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Some information about Tawfiq Al Hakim play “Song Of Death”
Tawfiq Al-Hakim was born on October 9, 1898.
He was born in Alexandria, Egypt, to a wealthy family of landowners
His father was a famous judge in Alexandria.
He showed from a young age love and fondness for literature
Tawfiq started attending theaters and attending shows by famous actors such as George Abyad.
He wrote several short plays while pursuing his high school education
His friends performed it.
He has written in many fields such as short stories, essays
He also wrote lyrics for patriotic songs.
Then he entered the Faculty of Law at Cairo University
But he didn’t do well in it.
And he moved to study French.
He started writing under the pseudonym Hussein Tawfiq.
To keep his family away from shame, which, like most families at the time.
They considered writing a trivial endeavor unworthy of distinguished families.
Al-Hakim suffered a reverse culture shock
When his father forced him to return from Paris to Egypt.
We find this evident in his nostalgia for the beautiful years he spent in Paris.
Tawfiq Al Hakim plays Song Of Death
Most of these plays were for public theater.
These musicals and comedies touched on social and political aspects
The play “The Heavy Guest” touched on the increasingly enthusiastic national spirit of that period in Egypt during the 1919 revolution.
Hakim spent three years of his life in Paris.
He obtained his law degree in 1925.
But he was unsuccessful in getting a government job at the time.
A friend of his father’s famous politician, Ahmed Lotfi Al-Sayed, encouraged him to study law in France and obtain a doctorate from the Sorbonne University.
But he worked during that period to prepare himself to work in the field of theater.
Although he did not study in an official theater college.
However, he spent a lot of time reading plays and attending various shows.
Quick facts about Tawfiq Al-Hakim
1. He is considered one of the pioneers of modern Arabic literature
He struggled to make Arabic literature contemporary literature concerned with social and political life.
2. He was considered an enemy of women according to some
Although it dealt with issues of women’s emancipation
He spent a long period of celibacy by the standard of his time.
3. Addressing issues of harnessing peasants and their workers
He wrote in a general folk language that was not intended for the elite
And he called that writing in a third language.
4. It is considered a qualitative leap in modern Arabic literature after Ahmed Shawky.
5. He said that his positions on the women’s liberation movements were a response to the positions of Mrs. Hoda Shaarawi.
In 1958, he was awarded the Medal of the Republic by President Gamal Abdel Nasser for his various contributions.
Especially for his distinguished work “The Return of the Soul,” which he believes inspired Abdel Nasser himself as well as an entire generation.
It was a novel with various symbols dating back to ancient Egypt and its timeless glories.
And in 1962 he was awarded the State Merit Award.
For his dedication to art and especially drama
In addition to igniting the national spirit through:
- His dramatic writing,
- The devotion of him is to the social evolution movement
- His deep interest in ending all manifestations of injustice and corruption.
However, all this honor he received from the state sparked widespread controversy
That is when he reviewed his positions regarding the period of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rule.
Tawfiq Al Hakim Song Of Death
1973 TV short film by Saeed Marzouk.
About Tawfiq al-Hakim’s play “The Song of Death.”
Starring Faten Hamama and Karima Mokhtar
Television Film Production (Adel Sadeq).
The film tells a story about the people of Upper Egypt and taking revenge.
The cast of Tawfiq Al Hakim Song Of Death
Faten Hamama: in the role of Asaker.
Karima Mukhtar: In the role of Mabrouka.
Abdul Aziz Makhion: In the role of Alwan.
Hamdi Ahmed: In the role of Sumaida.
Director Saeed Marzouq.
brief summary
All events take place in a poor house in Upper Egypt.
Asaker (Faten Hamama) interviews her sister Mabrouka (Karima Mukhtar).
Asaker is waiting for her son Alwan (Abdel Aziz Makhyoun) after an absence of 17 years away from his family and his village.
The wife, Asaker, from the Al-Azayzeh family, after her husband was killed by a man from the Tahawiya family.
She is waiting to fulfill her dream when her son grows up and returns from Cairo to avenge his father.
We know the story of the disappearance of the son for 17 years.
From the ongoing dialogue between the two sisters
Asaker hid her son from the eyes.
The mother sends her baby boy to a parent who is raising him to become a butcher
That is until he slaughters the cattle to strengthen his arm and get used to the bloodshed.
The boy leaves the butchery trade to join Al-Azhar
He graduates as an elder dressed as a clergyman.
The mother waits, hopes for revenge, and takes off the robe of weakness and submissiveness
She hopes that the people of the village will stop talking about the fact that their offspring no longer have men.
You hear the sound of the train coming and the returning young man enters after a long absence
But he is reluctant to take revenge
He came to preach to the people of his village to stop fighting and take revenge.
