Marie Ziadeh
Original name, was born in 1886 in Nazareth, Palestine, and
started her writing career soon after her family emigrated to Cairo in 1908.
Egypt, then under British occupation, was known for a certain
open-mindedness. For many Syrian-Christian immigrants, it offered better
economic opportunities. Attracting a number of intellectuals of the time,
the Egyptian metropole became a center for Arabic literature. Literature was
the first form to express the changes in Oriental society in this period,
thereby introducing totally new genres like the novel and the short story.
This process did not result from European influences alone, but from the
changing public and social structures, particularly the increase in modern
educational institutions of a European type; the rise of a new
intelligentsia from the middle and upper classes, often without classical
training; the quickly developing new medium of the press; a widening
readership with different demands and tastes; and an emerging bookmarket. At
a certain stage in this development, literary societies and salons became
popular as a new forum of public discourse, besides or even opposed to the
traditional sphere of the learned majlis and the coffee shop. In Cairo alone
more than one hundred of these clubs and salons sprang up. Half public, half
private, they served as a critical forum for the new intellectuals, who
sought to promote a national society by breaking with traditional norms and
conventions and adopting hitherto unknown forms of discourse.
This, in short, was the intellectual climate to receive May in Cairo and
henceforth mold her career. When her father, a former Lebanese teacher,
became a journalist and took over the Cairo weekly al-Mahrusa in 1909, the
pages of leading Egyptian periodicals were soon open to her, not least
because they were in Syrian-Christian hands. She quickly distinguished
herself as a prolific poet, translator, orator, essayist and critic. She
studied at the newly opened Egyptian University, learned to master at least
five languages, cooperated with early feminist groups like the one led by
Huda Shaarawi and, as early as 1913, started her literary salon in the house
of her parents.
At the different stages of her career, May appears as a typical
representative of her time. What set her apart was that she was a woman. Few
women during this early period dared to unveil themselves or their opinions
to the public. Most of the salons were held by men and hardly ever visited
by a female. May, one of rare exceptions, was compelled and for a certain
time able to overcome these barriers. An immigrant Christian among Muslims
and a women of exceptional education in a society traditionally dominated by
men, she felt herself to be a permanent outsider. This threefold 'inner
exile' led to her continuous search for social integration, probably best
described in her famous poetic prose work Aina Watani? (Where is my
homeland?). As long as it coincided with the concerns of a society defining
new social and political concepts, May's endeavor to find integration was
granted success. This proves to be the key to the understanding of her
literary development.
Educated in Lebanese mission schools largely in French, May consequently
published her first work, the collection of poems Fleurs de R
ve, in French.
However, she devoted herself mainly to writing prose in Arabic later,
utilizing the essay and article, which by their economy of expression were
more appropriate to the new medium of the press and reformatory aims of the
intellectuals. Her desire to belong prompted her to adopt the
national-liberal views of the circle around Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid, then
editor of the newspaper al-Jarida, which did not tie the concept of
nationality to religion or origin. She even discarded her formerly used
pseudonyms like Khalid Ra'fat or Isis Copia and changed her name from the
clearly Christian Marie to May, a name combining the first and last letters
of her birthname and more generally acceptable to Arab ears. It was under
this name that she eventually became famous. From this point, May
contributed to the modernization of Arabic literature and thought, in nearly
every field. She participated in the intensive translation efforts of her
time with adaptations of an English, a German, and a French novel, tried her
hand several times at the new genre of the short story and wrote sensitive
biographical studies of three pioneer women writers and poets, Warda
al-Yaziji, A'isha Taymur, and Bahithat al-Badiya -- quite a novum at that
time. Shortly after the Russian Revolution, she raised the issue of
socialism and other political ideologies of the day in a series of articles,
later collected in a book. Under the spell of the mahjar literates in North
America, especially Gibran, with whom she had been corresponding since 1912,
she became one of the most prolific writers of the new genre of 'shi'r
manthur', prose poetry or poetic prose. Her reputation as a critic also grew
first of all in connection with Khalil Gibran, whose works she helped make
famous in the Arab world with her articles.
The early and middle twenties have up to now been considered the most
productive period of May's literary activity, since the majority of her
books, mainly collections of articles on travel, literature, art criticism,
linguistics and social reform appears at that time. With her newly
discovered works, this assumption can no longer be maintained. Instead, the
early thirties might be regarded as the peak of her creativity.