Egyptian Enigma: Joyce Mansour

The ability to write fluently in the language of the occupying power seems to contradict an Indigenous author’s membership of a community that is not supposed to be able to write about itself at all.
—Tyson Yunkaporta, “Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World”

Nigmah. The word for نجمة (star) in transliterated Egyptian Arabic. Perhaps a lost, or more accurately erased, etymology of the word enigma. To write this introduction is to channel. To channel as Joyce Mansour surely did. Channel to the ancestors, both Egyptian and Jewish, and everything else. Channel through all the loss she survived. Indigenous and exiled, she was a person who lived with a foot in each world. In fact, they were many worlds: ancient and modern, living and transitioned, wealthy and humble, Arabic and French. And English.

Mansour’s mystery is the mystery of the feminine. She is exoticized and misunderstood in much of the scholarship that’s been written about her. Like the secrets of the ancient Egyptians, she is only to be understood by those who are meant to understand her. This is also why her work has longevity. Her instructions are specific, as in, “one must learn to wait to take revenge,” from the poem “Woman Warrior in Love.”

While some might try to categorize her work under the umbrella of Feminism™, Mansour was writing beyond the body and this world. To contextualize the revival of her work solely through this lens is a disservice to her timelessness.

Je suis l’homme
L’homme qui presse la gâchette et tire l’émotion
Pour mieux vivre.
—From “Je suis la nuit”
 
I am man
Man who pulls the trigger and shoots emotion
To live better.
—From “I am the night,” tr. by Emilie Moorhouse

Part of colonization’s cruel work upon all of us is that it repurposes the work of poets like Mansour for its own means and meanings. Kind of like how American English conveniently erases important etymologies, essentially whitewashing its own linguistic lineage. But language and meaning existed before colonizing languages like French and English. And it is from this place which Mansour writes—before the Surrealists made surrealism a movement™, it was a way of, and philosophy for, moving through life.

Mansour’s poems and references traverse the many imposed and projected borders of time, language, and physical surroundings. Born in England and raised in Cairo, she and her family were eventually exiled from Egypt when President Nasser, in his move toward Pan-Arabism, seized most of the affluent class’s assets. It was most likely her status as an exile that allowed her to defy any kind of projected societal or gender expectations in France, her adopted home. There, she continued to be a student of Arabic poetry and literature, which no doubt influenced her own work. She was likely fluent in a few Arabic dialects, including Egyptian and Syrian, as well as able to read Classical Arabic.

Mansour’s ability to seemingly defy gender norms also might be rooted in the language of Arabic poetry itself. In Arabic literature, gender tends to be fluid or even transcendent, disappearing into the oneness of the erotic, allowing the beloved to be addressed wholly and directly, and/or symbolizing the source of creation itself. She began writing in French when she met her second husband, Samir Mansour, and the two languages must have intermingled for her. Arabic, like French, also has gendered nouns and conjugations and I wonder if this might be confused in some translations as meaning something more than what was intended. It would be a mistake to take all the expansiveness her work offers and limit it through any kind of lens of categorization—gender or otherwise—especially as it is often women who have their circumstances dictated for them.

I think what’s important to consider as you engage with Mansour’s work is to remember she isn’t some radical exception—a woman having escaped or defied gender and its imposed or cultural norms—but a woman who made a place to be her full self in these poems. I feel this needs to be said as a kind of corrective gesture in response to much of the scholarship that has been written about this fierce poet.

I want to avoid ascribing or imposing any kind of Eurocentric reading or categorization of Mansour’s work because, though she lived in France, she held so many cultures and lineages in her. Instead, I feel called to bear witness to her grief and how her poems served to maybe restore her rightful desire and sense of belonging. Mansour survived many losses: she was marked by the loss of her homeland, her mother’s death, and the death of her young first husband just six months into their marriage. The absence of the lover explains what some might describe as the “unfettered desire” in her work. These are unbelievably painful and formative experiences that led her to seek some resolution through her love of literature and the craft she honed.

What’s both interesting and disappointing about how Mansour has so far been studied is this Western imposition, an insistence to read her erotic references so literally. It’s kind of an inside joke. Mansour and I are sharing a laugh now. The kind of laughter a grandmother and grandchild share as they prank the child’s parents. How can the esoteric be described in any language? Isn’t this the highest form of surrealism? Isn’t it why many of us write? To try to find out how close we can get.

A more apt question or consideration of this writer’s profoundly brave work would be to ask how many containers does it take to hold one’s wonder, one’s grief?

Flétri par le deuil solitaire
Partout le malaise fleurit
L’empire du cadavre s’étend
Nommer une fosse une fois recouverte
—From “Trous noirs”
 
Withered by the solitary grief
Everywhere uneasiness blooms
The empire of the corpse spreads
To name a grave once it’s covered
—From “Black Holes,” tr. by Emilie Moorhouse

I hope readers can free themselves of any expectations of this powerful poet as they dive into this rich folio and instead experience her work from their own interiority, making their own meanings of these ancient, and now, universal symbols and creation myths.