By Mursi Saad El-Din My interest in the Irish literary movement and comparative studies led me to attend the defence of a PhD thesis with the title "A march to freedom: A cultural study of Egyptian-Irish patriotic struggles from the beginning of the previous century till the twenties." The thesis was submitted by (now Dr) Hala Ahmed Zaki to the English Department of the Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams University. Her supervisor was Professor Fawziya El-Sadr and the readers were Dr Samir Sarhan and Dr Abdel-Rehim Rashwan. The dissertation discussed the impact of Egyptian and Irish struggles on selected literary works by poets such as W B Yeats and Ahmed Shawqi, and novelists such as Tewfiq El- Hakim and Elizabeth Bowen. Both countries experienced freedom marches at the beginning of the 20th century. Some Irish writers even deplored the colonialist role of Britain in Egypt. In his introduction to John Bull's Other Island, Bernard Shaw attacked the notorious British intervention in Denshway, while Sir Wilfred Blunt and Lady Gregory supported Orabi and his revolution and fought for his cause in England. The end of the 19th century witnessed the emergence of patriotism in Egypt and Ireland. These feelings constituted nationalism in both countries, a nationalism which found expression in politics and literature. The political expression took the form of an anti- colonialist, revolutionary struggle. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that a nationalist movement started in Egypt, symbolised by Mustafa Kamel. A certain awareness emerged which eventually led to the 1919 Revolution and the call for independence. Likewise, Ireland experienced similar developments which culminated in the 1916 Easter rise. In both countries the question of identity became the main preoccupation of the revolutionaries, an identity which, according to Zaki, expressed itself equally in literature and other aspects of culture. In Ireland the theatre became a new weapon of resistance. Audiences used to go to the Abbey Theatre, watch plays by Yeats and Lady Gregory, then come out and demonstrate, often marching to the headquarters of the British authority. That period saw the fighters-cum-writers leading the revolution. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Synge and O'Casey were the main contributors to the nationalist theatre. Something similar happened in Egypt where drama became a weapon in the political struggle. Egyptian drama of the time took the form of musicals or operettas. Salama Hegazi produced Saladin, invoking the great Muslim commander who defeated the Crusaders. Sayed Darwish was another singer-cum- dramatist who produced a number of plays with patriotic lyrics that are celebrated to this day. In the field of poetry both Egypt and Ireland produced poets who sang patriotism to the people. Zaki focused on Shawqi from Egypt and Yeats from Ireland. Both poets were accused of ideological dualism: in the case of Shawqi it was his royalist or khedieval attachment on the one hand and his severe attack against Lord Cromer, the British high commissioner on the other. In the case of Yeats it was his use of English as a language of expression with which to evoke Irish themes and mythology. To Yeats Ireland was ugly, but at the same time lovely. In this he was similar to an older compatriot, Swift, who wrote that Ireland was a "harmful shore". Zaki gives a number of examples of the poetry of both to prove her point, including, naturally, Yeats's well-known poem Easter 1916, with his famous refrain: "All changed, changed utterly/ A terrible beauty is born." Zaki then moves to the novel, comparing Tewfiq El- Hakim's Return of the Spirit (1933) to Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September. In both works, the main concern is the social and political cause of the country, and, of course, the question of identity. A reader of the two novels is apt to feel that there is a certain link between them. According to Hala's conclusions, the first thing that attracted her attention was the idea of identity in both countries. That identity was based, to a great extent, on the idealisation of the past and an insistence on forming this identity without recourse to foreign elements. Hala Zaki was granted her PhD with cum laude.
