Response to Modernity in T.S.Eliot's and Salah Abdel-Sabour's Poetry

Transcription

1 Ain Shams University Women's College for Arts, Science and Education English Language Department Response to Modernity in T.S.Eliot's and Salah Abdel-Sabour's Poetry An M.A. Thesis submitted by Eman Abdel-Moneim Mohamed Mansour To The Department of English Language and Literature,Women's College, Ain Shams University In fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Literature Supervised by Dr. Abdel Wahab Mohammed El-Messiri Professor of English Literature, Women's College Ain Shams University Dr. Isam Ahmed Bahei Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, Women's College Ain Shams University Dr. Magda Mansour Hasabelnaby Associate Professor of English Literature, Women's College Ain Shams University 2008

2 Acknowledgements V I would like to thank the following professors who have supervised my thesis and helped me greatly. 1-Dr. Abdel-Wahab Mohammed El-Messiri 2-Dr. Isam Ahmed Bahei 3-Dr. Magda Mansour Hasabelnaby I would also like to thank the following persons and institutions for their help and support. 1- Dr. Jehan Farouk Fouad 2- New York Public Library 3- The American University in Cairo 4- The British Council library in Egypt

3 Dedication I would like to dedicate this thesis to my family, namely, my mother; my father; my brothers and my sister for their patience, support and help. I would also like to dedicate this thesis for the soul of my late professor, tutor and close friend Dr.Abdel- Wahab Mohamed El-Messiri (may God rest his soul in peace) for believing in me. My sincerest love and respect for my guide Dr. El-Messiri. I am, and will for ever be, indebted to your fruitful conversations with me. I would also like to dedicate this thesis for the soul of my late professor Dr. Isam Ahmed Bahei (may God rest his soul in peace). Last but not least my greatest and deepest gratitude and thanks for Dr. Magda Mansour Hasabelnaby for her constant encouragement, continuous support and ceaseless efforts.

4 On the authority of Abu'l Abbas Sahl ibn Sa'd as- Sa'idi (may Allah be pleased with him, who said: A man came to the Prophet (may the blessings of Allah be upon him) and said: O Messenger of Allah, direct me to an act which, if I do it, [will cause] Allah to love me and people to love me. He said: Renounce the world and Allah will love you, and renounce what people possess and people will love you. A good Hadith related by Ibn Majah and others with good chains of authorities. عن أبى العباس سھل بن سعد الساعدى رضى الله عنھ قال : ) جا ء رجل إلى النبى فقال: یا رسول الله دلنى على عمل إذا عملت ھ أحبن ى الله و أحبن ى الن اس. فق ال : "ازھ د ف ى ال دنیا یحب ك الله و ازھ د فیم ا عن د الن اس یحب ك الناس ") ) رواه ابن ماجھ وغیره با سانید حسنة (

5 The Veteran When I was young and bold and strong, Oh, right was right, and wrong was wrong! My plume on high, my flag unfurled, I rode away to right the world. "Come out, you dogs, and fight!" said I, And wept there was but once to die. But I am old; and good and bad Are woven in a crazy plaid. Dorothy Parker

6 Contents Page Acknowledgments V Introduction 1-14 Chapter I: Modernity and its Premises Chapter II: Modernity and its Impact on the Individual's Psyche in Eliot's and Abdel-Sabour's Poetry Chapter III: Modernity's impact on Human Relationships in Eliot's and Abdel-Sabour's Poetry Chapter IV: The Aesthetic Manifestations of Eliot's and Abdel-Sabour's Responses to Modernity Conclusion: Works Cited: Appendix: 167 English Summary: 1-2 English Abstract: 1 Arabic Summary: 1-2 Arabic Abstract: 1

7 1 Modern age is characterized by its rapid and constant change in all walks of life. This fast-paced change is of a materialistic nature. It is claimed that such development is of extreme importance to man as it targets his own interests. Moreover, the importance of this desired development stems from the claim that it aims at setting man's potentialities and will free; hence it results in man's happiness. To achieve happiness, human beings have to cut ties with all that would hinder them from achieving their own goals. Each person is capable of exerting his/her will through his/her instrumental reason. Through reason, the individual discovers scientific laws that lessen the area of the unknown and that could be applied to all aspects of life for the sake of improving the quality of life on earth. These are modernity's main propositions. Ironically, however, instead of achieving happiness for the individual, the modern age is featured as the age of moral and spiritual dilemmas. Modernity is closely connected to the process of modernization which relies on industrialization and urbanization. Both industrialization and urbanization were supposedly meant to satisfy man's potentialities and talents. They were once expected to achieve paradise on earth. To successfully accomplish their mission, both the individual's and the society's attitude towards life should change in order to adapt to the requirements of industrialization. The individual has to turn his/her back to his/her cherished beliefs and traditions in order to gain materialistic benefits, even at the expense of spiritual comfort.

