عرض وتحليل للمجموعة القصصية "كان ما كان" لميخائيل نعيمة
Presentation & Analysis of the story collection “Kaan Ma Kaan” By Mikhail Naimy
Keywords:
Mikhail Naimy, New Arabic trends, Immigrant literature, Fictional Literature.Abstract
"Kaan Ma Kaan" is a collection of short stories published by Dar Al-Makshuf in Beirut in 1937. The collection consists of six stories: "The Cuckoo Clock", "Its new Year", "The Barren Woman", "The Ammunition", "Dear the Pasha", and "Shorty".
The collection was translated into Persian and published in 2014, and two stories, "The Its new Year" and "Dear the Pasha", were translated into English.
The stories are filled with memories and dreams, and they open up horizons of the past. Although the past may be all misery, Mikhail Naimey interacted with humanity in this collection, and he meditated on life and the secrets of the human soul, focusing on emotions and feelings that he conveyed through a magical and descriptive narrative, causing the reader to interact involuntarily with them. In each story of this collection, the human ego was present. This ego is what made Khatab turn his back on the field and immigrate to America to challenge the Cuckoo Clock that took his beloved, and it is the same ego that made the beautiful woman in "The Barren Woman" commit suicide because she did not find herself in the heart of Aziz, who wanted her for the Children. In her letter to Aziz, she repeated the word "I" seventeen times. This ego is what made Shorty say, "Names among people are used like branding for cattle, to distinguish one from the other, and they do not perform the qualities of the named." Shorty repeated the word "I" four times in the first part of his letter before the author interrupted him and eight times in the second part.
This ego seeks its happiness and hates what harms it. This collection seeks identity in its foreignness and seeks to communicate with others in peace and love. "Kaan Ma Kaan" revealed several social themes, including immigration to the West, its positives and negatives, and its effects on Arab immigrants, the preference for males over females in the Arab mentality, in the past and present, and the issue of infertility in women, as well as the negative effects of wars on individuals and communities.
