In the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century, a group of Latin American writers formed a paradigm shift in novelist creativity when they unleashed madness and literary imagination to write masterpieces of "magic realism" that defied the rules of traditional writing, and won international fame thanks to translation, travels and exiles.
The term "magic realism" emerged at the time, as the "strangeness" of Latin American geography and the gravity of its people's experiences made it almost impossible for any observer to separate fantasy from reality, and the juxtaposition of fantasy and mythology with everyday and ordinary activities, and after the success of "100 Years of Solitude" magical realism became in the opinion of critics in Europe and the United States an essential and indispensable component of Latin American culture.
But magical realism has never been far from the Arab tradition, starting with the legendary stories of "One Thousand and One Nights", oral tales passed down between generations, and the stories of mothers and grandmothers, as the miraculous and magical worlds mixed with folklore were a key element of Arabic writing, "where myth is located at the beginning and at the end of literature", says novelist Jorge Luis Borges.
In his book "Magical Realism in the Arabic Novel", academic and author Hamid Abu Ahmed, former Dean of the Faculty of Languages and Translation at Al-Azhar University, says that magical realism in its modern concept is based on 3 basic links: the miraculous, the mythical and the surreal, all of which are related to the developments of modern art. Magic Realism is one of the most profound writers capable of constructing a complex modern structure, but literary art itself is easy to approach and attracts the reader.
The book "Magical Realism in the Arabic Novel" by the late Egyptian academic, translator and critic Hamed Abu Ahmed (Al Jazeera)
The crowns of the kings of Donkeys and the wonders of India
In his introduction to the investigation of the book "Crowns in the Kings of Donkeys", the late Yemeni writer Abdul Aziz Al-Maqaleh says that it is the historical or mythical aspect of the book that excites researchers and writers, because myths have become a goal in themselves, and have become literary, artistic and human value.
The crowns is a book on the biography and stories of the kings of the Kingdom of Himyar narrated by Muhammad Abdul Malik bin Hisham in the third century AH or 14 AD, and the book includes many magical stories, including the hadith of the moon, and his saying to Numan bin Yafar, "Abkani turns the age with his people, and nothing will survive the treachery of this world and its pitfalls on earth or in the sky", and the story of the discovery of a new world, the story of the dragon, and other legendary stories, and the book has made um Bilqis Queen of Sheba from the jinn.
Al-Maqaleh says that the tales of the book fulfill all the conditions of magical realism, and if Marquez or other writers of this current read "crowns", he would have said in it, as he said when he read the first paragraph of Kafka's novel The Metamorphosis, which says that the protagonist woke up one morning after a disturbing dream and found himself in his bed turned into a formidable insect, and the next day Marquez wrote his first story influenced by Kafka.
In another heritage book attributed to the Indian Muslim traveler author and captain Buzurg bin Shahryar "The Wonders of India on Land, Sea and Islands", it is difficult to count the wonders: the drowned are transported by a great bird, the fish is a woman or vice versa, the turtle turns into an island on which humans who came out of the ship walk, and cooked fish whose bones and cartilage indicate that its origin is from humans, and serpents look alone kill, and love occurs between monkeys and seas, and many stories about the jinn market and the legendary salamander and others.
According to author Abu Ahmed, the famous Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges benefited from such books in all his works, and wrote the "Book of Imaginary Beings" in which he collected from all cultures of the world, including the myths of Greece, seahorses, serpents, phoenix (from Arab mythology), dragons, sphinxes, heavenly roosters, nymphs, and other imagined creatures that the Arab and Islamic region has a large number of.
The author – who holds a doctorate in Spanish literature from the University of Madrid – believes that the Arab imagination was able to create many arts of storytelling in popular biographies, translations and other books, such as travels, books, entertainment and Samar, and even historical books themselves, Ibn Khaldun spoke in his introduction about that, he said, "The stallions of historians in Islam have absorbed the news of the days and collected and wrote them in the pages of the notebooks and deposited them, and the intruders mixed them with intrigues of falsehood and they were in them or invented them, and Zakha of the weak novels of their fabrication And they put it down."
Therefore, Ibn Khaldun saw that those who went thanks to fame and honesty were few and hardly exceeded the number of fingers, such as Ibn Ishaq, al-Tabari, Ibn al-Kalbi, Muhammad bin Omar al-Waqidi, Saif bin Omar al-Asadi and others.
The Contemporary Arabic Novel
The late Abu Ahmed, who translated masterpieces of Spanish literature into Arabic, including the works of Camilo José Cela and Mario Vargas Llosa, provides examples of magical realism in modern Arabic literature, such as Naguib Mahfouz's Nights of a Thousand Nights, Khairy Shalabi's Al-Shatar, Edward Al-Kharrat's The Gypsy and Youssef Al-Makhzanji, Youssef Abu Rayya's Ashiq Al-Hayy, Mohamed Khairy Helmy's Abdullah Reads All Night and Bushra Writes All Night, as well as examples of magical realism in the short story as Said El Kafrawy's "Music Kiosk." and "Horn of a Gazelle" by Khairy Abdel-Gawad.
The author says that about a year before the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize, he had an interview with him in which he asked him if he had read Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude." Mahfouz replied that he read it and read "The Autumn of the Patriarch", and Mahfouz commented that magical realism is part of superstition, which in turn is part of human life, and despite Mahfouz's reservation on this current theoretically, he was influenced by the Arabian nights and their magical events, as Abu Ahmed says.
In his reading of the novel "The Gypsy and Youssef Al-Makhzanji" by Edward Al-Kharrat, in which the novelist combines the real, the magical, the historical and the legendary in overlap, separation and chaos, Abu Ahmed discussed the shift from the historical reality of the magical world when Al-Makhzanji, the protagonist, rushes to the head of the stone bridge entering the heart of the Nile and calls the Nile fairy, who does not respond to his call, but waits for him until she comes to him in human form that creates an atmosphere of illusion, doubt and superstition.
Although this literary current tends towards the miraculous and magical, it should be based on reality, as Abu Ahmed quotes the Colombian Nobel writer Márquez, one cannot imagine or invent everything that means to him without control, because then the matter turns into a kind of lie, and lies in literature are more dangerous than in real life.
The writer can displace the space of the mind provided that he does not fall into chaos, that is, into absolute irrationality, as the author quotes Marquez, who says, "I think that imagination is only a tool for shaping reality, but the source of creation first and foremost is always reality, and fantasy or pure and simple invention in the manner of Walt Disney is the most hateful thing for me."
This does not mean that the combination of reality and magic or fantasy automatically produces magical realism, because there are many other conditions that must be met in order to lead to real narrative creativity, such as the poetic treatment of reality, the use of a language that is compatible with this magical reality and in harmony with it, talent and artistic glow, knowledge of the use of new techniques in the art of storytelling, the assimilation of outstanding creative works, the harmony of vision in accordance with the essence of art, and other conditions and phenomena that can only be achieved by a writer. Special.