The quartets are the best form for the philosophical poet who wants to present his doctrine to us, not in a jurisprudential study or in a logical sequence, but in bright flashes. This is known by Omar Khayyam readers all over the world, but in Egypt, there has been another poet, another philosophy and definitely another book of quartets.

In 1963, Salah Jahin; a poet, political cartoonist, songwriter, scriptwriter and children theater creator, collected his published quartets in the Egyptian weekly Magazine (Good Morning), to be printed in one volume, to shape a cultural taste with its depths.

The book is a mirror of the poet’s life, but it does not present you with its days in sequence, but rather chooses from them its unique moments. You may read it in an hour, but you feel that you have lived with the poet throughout his long emotional life,.

Quartet one foretells of a strong appetite for life and its greatness. And attached to it, and at the same time foretells the disdain for this life and its contempt. You do not know whether it is a sensual pleasure or is it a spiritual pleasure? Am I an optimist or a pessimist believer? Is he an infidel?

Jahin writes: “I am the one intrigued by the impossible/ I see the moon and jump high into the sky/ Whether I catch it or not should not matter/ As my heart is already filled with joy.”

This famous quartet summarizes the philosophy of Salah Jahin, that revolutionized popular songwriting with his unique phrasings, adding charming new words and delightful expressions to the colloquial Egyptian vocabulary.

The famous name of Jahin has also built upon the 1960 children puppets operetta “El-Laila El-Kebira (The Big Night), directed by Salah El-Saqqa, and tuned by music composer Sayed Mekkawy.

In addition, the daily political and social cartoons by Salah Jahin, published for long years in Al-Ahram newspaper, gave another deep dimension of the poet’s thought.

After six decades, the quartets have been come alive, again, as Syrian artist Youssef Abdelke is

showing his reflections on them, in Cairo>

Abdelke’s hyper -realistic charcoal works on paper evoke a nation at war as they attempt to “express the

concerns and emotions of the ordinary Syrian citizen amid this huge river of blood,” says the artist, referring to his native country’s recent history. His carefully rendered still lifes are splattered with red paint and often include overt memento mori such as skulls, bones, and even a heart impaled on a nail.

Abdelke lived in Paris from 1981 through 2005 and attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. However, he was later forbidden from leaving Syria after his passport was confiscated and he was arrested for his activism.

​After a long absence from the Egyptian scene, the well-known Syrian Artist Youssef Abdelké comes back with a new exhibition. It includes 35 subjects coming from Salah Jahin’s quartets, that the Egyptian poet wrote between 1959 and 1962.

    After drawing them between 2015 and 2019, eventually Abdelké made a limited edition of 10 copies numbered and signed, including hommages to some famous artists like Marcel Duchamps, Mahmoud Mokhtar, Hokusai, Mahmoud Said and Sheikh Imam.

The quartets of Jahin have been inspiring many singers to present them for his fans, but they were also a solid material to inspire young artists who designed cover books with selections of these quartets.

And the spring came, laughing at my sad fate

It called my name, I inquired: who

Spring put its flowers beside me and gone

What do flowers do for the dead?

I wonder..”

Jaheen was born in Cairo, 1930 to a middle-class family. He studied law in Cairo University. In 1955, he started working for the Egyptian weekly magazine “Rose al-Yousef” as a cartoonist. A year later, he moved to the new magazine “Sabah el-Khair (Good Morning)” for which he became its editor-in-chief. Then he joined Al-Ahram newspaper.

He was known for his nationalist and patriotic songs that marked the revolutionary era of Gamal Abdel Nasser role and was sometimes known as the semiofficial poet of the revolution. However, after Egypt’s defeat in the 1967 war and Nasser’s death in 1970 and the sudden shift in political orientation he felt increasingly like Hamlet with the following President Sadat, embodying the treacherous Claudius.

Jahin’s poems frequently contain abstract metaphysical and philosophical themes questioning the purpose of human life, the nature of good and evil, human and divine will and the limits of human pursuit of freedom and happiness. He passed away in April, 21, 1986.

____________________

Published under International Cooperation wirh "The Silk Roud"