 May
Ziadeh
Suggested
Curriculum Developments to Communicate Women's Rights Through Literature:
Poetry by Women in U.S.A., Turkey and Egypt. By Dr. Emine Sonal
(A paper presented at the International Conference host
at the American University in Cairo)
May Ziyadeh:
A poet and great scholar, May Ziyadeh, was born in Palestine in
1886. Her father Elias Zakhour Ziyadeh was Lebanese and her mother
Nuzha Muamar was Palestinian. She received her early schooling in
Nazareth- Palestine from 1892 to 1899. In 1908, she moved with her
parents to Cairo, Egypt because of her father's job opportunity
in Al-Mahrousa newspaper.
May Ziyadeh's first French poetry collection titled "Fleurs
de Rêve" was published in 1910. It was well accepted by the
authors and journalists who were originally Lebanese and lived in
Egypt in that time. She also translated a French novel by Prada
into Arabic and it was published in
al-Mahrousa.
May Ziyadeh wrote about her thoughts on various matters ranging
from her political ideas to education of women in the newspapers
and in the journals. She participated in different aspects of the
women's movement and she was very well-known for her Tuesday Salon.
The Tuesday Salon, based on the French model, was the most important
meeting place of all intellectuals, well-known writers, poets and
artists of the region between the years of 1920 and 1930. That was
the only opportunity for all literary people to come together and
discuss the various issues.
After publishing her first poems, May Ziyadeh continued working
in this literary genre and became the leading voice of Egyptian
society in 1919. She studied history, philosophy and modern sciences
at a newly opened Egyptian University. May Ziyadeh introduced a
new prose form of poetry into Arabic literature. In some of her
poetic prose works "Ayna Watani? (Where is My Homeland?)"
and "Al-Musawat (Equality)", she reflected her feelings
as a woman being an outsider in the society dominated by men. According
to -el Akkad, special attributes of May Ziyadeh that made her poetess
were her ability to transfer her feminine feelings and the sensitivity
in her writings. The letters she had written to her close friends
are also very significant in terms of their literary value. Trying
hard to locate all documents, letters and manuscripts of May Ziyadeh,
Salma al-Haffar al-Kuzbari, the Syrian author, edited her works
under the title of Al-Mu'allafat al-Kamila (Complete Works) in 1982.
Professor Ziyadeh greatly contributed to the modernization of Arabic
language and thought in every aspect since she had an extraordinary
talent for translating novels from English, German and French into
Arabic. She published many short stories, which was considered a
new genre in Arabic literature, focusing on the theme of women's
rights. She was an activist for the emancipation of women and wrote
15 books of poetry and biographical studies of three pioneer female
writers and poets. She presented a series of conferences discussing
the issues on the advancement of the Egyptian woman and the family
at various Universities in the Middle East. Her last conference
that was held at American University in Cairo, titled "The
Mission of the Writer to Arab Life", was very witty and influential
in many aspects in Literature and in the Social Sciences, which
helped her to prove that it was a 'dirty game' of her relatives
to put her into a mental hospital.
She longed for a democratic and egalitarian society for her country.
Her political views are reflected in her articles in her book titled
el-Müsavat. In an opening speech of one of her lectures, May
Ziyadeh described poverty as 'illness, indolence and enslavement'
and she continued as follows:No society can enjoy good health when
its members are ill... and no nation can enjoy independence if its
citizens are enslaved. An attribute of the rich is a virtue but
for the poor it is a flaw. ... Women can be a cause for poverty
but can also be a cause for prosperity... from 50 to 60 per cent
of public income is spent by women
In her poem
titled "Elle Poéte", she exemplifies her situation,
by stating that she was considered inferior to male poets, and that
she must have stolen the stanzas from someone and that "a person
who is Syrian, not French, is not gifted to write in French".
May believes that it is not
meaningful for a woman who reaches up passionately to the peak of
intellectial thought, unless the woman maintains her natural female
identity. She labels these features as feelings and love. For her,
a woman spends all her life among the waves of the sea by wandering
around but never
reaching shore. These seas are known as woman's feelings. In her
speech at one of her conferences, May Ziyadeh emphasized the role
of women in a civilized society to stand in opposition to the traditional
culture in the following statement:
We should free
the woman, so that her children won't grow up to become slaves.
And we should remove the veil of illusions from her eyes, so that
by looking into them, her husband, brother and son will discover
that there is a great meaning to life.
In another of
her poems, "Une Petite Historie", Ziyadeh focuses on the
importance of education of women. For her, the illiterate woman
is like the vessels that haven't been to the sea. In the line, "By
reading it, you nearly get a delight" she implies that through
education the women will have their liberty and independence.
In the following quotation, May Ziyadeh criticizes male-dominated
society and addresses men that "if you are the material, the
women are the soul, if you are the fiction, the women are the prose".
