A naked bulb
sheds more
light
Photo: Derekskey Flickr Creative Commons
He took her soft hand. It felt cold; the contraction of her heart had stopped her blood circulating. He squeezed it repeatedly, as if passing a secret message. She wasn't expecting this – or so she pretended – and tried to take her hand away. But he did not let her.
‘What’ve you done?’
‘We’ll discuss that later.’
‘But you haven’t tried to get in touch with me.’
He bent towards her and kissed her cheek as he whispered in her ear, ‘Later . . . later . . .’
‘But this is what I’ve come for.’
‘You’ll get what you’re after . . . but later . . .’
She opened her mouth to speak but he stopped her with a long and heavy kiss saying sharply, ‘Later.’
Nature played one of her infinite tunes with joyful bravura, which seemed like a miracle. But soon the tune died away receding into oblivion and leaving behind a suspicious silence and a feeling of langour full of sadness. He lay on his side on the bed while she stayed where she was on the settee, exposing her slip and the drops of sweat on her forehead and neck to the unshaded light of the electric bulb. He looked at nothing and wished for nothing, as if he had accomplished what was required of him on earth. When his eyes turned in her direction, they denied her completely, as though she had been some strange object sprung from the womb of night, and not that enchanting person who had set him on fire: a dumb thing with no history and no future. He said to himself that the game of desire and revulsion was no more than an exercise in death and resurrection, an advance perception of the inevitable tragedy, matching in its grandeur such fleeting revelations of the unknown, in its infinite variety, as are granted.
Extract
from
حضرةالمحترم
Respected Sir (1975)
by
Naguib Mahfouz
(Nobel Prize in Literature 1988)
حضرةالمحترم
Respected Sir (1975)
by
Naguib Mahfouz
(Nobel Prize in Literature 1988)
Citation for Arabian narrative art.
Naguib Mahfouz . . .‘ through works rich in nuance – now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous – has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind.’ His ‘authorship deals with some of life’s fundamental questions, including the passage of time, society and norms, knowledge and faith, reason and love. He often uses his hometown of Cairo as the backdrop for his stories . . . ’
Nobel Prize citation.
Certainly, the 1975 novel quoted above is profound in describing the anguish of a low-born aspirant striving – ultimately in vain – to compete in a rigidly hierarchical administration of ‘networkers’ in which preferment depends less on merit and more on the caste system of a well-connected elite, a condition of existence universal in its occurrence by its being unconfined by cultural boundaries. In this regard, one is reminded of Nobel laureate (1972), Heinrich Böll, whose novel The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (or, How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead), an exemplar of simple unadorned prose, has the power to similarly inspire empathetic recognition worldwide without inviting the label of ‘polemicised literature’.
See also
The Utility of Art as a Social Function according to Heinrich Böll
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