It is noticeable in our Arab world that some writers, intellectuals, statesmen, and businessmen race to write down their autobiographies, knowing that some biographies are poor. Because it neglects what the reader would like to know about what is kept quiet, while some ignore the element of suspense, and others exaggerate in showing the positives rather than the negatives, which makes the biography and its writer lose interest, and here is a diversification of visions about this literary genre, presented by a number of passionate people and specialists..
Novelist Dr. Badriya Al-Bishr believes that most people believe that their autobiography deserves to be written, explaining that she has met people who regret that they do not find the time or means to complete and monitor what they have lived. She added: I think they have the right, as they do not know their lives compared to others, but they realize that the life they experienced contains secrets and tribulations that deserve to be recorded and known to the reader. Emphasizing that some lives contain a special magic that is the magic of life itself, we do not exist in vain, indicating that there are those who can make their world a wider world with their contemplative outlook and the depth of meaning extracted. She argued that some biographies take into account the difference in time, as there is a difference between the abundant time of today and the time of scarcity, and she considered all biographies acceptable for narration as long as we find the making of meaning within them. She added: There are beautiful biographies, such as the biography of the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Engineer Ali Al-Naimi, and the biography of Dr. Hamza Al-Muzaini, which are worth reading because of the richness of inspiring experiences for generations.
Professor of Literature and Criticism, Dr. Saleh Moeed Al-Ghamdi, believes that any life biography is rich in experiences, experiences, lessons, and depictions of the human being. As a human being, his joys and sorrows, his victories and defeats, are worthy of being recorded, regardless of who the owner is, a minister, or an ordinary man.
The biographer lover and explorer of its depths revealed that what achieves pleasure and benefit at the same time, some of it is worthy of acquisition and reading, and readers in the first place decide that, and their standards in that are necessarily different, as some of them are attracted by the style and construction of the biography, and some of them are attracted by the nature of the life experiences narrated in it and the practical and functional backgrounds of her book. And scientific, and some of them are attracted by the gender of the biographer, whether he is a man or a woman, etc. Pointing out that what strongly intersects with the life experience of each reader remains in the memory. The autobiography either opens up new horizons for him to explore, or erases the wounds he suffered from and provides consolation to him, or motivates him to review the course of his life and reflect on it, or helps him get to know himself. more.
Cultural advisor Hashem Al-Jahdali confirms that from an early age, autobiographical and autobiographical books were among the most ingrained books in his memory, and because books were scarce, he shared their reading with people around him, and thus it was a constant focus of their conversations. He pointed to the most prominent profound biographies that attracted him to her world, including “I Confess That I Have Lived” by Neruda, “The Butterfly” by Henri Charrier, “The Days” by Taha Hussein, “and Non-Memoirs or Anti-Memoirs” by Malraux, stressing that his interests, readings, and sources of knowledge expanded until he read the novel “The General.” In his “labyrinth” by Márquez, in which he created a biography that combined the real and the imaginary of the life of “Simon Bolívar.” The experience aroused his astonishment and motivated him to approach this dangerous, imagined area in the biography of the real, and how it is, when, and why. He considered it an important experience in the process of his readings, which enabled him to possess the tools of the narrator who It fills in the forgotten or unspoken gaps in the biography of those who did not write their biography through available evidence, documents, and evidence. He added: The beginning was with his writing of the biography of the late Abdullah Al-Qassimi, then the novelist Abdul Rahman Munif and the Minister Muhammad Surur Al-Sabban, and there are biographies that he wrote by combining dialogue and documentary, such as the biography of Dr. Muhammad Alawi Maliki, the great poet Muhammad Al-Ali, Dr. Turki Al-Hamad, and others whom the circumstances of that time did not allow for the publication of his writings about them. He believes that autobiographical literature finds excellent popularity these days in our cultural and social scene, and there are many forms of it, between the sober historical documentary biography as presented by the writer Muhammad Al-Saif, or the human biography that is silent about it, as manifested in several works such as “In the Aftermath of Inayat Al-Zayyat” by Iman Mersal or Wassini Al-Araj wrote about May Ziadeh, Abdel Qader Al-Jazairi, and many other examples.
While critic Dr. Hussein Al-Manasra explained that a biography worth writing down is one that reveals what is hidden or kept silent about in the life of its writer. Because what is known and common about the biographer does not require a biographical record, especially if it is ordinary and familiar. Therefore, there is no biographical need to write down the life of a person whose life is similar to the life of all or most others, as it appears to the eye. Al-Manasra believes that writing down means that the biography writer draws from his hidden life that breaks what is known about him, whether this revelation is positive or negative, especially in breaking the social taboo that is shrouded in shame, religiosity, or the authority of the censor, which means that acquiring the biography for reading is governed by the truthfulness of the hadith. About the self, as the charter of the biography is fulfilled documentaryly, without neglecting the aesthetics of creative writing in writing the biography, because the biography is not only a document, but rather an aesthetic creation to show the documentary in the most beautiful language, image and rhythm.
Al-Manasra added: Personally, I prepare many novels as biographical novels, and many of the biographies are fictional biographies, especially since the degree of disclosure in writing Arab autobiographies is often at its lowest levels, due to the traditional societal culture that dominates the personality of the Arab creator, as if writing autobiographies is taboo for people. The “If you are afflicted, then cover yourself” method!!