Alwan leaves to join the train back to Cairo
The mother mourns her fortune.
A knock on the door is the son of her sister Mabrouka, the young Saidi Sumida (Hamdi Ahmed)
Who did not leave his village and believes in the traditions and legacies
And it erupts when he hears about his cousin Alwan’s departure from taking revenge.
Sumaida takes the knife and sets out to kill the weak young Alwan
So as not to spread the news of his disappointment and inherits his family’s shame
He promises his aunt to kill her son before he gets on the train to escape and tells her that after the killing is carried out, his voice will reach her as he sings to tell her that the mission has been completed and she is happy to wash away shame.
Production of Tawfiq Al Hakim Song Of Death
It is the Upper Egyptian environment.
The film discusses the issue of revenge amid the customs and traditions in the South.
It is in the Saidi dialect.
The expert for the Saidi dialect was the great poet Abd al-Rahman al-Abnoudi
Here, Faten Hamama and Saeed Marzouq asked Al-Abnoudi to shoot the film in the Al-Abnoudi house
Or at least the description of the house, in order to design a replica of the house in which he was born and raised in Upper Egypt.
Indeed, Al-Abnoudi agreed to their request.
Designers gave the same design to his home, with the same “rooms”, “energies” and “mazira” and the same “greedy” bed on which his mother was sitting.
It became a real simulation of his home in Upper Egypt
And that, according to Al-Shabaka magazine, in an interview with the great artist, Faten Hamama
She refused to photograph except in the presence of this determination.
The journalist Wael Al-Ibrashi congratulated the poet Abdul Rahman Al-Abnoudi.
He congratulated him on his birthday and screened his rare movie “The Song of Death”, starring Faten.
Al-Ibrashi said, during his “Ten PM” program on “Dream 2” channel:
This movie is rare
He met the artist Faten Hamama and praised the great poet Abdul Rahman Al-Abnoudi, and said to him:
“Al-Abnoudi taught her to master the Saidi dialect in this film.”
Excerpts from the script
Alwan: I will tell them – to the people of his town – I have not come to say … that I have always thought about my town and the people of my town …
Despite my long alienation, there is some emptiness from the lessons of Al-Azhar
Where colleagues meet, and we read newspapers
And longing for the land that grew us back
We ask ourselves anxiously:
When do our people live in the countryside like human beings live in clean houses where animals do not eat them?
And when their roofs are perched without the cotton and corn trees
And their walls are not covered with mud and animal dung? …
Is this too much for our people?
Do not our people have a right to live like others?
Asaker “like someone who did not understand”: What is this saying, Alwan?
Alwan: This is what the people of the country should know.
It is our duty, as we learned in Cairo, to see them as they are right in life.
It is not difficult for them to reach this goal if they unite and join forces or cooperate in establishing a council among themselves.
This council imposes royalties on those who are able.
Teams of strongmen must be formed and rise in the long leisure time here by erecting bridges and installations
Instead of wasting it in aversion and quarrels.
Asaker: Sheikh Muhammad Al-Asnawi shares this word of reading and writing.
He who understands it.
Now, Alwan, we have what is more important than that.
Alwan “shocked”: What is more important than that?
Asaker: Yes.
Leave the prayer in the mosque tonight, lest it spoils the matter.
Arrive here if you like.
Get up and take off your clothes, and I will bring you water from the water for ablution
And put on the cloak and then sharpen the knife with me.
Alwan, “a whispering hammer”: Oh God, your mercy, your pleasure, and your forgiveness
Asaker: What do you say, Ya Alwan?
Alwan “raises his head”: I say that I only came to see life
I bring you life.
Asaker: And this is what we have been patient with in anticipating nights.
Seventeen years and your dear clan are all dead waiting for your coming to restore life to them.
Alwan “knocks on a whisper”: Oh God! What do I do with those?
Asaker: What do you think, Alwan, too much peeping?
Get up and don’t waste time.
stand up.
Alwan “raises his head with encouragement”: My mother, I will not be killed.
Asaker “hushed her dismay”: What do I hear?
Alwan: I will not be killed.
Asaker’s “hoarse voice”: Your father’s blood?
Alwan: You lost it by hiding it from the government.
Although the original idea of Tawfiq al-Hakim.
However, Abdul Rahman Al-Abnoudi’s pen added flavor, beauty, and magic to the novel. He also makes you stop with your heart before your ears at every word
As if you are afraid that a phrase spoken a short while ago may be tempted by you
Deprive your attention of another, nicer phrase that you hear now
This is the end of our article about Tawfiq Al Hakim Song Of Death.
