Written by the critic : Jalila El Mazny , Tunisia.
Translated into English by the critic: Awny Seif, Egypt.
Surrealism and the pleasure of the very short story.
The important Syrian author Elham Issa is a multifaceted media poet who writes the short story and the very short story. In this context and as she is s a very short story writer, I will read critically according to a surreal approach to this quartet of four very short stories:
1- Dismissal Hour/2- Leaf/3 - Stigmatized Sin/4-Record.
Through this quartet I will address the surreal presence in this very short story collection.
So, what is surrealism? How far is it in this quartet?
Surrealism: according to the researcher Tamam Tu'ma, is one of the "most important artistic, cultural and literary movements that emerged in modern times and specifically in the early 20th century as a new doctrine in art and literature which means literally above and beyond reality."
Surrealism originated as the legitimate and artistic heir to the Dadaism school(1916) and was then cut off with the absurdity of the radical movement to become in the 1940s a global phenomenon. The First World War had an impact on its activism, and its founders claimed it was a reaction to the madness of the world that raged in the war away from reality, remembering from its voices Max Ernst, Hatz Arp, Salvador Dali and others.We will mention, for example, some of its characteristics:
* Follow symbolic, subconscious methods
* Challenge various traditional constraints and values.
* Moving from clearly known to confused mystery.
Integrating reality into unreality and logic into irrationality
* Adopt drawing things as they appear in the world of dreams and insights (psychoanalysis)
Further , I will be examining the surreal presence in the group "Crime of Love", which is governed by this duality , the reality and unreality . which turns us into another duos, including:
- Existent and minstrel.
- Pessimism and optimism
- Creativity and life
My critical reading of this "Crime of Love" quartet will not be a just written critical reading, it will be a surreal approach in which the whole quad's stories interact.
The title of the quartet, "A Crime of Love", is a comprehensive content of the very short anecdotal collection. It is its title: - its semical connotation as an additional compound, in Arabic grammar, and added to it at opposite ends since the crime cannot be combined with love...
- Its real significance: This bitter reality has inverted the values since love no longer has that human value. It is linked to the material interests that stripped it of its essence. It has turned against it and is it more than a crime as classified by the important writer Issa and made it transnational and shared content. Since the title we have hit you by the double of love and crime.
The author also considered it to be her belief that the love of our nowadays time had not only lost its human essence but had been "confused" by the crime.
* Very short story characteristics in surreal service:
1- Properties:
A- The title : The critic, Ali Ahmed Abda Kassem, believes that "critics have attached great importance to the title by describing the title as a first threshold for the text as the reader's blueprint for entering the fabric of the internal text, which is more important as a parallel text."
So we find every story. In this collection of the important author Issa is titled as a micro-content of the story. As:
Story (1) Dismissal Hour.
Story (2) Leaf.
Story (3) Stigmatized Sin.
Story (4) Record.
The overarching title "Crime of Love", and since the title of the quartet, has presented a surreal proposition according to the dual life and death (crime and love).
B. The feature of the symbolism in the very short story .Miena Kaseri , the critic, said:
"The very short story is based on the suggestion, the insinuation and the intensification of what makes it a symbolic writing with privilege that helps its writer to express what he is going through without direct prohibition or blatant drowning, riding the ward of symbolism and opening to the reader the many skies of interpretations ."
Researcher Ghanim Imran Al-Maamouri also said that the use of symbolism has come for a variety of reasons, including social, political and economic pressures or psychological dimensions, especially in the reality of the poetic writers' experience. The symbols in the short story vary from natural, historical, mythical, fantasy, spatial and Semitic. Modern Arabic Very Short Story was born in the sea of politics, which forced the writers to swim in order to survive throughout the storms of reality. "
* Machiavellian political symbol: Machiavellian (relative to Italian politician, diplomat and philosopher Nicolo Myakavelli, born in Florence, 1469) is a political theory or view used by a political leader or administrator and can be summarized in the phrase "the end justifies the means", however unjust and immoral the means to preserve his power and achieve his objectives. Machiavellian views humanity's nature with a pessimistic view, reinforces opportunistic ideas and justifies manipulation, deception and other humanely rejected ethics.
- In the story of " Dismissal Hour", we find "the man who carried the work and factory in his heart": this worker who believed in the value of the work, loved his work and dedication finds himself dismissed. Until the "Board of Directors enacted the law to transmit it early in the honour of the profession" because "his watch is inconsistent with the philosophy of work".
