Guest of the ilb 2002, 2003, 2006
»I come from a family of Muslim theologians and academics in Tunis who
belong to the theological tradition and I was present, during the
fifties, at the unveiling of women in one of the strongholds of Islam,
in the name of the ideology of westernisation and modernisation. For me
it was a shock when the question of the veil and re-veiling of women in
one of the strongholds of freedom and western culture, namely France,
Paris, was raised again. I asked myself, what is happening here, where
is the actual problem?« Abdelwahab Meddeb
crosses frontiers in a way which is not often seen in contemporary
literature, posing questions to which there are no easy answers, as in
this interview with the magazine »Lettre International«. Born in Tunis
in 1946, Meddeb is now a French national. He feels equally at home in
Tunisia and France. Yet both in his literary and in his academic work
he is primarily concerned with the roots and history of Islam, its
literature, its culture and the problematic integration of Muslim
thought into the processes of modernity. As such, since September 11
his status has been raised as an expert on the kind of cultural
exchange which is experienced by many as culture shock and understood
only by a few. After studying Art History and Literature, Meddeb worked
briefly as an editor for a large Parisian publisher, before overseeing
his own literary series for Editions Sindbad, from 1974 to 1988. Two of
his novels published at that time were also translated into German. In
»Talismano« (1979) the first person narrator in Paris imagines a stroll
through Tunis, the town of his childhood, and recalls for the reader
the multi-faceted sensuousness of an Arab medina. In »Phantasia«
(1986), by contrast, the strolling narrator moves through the Parisian
cityscape, making a connection with Walter Benjamin's explorations of
the city. Since the nineties, Meddeb has become increasingly involved
with academic concerns. He has been a guest lecturer at universities
and research centres in Geneva, Florence, Paris and Yale. Nevertheless,
he spends most of his time in Paris working as a freelance writer and
journalist.
His book, »La Maladie de l’Islam« (2002; Eng. »The Malady of Islam«,
2003), is an attempt at an exact analysis of the Islamic movement. On
the one hand he contrasts the poetic tradition of the freethinkers and
medieval mystics with that of a militant tradition of dogmatic thinkers
and purist fanatics, and on the other hand he criticises the simplified
thinking of the West which sees an enemy in Islam. Meddeb places
emphasis on a more detailed knowledge of tradition. In his view writers
such as Ibn Arabi, Dante and Yehuda Halevi are pioneer thinkers for a
more humane world, whose philosophies touch upon one another rather
than against one another. His book of poems »Ibn Arabis Grab« (t: The
tomb of Ibn Arabi) was published in 2004, presenting the original
French prose poems alongside Arabic and German versions. His recent
»L'exil occidental« (2005; t: Occidental exile) echos an account of the
Persian mystic Sohrawardi and published the essay "Der Koran als
Mythos" (t: Alcoran as myth) in the German edition of "Lettre
International" (2006).
© Dirk Naguschewski / internationales literaturfestival berlin
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Phantasia
Sinbad
Paris, 1986
La gazelle et l'enfant
Actes Sud
Paris, 1992
Talismano
Wunderhorn
Heidelberg, 1993
[T: Hans Thill]
Aya
Wunderhorn
Heidelberg, 1998
[T: Hans Thill]
Die Krankheit des Islam
Wunderhorn
Heidelberg, 2002
[T: Beate und Hans Thill]
Ibn Arabis Grab
Wunderhorn
Heidelberg, 2004
[T: Hans Thill, Mohammed Bennis]
L'exil occidental
Albin Michel
Paris, 2005
Der Koran als Mythos
in: Lettre International
Berlin, 2006
www.lettre.de/aktuell/73_Meddeb.html | 