8 2 The attitudes that modernity has given rise are featured by a mechanized, quantified outlook that penetrates into all aspects of life. Instead of directing the individual towards nourishing his/her potentialities and talents, modernity has made life intolerable and unbearable to man. Self-interest, loneliness and isolation became modern man's most salient traits. Denis Goulet in his article, "Development: Creator and Destroyer of Values", defines development as "the vision of a better life a life materially richer, institutionally more "modern" and technologically more efficient and an array of means to achieve that vision" (467). Mahamoud Amin El -Alem in his article, "The Culture of Development and the Development of Culture" concurs with Goulet and adds that development is seen as a comprehensive project that involves all of mankind. He stresses that "development is not merely an economic process; it is a global, political, economic, social, historical and cultural project" (55). However, S. C. Dube in his article, "Cultural Dimensions of Development", asserts that development is basically economic. Dube adds that development claims that "wealth [comes] to be equated with happiness" (505). In his exploration of the features of development, Alain Touraine, in his article entitled "Modernity and Cultural Specificities", points out to other aspects of development. Touraine elucidates that development becomes to be seen as the path to increase "the resources and the potential of action of all individuals and all groups"(444). Touraine articulates another fundamental feature of development. Touraine asserts that

9 3 development is the bond that relates the process of modernity to the process of modernization. According to Touraine the process of modernization is conceived as "the gradual obliteration of cultural and social differences in favour of an increasingly broad participation of everyone in one and the same general model of modernity"(443). In this light, Touraine elucidates that development is one-dimensional where one mode prevails and allows no other modes to exist. Moreover, Touraine elucidates that development involves fragmentation as it is perceived as the state of "transition from seeing things in terms of continuity to seeing them in terms of discontinuity which marks the principal break between present day thought and the thought of the previous century" (452). Touraine puts a strong emphasis on another premise of modernity which is rationalization. He elucidates that modernity involves "applying the general principles of reason to the conduct of human affairs"(443) to achieve development. Moreover, Touraine asserts that the root of modernity is "originally the philosophy of the Enlightenment and subsequently the philosophy of progress from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries in Europe"(444). In addition to this, Touraine asserts that the Enlightenment called for and necessitated a demanding change of culture ( 444). Modernity calls for a break with old "traditional beliefs and forms of social organization"(444). Touraine articulates that to achieve change the Enlightenment stressed the urgent need "to replace the reign of beliefs and traditions by the reign of reason" in order to achieve one's happiness (448).

10 4 Critics assert that there is a strong relationship between culture and development. El-Alem defines culture as "man's global vision of the universe and of society, it is embodied in his general intellectual, moral and behavioral stands" (57). In his exploration of the bond between culture and development, Dube asserts that "culture cannot be dispensed with to promote growth, for it has critical functions, and development does not offer adequate replacement for them"(507). El-Alem agrees with Dube and adds that culture is a prerequisite condition for development. In fact, he elucidates that the success or failure of either development or culture is indispensable. El-Alem confirms that no development can survive, achieve or succeed unless it is in harmony with the culture and national identity within which it is being realized. But there also can be no survival, achievement or success for a cultural and national identity without being developed and nurtured within vaster, deeper more effective and conscious horizons than its own particular limits in political, economic, social and cultural areas. (57) However, El-Alem stresses the existence of a hostile attitude towards the important role of culture. El-Alem states that there was a current of thought, powerful in the nineteenth century, held that continuing and obstructive persistence of tradition would block substantial

11 5 modernization as traditional values and institutions are incompatible with modernity.(507) In fact, Touraine points out that modernity emphasizes the notion of material gains and seeking one's own pleasures. To achieve these goals an individual has to deliberately neglect moralities in exchange of utility. Everything in modern societies is valued according to its function and the benefit it brings about. This intellectual trend of thought was reinforced through "secularization"(444). Touraine states that the utilitarianism of the nineteenth century reduced the expression of this rationalism to the quest for individual economic advantage, but it is scarcely possible to reduce to this individualistic economic conception the grade-scale movement which was reflected as much and more in the secularization, the differentiation, of institutions and, more centrally, the gradual rejection of any transcendent principle of integration and control of social life. (444) Modernity resorts to two different methods in its attempt to overcome the problem of bringing about fundamental changes on the social level. Dube asserts that deliberate and complete neglect of cultural and traditional "institutions" (507) was a legitimate method that modernity used to overcome the problem of culture. Modernity achieved its goals either through obliteration, or through altering the function of social and cultural institutions. Dube states that

