As part of the activities and awards programs of the eighteenth session of the Sultan Bin Ali Al Owais Cultural Foundation, a dialogue session was held yesterday, Wednesday, with the great Bahraini writer Amin Saleh, winner in the field of story, novel and theater, at the Arab Club in Sharjah, in the presence of a group of writers and interested people, where Saleh spoke about his experience in a paper. It was titled “The Sedition of the Text,” and below “Al-Bilad” reviews what was stated in the paper.
Saleh says:
After decades of writing, accumulating experience, and moving between various and disparate forms of writing, those first features are no longer as bright as they were and as clear as they were, but rather have become shrouded in a mist of uncertainty, ambiguity, and confusion that confuses the general picture. The memory itself no longer helps, as if it relies on facts of questionable validity and credibility. So I will try to arrange the elements of the picture as I see them now, and not as they were originally.
Heart-stopping stories narrated by a grandmother who is skilled at narrating, gripping the ears and drawing them into worlds from which we do not wish to leave. Readings of everything that comes within reach, of every neglected scrap that has been trampled on by feet with indifference but without hatred. Readings of books borrowed from friends who, like me, have a passion for reading, and others stolen recklessly and without skill from libraries. Browse countless magazines and newspapers, then imitate the magazines by issuing wall newspapers that no one among the gym members reads. Then comes the test of your ability to write by writing naive, worthless stories. However, you find a home in an arena that is not yet full of both talented and pretenders, and a small, overly enthusiastic literary group lures you in and gives you false importance. From there, it joins a larger group of writers who are not homogeneous. With the passage of time, you gradually become liberated from illusions, become humble, begin to listen to others, benefit from your readings and contact with other experiences, interact with modern achievements in literature, are influenced by the new sensitivity generated by various innovations in the forms of art and literature, and become closer to the poetic worlds. Finally, you feel that writing is not… A profession is not a hobby, it is not a means of earning money or achieving glory or fame. Rather, it is another life, more beautiful and pure, which you live with a true desire and with limitless passion, and realize that it is the only one that gives your existence meaning and value.
Saleh adds:
My passion for reading stories and novels began when I was in high school. This voracious reading incited me, in the late sixties, to try writing stories… but with the naivety of a beginner.
It was not only this passion that directed me to writing short stories, there was also my deep influence by the stories that my grandmother used to tell us when we were young. She told the story in a way that had a lot of suspense and drama. It was amazing in its narration. I loved the narration, but the irony is that in writing the story, after the miserable beginnings, I did not add much to the traditional narration. Perhaps because I unconsciously felt that I could not match the novelty’s narrative, or perhaps because I felt fulfilled and fulfilled in the years I spent listening to her narration.
I loved poetry very much. More than the story and the novel. But I have not tried writing a poem. I didn’t feel able or qualified to do that. I wanted to be a poet in my own field.
You start writing with specific goals, such as wanting to express what is inside you. Your thoughts, emotions, feelings and concerns. Then you set yourself a lofty goal, with a lot of pretension, to change your reality, dreaming of a better world, a better world. This was a kind of innocence and naivety that usually accompany the beginnings, and imposed by a certain political and social climate. At the time, we all thought that writing was capable of performing a miracle in a glance. Expected. We were actually dreaming, and it was a beautiful, noble, childish dream. But we failed this dream, or it turned out to be an illusion. A person wants to give himself, and what he does, some importance, some value, some distinction. To consider himself extraordinary and with an overwhelming presence. But this is self-deception before it is misleading others. We must accept our humble, insignificant role and fragile existence in this world, and not give ourselves a false size. The claim that writing can bring about a change, even if it is simple, is an illusion. Writing, and all artistic forms, cannot change reality. It may tell a person something about his reality, about the meaning of himself and his existence, to deepen his awareness, and to sharpen his aesthetic sense. If you can achieve some of this in writing, you will have accomplished something of value and importance.
What you write is related to this reality, its roots extend into it, but it goes beyond this reality to present a more comprehensive vision related to eternal questions. In my texts, I did not try to present reality in its literal form and in its direct daily issues. I was more concerned with the worlds of dream and imagination, in which I have greater freedom to address more fundamental or broader issues…from my point of view. The world of dream or imagination is a natural extension of the world of reality, and is not separate or independent from it.
