What is the definition of mysticism used in literature and particularly in Emilie Nasrallah's work?
If we go back to the Middle Ages, it is apparent that the term mysticism relates to an aspect of religion which is 'mysterious', even 'enigmatic': it relates at once to the need and to the desire to find a world beyond everyday feelings and sentiments, a world in which the human values which bring them close to their creator are rediscovered. Thus we can speak of 'absolute', transcendent values where the being finds itself once again face to face with the creator, its spirit freed from evil, jealousy, bitterness, superiority, baseness....All the same, in the course of time, the term mysticism has taken on new aspects, especially in literature: a kind of eloquence based on the power of words leading to a silent contemplation, a desire to affirm oneself in opposition to reality.
In this way we can understand the fury, the anger, the resistance of Emilie Nasrallah in her work:
What has happened to the dreams we seeded in the fields by our house?.....How naive this woman is! How could she understand me? How could she brush aside my more elevated space, this world that I have created and whose walls I have built with my own hands and where I have established a safe haven for my happiness? How could she understand that my wandering eyes are searching for distant horizons....far from the boundaries of the village? And that my feet are ready to flee to where no one can dictate my destiny.
Interviewed on 25 November 2017 in her home in Beirut, the author insisted on the fact that her work, in spite of the deliberate intertwining of real life and fiction, broadly reflected the feelings and emotions she experienced at the time of her elder brother's emigration to Canada.
Faced with a reality she thought absurd, she unfettered her artistic creativity so that stylistic devices such as metaphor, oxymoron, comparison and hyperbole came together to create impressionistic scenes:
The villagers are not interested in the birds' return at the beginning of spring. The flight of these birds is dispersed. Some take advantage of the warmth of the country in the south and take up residence there, others return home alone without companions, while many of the birds break their wings in a storm which takes them by surprise during their journey, then throws them cruelly on to the rocky cliffs, or soaks their wings and drains their strength.
Ainsi, le goût de la migration dure sur la langue des villageois et la joie du retour s'effrite sous le poids lourd de l'angoisse des adieux, alors que les larmes de la triste nostalgie l'emportent sur les douces larmes de joie du jour de noces.
So the taste for emigration endures in the language of the villagers and the heavy weight of the anxiety of goodbyes is overcome by the joy of the thought of return, so the tears of sad nostalgia are overborne by the tears of joy on the wedding day.
Here the author expresses the torment caused by the conservative village environment which is closed in on itself, proud of its traditions, where education is reserved for boys:
Mona, hurry up, kiss your brother. Have you forgotten that he is going to school?
No, I have not forgotten...I have forgotten everything else. I have so longed to go with him to high school, where I would have dived into the ocean of my dreams, satisfying a desire so insatiable that it eats at my heart like a hunger that shreds my nerves.
But the solid walls of custom, of ideas, of rumour are so high that this dream cannot become a reality.
If you educate her, you lose her!
The same old tune, every morning, Hannah and her mother.
Emigration is also the privilege of young men:
Even Mircelle, my most cherished friend, was astonished when during a discussion I shared my ambition with her:
But what would people say? You go and live in town, alone, like the young men? You can't be serious Mona, I'm sure! ....Raji's mother was beautiful and intelligent and worried greatly about the future of her only son in the village: The village is not the place for young men like Raji...I don't want my son to bury his life here, just like I did...
On the other hand, marriage is an obligation for girls:
Oum Chafique is bad, My Friend, she married her daughter early.... said Hannah when they met in front of Angélina's house.
The old woman replied to her like a messenger of destiny: "Marriage guarantees protection, my girl, and it is the fate of every woman....
'Gossip' and social and religious discrimination are customary:
Saada thought that the situation had become intolerable, and it was her duty, as a neighbour and a mother of daughters, to break the silence and tell Salma about the rumours that were circulating with regard to her daughter Najila...
Abou Elias tried to convince him, playing his last card:
But he loves her and Maryam loves him and....
but hardly had he said this than Maryam's father turned on him:
Love?...A dog like that knows how to love?...He lives in the alleys. If he knows what's good for him he'll leave our girls alone.
..All love ends in marriage. But, my brothers, will they accept this scandal? Will his father, Abou Hani, stand the shock?
His daughter loves a young man from a different religion than himself!
Emilie Nasrallah rebels against this environment, especially against social discrimination, the consequences of which are terrible: a crime is committed by a youth against his beloved whom he could not marry for lack of money (p31-38): the emigration of young people fleeing their village in search of a more promising future, far from their native soil, their adolescence and the beginning of their youth...a hoped for future based on their dreams but with no guarantees. (p73-82).
