Fatima Atfa (Abu Dhabi)
Session: “Taha Hussein and the Enlightenment” Yesterday, at the conclusion of the 31st Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, with the participation of writers and academics, President Dr. Ali bin Tamim was present. Abu Dhabi Center for the Arabic Language.
The poet Adonis said: “He was refined in his own way and reached the limit himself … he was only one race.” I always meet al-Marri, I met Taha Hussein before 1967, the time of setbacks, I described this meeting, so I wrote an article about it: “An Arab miniature of a Greek statue”, which the newspaper published. “Listen al-Hall” in Beirut at the time, and our interview revealed many common concerns between us, enough to mention two basic things that occupy workers today in the fields of thought, art and culture. We Arabs cannot be free, politically and culturally free in everything related to our relationship with the past, so we see it as our peers view Jewish unity, its sister Christian monotheism, their past history and their religion. Cultural and political traditions. Second thing: we, the Arabs, have been mixing the idea of growth and progress, and development has caught the attention of all of us, until it almost changed progress and took its name.
Adonis wondered: Why did the thought of growth overwhelm us, and why not the idea of progress? Why did the Arabs lag behind as the West advanced? It was also designed in what we call the “Renaissance”.
For his part, Hossein Ahmed, an aide to National Ireland’s modern Middle Eastern history, spoke about the administrative work he has done from Taha Hussein’s ministry to university and teaching, and said he has seen the documents and plans. He wants to be described as a pragmatic thinker who has made great changes.
Amani Fouad, a professor of modern literary criticism at the Academy of Arts in Cairo, focused on her involvement in the book “On the Margin of the Autobiography” by Taha Hussein, one of the most beautiful and endearing autobiographies. In all works of the Dean of Arabic Literature, at the intellectual or creative level, the novel is the first history and critique and journal article.