Any text is necessarily a reflection of the writer’s self, his visions, his personal experiences, his cultural knowledge, his dreams, his memories, and his imagination.
Writing, for me, is not a mask or the product of pure imagination, but rather a window into the soul. A mirror of the soul that reflects the insides and depths. The self, or fragments of autobiography, are present in the text, but they may assume forms, characters, or ideas.
About an experience.. and it affects. You write motivated or instigated by some vision, some idea, a desire to express or reveal. It may be an experience of love, memories of a picture, or events that relate to you. In you emotionally, psychologically, or politically, you seek to express it through a text that gradually takes shape, and acquires a life that is often self-developing and shaping and independent of the plans, designs, and ideas that you have set in advance. That is, the text often takes on its own as an entity of its own, sometimes outside of your control and in isolation from your desires. And your intentions. When I start writing, I do not think that there is a compass that determines my path towards one direction or another. No maps either. It is like traveling to an unknown country whose terrain you do not know, nor where the path will take you. There is an urgent desire to write, a desire that is difficult to resist, and what sparked or awakened this desire within me is something that may be mysterious, “perhaps” an image from a dream, a fragment of a memory, or something that can be known but is the product of coincidence.
“A title that comes to mind, a conversation, a clip from a movie, a painting…etc.” So desire takes me to a land I have never visited before, a virgin land, and things begin to take shape. Every time I step and stumble, I find at every turn something waiting for me to blow my imagination into a wind, a harbor, people, fields… worlds emerge that want to occupy a place in the text, and I go on, not knowing where to go. Where will I arrive and when? Nothing is clear, nothing is specific. The language takes me, the imagination takes me, and throws me into the ovens of the text. When I write a text according to a pre-established plan, or according to specific elements that guide me to the paths, outlets, and exits until the end, I feel bored and stop writing, because then I miss the most important characteristic of writing: pleasure. That’s why I like to start writing with nothing but a thread or a picture, even if it’s vague. The text then forms itself based on a specific image, sentence, or impression. There are very complex and ambiguous matters that govern writing and not the other way around. It is not clarity, logic, or cognitive system that governs.
Saleh continues:
It is difficult to determine how to construct ideas. It is a very complicated process. There is no specific plan, or specific curriculum, according to which you build the idea. The idea comes to you, like this, without prior design, and it may stem from various sources, from a dream, from a picture, while you are walking, contemplating, looking at a painting, or listening to a piece of music… many and varied sources and sources… but they are not governed by a special logic or a specific mechanism. And understandable. Everything could happen very easily. Without disabilities, it may take a long time, and you may be distracted from the idea.
While writing, all the elements work: consciousness and subconsciousness, memory, knowledge, and imagination. All years of experience overlap, and no element overpowers the other. Give yourself five minutes with your imagination, with intense focus and an open mind, and your imagination will give you countless pictures. All you have to do is take the pictures and place them within a tight and harmonious structure. As for the stage of correcting, revising, selecting vocabulary, and improving sentences, it is the role of awareness to intervene and decide.
Language must be poetically employed, otherwise it will fall into ordinary, declarative, and monotonous…and this is what we find among writers who do not believe that language has tremendous explosive power. In the ordinary, traditional declarative language, I cannot build a text that convinces me personally, or surprises me in the first place.
Of course, it is the situation that creates its own language, not the other way around. That is, I do not come to a specific passage and decide to write it in narrative prose or poetic language. Situations and images impose a language consistent with them. Such matters are not decided in advance, but rather emerge from the moment of expression.
From the beginning, I was not confident that classical narrative would enrich my texts or contribute to supporting and enhancing my vision. So I made it take another turn, exploiting its poetic essence. My poetics of narration stems from a deep belief that narration has tremendous poetic energy that has not yet been exploited and that story and novel writers do not attempt to channel, explore and exploit. For them, it is disabled, paralyzed, rather, it is an object of denunciation, contempt and ostracism.
I try to employ this poetic energy of narration to enrich my text. Through it, I seek to deepen my beings’ relationship with reality, in its daily, dreamy, and imaginative ramifications. Without this energy, the language of narration becomes dry, direct, constructive, lacking in spirit, sweetness, or beauty.
