나집 마흐푸즈의 『미라마르』에 나타난 이집트 1952년 혁명

Abstract

The recent Arab Spring will be considered as a historical event which brought and will bring drastic changes to the whole Arab world. The Egyptians and Arabs, however, have not produced yet proper literary outputs about the January revolution of 2011. Prominent Egyptian literary works of the past can offer to the contemporary writers a reliable guidepost in this regard. The paper selected Najib Mahfuz's novel Miramar, published in 1967, to study on the impacts of revolution in Egypt. The novel attracted wide attention with its multiple narrators, because the technique was new to Arab writers since the translation of William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury into Arabic in 1963. Miramar is s story about the events that happened in an Alexandrian pension of the same name. The characters have different backgrounds and each of them narrates what happens inside the pension and, at the same time, reveals through retrospection what he saw, experienced and believed. Pivot character of the novel is Zuhra, the beautiful servant girl of the place. Amir Wajdi seems to represent the author Najib Mahfuz in a number of aspects. One of the main topics of the residents is 1952 Revolution. They advocate, complain and blame the Revolution and what it brought to Egyptian society. The novel discovers in a scene that they all feel fear of the Revolution's watchful eye and ear. Amir Wajdi says that he has not been an opponent of the Revolution. But he probably is not pleased with the current situation of Egypt after 1952. His view on the Revolution is clearly shown in his advice to Zuhra when she decides to leave the pension. The paper concludes that Miramar exposes that the Revolution, as is shown in Sarhan al-Buhayri's corruption and eventual suicide, failed in achieving what it promised. But Amir Wajdi, and so does Najib Mahfuz, finds a hope in Zuhra who represents Egypt. She is destined to find magically a suitable bridegroom when the time comes.