Emilie Nasrallah tells the story of these villagers from the point of view of Mona, a young woman of the village from a conservative family; it is the story of her own village where reality and imagination are intermingled to produce a tale with elements of reality: such is Mircelle's story of unfulfilled love whose beloved breaks his promise and abandons her for new horizons and whom she meets again several years later, married to a blond from another culture, a culture he has been obliged to embrace in order to survive in another country. This very realistic story shows the bitterness the author feels when she explains that the sufferings Mircelle, her friend in childhood and adolescence, had to endure were much worse than the imagination can describe, especially when she was forced by her parents to marry a young man she did not know. Maryam's story, however, is purely from the author's imagination as she introduces a touch of fiction to the reality to which she bears witness in the course of the novel: this young girl, whose lover belongs to a different religious community from hers and whose financial situation prevents him from establishing himself and founding a family, dies of her wounds after she is shot by her beloved. In effect, her lover cannot control his fury at being unable to give her the life she deserves, so he kills her and condemns himself to a wandering life, following verbal harassment he suffers during a village wedding.
Having related these details, Emilie Nasrallah claimed that they were an involuntary expression of a mystical process. Her main object was to share with her readers what she felt, what she imagined, in an attempt to calm the sorrow she felt. Later she vowed that after finishing every chapter of Les oiseaux de septembre her eyes filled with hot tears: She was retracing a lived experience scarred by the emigration of her dear brother; a separation which marked her for a long time.
Thus this mystical discourse is revealed throughout the novel: Emilie Nasrallah uncovers a personal experience based on a meditation on every observed fact, making the reader ask questions about the reality of life, nature, love, death, friendship, and the attachment to roots.
Choosing interior narrative, the author expresses her thoughts through Mona who is always found in the right place for meditation early in the morning or later in the evening, on the terrace:
Whenever I sit here on the verdant terrace overlooking the beach of warm, golden sand, I think about those who have seen life with me for a certain moment.
or in her room dreaming of her haven of peace:
Wrapped in profound sleep, I fled the narrowness of my room towards the terrace to endlessly breathe in the fragrance of morning when the brave buds put forth their little tendrils onto the branches of the lilac which grows in our garden...
On that morning of such calm, I would stay in bed. I feigned sleep so that my mother would not tear me away from my dreams. Those brief moments of morning were for me the happiest part of the day: I would flutter out of my earthly cage and fly above the wide faraway world, so far away.
My dreams, my thoughts were limited by the horizons of my village; its strict customs erected fortified walls around me, preventing me from understanding anything: so I did what I was told and obeyed their orders.
She meditates on the value of human life, the ephemeral nature of all that exists, the dissatisfaction inherent in the ordinary world, and what one ought to accomplish or avoid. As an interior narrator, Emilie Nasrallah accompanies the reflections of her main character with a description based on the five senses: smell, sight, touch, sound and taste. The description is so exact that the reader has the impression of being with the main character, sharing with her those moments, notably, when Mona, having lived in town for a certain time, returns to her village and is surprised by the narrowness of spirit of the villagers in thrall to a culture which is limited by the boundaries of the village, blinded by their customs and beliefs, which prevents them from appreciating the magic of what they have.
Through the different stories told by Mona, Emilie Nasrallah tries to reflect on the hard reality facing the young girls of the village. She tries to draw the attention of her readers to the necessity of respecting the ambitions and the private life of girls and of giving them the chance to live and flourish in an educated and open environment. Emilie refuses to be classed as a feminist: for her, women and men are equal and owe each other mutual respect at all levels.
Definitively, mystical discourse in literature is reflected through eloquence based on the power of words: Emilie Nasrallah has the gift of expressing her most profound reflections and feelings, giving free rein to her super-ego[1] foundation of moral sense. This state of detachment from a social framework governed by injustice, discrimination, ingratitude and all the evils which can separate the person from their ideals cannot but be felt in the style Emilie Nasrallah adopts in this work which aims to convey a clear message, to make the reader aware of the harm that can be caused to a human being by those who surround them, by a society to one of its members and by members of society to each other. A detachment which allows Emilie Nasrallah indirectly to approach her creator: creator of love and beauty. Finally, can one describe Emilie Nasrallah as a 'mystic', as an author who asks profound and existential questions about humanity? In the framework of our analysis, the answer to this question is clear: no, we cannot call Emilie Nasrallah a 'mystic'. But we can, however, say that her writing represents literary mysticism.
