Fatima Atfa (Abu Dhabi)
The session: “Taha Hussein and the Enlightenment” came yesterday, at the conclusion of the symposiums of the 31st Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, with the participation of writers and academics, and in the presence of Dr. Ali bin Tamim, President of the Abu Dhabi Center for the Arabic Language.
The poet Adonis said: “He was refined in his own kind and attained the range himself… He alone is a race.” I always meet Al-Maarri and I met Taha Hussein before 1967, the time of setbacks, and I chronicled this meeting, so I wrote an article about it entitled: “An Arab Miniature in a Greek Statue”, which was published by the newspaper “Lisan al-Hal” at the time in Beirut, and our interview revealed to me many common concerns between us, Today I will suffice to mention two basic things that occupy workers in the fields of thought, art and culture. The first is that we Arabs cannot truly be free, politically and culturally, in everything related to the relationship with our past, so that we look at it as our peers look at Jewish unity. and its sister Christian monotheism, to their past history and to their religious, cultural and political legacies. The second matter: we, the Arabs, have mixed and mixed the idea of growth and the idea of progress, and growth has captured all of our attention, until it almost replaced progress and took its name.
Adonis wondered: Why did the idea of growth overwhelm us, and the idea of progress absent? Why did the West advance and the Arabs left behind? It was also formulated in what we call the “Renaissance”.
For his part, Hossam Ahmed, Assistant to the History of the Modern Middle East in National Ireland, spoke about the administrative work that Taha Hussein carried out from the ministry to the university and teaching, and said that he had seen the documents and projects that he would like to undertake, describing him as a practical thinker who made great changes. In the Academy of the Arabic Language and Universities, he established many institutes to study the Arabic language, from targeting culture to producing culture.
Amani Fouad, professor of modern literary criticism at the Academy of Arts in Cairo, focused in her intervention on the book “On the Margin of the Biography” by Taha Hussein, which is one of the most beautiful and kindest biographies, pointing to the importance of the Dean of Arabic literature in all his works, whether on the intellectual or creative level, from the novel to history and criticism. and press article.