He counted among the important autobiographies that he read, and they still reside in him, and he wrote about some of them: “Bare Bread” by Muhammad Shukri, because he did not think that there was an Arab autobiography that had been written or would be written like “Bare Bread,” which showed the oppressed human being in an environment full of ignorance, poverty, disease, and various contradictions. To the point of scandal! He read, acquired, and wrote about the two biographies of Jabra Ibrahim Jabra: “The First Well” and “Princesses Street,” which are two biographies that depicted Jabra’s life in Palestine before his departure to Baghdad, and the beginning of his life in Baghdad. When Jabra was asked about not continuing to write his autobiography in other parts, He mentioned that his biography became part of his novels, stressing that his interest was directed to Palestinian autobiography, especially: “The Sojourn of the Shepherd” by Ihsan Abbas, “A Mountain Journey is a Difficult Journey” and “The Most Difficult Journey” by Fadwa Tuqan, and “I Saw Ramallah” by Mourid Barghouti.
He emphasized that Taha Hussein’s “The Days” was particularly important to him in the first part, in which he talks about his childhood and his suffering in dealing with the loss of his sight, and holds him responsible for this loss for the traditional methods of treating eye diseases that cause blindness in any case, as well as the negative educational methods in “Al-Katatib.” And all his feelings are in the face of what was around him to compensate for his loss of sight, and the intelligence and acumen he possessed made him a great personality in the end, despite his loss of sight. That is, he conquered life, starting with his memorization of the Holy Qur’an, and ending with him becoming the dean of Arabic literature, and Al-Manasara sees it as, A biography written in a distinctive language and in an amazing style, with a true, human revelation of the inner personality of the boy Taha Hussein in the face of others’ neglect of him due to his loss of sight.
While the novelist Wajdi Al-Ahdal argued that Naguib Mahfouz’s life was worthy of being recorded in an autobiography, and if that had happened, it would have been one of the most widespread Arab autobiographies, in addition to the autobiography of the great Yemeni poet Abdulaziz Al-Maqaleh. Who passed away and did not write his autobiography for reasons we can understand. The same applies to the giant of Arab literature, Naguib Mahfouz. They both know that writing an autobiography means that one becomes naked in front of the reader, not hiding anything big or small from him without counting them. This, as we all know, is still unacceptable in our conservative Arab societies.
He explained that the biography of “Peeling the Onion” by Günter Grass, “I Lived to Tell” by Gabriel García Márquez, “I Admit that I Have Lived” by Pablo Neruda, and “Report to El Greco” by Nikos Kazantzaki, haunted him, while his memory of Mahatma Gandhi’s biography “The Story of My Experiences” did not fade. With the Truth” and “Long Walk to Freedom” by Nelson Mandela, and “The Singapore Story” by Lee Kuan Yew, and the reason is that these great politicians succeeded in lifting their countries from the bottom to being on top of the world in many fields, and their lives deserve to be taught in our educational curricula. To be a role model for future generations.
What resides in memory and conscience
When I read the literary biography of Taha Hussein (Al-Ayyam), I was not more than sixteen years old, and then I read his other biography (on the sidelines of the biography), which was the beginning of my dedication to reading the entire literary and critical legacy of Taha Hussein.. and these two biographies still inhabit both the conscience and the mind since Taha Hussein’s easy and simple style was distinguished by his sweetness of language, elegance of expression, and charm of statement, rarely matched in our contemporary literary heritage. His biography (Al-Ayyam) influenced me, just as the autobiographies that I read later did not. Perhaps this is due, in addition to its linguistic charm, to… That great mental power of Taha Hussein, which he infused into the fabric of his unique text, and made this literary text a paste of his personal self and his disability, illuminated in a genius way the darkness of his present and his reality, while he was blind and unable to see, as if his blindness had lights that the sighted did not possess, as the French philosopher Descartes says.
A literary biography is a literary work that is close to the novel and memoirs, but it is not necessarily a complete work of fiction in its artistic architecture. However, it is mostly what is called the nature of the narrative immersed in contemplation, digression, restoration, and accession from the well of memory, that narrative that does not belong to the template of the novel, its techniques, or its construction. Dramatic, but it comes close to revelation, disclosure, and historical frankness, as we read in the two creative biographies (My Dagestan) by Rasul Gamzatov, and (Report to Greco) by the Greek novelist Kazantzaki. When the biography is a novel with complete artistic conditions, then imagination must be imbued with the fabric of realistic storytelling. Then the self has flown a little away from its subject, but it has not severed its narrative ties with it, as the surface of the subject becomes the first spring from which the birds of the imagination drink. Every time they move away from it, they return to it like a nest shrouded in shadows, like what we read in the wonderful novel biography (Al-Khabar Al-Hafi). By Muhammad Shukri.
There are autobiographies written by their authors in the form of memoirs or confessions that enlightened, revealed, and brought closer to those who were affected by them than they were. When the autobiography delves into revealing small details and researching the shortcomings and contradictions contained within the writer’s self and the setbacks and disappointments in its dreams and distortions, then the autobiography here It turns into what can be described as confessional literature, which can be observed in some memoirs, such as what Louis Awad wrote in (The Papers of a Lifetime), in which he had a great deal of honesty and openness, and what Abdul Rahman Badawi wrote in his tumultuous memoirs (The Biography of My Life), where he was defending his intellectual personality. He often went through repulsive attacks on intellectual figures close to him and different from his intellectual orientations, and his knowing ego swelled and left its shadow in every line of his.