12 6 Economic growth and development were of paramount importance: and tradition and social institutions had to be changed if they stood in the way of attainment of these objectives... traditional societies could not modernize unless they altered their traditional institutions, beliefs, and values to suit the demand of development. Abandoning traditional institutions was thus considered a precondition to development. (507) Touraine sheds light on another method used by modernity to impose change on social institutions. Touraine asserts that modernity manipulates basic religious thoughts to achieve its own interests. In modernity's "economic analysis" the new ethical values are those of "labour, enterprise and profit" (452). To support these new values modernity manipulates the religious thoughts of suffering and salvation. Touraine elucidates in modernity's economical frame man is seen not so much as a rational being imposing his laws on nature as a worker, admittedly rational but also as a suffering being engaged in a productive effort. This establishes a link between the rationalist tradition driving from the Enlightenment and the Judeo-Christian tradition attaching merit to hard work and redemption through suffering. (452) Modernity has drastic consequences on the individual. El- Alem points out to a universal state of fragmentation that prevails

13 7 in our modern life. According to El-Alem, this state is due to the hegemony of a general attitude in which the American way of life; the philosophy of the "fast buck" and "greatest enjoyment" prevailed, a philosophy of benefit-oriented pragmatism, of individualist adventurism, of blatant nationalistic idealism. (63) Goulet examines the consequences of modernity on the individuals. He elucidates that modernity creates individuals with deformed entities. To emphasize his viewpoint, Goulet refers to a statement by Leopold Senghor "that no people wish to commit cultural suicide, by repudiating its history and identity, on the grounds that this sacrifice is the only road to modernity"(qtd in Goulet 468). In his elucidation on the failure of modernity, as a project which aims at achieving man's happiness, Touraine states that "...we no longer believe that economic and social transformations solve the problems of either individual happiness or collective freedoms"(450). In fact, Touraine gives strong emphasis to the fallacy of "progress" (450). According to him the saying that economic development and personal and collective happiness inevitably go hand in hand "is but a dream of the past" (450-1). In addition to this, Touraine sheds light on the fact that modernity has not set man free as its propositions claim; instead it has enslaved him. Touraine states that

14 8 most mankind, were transformed into instruments of modernization rather than participants in modernized society. Man's domination over nature imposed, along with a vast movement of liberation, the development of new controls and increasingly severe forms of repression (447). Literature is an intrinsic component of any culture; it sheds light on and reflects what is going on inside society. Literary figures have contributed, through their works, to enlighten the society and alerting the individual to the dark sides of modernity. Both T.S. Eliot and Salah Abdel-Sabour realized the dark aspects of modernity and responded to it through the medium of their literary output. The two poets share many similarities. Both enjoy vast knowledge, and exhibit a profound concern regarding the impact of modernity on man. Moreover, both poets use their poetry to address their concerns, and finally, both poets are considered pioneers because of the innovations in their poetry. T.S. Eliot ( ), born in St. Louis, Missouri, of an old New England American family. In 1927 he became a British citizen. He was educated in many distinguishable institutions such as Harvard, Sorbonne, Merton College and Oxford. During his stay in England, he took different jobs such as a school master, a banker, and a literary editor for the publishing house Faber and Faber, which, later on, he became its director. During the seventeen years of its publication ( ), he edited the eminent literary Journal of the Criterion. ( T.S.Eliot 1)

15 9 T.S. Eliot is considered one of the most daring innovators and pioneers of twentieth-century poetry. He believed that poetry has an influential mission which aims at representing the complexities of modern civilization in language. Eliot's poetry is called "difficult poetry" ( T.S.Eliot 1), because it corresponds to the difficulties and hardships of modern life. Eliot's poetry, from Prufrock Poems (1917) to the Four Quartets (1943), mirrors his development as a Christian writer. His Waste Land (1922) is a deep expression of the horrors that result from searching for a higher world. In his Ash Wednesday (1930) and the Four Quartets (1943) this higher world becomes clearer and more articulated. ( T.S.Eliot 1) Eliot's literary works reflect his religious concerns. His plays Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and the Family Reunion (1939) are obviously Christian apologies. In these plays Eliot elaborates on some religious issues. Moreover, in his works that reflect his concern with cultural criticism such as Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), he strongly supports traditionalism in religion, society and literature. ( T.S.Eliot 1) Likewise, Salah Abdel-Sabour ( ) is considered one of the most influential pioneers of modern Arabic poetry. Abdel-Sabour has his own philosophical vision concerning poetry and the role of the poet. He believes that a poet's mission is not to portray what the people want; rather he should portray the problems of his own age. (Abdel-Sabour, My experience 15)