Interview With Edward Al-Kharrat

/ Interview with Edward al-Kharrat
Author(s): and Sabri Hafiz

Source: Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, No. 2, Criticism and the Avant-Garde /
& lrm; (Spring, 1982), pp. 90-113
Published by: Department of English and Comparative Literature, American University in
Cairo and American University in Cairo Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/521745
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EXCERPTS FROM
THE INTERVIEW WITH
EDWARD AL-- KHARRAT

Sabri Hafiz
My abiding concern has always been man's loneliness and his

estrangement from himself, from society, from the universe. A deso-
late, silent universe that was not designed to respond to man's ques-
tions, or to grant his desires. Man as an island ... his isolation ... But at
the same time his yearning for communication.
Another problem which has preoccupied me is the relation between

the present, the contingent, the transient, on the one hand, and the
everlasting, the necessary, the stable, on the other; between, one might
say, the relative and the absolute, or between the ?human> and the
<divine.>>
Q.
During the period when I was writing my novel Rama and the
Dragon, I was working with some basic concepts regarding the levels of
meaning and form itself. Form as it is predominant in Arab culture and,
even before, in Pharaonic culture, was mainly repetition. This form
could certainly be linked to the relation between the relative and the
absolute. In the case of the arabesque, we find that circular repetition is
infinite by its very nature, whereas the elements that constitute it are
partial, minute and finite in nature. The coupling of the finite, partial
and minute and their infinite repetition allows the finite to transcend
itself into the infinite and the partial to transcend itself into the whole.
The episodic structure of my novels is linked to the abstract designs

of the hieroglyphs, the closed cartouches that are repeated indefinitely
on the walls of the ancient temples.
In my early days I was greatly influenced by the Russian novelists,

Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, as well as by the English Romantic poets,
Shelley, Keats and Byron. I read Joyce later and, although I was not
immediately impressed by his novel, it has had nonetheless a kind of
gradual but deep subterranean effect on me.
The influence of the Arab heritage was profound and essential: The
Thousand and One Nights, the classical texts from the Jahiliyya to Subh
al-Acsha, as well as Coptic and Christian readings, these have all had a
very powerful and lasting influence on me.
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Interview With Edward Al-Kharrat

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/ Interview with Edward al-Kharrat

Author(s): and Sabri Hafiz

Department of English and Comparative Literature, American University in Cairo and

EDWARD AL-- KHARRAT

My abiding concern has always been man's loneliness and his

Another problem which has preoccupied me is the relation between

The episodic structure of my novels is linked to the abstract designs

In my early days I was greatly influenced by the Russian novelists,

p \ 4jF 1. ;i0L3.s1 A\ ; 90 C09? .~~ I c> ;i0L \

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