QUARTET OF JOY Review

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QUARTET OF JOY ReviewHaving used this book as a principal text in my MA thesis, and become personally acquainted with the poet in the process, I feel I must offer some clue to the reader considering reading it:The Four Quartets is also often classified as an autobiographical text because of the personal meditative experience that is fundamental to the poem: Muhammad Afifi Matar grew up in the Egyptian countryside of Minufiyya where his first educational experience was learning the Koran in the village Koranic school, after which he received regular schooling in a neighboring town and acquired his B.A. in philosophy from the Cairo-based Ain Shams University. From this biographical sketch alone, a number of influences can be extracted; firstly, the Egyptian countryside, its focus around livestock and agricultural affairs on one hand, and its wealth of superstitions, folklore, popular Sufism and cultural mysticism on the other. As a poet later in life, his language constantly derives from the world of the village, of harvest, mating, pregnancy cycle and fertility are pulled directly from his life experience in the village where life is lived according to the seasons of sowing and harvest.
The second influence was the Koranic school which instilled in Matar a deep respect for the religious injunctions of orthodox Islam and inspired in him a lifelong wonder and appreciation of the elegant language and form of Koranic verse. And finally, there is the influence of his study of philosophy and what it entailed of exposure to western literature, the Classics and Arab, possibly Sufi, philosophers. It is impossible to separate him from these ever-converging circles of influence, as his consciousness, like that of his nation, is the product of massive interpenetrating cultures.
In his quartets, Matar lashes out against the `sleeping insomnia' of the Arab nation, which he believes is the result of the hegemonic impact of authoritarian politics on the written text that places opaque mediators that block the vision of potentialities. To pervade the mental cloudiness imposed on the reader by external forces, Matar plays on his remaining capacity for wonder and proceeds to perform precise verbal gymnastics, juxtaposing myriads of provocative images to command the alertness required for the paradigm-transformation he urges the readers to make in reclaiming their senses so that they can write their own texts. He alienates them from the text so that they can watch him as he dismantles and reconstructs reality, an activity that is at the core of poetic knowledge and the point of creation of philosophy and poetry
Instead of building philosophies on the basis of texts propagated to serve temporary political agendas, the reader must learn that what is important is not the 'Answer' but the quest for the correct and most vital question.
Hence Matar's discourse with the reader takes on a two-stage strategy: First he stuns his reader, causing him to lose his bearings amidst the verbal vertigo that Matar creates, putting him in the position of one who is ready to relearn the meaning of the words as he discards the traditional questions pertaining to the meaning of the poem. In the second stage, the still-dazed reader begins to ask the truly vital questions that the poet intends concerning the worldview that Matar is trying to communicate.
The most rewarding way to read this is with an open mind, allowing the language and images to wash over you, it is recommended reading if you are interested in:
Sufism, Arabic Poetry, Eastern Philosophy, the Arab consciousness etc..QUARTET OF JOY Overview

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