In his fascinating poem "Theme for English B," Langston Hughes, the black American poet and writer, epitomizes the answer to the identity question when in a question-answer form he eloquently says:
Me––who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
Or records – Bessie, bop, or Bach.
Simple as it is, I am one of the dwellers of this BIG, BIG universe. Say, I am you, but with a different name that may be an indication of a different tongue, a different culture, a different race, a different nationality, and a different religion. Still, WE ARE ALIKE AND DISTINCT.
For earthly traditions of introduction, however, I am Mursi Hasan, a Cairine, Egyptian dweller. I do not have much to say about myself. I am a lecturer assistant, a researcher in linguistic stylistics, a freelance English-Arabic-English translator, an Arab poet (or so I assume) and a good reader.
I believe that teaching is a mission and that a teacher is not that the all-knowing sort of being, if ever there was one. I always try to help; as the great Andrew Martin (viz., the persona acted by Robin Williams in "Bicentennial Man") used to say, "One is glad to be in service." My students, on the other hand, help me the same way I help them; it is a reciprocal give-and-take process. This is why I would rather be a friend to them and be criticized face-to-face than be a dictator and be hated and sworn behind my back. I work to achieve these standards.
The other side of my job, so to speak, is my research work. What a blessing it is when your job is your joy. I do like research work and I do enjoy it in the extreme. I hope that I can contribute to the academic (linguistic) research work, the real academic enterprise that explores the untrodden continents of knowledge, constructs new cities in the already-known research worlds, repairs the damaged, old houses of ideas, and provides maintenance and enhances decoration of the palaces of genius. I hope I can.
Then comes my extra work, which is again a part of my world of joy, that is, translation. From English into Arabic and vice-versa, I translate in different and various domains of knowledge. For the incomparable difficulty of this time-and-effort-consuming process, I myself feel interested in translating only English poems into Arabic poetry, though more difficult it is. It is not a mere transformation of ideas from a source language into a target language; rather, it is basically a creative, challenging competition between two poets the second of whom asks the first for the challenge, yet he tries to prove that precedence in time does not always mean excellence. In other words, the ancestors, great and pioneering though they may be, are not always better than the descendants. I get into the translation of English poems with a great fascination towards the significant poem and the significant poet, but at the same time I feel motivated by the so-called anxiety of influence to translate and write my version so as to make my own poem a symbol of my self-achievement and an apt psychological compensation. "Have I succeeded or not?" is the question that I try to answer in the affirmative through my translation.
When I realize that a significant English poem is too English to translate, I seek refuge in my originally Arabic poems. I write on various themes, but my favorite theme is that which originates in all big existential questions of the man and the universe.
All these aspects of life are just lines in a face with no distinctive identity; reading is what turns lines into features and bestows an identity upon these features. Reading is simply what makes me who I am. I read and read and read in every field of life and in every domain of knowledge with the same enthusiasm and interest. I do adore the being called BOOK.
I hope you have started to know me by now: I SEEK "MENTAL PLEASURE" IN ALL THAT I DO. Still, in case you have not, just try to look around in my stuff, searching for an answer for my "Me?".
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
Or records – Bessie, bop, or Bach.
Simple as it is, I am one of the dwellers of this BIG, BIG universe. Say, I am you, but with a different name that may be an indication of a different tongue, a different culture, a different race, a different nationality, and a different religion. Still, WE ARE ALIKE AND DISTINCT.
For earthly traditions of introduction, however, I am Mursi Hasan, a Cairine, Egyptian dweller. I do not have much to say about myself. I am a lecturer assistant, a researcher in linguistic stylistics, a freelance English-Arabic-English translator, an Arab poet (or so I assume) and a good reader.
I believe that teaching is a mission and that a teacher is not that the all-knowing sort of being, if ever there was one. I always try to help; as the great Andrew Martin (viz., the persona acted by Robin Williams in "Bicentennial Man") used to say, "One is glad to be in service." My students, on the other hand, help me the same way I help them; it is a reciprocal give-and-take process. This is why I would rather be a friend to them and be criticized face-to-face than be a dictator and be hated and sworn behind my back. I work to achieve these standards.
The other side of my job, so to speak, is my research work. What a blessing it is when your job is your joy. I do like research work and I do enjoy it in the extreme. I hope that I can contribute to the academic (linguistic) research work, the real academic enterprise that explores the untrodden continents of knowledge, constructs new cities in the already-known research worlds, repairs the damaged, old houses of ideas, and provides maintenance and enhances decoration of the palaces of genius. I hope I can.
Then comes my extra work, which is again a part of my world of joy, that is, translation. From English into Arabic and vice-versa, I translate in different and various domains of knowledge. For the incomparable difficulty of this time-and-effort-consuming process, I myself feel interested in translating only English poems into Arabic poetry, though more difficult it is. It is not a mere transformation of ideas from a source language into a target language; rather, it is basically a creative, challenging competition between two poets the second of whom asks the first for the challenge, yet he tries to prove that precedence in time does not always mean excellence. In other words, the ancestors, great and pioneering though they may be, are not always better than the descendants. I get into the translation of English poems with a great fascination towards the significant poem and the significant poet, but at the same time I feel motivated by the so-called anxiety of influence to translate and write my version so as to make my own poem a symbol of my self-achievement and an apt psychological compensation. "Have I succeeded or not?" is the question that I try to answer in the affirmative through my translation.
When I realize that a significant English poem is too English to translate, I seek refuge in my originally Arabic poems. I write on various themes, but my favorite theme is that which originates in all big existential questions of the man and the universe.
All these aspects of life are just lines in a face with no distinctive identity; reading is what turns lines into features and bestows an identity upon these features. Reading is simply what makes me who I am. I read and read and read in every field of life and in every domain of knowledge with the same enthusiasm and interest. I do adore the being called BOOK.
I hope you have started to know me by now: I SEEK "MENTAL PLEASURE" IN ALL THAT I DO. Still, in case you have not, just try to look around in my stuff, searching for an answer for my "Me?".
1 comment:
GREAT
you seem to be so thoughtful and cogitative...
just go on..
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