Scrolling through Elenco dei manoscritti arabi islamici della Biblioteca vaticana (The List of Islamic Arabic manuscripts in the Vatican Library) by Giorgio Levi Della Vida (1935, p. 65), I was intrigued by manuscript Vat. Ar. 594, entitled Riwāyāt ḍiḥkiyya (Humorous Tales), dating back to the 17th century. After examining its content, I was attracted to: a) its predominant use of Egyptian; b) its avant-garde intent to teach (what’s more, in Italy), the vernacular rather than classic or standard Arabic for communication purposes; c) I was amused by the ironic, moral and satirical nature of the text and its dialogue reworkings; d) I was struck by the originality of the description of its protagonists that unfold and end with sui generis moral advice.
For these reasons, I decided to study his fables (143r-187v), setting myself three main objectives: to illustrate a) the representations of the protagonists; b) some characteristic linguistic elements of 17th century Egyptian; c) Italian-inspired avant-garde use of colloquial neo-Arabic for language teaching purposes, found in the works written in Rome at San Pietro in Montorio school.
Michel Trād (1912-1998), pionnier de la littérature vernaculaire libanaise du 20ème siècle, a conclu sa vie simple et pleine d'émerveillement, déçu par la modernité et par l'homme. Certains de ses poèmes - chantés par Fayrūz et Wad' al-Sāfī - ont fait le tour du monde néo-arabophone, mais à ce jour, aucun de ses recueils n'a été traduit. Cet article le commémore et tente de nous faire savourer son art, plaide pour son réalisme linguistique et sa spontanéité lyrique, illustre la potentialité métaphorique de ses mots-clefs, sans négliger la prosodie des vers. L'annexe comprend quelques traductions de poèmes extraits de son recueil Guélnār.
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