Sufism and Surrealism in ʿIṣām Maḥfūẓ’s poetry
The project is part of a larger research that aims to investigate the different manifestations of surrealism in modern Arabic literature. After having examined the first Arabic forms of surrealism in his PhD dissertation, Monaco now studies a number of poets who gave their personal contribution to the process of adoption and adaptation of surrealism in Arabic poetry. In particular, this project will take the Lebanese poet and playwright ʿIṣām Maḥfūẓ (1939-2006) as a case study. Acquainted with surrealism very early in his career, he was soon able to elaborate a personal interpretation of it, being among the first ones who linked it with Sufism. Drawing on the early studies on the encounter of Western surrealism with mysticism [Chabrun 1943; Balakian 1947; Carrouges 1947] and following Hédi Abdel-Jaouad’s concept of soufialisme, ʿIṣām Maḥfūẓ’s poetry will be read as a twofold experience where the surrealist and the Sufi trends meet each other. Far from the overlapping of two monolithic experiences, this encounter has to be intended as the interaction of two protean creatures who find in poetry a shared field of expression.