The poetics of nahdah multilingualism: Recovering the lost Russian poetry of Mikhail Naimy

Abstract

Drawing on archival research, this article introduces several Russian poems by the Arabic mahjar poet and writer Mikhail Naimy (Mīkhā'īl Nu’aymah) (1889-1988) for the first time to scholarship. By examining the influence of Russian literature on Naimy’s literary output, we shed light on the role of multilingualism in generating literary identities and in shaping literary form. Naimy’s Russian poetry, we argue, furthers our understanding of the nahdah as a multilingual movement that synthesized influences from many different languages. We also show how this multilingual orientation served as a bridge between the nahdah and mahjar literature, by helping Arab writers craft a poetics of Arabic modernism in the diaspora. Alongside documenting an important archival discovery, this research contributes to our understanding of the temporality of Arabic modernism while illuminating its geographically and linguistically diverse substance.