Honoring the Moroccan writer and writer Abdel Fattah Kilito in the academic session recently organized by the House of Poetry in Morocco in cooperation with the College of the Arabic Language in Marrakesh (Al Jazeera)

Marrakesh -

Whoever listens to the Moroccan writer and writer Abdel Fattah Kilito, or hears about him, or reads to him, will have a share of pleasure mixed with amazement. It appears to him that he practices poetry and storytelling behind a mask, as he deliberately quotes others in his writing, dedicating the principle of freedom in writing.

This happened in the academic session that was recently organized by the House of Poetry in Morocco in cooperation with the College of Arabic Language in Marrakesh, which relied on tracking his works in relation to poetry, and succeeded to some extent in exploring its hidden meanings, as it began with an intellectual lecture by the writer himself under the title “The Necessity of What is Necessary.” In it, the writer combines analysis, interpretation, poetry, and narrative, before providing the public with critical papers that analyze this relationship and put it under the microscope.

It was not a coincidence, or perhaps it was so, that Kilito was honored in this session with two paintings, the first bearing his image, and the second the chrysanthemum roses that appear among wheat ears in farmers’ fields, like “a wild flower who does not know how it opened,” as the writer himself describes “the shrines” when he speaks About its origins after prose dominated poetry in Arab culture.

The novel “By God, this story is my story” by Abdel Fattah Kilito (Al Jazeera)

Among the most important aspects of the course was revealing Abdel Fattah’s “conquests” in his interpretive path of texts, determining the identity of the poet and his spectrum in his writings, and the roles of the maqamat in restoring poetry to its light and glow, in addition to exploring his approach to dealing with all of this.

The identity of the poet

“The poet is a goldsmith, even an alchemist, who transforms metals of base or low value into precious metals,” is how Kilito includes in his novel, “By God, the story is my story,” a description of poetry in the words of Abu Zaid al-Suruji, the hero of Hariri’s Maqamat.

Journalist and writer Ghada Al-Sanhaji says to Al-Jazeera Net, “It may seem clear to the reader that Kilito is a lover of poetry, but he may even go beyond this love, and he may even consider it a destiny and a fate that a person chooses voluntarily, as he stated and explained in his miniature “Majnun Layla” that Qais was unable to remain silent, and preferred Poetry for his beloved, and his love was stronger than her love.

Writer and media personality Ghada Al-Sanhaji indicated that Kilito loves poetry and stories (Al-Jazeera)

Al-Sanhaji highlights another matter that should be paid attention to, which is the introduction that Kilito gave to his novel “The Rivalry of Images,” expressing his happiness if the reader encounters himself in her narrative prose.

Perhaps when he asked his reader to approach her with feeling, he meant that his reading rituals would be different and that the texts would be recited as if they were poems.

A scribe is a poet

“Poetry and poets have a remarkable presence in Kilito’s critical and narrative works,” says critic and translator Hassan Al-Moudin. He highlighted in an interview with Al Jazeera Net that the novel “Nietzsche’s Horse” inaugurates a literary genre that perhaps has little luck in contemporary Arabic literature, which he calls “a reader’s autobiography” that devotes itself to The novel itself from the reader's childhood to his old age, with a focus on the student's relationship with language, writing, and that unique way of reading: copying books and writings.

Moroccan critic and translator Hassan Al-Moudin: Kilito inaugurated a literary genre that could be called an autobiography for a reader (Al Jazeera)

The mode weaves together one question after another, beginning with: “How did the copyist become a poet? Is the favorite topic in this type of autobiography to describe this coming to the world of copying and reading, and then coming to the world of poetry and writing? How did this child-student, whom others describe as stupidity, madness, and strangeness, become?” And mental weakness, from a copying machine that almost never stops copying books and writings to a character with a literary identity, with a poetic identity?

He ends up asking, “Does Abdel Fattah Kilito say that there is no literary identity without one learning how to manage one’s anxiety between a number of opposite dichotomies: copying/reading, reading/writing, memory/forgetting, one’s mother tongue/other’s language, poetry/narrative, self?” /Other.., how to erase the other, after copying and preserving it, then digesting and erasing it, in order for a new literary identity to be established.

Spectrum of poets

Some of the questions of the modern critic may seem to be answered by the writer and translator Mounir Al-Sarhani, when he highlights that writing is synonymous with forgetting, and an act closely related to another opposite act, which is “erasure.” Thanks to the fusion of knowledge in the self and readings in writing, the ego disappears, so that all writing becomes a “game.” About separate councils, stand-alone chapters, and maqams whose basic characteristic is “slowing down in reciting poetry,” which forces the poet to revise his poem throughout the year in the footsteps of Zuhair bin Abi Salma.