For a text to be characterized by poetry, or for poetry to permeate the fabric of the text, is not an accusation that the writer must refute, disavow, or defend himself against. Poetry is the essence of all writing and all art, meaning that it is rooted and inherent in every creative act.
It is a mistake to think that poetry belongs to the poem alone. This is a deficient understanding of the meaning and nature of poetry. Narration has a poetic quality, just like the cinematic image, the plastic painting, the musical piece, and the natural landscape in our existence. Poetry exists around us and everywhere, so why do you find it often found in stories or novels?
It is necessary to realize that poetry expands its boundaries, beyond the limits of verbal communication to embrace other forms of artistic expression… In other words, poetry is an open horizon in its scope, to include every creative activity.
I am not one of those who are fond of, or possessed of, destruction. I think that I have built a world for myself, and I believe that this is what most writers do, in which each text complements and does not destroy the other, whether this is consciously, unconsciously, or in an unintended, consensual manner. In every new text, there are echoes, signs, and certain flashes from the previous text or from texts written in earlier and distant times that are evoked by experience on the one hand, and memory on the other. Therefore, it is more like a continuous building process using the same tools and elements, with innovations here and there. So the act of writing, for me, depends on the connection between texts, that is, experiences more than separation, rather than accumulation, more than discontinuity. The text grows due to elements that are present or latent in the overall writing experience, and are not independent and borrowed from somewhere.
Titles have various functions: explanatory, suggestive, symbolic, semantic, interpretive, etc. Personally, I tend toward a title that has an aesthetic, poetic resonance, and at the same time expresses the essence of the text, and is open to a number of readings and interpretations. The title may be generated while writing, or after completing the work, and sometimes, for some mysterious reason, it is present and ready before thinking about writing. Sometimes, you seek the help of a friend who suggests an appropriate title to you, as the title can exist independently and in parallel with the texts. But in all cases, the title should be surprising and move, aesthetically and semantically, the reader’s imagination.
Sometimes the writer does not understand what he is writing for a simple reason. During writing, the consciousness does not have complete control over the entire process. Rather, there are direct and unavoidable interventions by the subconscious, imagination, memory, and delirium, and these elements impose themselves and direct the writer to paths that he did not plan and to mysterious meanings and connotations that are unknown. The writer can explain or interpret it at the time, but he finds it organically compatible with the situations emerging – metaphor and metaphor – from the heart of the text.
There is a magical power of the letter and the word that the writer feels before anyone else. The writer who falls under its spell as he seeks a chemical composition of the elements by working on the juxtaposition of vocabulary and monitoring the rhythm of the letters, their frequency in the sentence, their connection to each other musically and semantically, and what results from this juxtaposition, interaction and pairing. From the meanings deduced by readings and interpretations.
But this is not the product of awareness alone and always. Through free association, launching the imagination, activating memory, and feeling the rhythm of language and its phonetic connotations, an aesthetic is generated in which the use of the letter is an essential element.
For me, writing is not a rational process, with clear and studied motives governed by logic, causes, and results that can be explained and interpreted. Does one know why one lives? Or did he dream? He’s just living, just dreaming. Interpretation and meaning come later. Does one know why he wrote? He just writes. This is how I breathe the air of writing, leaving the interpretation to others. Writing is a need that requires satisfaction, but it is an ongoing need that seems eternal and infinite. In other words, it is a permanent desire that knows neither satisfaction nor sufficiency, no matter how many forms and types of writing there are. It will be a job for someone who uses writing as a source of livelihood, or for someone who devotes himself to political and moral preaching, or for someone who feels that the world cannot do without him, so he announces his presence in the most loud and pretentious ways. He is the writer for whom writing is not a special pleasure that he enjoys even in his sleep.
Saleh concluded his speech by saying:
Writing for me, as I mentioned earlier, is another life that I live until the last breath, and I enjoy it to the fullest. Writing is a form of immunity against the overwhelming feeling of marginality in a world that only wants you to be a thing, a number, or a tool. Reality has become more violent and ferocious against the individual, and in the face of it we must protect ourselves with actions that make us feel powerful… even if they are imaginary or extremely imaginary.
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