime itself, given expression in El Aydi El Na'mah, had begun to fade. The Egyptian people found themselves confronting some unsavoury realities: the use of the secret police to squelch the public expression of opinion, for example, and the personality cult surrounding the figure of Gamal Abdel Nasser. In such a historical context el-Hakim's play can be seen as a somewhat courageous statement of the need for even the mightiest to adhere to the laws of the land and specifically a plea to the ruling military regime to eschew the use of violence and instead seek legitimacy through application of the law.

tyle and Themes

While el-Hakim's earlier plays were all composed in the literary language, he was to conduct a number of experiments with different levels of dramatic language. In the play, "El-Safqah" (The Deal, 1956), for example - with its themes of land ownership and the exploitation of poor peasant farmers - he couched the dialogue in something he termed 'a third language', one that could be read as a text in the standard written language of literature, but that could also be performed on stage in a way which, while not exactly the idiom of Egyptian Arabic, was certainly comprehensible to a larger population than the literate elite of the city. There is perhaps an irony in the fact that another of el-Hakim's plays of the 1960s, "Ya tali el-Shagarah" (1962; The Tree Climber, 1966), was one of his most successful works from this point of view, precisely because its use of the literary language in the dialogue was a major contributor to the non-reality of the atmosphere in this Theatre of the Absurd style involving extensive passages of non-communication between husband and wife. El-Hakim continued to write plays during the 1960s, among the most popular of which were "Masir Sorsar" (The Fate of a Cockroach, 1966) and "Bank el-Qalaq" (Anxiety Bank, 1967).

Influence and Impact on Arabic Literature

Tawfiq el-Hakim is one of the major pioneer figures in modern Arabic literature. In the particular realm of theatre, he fulfils an overarching role as the sole founder of an entire literary tradition, as Taha Hussein had earlier made clear. His struggles on behalf of Arabic drama as a literary genre, its techniques, and its language, are coterminous with the achievement of a central role in contemporary Egyptian political and social life. He died in 1987

Personal life

Hakim was viewed as something of a misogynist in his younger years, having written a few misogynistic articles and remaining a bachelor for an unusually long period of time; he was given the laqab (i.e. epithet) of عدو المرأة ("'Aduu al Mar'a"), meaning "Enemy of woman." However, he eventually married and had two children, a son and a daughter. His wife died in 1977; his son died in 1978 in a car accident. He was survived by his daughter after his death in 1987. [Asharq Al-Awsat, "This Day in History-July 23: The Death of Tawfiq al-Hakim", July 23, 1992]

List of Works

The People of the Cave, 1933
Sharazad, 1934
Muhammad the Prophet, 1936
Pygmalian, 1942
Solomon the Wise, 1943
Boss Kudrez's Building, 1948
King Oedipus, 1949
Soft Hands, 1954
Isis, 1955
The Deal, 1956
The Tree Climber, 1966
The Fate of a Cockroach, 1966
Anxiety Bank, 1967
The Return of Consciousness, 1974

References