Biography
For some time, the date of Tawfiq al-Hakim’s birth was in doubt—in places the year 1902 was cited, but later October 9, 1898, was accepted as proved. It is certain that he was born in Alexandria, Egypt, of an Arab doctor and a mother who was descended from a family of Ottoman officials and army officers. Although his education moved forward slowly during his early years, al-Hakim evinced an early interest in dramatic storytelling. In 1915, he entered the Muhammad Ali Secondary School in Cairo, and he received the baccalaureate in 1921. His youth evidently was marred somewhat by difficult relations with his mother, and a brief, unrequited love affair did nothing to improve his attitude toward women. During the short-lived revolution of 1919, which was provoked by the exile of Saՙd Zaghlul, a prominent national leader, to Malta, al-Hakim was imprisoned for composing patriotic songs. His incarceration was brief and hardly unpleasant; at about that time he wrote his first play, a work that Cairo producers would not stage because of its defiantly anti-British standpoint.
For four years, until 1925, al-Hakim studied law at the state university in Cairo; increasingly it became evident that his proclivities, and his real calling, lay elsewhere. His further efforts at the writing of drama brought forth al-Mar՚ah al-jadidah (modern woman), which was composed in 1923 and produced on the stage three years later. Three other short plays, including Khatim Sulayman (the ring of Solomon), were produced in 1924, shortly after he had committed them to paper. In spite of an undistinguished academic record—he graduated third from last among those who were promoted in his class—he entered the Collège des Lois at the Sorbonne in Paris. At that time he was still guided in part by his father’s wish that he should become a lawyer, and evidently he was otherwise undecided about which direction his career should take. During his student years in France—between 1925 and 1928—he spent much of his time reading, sightseeing, and absorbing as much European culture as possible. In addition to philosophy and narrative fiction, he delved at length into published drama and attended performances of major plays. It would seem that he was particularly fascinated by the works of Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, and Luigi Pirandello. Classical Greek theater also left a lasting impression on him. The lack of an Arab dramatic tradition, which had troubled him during his first efforts in Egypt, was brought home to him more definitely; along the way, two love affairs, which turned out badly, added further poignancy to his outlook. In 1928, having passed all but one of his examinations, he returned to Egypt, ostensibly to commence work within the legal profession, but with his creative aspirations probably now foremost in his mind.
After an apprenticeship of one year in Alexandria, al-Hakim served as a public prosecutor in various rural communities between 1929 and 1934; he then became director of the investigation bureau of the Ministry of Education, and in 1939 he was appointed to a position in the Ministry of Social Affairs. In 1943 he left public service to devote himself entirely to writing. It may readily be inferred from his fictional and autobiographical works that he regarded government positions as sinecures, an attitude he also detected in those around him. The decisive event of his career as a playwright was the publication in 1933 of his The People of the Cave . His transfer from legal to bureaucratic responsibilities may have been a result of the uproar that greeted this work. Although Taha Husayn, a leading critic, and other men...
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of letters praised its bold, unconventional approach, others castigated it for its use of informal, even ungrammatical, language.Shahrazad had already been published (in 1934) when an outcry broke out over the staged version of The People of the Cave; audiences rejected it as far too long and too far removed from the formal routines that they had come to expect from the theater. Typical of other dramatic works from this period are Muhammad, a lengthy treatment of episodes from the life of the Prophet, and other works set in classical times. In 1936, al-Hakim, on a visit to Europe, attended the Salzburg Theater Festival, and in 1938 he vacationed in the Alps, in an effort again to maintain cultural contacts abroad.
The next period of al-Hakim’s creative life is sometimes associated with the title of his book Min al-burj al-ՙaji, which refers to the literary life as being led in an “ivory tower.” To be sure, some of his writings expressed concern about Nazi ambitions during World War II; in a more general light, he also wrote about his fears for world peace during an age dominated by brute militarism and technology. Other works explored classical Greek themes or considered episodes from the Old Testament that are also part of Islamic lore. In 1946 he was married, and thereafter fathered a son and three daughters; critics later have tried to determine the effect his family life had on the obvious though sometimes playful misogyny of his literary efforts.
His reputation as a playwright detached from ideological concerns was reinforced during the period surrounding the Egyptian revolution of 1952 and the ultimate withdrawal of British forces from that country in 1956. In 1953, al-Hakim’s version of Shaw’s Pygmalion was staged at the Salzburg Theater Festival; in 1960, The Sultan’s Dilemma was published simultaneously in Cairo and, in a French translation, in Paris. He was honored by President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who secured official awards for him and attended the production premiere of Tender Hands in 1957. The author thus had reason to believe that his renown and acceptance of his works were on the rise. His works were also produced in other Arab countries; some of them were successfully adapted for the cinema. Quite apart from experiments with language, he turned increasingly to futuristic, global concerns or to the bemused contemplation of the absurdities in everyday life. Students of the theater struggled to find political allusions in al-Hakim’s later plays; some of them were set in remote historical periods and others took place in future ages.
In January, 1973, the dramatist became directly embroiled in public concerns; he presented President Anwar el-Sadat with a letter on behalf of forty-six writers, protesting the nation’s indecisive stance against Israel. Although for a brief period publication and production of al-Hakim’s work were suspended, in October of that year war broke out, and the aging author vociferously supported Egypt’s military efforts. By 1974 a short treatise that al-Hakim had written that criticized the excesses and extravagances of the Nasser years was cleared for publication, in keeping with Sadat’s efforts to chart a political course of his own. Although this work, The Return of Consciousness, was denounced by Nasser’s remaining supporters (who, among other questions, asked why al-Hakim had remained silent until four years after their leader’s death), it became a best-seller for some time. In 1975, it was reported that a companion volume, which presented documents from the author’s work, in its turn had become the most popular book in Egypt. Although he did not go further in his professed intention to open the political files from his country’s recent past, al-Hakim remained an important and widely cited newspaper columnist. In line with the nation’s foreign policy, at times he suggested that Egypt and Israel may serve as islands of security in the Middle East. He also edited and supervised the collection of the numerous dramatic writings and other works that he composed over the years. Moreover, as the senior representative of an important modern tradition in Arabic and Egyptian literature, his works have been reprinted and have been made available in many parts of the world. Translations of al-Hakim’s writings exist in French, Spanish, Italian, German, Hebrew, Russian, and Japanese as well as other Middle Eastern languages; English language compilations of his major plays have also done much to increase his following.