Showing papers in "Substance in 2021"

Translating Whispers: Recitation, Realism, Religion

Abstract: The essay analyzes the beginning of the seventh chapter of Naguib Mahfouz›s Palace Walk in which, at the heart of this realist novel, we encounter a vivid description of Qur’anic recitation. The scene does not discuss what is recited so much as it offers an account of how. “His voice could not be heard,” we are told, “but the continual motion of his lips gave him away. From time to time a faint whisper slipped out in a sibilant s sound.” What is a minor detail in a novel otherwise filled with events reveals a sort of literary limit to the descriptive labor of realism. In the translator’s use of “sibilant s sound” is a creative rendering of the Arabic letters sīn and ṣād and the evocation of waswasa. Drawing together reflections on the whispered s and the speaking body, this essay considers the potentials of language folding upon itself, torn between the tongue of the speaker described in prose and the poetic resonance of the Qur’anic verse. Alongside discussions of the postlingual turn, this whispered detail invites reflections on registers of discourse both liturgical and literary. In a curious passage at the beginning of the seventh chapter of Naguib Mahfouz’s Palace Walk (Bayn al-qasrayn), we are presented with a scene. The opening paragraphs describe a set of routines that greet the domineering father al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad as he arrives at his store first thing in the morning. He bids good morning to his assistant, Jamil al-Hamzawi, who has already opened the shop and prepared it for customers. And we learn that, even though al-Sayyid Ahmad is dreaded and feared in his family, in the context of business, “with friends, acquaintances, and customers,” he is “a different kind of person” (36). Following the arrival of these two characters, Mahfouz goes on to describe the space: a medium-sized store crammed full of coffee beans, rice, dried fruit, nuts, and soap “on the shelves and piled by the walls” (36). The owner’s desk, we are told, is stacked with ledgers, newspapers, and a telephone. Mounted on the wall is a safe (“its color was reminiscent of bank notes”) and just over the desk hangs an ebony frame containing the words, “In the name of God,” in gold lettering. Carefully crafted with attention to minute details, the passage presents a description of objects, each of which speaks in a particular way about the store and the sensibility of its owner.