LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

11 1The Nation Speaks: On the Poetics ofNationalist Literature 1Yasir Suleiman— 208 —The title page of George Antonius’ classic study The Arab Awakening: The Storyof the Arab National Movement, published in London in 1938, carries as anepigraph in beautiful Arabic calligraphy the first hemistich of Ibrahim al-Yaziji’s(1847–1906) famous ode: tanabbahu wa-stafiqu ayyuha al-Æarabu (‘Arise, ye Arabsand Awake!’). As I have argued elsewhere (Suleiman 2003: 96), this choice wasnot fortuitous: it was ‘intended to highlight the cultural nature of this nationalismin its initial stages’ in the nineteenth century; in addition, it was meant todraw attention to the fact that the nationalist idea was, as Antonius expresses it,‘borne slowly towards its destiny on the wings of a nascent literature’, in which,it may be added, poetry played a leading role (Antonius 1936: 60). Thisreference to literature is echoed in the metaphorical use of the term ‘story’ in thesubtitle of Antonius’s book and in the ‘poetic’ flavour of his prose, of which thepreceding quotation is an example. Although one may disagree with Antonius’snarrative on periodisation and agency in the evolution of Arab nationalism, hisviews on culture and literature as sources of this nationalism are still as validtoday as they were at the time of writing. In fact, I would go further and say thatno account of Arab nationalism would be complete without understanding thecontribution literature made, and still makes, to its articulation or to its role ingroup mobilisation.The same is also true of literature, in prose and in poetry, in expressions ofterritorial and pan-Islamic nationalisms in the Arabic-speaking world. 2 To takeone example from Egypt, Ali al-Ghayati, a minor poet, published in 1910 acollection of patriotic poems, Wataniyyati (‘My Patriotism’), to which thenationalist leader Muhammad Farid (1868–1919) wrote an introduction underthe title ta’thir al-shiÆr fi tarbiyat al-umam (‘The Influence of Poetry on theEducation of Nations’). In this introduction, Muhammad Farid – who was triedin a criminal court and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment by the Britishauthorities for his composition – writes: ‘When the vanquished nations awoketo their situation, they made the first of their principles the composition ofpatriotic qasidas (odes) and rallying songs … It pleases me that this blessedawakening has spread in our country’ (cited in Khouri 1971: 90). He furtheradds, stressing the mobilising role of poetry in Egypt and expressing his panwww.taq.ir