Doppelte Heimat? Zur literarischen Produktion arabischsprachiger Immigranten in Argentinien.

• Author: Nijland. C.

The present work examines the literary production of Arabic-speaking immigrants in Argentina, focusing on the aspect of their explicit or implicit cultural connection, while investigating the question of their linguistic parentage (p. 8). The title implies that only those Arabic immigrants are included who were or are still conversant with Arabic and who produced literary works either in Arabic or in Spanish or in both languages.

The first chapter deals with the relationship between Argentina and the Arabs, and its background. After a short introduction and an exposition of the problem to be investigated, the author relates the history of the Arab immigration from the end of the 19th century. She then discusses what Sarmiento wrote about the Arabs in his Facundo (1845) Next comes Habib Estefanos' defense of the Arab immigrants in his Los pueblos hispano-americanos (Mexico, n.d.) which was published some 100 years after Sarmiento's book. The third book discussed in this chapter is S. Peralta's La accion del pueblo arabe en la Argentina (1946).

Chapter 2 deals with terminology and method, and the cultural significance of "literary" texts, the concept "Heimat" and the difference between "Ghetto-literature" and "exile-literature. " Chapter 3 is concerned with the literary production in the Arabic language, in which works by Yusuf al-Id, Malatiyus Khuri (Khoury), Ilyas Qunsul (Konsol), Salim Mufarrij, Jurj Assaf, Hana Jasir, and Abd al-Hamid Abd al-Wahhab al-Mu la are discussed. The fourth chapter takes up the literary production in Castellano, in particular the work of Jose Guraieb, Ilyas Konsol, Malatios Khoury and Ibrahim Hallar. The fifth chapter is a glance both backward and forward, assessing the place of Argentine-Arab poetry and prose in literary history.

It should be stated at the outset that this work is the first study of Argentine-Arab literature in a European language, and hence most welcome. But the approach of the author has its roots in the social sciences rather than in language and literature, and the works are examined primarily for their cultural rather than literary significance, a position made clear by the author, who states that the quantity of the production, and its obvious lack of quality, make these works uninteresting for literary science" (p. 30). This statement is based, Scheffold says, on Salma Jayyusi, in her Trends and Movements in Modem Arabic Poetry (Leiden, 1977), who discusses Arab immigrant literature in...