In My Library: The Cares of Youth, by Dr. Abd al-Rahman Badawi

In my library, this time, is a story by Dr. Abd al-Rahman Badawi. Its title: The Cares of Youth. Publisher: Maktabat al-Nahda al-Misriyya. Number of pages: 158. Price: 30 Egyptian piasters.

Dr. Abd al-Rahman Badawi, young as his acquaintance with life still is, stands in the first rank among the writers of Egypt. Marvel, then, at the mind of a young man that opens itself upon civilization and draws from its authentic heritage, wanting neither in industry nor in steadfastness — so that Plato and Aristotle and Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and Spengler and their peers among the masters set him to writing out their thoughts in Arabic letters.

Yet this Arabic letter, which transmitted 'the essence of European thought,' was not at ease, had not found itself, was not at one with itself in matters small or great: it was a primitive borrowing, ruled by enthusiasm and impetuosity. And it is as if Abd al-Rahman Badawi — faithful to thought as he is faithful to himself — did not wish to keep to himself this precious treasure upon which he had come, and so bent himself to summarizing it, defying time and place. Here he sets out a program in alphabetical order: under its alif, 'the wellsprings of European thought'; under its ba, 'its philosophers'; under its jim, 'its thinkers'; under its dal, 'its philosopher-poets'; and under its ha, what he calls 'the spirit of the civilization' which that thought has built. He has thus far managed to bring out 'Nietzsche,' 'Spengler,' 'Schopenhauer,' 'Plato,' 'Aristotle,' 'The Spring of Greek Thought,' and 'The Autumn of Greek Thought.' No doubt he looks forward to issuing what remains of the program — and it is much, enough to make a great institution stagger under the burdens of carrying it out. And if Abd al-Rahman Badawi is to be praised for his energy and his fruitfulness, commended for his zeal and his devotion, and encouraged for the worth of the mission whose banner he has charged himself to carry — he is nonetheless, without doubt, to be taken to task for his manner of presenting this 'essence,' whether in its style or in its direction. It would have been more fitting for him to begin the presentation in historical sequence; for whoever aspires to understand 'Nietzsche,' for example, must first understand the Greeks, and Christianity, and the German idealism that showed itself above all in its two champions, 'Kant' and 'Hegel.'

As for direction, it would have better become Abd al-Rahman Badawi to hold to 'objectivity,' for he is 'presenting,' not 'composing' — and because, moreover, he had not yet found his intellectual center and come to rest. Among the results of this presentation of 'the essence of European thought' was that confusion crept into the reader's mind, a creeping that did him more harm than good, and disorder spread through the writer's opinions, a spreading that lessened confidence in him more than it increased it: he is an idealist at one turn and a skeptic at another; 'immersed' at one moment, 'Spenglerian' at the next. And here he is today, in his view of history and in his 'original works,' leaning unmistakably toward the philosophy of being.

Nor was Dr. Badawi content with 'the essence'; he aspired also to 'the whole': here he is choosing a hundred masterpieces and setting about their translation one by one. And here too, instead of beginning where he ought to begin — that is, with the Greeks — he has begun with the idealist romantics of the nineteenth century, the likes of 'Eichendorff,' 'Fouqué,' 'Goethe,' and 'Byron': and behold, the same confusion returns, and the same disorder takes hold and reigns.

And now — I fear this preamble has taken the place of what I meant to write in this space, for I meant to write a word about 'The Cares of Youth,' that story which is no story, which Dr. Badawi lately brought out among his 'original works.' Original it truly is: there is originality in its style, originality in its subject, and originality too in the atmosphere in which it saw the light. And yet how the true reader would have preferred its style free of this verbal and rhetorical willfulness and of that evident unsteadiness in the storyteller's art; how he would have wished its subject to turn from the pursuit of preaching and instruction to the pursuit of analyzing the persons from whom the lessons and the instruction are to be drawn; and how he yearned, too, for its atmosphere to be clear of affectation and flattery, and cleansed of charlatanry and disguise — then would its presence have found in his depths a wide and roomy place, and settled into its shades in welcome and in ease.

Be that as it may, 'The Cares of Youth' has value from several sides. First: it has shown where Abd al-Rahman Badawi will come out after his deep wanderings through the worlds of thought — I mean, as a man of letters like the other men of letters of Egypt, ending where it would have better become him to begin, and beginning where it would have better become him to end. Second: it has cast light upon his personality and lit up certain sides of his being and his thinking, which had been, as he himself confesses, masked and counterfeit, echoing beings and thoughts other than his own. Third: it is the parting of the ways at which Badawi has stood, bidding farewell to his excuses, his logicality, and his German idealism, and welcoming that doctrine of being (existentialism) whose spread grows ever wider at the present time. Fourth: the progressive, liberal opinions — most of them — which the author marshals, by design or by accident, in the course of his telling. For all this I encourage the reader to peruse it with care and attention.