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an excellent mood. He greeted me at the door as usual and immediately began talking about his book that had recently been published in Cairo: a collection of Egyptian short stories in translation spanning more than six decades and entitled Homecoming. He spoke of the weekly column he wrote for Al-Bayan, the Emirati newspaper, and the Epic of Gilgamesh that he was rereading.We discussed Gilgamesh, something he was very knowledgeable about. Paola came and invited us to take a seat in his cosy study, I noticed pages piled up on the desk and he told me that they were from his autobiography, which he hoped to finish in the coming days. Then he started telling me details of his life that he had never so much as hinted at before. Denys Johnson-Davies is not like those intellectuals who constantly rely on concepts, complex terminology and obscure references. He talks in stories that sum up life’s experiences, transcending all the petty details and cutting to the heart of what he wants to say: life is full of secrets and experiences, of failures and victories, of achievements and hopes.When I’m with him, I feel I am plunging into the sea of life, the sea that he describes as strange and teeming with coincidence. Saying goodbye to Denys and Paola at the door I told him that I was going to write about him. He looked at me as if he wanted to say something. “Never trust writers!” I said. He smiled. “That’s right,” he said: “Never trust writers!” Brahim Oulahyane is a Moroccan literary critic. MARGARET OBANK First and foremost an art, not a science Achance remark from Denys Johnson-Davies that he had just published his last volume of translations set in motion Banipal 43’s celebration of a man who has spent a good part of his life with Arab authors and their works, who has influenced and inspired countless readers of world literature, not to mention generations of literary translators. Above all, Denys Johnson-Davies has an eye and ear for the reader 66 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES
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Margaret Obank and Denys Johnson-Davies as much as he has for the texts that he translates, and with so many friends among the numerous authors he has translated from all other the Arab world he sees the modern literature of the Arab world as just part of the literature of the world. For him, translation is “first and foremost an art, not a science”, translators being the essential lynch-pin in the cultural world from the earliest days, though when I interviewed him twelve years ago he was lamenting, like many of us then, the “deplorable” situation for the translator from Arabic and the fact that there was no encouragement given to the translator of fiction from Arabic to English. Today the world of literary translation from Arabic to English is almost unrecognisable – it is so changed, so charged with the energy of would-be young translators who come from many different walks of life – and in a way these changes complement the explosion in creative writing that’s been taking place throughout the Arab world. Denys has been one of the unwitting catalysts for change by persevering with translating and bringing to the Anglophone world an array of interesting, powerful writers. Not for nothing has he been described as a “talent-spotter”. I join our editors and contributors to this feature in saluting Denys Johnson-Davies as an author, reader and indomitable pioneering translator. • Denys Johnson-Davies’s “last” volume, of works by 57 Egyptian authors and spanning his 60 years of translating, is aptly titled Homecoming after the story by the late Yusuf Abu Rayya, which Banipal was pleased to publish in Banipal 34 – the World of Arab Fiction. See Books in Brief, below, p211. BANIPAL 43 – SPRING 2012 67

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an excellent mood. He greeted me at the door as usual and immediately began talking about his book that had recently been published in Cairo: a collection of Egyptian short stories in translation spanning more than six decades and entitled Homecoming. He spoke of the weekly column he wrote for Al-Bayan, the Emirati newspaper, and the Epic of Gilgamesh that he was rereading.We discussed Gilgamesh, something he was very knowledgeable about. Paola came and invited us to take a seat in his cosy study, I noticed pages piled up on the desk and he told me that they were from his autobiography, which he hoped to finish in the coming days.

Then he started telling me details of his life that he had never so much as hinted at before. Denys Johnson-Davies is not like those intellectuals who constantly rely on concepts, complex terminology and obscure references. He talks in stories that sum up life’s experiences, transcending all the petty details and cutting to the heart of what he wants to say: life is full of secrets and experiences, of failures and victories, of achievements and hopes.When I’m with him, I feel I am plunging into the sea of life, the sea that he describes as strange and teeming with coincidence. Saying goodbye to Denys and Paola at the door I told him that I was going to write about him. He looked at me as if he wanted to say something. “Never trust writers!” I said.

He smiled. “That’s right,” he said: “Never trust writers!”

Brahim Oulahyane is a Moroccan literary critic.

MARGARET OBANK

First and foremost an art, not a science

Achance remark from Denys Johnson-Davies that he had just published his last volume of translations set in motion Banipal 43’s celebration of a man who has spent a good part of his life with Arab authors and their works, who has influenced and inspired countless readers of world literature, not to mention generations of literary translators.

Above all, Denys Johnson-Davies has an eye and ear for the reader

66 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES

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