Manfalūṭī, l’amour pur, et la critique sentimentale de la civilisation

This essay addresses the question of the semantic transformation of the notion of adab through the work of Muṣṭafā Luṭfī al-Manfalūṭī (1876-1924). The Egyptian writer’s essays and fiction, including both “original” and “translated” stories, are examined here combining the literary and linguistic perspective of studies in Arabic literature with the history of ideas pursued by Islamic studies. Manfalūṭī’s literary output belongs to a phase of Arabic literary history that lies midway between the renewal of classical adab in the era of reformism and the creation of modern Arabic literature in the interwar period. The periodization and literary models of Western modernity, while already exerting their influence on his contemporaries, had not yet become normative in the literary field, just as the rules of European politics had not yet led to a radical reconfiguration of the borders of the Near East. Literary history is inseparable from a specific vision of cultural and national identity and of the relations between cultures. In early twentieth-century Egypt, these questions, still undecided, were the subject of intense public debate. The essay attempts to show that Manfalūṭī, as a cultural translator and a sentimental writer, entered this public debate in a way that is less naïve than it has often been considered by critics of his tearful style. As a best-selling contributor to the early 20th century cultural industry, he consciously participated in shaping the new national sensibility and moral self-discipline of the modern Egyptians. However, his approach to literature as a means towards the refinement of the self bears strong continuities with classical Islamic spirituality. The latter apparently influenced his subtle critique of the colonial civilizing process, in dialogue with late antique and early modern ascetic utopias.