The additional compound in the title "Dismissal Hour" has its connotation that the hour is a short time in working life and is evidence of the administrative officer's improvisation in his decision to sack, it was an amazing and shocking end for the reader.
* Religious symbol: In" the story of a leaf" we find the needy man who found no one to help him "he was weeping silently until the preserved holy board heard him and allowed his leaf to come down from the olive of life": the fall of his "Leaf "is a symbol of his death.
* Moral value symbol: In a "Stigmatized Sin Story" we find a young woman who has a child born without marriage,who goes on to kill her baby for fear of the cruelty of society and she is ashamed to be a single mother.
"It is not enough than a roll of a black bag with a garbage container" and the sentence symbolizes the killing of the infant.
The adjective before the noun here, (stigmatized sin) may support this shame, which will be inflicted on the sin committed by the young woman as if the word sin alone was insufficient to express what the young woman committed. The author described it (stigmatized) to support the severity of this sin in Arabic society.
* Creative artistic symbol: In the story of "Record" , life treated the main character badly,who found herself as in an accusation and an investigation status. She regarded life's recognition of her creativity as a breath that preserved her life (INHALATION)... can the story with its aesthetic narrative structure and in harmony with its elements and symbols identify with the character of the story writer and does this recall character pass the narrator vision, a vision filled with blackness and gloom?
The narrator manifests itself through its undeclared symbol on traditional school and its dream of a more generous and creative future. It is binary present and future.. binary life and death. Binary recognition and disguise for creativity.
"In front of a typewriter and a frown face she wanted to inhale the confession of life again... but Shame showed her the face photo and the continuity of the threat... and when she found the rope of the lie,"she wrapped herself in the neck of the sky", a symbol of the death of the creativity and the breakdown of creativity through the end (The Police Record is complete and locked).
- "Lying rope", a symbol of restraints, stressors and falsehoods.
It is noteworthy that the common denominator of the characters of the single story in this quartet is non-communicative, neither communicating between the worker and the official and responsible person, nor communicating between the man in need and the others, nor communicating between the young single mother and the person who caused her pregnant and abandoned her, nor communicating between creativity and life.All these non-communicative status are a surreal approach .
C- Intertextuality in the very short story:
The author Rabah Ben Khoia said: "Intertextuality is one of the remarkable features and characteristics of the structure of very short story that is very rich through itself... The diversity of the Intertextuality is due to the diversity of its sources as religious, literary, historical, mythical, popular and philosophical references as well as the Intertextuality of the very short stories' titles. Which interface in various types and arts... the Intertextuality has enriched the suggestions of meanings of very short and enrich texts in limited length and very short ones"
The critical reading benefited from the tools and concepts proposed by the Moroccan critic Mohamed Benis from the inscription in more than one of his studies under the designations "absent text" and "the immigration of text" and through the laws of Intertextuality (rumination/absorption/dialogue) and other concepts... "Intertextuality permits text within the text.
The important author Elham Issa adopted the Intertextuality through the titles of the Quartet's stories as"Dismissal Hour" which referred us to a political reference, a "Leaf" with its religious reference, a "Stigmatized sin" with its religious, moral and social reference and a "Record" that referred us to legal reference in relation to accusation and innocence.
The author has used the attribute of Intertextuality in most of the quadruple stories:
The important author Issa in the story "Dismissal Hour" has used a popular cultural Arabic proverb, that the popular memory has given to us. "The Senmar end" and Senmar was a civil engineer who built a unique palace for the King of Al-Hera, Noa'man Ben Elmonzer ,whose jealousy prompted him to imagine that Senmar may build such a palace for others. This jealousy blinded the king's eyes of all vision and thinking in Senmar's death and killed him, pushing him from the top of the palace.
This proverb is said about everyone who improves his work for no benefits, as for the factory worker who has devoted himself to his work and the development of the factory. The dismissal decision was an amazing and shocking lock that we would not have expected at the end of the story.
And how many Senmar's example in our reality who is rewarded in evil way after doing all his good and good things and those are the present days that no sane person can secure. It's bipartisan and abusive
One poet said: "Rewarded me, God may reward him with the evil of his sanction//The sanction of Senmar who was no guilty.
The story of "Leaf" is inconsistent with the religious Koranic text, since the fall of the leaf indicates death.