Writer and researcher Mounir Al-Sarhani: Kilito practiced poetry and speech from behind a mask (Al-Jazeera)

He is, therefore, the poet's phantom in writing and in the stories of Kilito, who tore up his lectures on French literature to write about texts that enable him to add, to innovate, and to "impossible translation" and to protect him from blindness and boredom.

Al-Sarhani quotes the idea that Kilito practiced poetry and storytelling behind a mask. He writes through the “attempt” that gives the possibility of citing others, in line with the principle of suspicion, and he was able to hide the truth and move away from it, especially thanks to the narration and thanks to the storyteller who breaks the academic method and sometimes enshrines the principle of freedom. In practicing this type of writing.

He says that Kilito avoids the educational dimension in his attempts, by writing that takes real characters, such as Al-Ma'arri and Al-Jahiz, to the point of imagination, so that the reader is prepared that they are imaginary and do not exist in reality or in the history of literature.

Maqama and poetry

Kilito likens the Maqama to “a wild flower who does not know how it bloomed,” as Saeed Al-Awadi, professor of rhetoric and discourse analysis, notes, highlighting that it is the text that took up an important part of this writer’s critical and laboratory interests.

He told Al Jazeera Net, "In the maqamat, the prose resides with the poetic in one maqamat. This is what gives this blooming flower its uniqueness in the wild, and requires special sensitivity from the person dealing with it, because it is smelled and not rubbed."

Professor of Rhetoric Saeed Al-Awadi: Maqama emerged after the decline of poetry in favor of prose in Arab culture (Al-Jazeera)

Al-Awadi notes that the maqama emerged after the decline of poetry in favor of prose in Arab culture since the middle of the second century AH, and that it paved an unusual path in Arabic prose, benefiting very shrewdly from the achievements of poetry.

Al-Awadi continues by saying, whether at the level of vocal balances that will focus on the Assonance component, as Kilito says, “Assonance, which flourished and became brilliant in the fourth century, seriously competes with poetry.”

Or on the formative level, Al-Awadi adds, the tendency toward difficult language and strange imagery is based on what Kilito called “curtain poetics,” where meaning is hidden in a floating horizon, or on the juxtapositional level, where poetry emerges in an explicit way, juxtaposed with prose.

Against the curriculum

Another question that arises is whether Kilito linked his reading practice to a theory or restricted himself to a method.

Muhammad Al-Hirash, an academic and researcher specializing in linguistics and interpretations, answers to Al Jazeera Net, “From his beginnings, the writer felt that the adjective “structural,” mentioned in the subtitle of his book on “Literature and Strangeness,” placed him in an epistemological narrowness that was not consistent with his broad critical or interpretive choices.

Researcher Muhammad Al-Hirash: Kilito takes a creative approach in his descriptive language that escapes the shackles of the curriculum (Al-Jazeera)

It is noted that Kilito's method of reading and interpretation contains within it a position that is cautious about methodological facts and does not trust them, and that he takes a creative approach in his descriptive language that is free from the shackles of the methods and devoid of all commitment to their limits and mechanisms.

He adds, "At first glance, this explanation may seem to have some plausibility in view of the fluidity that characterizes Kilito's descriptive language, and also in view of the elegance with which he formulates his analyses. However, fluidity and elegance do not explain in depth the creativity of Kilito's critical language, nor do they explain the qualitative additions it entails." To knowledge of literature, because a careful look at the vocabulary of this language brings us before a critic who dazzles us with his deep methodological experience and insightful reading skills, and whose relationship with the curricula remains positive and balanced.

"Abdel Fattah's conquests"

Anyone who contemplates Kilito's interpretive path will notice that it is governed by a special strategy in his work on various heritage texts, including short narratives, long narratives, anecdotes, excavated narratives, travel narratives, philosophical stories, letters, critical texts, poetic literature, and shrines, as the researcher and critic Muhammad Ait Lamim highlights.

Muhammad Ait Lamim: Kilito worked on a variety of heritage texts, including short narratives, long narratives, and anecdotes (Al Jazeera)

It is evident that this diversity of literary texts is brought by Kilito into an interpretive space with the aim of generating meaning from wombs that we thought had become sterile due to repetition and rumination, as the writer seeks to create a disturbance and provide the opportunity to find the enlightening lamp while descending into the darkness of texts, as the act of reading for him is founded on questioning intuition. And the discovery of the ordinary, and the possession of the stolen message, which was so clear that it was impossible to see.

He adds that by impersonating the character of a detective in detective novels, he does not follow misleading evidence, but rather takes the difficult path in decoding the puzzle, and therefore the pleasure and amazement that he experiences during his research is what tempts his readers as they follow Abdel Fattah’s interpretive conquests through a network of relationships that he builds between texts, where Literature becomes a reader of literature, and literature is interpreted by literature.

Source: Al Jazeera