Last month the diwan "Sharar" ("Sparks") by the poet Ahmad al-Safi al-Najafi was issued by the Sader and Rihani presses. It is his eighth diwan, running to 228 pages and printed on glossy paper.
The diwan "Sharar" is nothing other than a rich collection of poems and short poetic pieces that came unbidden, as the poet says; he set them down just as he felt them within his own soul, and in setting them down he was truly faithful — and there is no doubt that behind the spirit of "Sharar" lies a rebellious, daring soul that adores freedom and lives in life, at its very heart, despite life's pressing hard upon him and driving him to wander...
The Woman's Voice is pleased to be alone in publishing the letter sent to the poet by our man of letters Mr. Mikhail Naimy, in thanks for a presentation copy. He wrote:
My dear Mr. Ahmad al-Safi,
Greetings. I have received the copy of your new diwan "Sharar" which you were kind enough to present to me. It is a diwan to be read from cover to cover without tedium. Perhaps the finest thing in it is its freedom from affectation and embellishment in picturing the world in which you live with your body and your spirit. It is indeed a world rich in thought and lessons, in forebodings and misgivings, in visions luminous and dark, in pleasure and pain, in repression and release, and then in a self-esteem going far beyond the soul's own capacity — as in your saying:
"My poetry is the whole of
existence — how can a mere part of existence prevail against it?"
and your saying:
"Come to my poetry: it will show you everything; in any poetry but mine you will see nothing at all."
Yet although I recoil from such excess in your estimate of your own poetry and your lowering of the worth of absolutely all poetry besides it, I turn and pass it over in exchange for the many merits in the diwan, among them this verse in your piece "Ramadan":
"Those who have made eating their feast have broken the fast, but have kept no feast."
This is the word of a friend who appreciates your gifts, who knows something of the harsh circumstances that attend your life, and who wishes you well, with more fruitful work, together with health and clarity of mind and spirit.
Yours sincerely, Mikhail Naimy
Dar al-Ma'arif of Egypt has recently issued a collection of stories by Mr. Najati Sidqi, eighteen stories in number, running to 126 pages.
The stories picture some of the tragedies of Palestine. We single out for mention the story "The Sorrowful Sisters," which joins history to agreeable imagination; the story of the militant schoolteacher Hayat Balabsi, who was killed in the massacre of Deir Yassin; and the story "A Boys' Battle," the story of the children who fought a battle with the enemy in their own particular way.
As for the remaining stories, they picture truths drawn from the author's travels in the Arab and European countries.
Mr. Sidqi is influenced in his
stories by the schools of Chekhov and Maupassant... The collection is well worth reading. And we promise our readers, men and women alike, that we shall soon publish some of the stories of this collection.
"The Mahabharata," a magnificent masterpiece of art, was issued this month by "Dar al-Ahad" in Beirut.
"The Mahabharata" — that Indian epic which equals in literary worth the Greek Iliad and Odyssey — has been rendered into Arabic by the learned scholar Mr. Wadi' al-Bustani, who gave up some forty years of his life to its Arabization in verse; it has therefore been counted a momentous event in the world of letters, and in the world of printing as well.
"The Mahabharata" is the story of the war of the "Banu Hirat," and the portion now Arabized does not exceed four thousand verses out of an original forty thousand. Its events took place in India three thousand years ago — that is, in the very age in which Homer sang his epic.
It is to be regretted that the number of printed copies of "The Mahabharata" does not exceed five hundred, which makes the range of its circulation a narrow one.
"The Mahabharata" has been published at the expense of the Alumni Association of the American University of Beirut; its proofreading was undertaken by the translator's son, Mr. Fouad al-Bustani, and its artistic production by the owner of "Dar al-Ahad," Mr. Azmi al-Buhayri.