Damascus-SANA
In modern Arab literary criticism, the name of the writer Khaleda Saeed, who was called the icon of modern Arab criticism and poet of criticism, shines with the studies, articles and critical visions she presented in this field to literature and poetry, during which she touched on the beginnings of the transformations of the Arab poem towards modernity and the emergence of its knights and their launch towards renewal in the form and content of the poem.
Khaleda grew up in a rich literary environment, as she is the sister of the two late poets, the poet Sunni Saleh and the artist Maha Al-Saleh.
Khaleda studied Arabic literature at Damascus and the Lebanese Universities in Beirut and obtained a doctorate in Arabic literature from the Sorbonne University in France. She began her journey in criticism under the pseudonym “Khuzama Sabri” in a poetry magazine, reading about the Diwan of Qararat al-Moujah by Nazik al-Malaika in a way that is different from the prevalent readings of that period.
Later, Khaleda wrote successive articles on Fadwa Toukan’s “The Resurrection and Ashes” by Khalil Hawi and “Sadness in the Light of the Moon” by Muhammad Al-Maghout, after which she signed her real name Khaleda Saeed and got acquainted closely with the pioneers of the literary and poetic modernity movement such as Onsi Hajj, Shawqi Abi Chakra and Fouad Rebekah. A harbinger of greatness.
The plastic artist and critic Fatima Esber indicated in a statement to SANA that Khaleda's critical opinions have received great attention from the beginning, especially with her first book in criticism entitled "Searching for Roots", which includes a group of critical articles. Surrealism, lyre grass, and the kinetics of creativity.
Esber considered that Khaleda's critical product is abundant with its distinct characteristics in terms of language, presentation, and depth of analytical vision. She is also an extraordinary reader and critic. The text then must be read in a deep and objective reading from all sides, with accountability for the text to reveal its dimensions, depths, and most accurate relationships.
And it is evident in Khaleda’s writings, according to Esper, her keenness to combine the scientific, academic and cultural dimension through her own language based on research and entering into the veins of the text she writes about. Her view of literature is that it is not only a reflection of reality, but creativity and ambition to an unrealized reality, and that modernity is an open horizon, visions and possibilities without end.
Khaleda is the best able, as described by the writer Abed Ismail, to analyze the ambiguous relationship between the creator and his text and between the creator and his era. She is also a literary historian who is passionate about theater and an exceptional reader of the poem. She remained the avant-garde educated woman who witnessed the most important transformations of Arab culture during the second half of the twentieth century.
Khaleda is the owner of an integrated critical project, as described by the novelist Khalil Sweileh, especially with her two books, Jarh al-Maan and Afaq al-Maan, which delve into the study of the place of poetry and prose in the Arabic blog by bringing the sacred and historical text into the field of experiment and monitoring intellectual and textual artistic transformations and modern visions in contemporary Arabic literature, both poetic. Or prose and its flags.
Bilal Ahmad
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