When he visited Taha Hussein Al-Maari in his prison.. the prisoners were held hostage by the eyes of the dean of Arabic literature

Taha Hussein was not just an Arab writer or an Egyptian minister, but rather he was, without dispute, one of the most prominent names in the world of Arab culture during the mid-twentieth century AD, and as much as he was admired by many, he also sparked great controversy regarding some of his ideas, writings, and positions.

And if his autobiography, which bore the name “Al-Ayyam” and wrote such as: On Pre-Islamic Poetry, The Two Sheiks, The Great Sedition, The Future of Culture in Egypt, is the most famous, then his book on Abi Al-Alaa Al-Ma’arri seems to be a special station in the life of the Arab writer that deserves stopping, and raises a lot of questions. Pleasure and insanity for those who stand there.

"With Abi Al-Ala in His Prison" is not a biography like the days, and it is not a book that stirs much controversy and stirs stagnant waters like "In Pre-Islamic Poetry", but it is a unique experience written by the dean of Arabic literature with his heart and conscience about the poet of the philosophers and the philosopher of poets who admired him most admiration and was deeply affected by him.

Although this was not the only book that Taha Hussein wrote about Al-Ma’ari, as he wrote “Renewal of the Memory of Abu Al-Ala” and “The Voice of Abu Al-Ala”, it has a special taste, which you realize when you turn the pages and discover that you are not only about a writer writing about a writer, but rather a genius defending Genius, and afflicted with blindness writes about a similar affliction.

In fact, the similarity between the two men is great, not only in upbringing and early blindness and the difficulties that entail, or even in the fact that both of them lived on this earth for 84 years, but also in the critical outlook and existential philosophy, which is evident in our book. .

Dialogue with oneself

Despite the passage of a whole thousand years between the birth of Al-Ma’arri in Maarat Al-Nu’man (973 AD) and the death of Hussein in Cairo (1973), you feel as you read the book that the latter has transcended the barriers of time and wrote about its owner as if he lives with him and feels what he feels, and even justifies his stances for him sometimes, and at length Time seems to admire his personality as well as his poems.

From the first line in the book, Taha Hussein declares to you that it will only be "a form of self-talk in which you are presented as you want" the memories and opinions that were created in an excellent person, a great artist, harsh, strong-willed above all, with a rare intelligence, alertness, accurate anxiety.

The excitement of the supposed dialogue between the two men begins early with the first chapter, when Taha Hussein says that he conducted a dialogue in himself with Abi Al-Ala on the subject of satisfaction with life and discontent with it, and that he told him that his pessimism has no source in reality except for the inability to taste life and the inability to feel what is possible. That there be beauty and joy and bliss and pleasure.

However, Taha Hussein soon sided with Al-Ma'arri, and he says in the same chapter, "And if after hours I am like Abu Al-Ala, hostage to three prisons, not two, isn't Abu Al-Ala saying:

He showed me in the three of my prisons, so do not ask about the bad news, because

Faithful loyal

In the second chapter, Taha Hussein declares to his reader that, although he had opinions about al-Ma'arri, he wants in this book to follow the life of the loyal and honest friend with him. He revealed his affair with what knowledge required to reveal, and made his secret public with what science requires scholars to do with it?

Then he adds that he will speak of his owner with a heart that loves, sympathizes, and has mercy, not with a mind that examines, analyzes, and hardens.

Then Taha Hussein reviews the prisons of his owner in the third chapter of the book, and says that he was not satisfied with the prison of blindness, but rather imposed two other prisons on himself, one of which is visible and felt by all people, and it is the house in which he resided in which he does not leave, and the second is a philosophical prison that he imagined as poets imagine and derived from facts things as philosophers do.

And after examining Al-Ma'ari's confusion about man and whether he is a path or a choice, and whether religions and philosophies are correct or contradictory, Taha Hussein concludes that the real reason for which his companion was miserable for 50 years is the pride that pushed him to try what he cannot bear and to covet what he does not covet. And to ambition in what is not aspired to, as well as the extravagance of faith in his mind and trust in him and the rejection of everything but him, although the mind, as Taha Hussein says, is human and therefore limited, whatever its essence and whatever its nature.

Taha Hussein considered that Abu Al-Ala Al-Ma'arri gave himself a philosophical prison, imagining him as poets imagine (Al-Jazeera)

Bashar and Al-Mutanabbi

In the fourth chapter, Taha Hussein elaborates on the "philosophical prison" in which Al-Ma'arri spent about 50 years of his life, and by the writer here he means the feelings of turmoil, confusion and anxiety that dominated his owner, as well as his nature, which was preparing him for isolation and preparing him for solitude, he said. Writer.

Taha Hussein believes that Al-Ma'arri's circumstances strengthened within him two emotions, which are modesty and mistrust, and then pushed him to pessimism.

Then Hussein sets out to compare Al-Ma'arri with two poets who he said shared with him superiority, genius, excellence and pride, namely Bashar bin Burd and Abu al-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi.

The first - as Taha Hussein says - was blind like Al-Ma'ari and was also like him, intelligent-hearted, delicate-sense, deeply philosophical, but nevertheless he followed a biography of what is described as the least inconsistent with the biography of Abu Al-Ala, as he went towards satisfying desires, while Abu Al-Ala was a model in torturing himself And his body and taking them for them in the strictest and strictest laws, and distracting them from the easiest and least pleasures.

As for the second, Abu Al-Ala participated in the intelligence of the heart, ingenuity, and self-esteem, and he may even have been like his professor in the field of poetry, but the difference between them is great in the opinion of Taha Hussein. In the market of recession, praising those he despised and flattering those he despised, while Abu Al-Ala did not let himself desire except that he humiliated it, and no emotion except that he subjected it to the authority of his mind.

Unite, for God your Lord is one, and you do not wish for ten presidents 

And for Taha Hussein’s conversation with Abi Al-Alaa in his prison, the rest…