Muhammad al-Maghut

Early years

Al-Maghut was born in 1934 in Salamiyya, in the Hama Governorate, into an Ismaili family.^[1] The son of a farmer, he grew up in poverty. After completing his primary education in Salamiyya, he moved to Damascus at the age of 14 and attended a boarding school to prepare for a career in agriculture.^[2]

During a nine-month imprisonment in 1955 for his membership of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), al-Maghut began writing socially critical poems on cigarette paper. Having received no higher education, his literary career was largely self-taught. Al-Maghut fled to Lebanon in the late 1950s and joined the influential literary group Shi'r, known among others by the Syrian poet Adonis. It was there that he met his future wife, the poet Saniya Salih.^[3] Already then, he was regarded as an unconventional innovator of prose poetry.^[4]

Literary career

Al-Maghut revitalised Arabic poetry by breaking with traditional forms and employing colloquial language – at times with an absurd sense of humour. He is regarded as one of the founders of free Arabic prose poetry, and his poems are characterised by an accessible, often satirical language that combines existential experiences with political criticism. Central themes of his poetry include political oppression and alienation, isolation and fear, exile and the individual’s experience within an authoritarian state. Al-Maghut understood his role as a poet as follows: "[...] the daily blotting paper that dries the thousands of bloody pages in our everyday lives."^[5]: 146 Well-known collections of his poetry include Huzn fi daw al-qamar (Sadness in the Moonlight), Ghurfa bi-milyun judran (A Room with a Million Walls) and Al-farah laysa mihnati (Joy Is Not My Profession).^[6][7]

In addition to his poetry, al-Maghut wrote for the theatre, television and cinema. His plays and screenplays combine satire with criticism of social deprivation, authoritarian regimes and moral decay in the Arab world. He drew on his vivid imagination, his eloquence and his satirical imagination to craft his dramatic works.^[8] His first theatre production, Al-ousfour al ahdab (The Hunchbacked Bird), was originally a long poem he wrote while hiding in a small room with a low ceiling. The poem developed into a dialogue and was later performed in the theatre. This was followed by the play al-Muharej (The Clown), in which a troupe of down-and-out actors attempt to perform Shakespeare’s Othello in a café.^[9] In the 1970s and 1980s, Al-Maghut collaborated with the renowned Syrian actors Duraid Lahham and Nehad Qalei, creating some of the region’s most popular plays and television films, including Kasak ya Watan (A Toast to the Fatherland), Ghorbeh (Alienation) and Dayat Tishreen (The Village in October).^[10]

Journalism and relation with the government

Al-Maghut enjoyed a good personal relationship with President Hafez al-Assad, which meant he was able to criticise poverty, corruption, the powerlessness of the Arab states and the tragedies in Palestine and Lebanon without censorship, though without making direct reference to Syria.^[1] As a journalist, al-Maghut worked for the official government newspaper Tishreen (October), writing a daily column from 1975 onwards in rotation with another writer. For the Paris-based Lebanese weekly Al-Mustaqbal (The Future), he wrote the column Alīs fi balad al-ajaʿb (Alice in Wonderland).^[2][11][12] In 2005, al-Maghut was awarded the Syrian Order of Merit by Bashar al-Assad.^[13]

Private life and death

Al-Maghut and his wife Saniya Saleh, who died in 1995 at the age of 56, had two daughters.^[3] In April 2006, Al-Maghut died in Damascus at the age of 72. The Syrian news agency commented on his death, saying, “Syria and the Arab world have lost a giant [of Arab literature].”^[14]

Poetry

• Huzn fi daw’a al-qamar (Sadness in the moonlight), Beirut: Dar Majallat Shiʿr, 1959.
• Gurfa bi malayin al-judrán (A room with millions of walls), Damascus: Muʾassasat al-Nuri, 1961.
• Al-farah laysa mihnati (Joy is not my profession), 1970.
• Sayaf al-zohour (The rose slayer), 2001.
• Sharq Adan, Gharb alaah (East of Eden, West of God), 2005.
• Al-badawi al-ahmar (The Red Bedouin), 2006.
• Al-aʿmāl aš-šiʿrīya (The Poetic Works), Dar al-Mada, Damascus, 2013.

Prose

• Sa akhoun watani (I will betray my homeland), 1987. Essays
• Ightisāb kāna wa akhawāteha (The rape of "Kāna" and her sisters), Damascus: Dar al-Balad, 2002. Interviews

Theatre

• Al-ousfour al ahdab (The hunchback bird), 1967.
• Al-muharij (The Clown), 1973.^[16]
• Da'yat Tishrin (October Village), 1973.^[17]
• Ghorbeh (Exile), 1975.
• Kasak ya watan (Cheers to you, Nation), 1978.
• Shaqaeq al-nomaan (Poppies), 1989.
• Kharej al-sareb (Outside the flock), 1999.

TV

• Hakaya al-layl (The night tales)
• Wayn al-ghalat (Where is the mistake)
• Wadi al-misk (The musk valley)

Movies

• Al-hudood (The borders), 1984.
• Al-taqreer (The report), 1987.

Translations

• Joy is not My Profession, translated by John Asfour and Alison Burch, Signal Editions, Montreal, 1994
• A Fan of Swords: Poems, edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Three Continents Press, Washington D.C., 1991^[18]

Bilingual edition in German:

• Muḥammad al- Māġūṭ (2021). Khalid al-Maaly (ed.). Geht auf Zehenspitzen, denn die Heimat liegt im Sterben! / Wasīrū ʿalā ruʾūs aqdāmikum fālwaṭan yuḥtaḍar!. Berlin/Tübingen: Schiler & Mücke. ISBN 978-3-89930-386-5.