The Holy Verse 59 of the Holy Koran of Anam says: "Any leaf falls, God knows it any seed falls in the darkness of the earth and any green branch or dry one all of them written in a holy,shown book ," This holy shown book is what the important writer Issa called the "preserved board". In Broj (22) "It is a holy Quran in a preserved board" and the preserved board according to the islamic interpreters is the book in which God wrote the destiny of creatures before HE created them, the book mentioned in the verse (59) of the Holy Koran of Anaam.
2 - Surrealism and very short story fun
The author has adopted a paradox technique, the most basic of which means a spontaneous running event at the expense of another event, which is ultimately meant by the character acting who ignorant by the reality of the contradictory things about her/his real situation. The paradox is an exciting and interesting exit from the direct narrative of four elements:
a. There are two levels of meaning in the same expression:
- Surface level.
- The level at which the reader is obliged to discover the effect of his sense of conflict of speech.
b. Recognize the inconsistency between the facts at the macro and tolal levels.
c. Pretending innocent to the extent of naivety or omission.
D. There must be a victim who is accused or innocent and oblivious, which makes the paradox of the crying funny-manner of the reader.
Thus, the paradox is a linguistic given controlled by bilateral conflicts and its aesthetic lies in the fact that it implicates the reader in discovering the saying of one thing and the intention of another (e.g. praising to be vilified or repentant to be praised).
If we look at the quadruple stories "Crime of Love" by Elham Issa, these elements include:
- In the story of the hour of dismissal: The worker's dedication to his work is the simple level and the level that the reader will discover is that this dedication to work has earned him the reason for his dismissal. Thus, the contradiction between the facts of dedication to work and dismissal was to the extent that the pretence of innocence was invisible. This dedicated worker in his work has thus become an oblivious victim.
- In the story of a leaf: the poor man in need of a helping hand, whose life complicated badly and tearfully overwhelmed his dire situation is the surface level and the latent level that the reader will discover is that this poverty will put an end to his life by the fall of the "life olive leaf" because his end was recorded on the "preserved board". (The truth of love for life and the truth of death) and the pretence of innocence was to the point of naivety.
- In the tale of stigmatized sin: the young woman who born a baby girl without marriage is the superficial level and the underlying level that the reader will discover is that she will "give birth" her child and kill him for fear of the cruelty of society and ashamed to be "a single mother".
The contradiction here between the reality of life and death.And the baby was innocent victim.
- In the story of a record: The creative writer that wants life to recognize her creativity is such a superficial level and the level that the reader will discover that this creative writer will find herself accused, and in the investigation and opening of a police record because of her freedom of thought and resistance to her creativity of all prevailing traditions.
These paradoxes (according to critic Mohammed Yob) "relate in many ways to cynicism, irony, astonishment, anguish, bereavement and tragedy with their astonishing lock(story end )and the story writer here picks his words and words in a opposite directions".
The important author Issa actually researched in living reality through realistic social scenes and found a bitter reality that violated human values. Love was the victim of this violation. The value of the love of work is violated , breaking the value of social solidarity. The inviolability of the human relationship was violated also between men and women, and in this society the creative writer was accused .
The common denominator of the figures of the quartet was the real death and the spiritual death.
This tragic reality that exists has compelled the author to seek a world in which she will get rid of her pessimism to be optimistic about a desired world in which love prevails rather than crime and justice will prevail too. "The man who carried the factory in the bottom of his heart", solidarity with the needy, respect the humanity of women, recognize the creativity of the writers.
Elham Issa may give us this desired world through the coding function employed by you "Life olive leaf" has linked the desired life to the blessed olive that "has its origin fixed and its branch in the sky" .The writer has wrapped herself in the neck of heaven and heaven is the "upper" world. Perhaps the victims of the "lower" world seek a better everlasting life.
The author is concerned with the tragedy of this miserable reality, which she painted through the quartet "Crime of Love". This additional compound may have been developed by the important writer Issa to make the crime in fact the existing living and love in another reality, so she wants to get out of the presence and replace it with the manoeuvre with another reality, it is reality or post-reality.
Conclusion:
The important author Issa didn't hide her surreal thinking. She made a good survey of the quartet of the very short story "A crime of love" through titles, symbols,Intertextuality and paradoxes to get rid of the complexity of the duos and to achieve the desired and optimize another reality that gives the human right to love, his right to humanity itself, his right to life, his right to creativity... it is surreal and the pleasure of the very short story in this quartet...
Thanks to the important creative writer Elham Issa.
With the pen of the critic : Jalila El Mazny , Tunisia.
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