In the history of modern Arab theater, the dramatic work of Naguib Mahfouz occupies a singular place. If his novels have ensured him worldwide recognition, his theater, more discreet, presents itself as a true aesthetic laboratory where he explores, through symbolism, the great spiritual, political and social crises of the Arab world. His plays He Makes Death and Makes Live (1974) and The Devil Preaches (1981) constitute two essential milestones: they translate, through highly symbolic figures, spaces and temporalities, the disenchantment born of the Arab defeat of 1967 as well as a critique of a sacred confiscated by ideology.
Titles as keys to symbolism
The symbolism first emerges from the titles, which condense a strategy of inversion.
He causes death and brings life hijacks a Quranic verse to overturn the sacred order of life and death, revealing a society where death is glorified to the detriment of life. The title then becomes a symbol of the ideology of martyrdom that Mahfouz denounces. Likewise,
The Devil Preaches is based on an oxymoron: attributing to the Devil the function of preacher. This paradox symbolizes the displacement of truth, which no longer resides in the official discourse but in the marginal and forbidden voice. The inversion, as a symbolic process, reflects Mahfouz's desire to undermine religious evidence and to question the political use of the sacred.
Symbolic time and scenic spaces
This use of symbolism also structures stage time and space. In these two pieces, time is never dated: it is suspended, cyclical, repetitive, a dramatic figure of spiritual impasse. The decor itself becomes a symbolic language. In
He makes one die and makes one live, the water wheel represents the cycle of life, while the mastaba embodies frozen memory and the morbid glorification of the past. The Young Man, oscillating between these two poles, appears as the symbolic figure of consciousness in search of truth. In
The Devil Preaches, the City of Brass materializes a closed, authoritarian universe, frozen in its laws, where only the margins – prison, exile, street – allow a possible truth to filter through. Spatial symbolism thus translates the conflict between life and death, light and darkness, freedom and oppression.
Characters, speech and instructions: an allegory of the Arab worldThe characters relate to a symbolic typology more than a realistic psychology. The Giant embodies the religion of terror, a caricature of a power that speaks in the name of Allah to impose death. The Young Girl, luminous and silent, symbolizes on the contrary a poetic and Sufi faith, rooted in love and compassion. The Devil, paradoxically, becomes the emblem of a displaced truth: he embodies the marginal lucidity which dares to say what no one wants to hear. Even silence and gestures – covering one’s ears, laughing ironically, moving slowly – acquire a symbolic value, codifying power relations and spiritual choices. Mahfouz's theater thus becomes an allegorical fresco where each character, each object, each posture reflects a state of contemporary Arab consciousness.
Dramatic speech as a critical instrument
Dramatic speech, too, is not reduced to realistic dialogue but functions as a symbolic sign. The discourse of power, whether carried by the Giant or the Judges, is a fixed, stereotypical word, a symbol of ideological confinement. Conversely, the rare words of the Young Girl, the silence of the Sheikh or the irony of the Devil symbolize a truth that escapes control. The theater then becomes the place where the truth moves to the margins, where the symbolism of the weak voice or silence deconstructs the thunderous verb of authority.
Didascalies and scenic contrasts
The directions also participate in this symbolic architecture. The contrasts between light and darkness, the heavy silences, the codified gestures, all of this composes a choreography where the scene becomes a metaphor for the post-1967 Arab world: a closed, conflicting space, where the truth seeks to be told through indirect signs. The light surrounding the Young Girl symbolizes the transparency of the faith lived; the darkness enveloping the Giant translates the deadly dogma. The Devil's silent pauses become symbols of a suspended truth, which the spectator is invited to complete with his own consciousness.
Critical and spiritual scope of symbolism in MahfouzUltimately, the symbolism in Mahfouz's theater goes beyond the simple aesthetic register to constitute a critical strategy. It is through symbol that he denounces the instrumentalization of religion, reveals the crisis of Arab consciousness and outlines a spiritual solution. Theater does not reproduce reality, it metaphorizes it: it invites the spectator to decipher the signs and reconstruct meaning. The faith that emerges is not institutional but poetic and interior: it is housed in light, silence, love and even in the paradoxical provocation of the Devil. Symbolism thus becomes a vector of spiritual resistance, a way of breathing new life into the sacred in the face of its ideological diversion.
Through
He makes one die and makes one live and
The Devil Preaches, Mahfouz creates a theater where everything is a symbol: the title, the setting, the characters, the words, the silence, the light. This symbolic theater, far from being a simple formal experiment, reveals itself to be a weapon of unveiling and resilience. It opens a space where the sacred is regenerated by freeing itself from power, and where dramatic art regains its function as a spiritual and critical mirror, calling for a reconciliation of humans with their inner truth.
