Title: The Postmodern Phase in Edwar Al-Kharrat’s Novel
Stream: Literature, Literary Studies and Theory
Presentation Type: Live-Stream Presentation
Authors:
Yaseen Kittani, Al-Qasemi Academy, Israel
Abstract:
This paper is an examination of the late phase in Edwar al-Kharrat's fiction. It sheds light on the spaces of the dream and fantasy at the ends of the chapters of his novel Turābuhā Zaʻfarān/ City of Saffron (1986). Besides other modernist techniques and artistic styles that characterize this advanced stage in al-Kharrat's works, dream and fantasy in this novel contribute to the structure of the semantic dimensions which are represented in: confiscating temporality, contemporizing the story to save passing times from loss, vanquishing mortality, seeking eternity, and propositioning the impossible. The phenomenon of symbolic and linguistic intensity through fantasy and dream at the ends of the novel chapters represents a distinctive feature of al-Kharrat's novel, Turābuhā Zaʻfarān. The scenes of 'dream and fantasy' reveal the character's frustration and its suppressed desires, which it could not achieve in real life. Following Said, we see that al-Kharrat, while collecting the remains of his life on the approach of the ghost of death, makes deep fractures in his late creative texts, as if he desired to say his last word through them. His late texts are characterized by contradiction, indeterminacy, dismantlement, non-temporality, pastiche, ‘abr al-naw‘iyya "transgeneric writing". All of these styles are post-modern features that are embodied in the employment of dream and winged-fantasy, specifically at the ends of the chapters. Consequently, his late brilliant texts, including Turābuhā Zaʻfarān become a difficult and daunting task due to their ambiguity and incomprehensibility.
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