...Men, may God forgive them for their many sins, hold that civilization
is that edifice constructed of governing systems, laws, agriculture,
industry, tools and machinery, sciences, art and literature. Where
is the hand of woman in all this? they ask. It is men who invent
and produce and continue to invent and produce. And it is women
who use and consume what they invent
and produce. Why should the user and consumer get any credit?
She asks similar
question imitating the men's rhetoric, in order to refute the idea
that women are not in the secondary position. To sum up, it can
be said that not only May Ziyadeh's poetry but also her stories,
plays and articles reflect the wrong attitudes of people in her
society by revealing the actual history of her time. Her fictional
works allow the reader to conceptualize the "woman question"
in Arabic history and culture, and the poet's sufferings as a well-educated,
westernized person who is trying to change the cultural norms and
establish an egalitarian society without gender discrimination.
Like, Þüküfe Nihal, the Turkish poetess, May Zeyadeh,
the renowned poetess of Lebanese origin, because of her progressive
ideas in women's rights and education and freedom, has been misunderstood
by her contemporaries and nearest circle.
In
memory of May Zeyadeh
A torch in the darkest of ages
By Lubna Khader
Star Staff Writer
"We should free
the woman, so that her children won't grow up to become slaves.
And we should remove the veil of illusions from her eyes, so that
by looking into them, her husband, brother and son will discover
that there is a great meaning to life."
These spellbinding words
are the saying of a renowned feminist, who was among the first Arab
literary figures to embellish feminine intellectuality.
Born in Nazareth in 1886,
to a Lebanese father and Palestinian mother, May (Marry) Zeyadeh
lived in a world where women were hammered by patriarchy and male
chauvinism.
May studied elementary
education in Al Yousifiat Nuns school, and later in Ein Tora in
Lebanon before she moved to Beirut where she finished her secondary
studies there.
In 1907, she left Nazareth
to Cairo with her parents to study Italian and German.
During her stay in Egypt,
May's father, Elias Zakhour Zeyadeh-who advocated women education-became
the chief editor of Al Mahrousa newspaper. It was a golden opportunity
for the young intellectual to publish articles, which she chose
to write under a nick name.
In 1911, May wrote her
first poetry collection in French titled, "Fleurs de Reve",
and later translated several poems from the same collection to Arabic
and published them in the Egyptian magazine Al Hilal, under the
name Eziz Cobia.
In the same year May
published her second poetry collection, "Aidah Dairy",
which was written in French under the name Aidah.
She remained to write
under different pen names until her mother proposed the name "May",
using the first and last letter from her "Marry", her
original name.
Later, May was elected
as a member of the Pen League in New York. In 1912 she launched
the Literature Salon, where she held weekly gatherings and intellectual
debates with more than 30 famous Arab writers, poets and journalists.
Among those were Lebanese
poet Khalil Motran, Egyptian prodigy Abbas Mahmoud Al Aqad, Antwan
Al Jmayel, owner of Al Zouhour magazine, famous Egyptian intellectual
Taha Hussein, Nile poet Hafez Ibrahim and Prince of Arab poets Ahmed
Shawqi. These gatherings went on for 20 years.
In 1914, she joined the
Egyptian University where she studied history, philosophy and modern
sciences, graduating in 1917.
During her study, she
continued to publish her literary works in famous Arabic magazines
and newspapers like the Lebanese Magazine Azohour, Egypt's Al Hilal
and Al Ahram newspaper, which she continued to write for till 1935.
Zeyadeh, a coy girl, had a great infatuation with nature, music
and books. A true romantic, Zeyadah's literary style is characterized
by fusing emotion with fantasy and romanticism with objectivity.
But all this artistry
and innovation were meshed with solitude and misery. A lifetime
bachelor, the famous poet fell in love with famous Lebanese poet
Jubran Khalil Jubran, whom she never saw, but exchanged letters
with.
A women activist, May
wrote two books about women at a time when feminine identity was
slandered by social modes. "Aisha Al Taymoreih", published
in 1924, was one of the famous Egyptian female poets (1840-1902)
who belonged to an aristocratic family in Egypt. Al Taymoreih was
a torch of vigor at a time of much illiteracy and oppression among
women. May was an admirer of the Egyptian poet whose character was
of true determination and liberalism.
May's second book, "Bahethet
Al Badiah", published in 1920, depicted the character of a
charismatic Egyptian feminist called Malak Nasef (1886-1918), nicknamed
as Bahthet Al Badieh. In her book, "Al Nesa'eyat", Nasef
called for the emancipation of women in a society governed by stereotypes
and male solidarity.
After her return to Lebanon,
May suffered from several nervous attacks and entered a mental hospital.
May lead lonely years, following the loss of her parents and friends,
including her far distant lover, Jubran. Her relatives, on the other
hand, tried to get a grip on her estate saying that she has lost
her mind and is unable of managing her own properties.
She left the
hospital to spend her remaining days writing in Cairo, where she
died on 19 October, 1941. Zeydah left more than 15 books of poetry,
literature and translations. More than anything else, she left behind
a legacy of women liberators who believed that with knowledge and
art, women can finally inhale the ions of emancipation.
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