It will be issued soon by
Safsafa publishing house / Cairo
The book :
“Joyce Mansour
The tuberose baby girl
By the surrealist writer, researcher, and visual artist:
Mohsen L Belasy
The book is the first book in Arabic that deals with the life journey of the francophone Egyptian surrealist erotic poet and writer Joyce Mansour, in a comprehensive and ramified manner.
Finally after thirty-seven years
The magical hoopoe returns to her first nest in the heart of Cairo
The oriental tale called tuberose baby girl returns
On a research, narrative, critical and hunting trip with testimonies and stories from the surrealist wolves who surrounded Joyce Mansour and accompanied her on her journey.
From Cairo to Paris, and from Paris to the furthest depths of our secret desires.which we hide from ourselves.
As for the introduction of the book, it is brought to you by:
-The American poet Will Alexander / Pulitzer Prize Nominee/2022
2016 — Jackson Poetry Prize (awarded by Poets & Writers)
2014 — American Book Award for Singing In Magnetic Hoofbeat: Essays, Prose, Texts, Interviews, and a Lecture
2002 — California Arts Council Fellowship
2001 — Whiting Fellowship for Poetry
-The American novelist, poet, and artist Rikki Ducornet
winner of :
-Arts and Letters Award in Literature, American Academy of Arts and Letters (2008)
-Lannan Literary Award for Fiction (2004)
-Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters (1998)
-Critics Choice Award (1995) [21]
-Lannan Literary Award for Fiction (1993)
-Professor Marc Marc Kober of the Sorbonne and Paris 13 University.
– The French poet Laurent Doucet , director of Maison André Breton.
– American/Greek poet and artist Giorgia Pavlidou.
The book deals with h prospecting of cultural life in Cairo at the end of the twenties, thirties, and forties, leading to a complete anatomy of Joyce Mansour’s early life in Cairo with a critical interlude of the legacy of those who surrounded Joyce Mansour in her early life in Cairo. With a journey between the French-speaking literary salons in Cairo until we reach her departure from Egypt in 1956 after the position of Abdel Nasser regime towards Jewish and foreign families after the tripartite aggression against Egypt 1956.
With contemplation of the changes that occurred in the cultural movement of mixed nationalities in Cairo, then comes the arrival of Joyce Mansour to Paris and her joining to the Paris Surrealist Group, and her close friendship with Andre Breton, to begin a new chapter of the book about the secrets of the Paris Surrealist Group in the fifties, their legacy , and the influence of Joyce Mansour’s activity on the group after its full integration into the activities of The surrealists in Paris with a concave critical dissection of Joyce’s early poetic product and her scattered texts in rare surrealist journals throughout the fifties and sixties with a collection of historical testimonies from Joyce Mansour’s friends with the help of Joyce’s living friends, the book also deals with a lot of Joyce’s previously documents and correspondence with her rare texts with a complete critical dissection of her works accompany a critical examination of her erotic philosophy with an exposition of the secret events that Joyce co-organized, With extensive research on the secret sexuality and philosophy of the Surrealists of the 1950s and 1960s
The book reintroduces Joyce Mansour to the Arab reader as a storyteller, not a poet, as she has been introduced to the Middle East since her death by dissecting her rare stories and critical research in which she participated with the international surrealist movement. And the literary philosophy of those texts that have not been published before in Arabic or English.
The book also discusses surrealist alchemy, its symbols, and its relationship to the symbols and personalities of the Pharaonic civilization, which Joyce was influenced by in a way that not many people know.
Then the book jumps towards the research and dissection of the circle of friends of Joyce in Paris and from the artistic and surrealist collaborations that brought them together with Joyce Mansour until the end of her life with the presentation of many events that were not presented to the Arab reader before with a broad critical braiding of their works With more detail to be revealed in this large volume Which will be followed by the publication of all her prose texts.
Muhammad Al-Baali, director of Safsafa publishing house, says:
We at Safsafa publishing house believe that Joyce Mansour’s book will be an addition to the Arab Library in general and to its list in particular. It will be an addition to the field of the history of the Surrealist movement globally, as well as the history of the relationship of Egyptian-born writers with this movement that reshaped the literary and artistic field in the twentieth century. The book will also be an addition to us. In the field of literary biographies, of which we are preparing to publish more than one title… We must add that we express our happiness because of contracting with the writer Mohsen El belasy, who is quickly establishing his feet in the Arab cultural arena and is also confidently stepping forward in expanding the horizons of his activities and contributions globally.
Quotes from the introductions of the book:
Will Alexander:
This being a lingual gift that cuts through all forms of lingual expression. For instance it can explode, say, from the little known African language of Gur, or from the creative exposition that explodes from Amos Tutuola’s English. Mansour ignites the possibility that lingual grafts or leaps can occur beyond the self-imprisonment that concurs with consciously imposed training. Thus, liberty expands itself in Mansour’s by a creative act of roaming incapable of plagiarizing the power that continues to emanate from her own essence.
Rikki Ducornet
In the morning I had set aside to write these few words devoted to the great surrealist poet Joyce Mansour,
I dreamed of a girl dancing beneath a colossal pair of scissors. Suspended in the air, the scissors mimicked
the girl’s crossed legs, her arms raised to the sky. Come to think of it,the girl’s pose was scissor- like.
Perhaps it was the girl who mimicked the scissors! If the girl were an athlete, a runner and a high jumper,
she might well chose scissors as a talisman. After all, a scissor’s legs are sure, sharp and swift.
Like the talismans and amulets of time past, Mansour’s poems both challenge and illuminate expectations,
implying sexual promise, yet leading to dissatisfaction, dismay, and the absurd.As the poems are conceived
with impatience, a burden of sorrow, and antic humor, the reader most be prepared for anything, including sudden
smackdowns (and they could not be more devestating). All this, and yet, from within the shadows, and when least expected,
Mansour will offer a fearless delight, a sudden moment when Eros triumphs and sings. Eros, the mango that heals and quickens the heart.
Laurent Doucet
Mohsen et ses amis du groupe surréaliste du Maghreb et du Moyen-Orient
On reprit courageusement la lutte de Joyce
ET de la liberté du corps de la femme-poète
Celle aussi d’Abdel Kader Al Janabi
En écrivant la vie de Joyce Mansour
Et en la traduisant
Dans la langue pseudo sacrée
Pour la première fois
Giorgia Pavlidou
Surrealist poetry when effective, I think, like freemasonry, alchemy or psychoanalysis, generates an existential practice or near-mediumistic motion that eludes such simple designations as art, well-being, profession or passion, let alone hobby, leisure, entertainment or ideology. Not unlike bebop, it builds on the possibility of a trance-induced escape-hatch from cliched living and stereotyped perception. It offers, to paraphrase Aime Cesaire, the promise of disalienation or in my own words, linguistic radicalization. The reader of this book will discover that Joyce Mansour’s life and poetics supersedes all these promises.
Circling back to biography, as might be expected, there’s more available about her life in French, Joyce Mansour’s language of poetic expression. It stupefied me, however, to learn from scholar and steward of surrealism in Egypt, Mohsen El Belasy, aka the writer of this text, that a biography of Mansour’s was non-existent in Arabic and tout court in Egypt. This fabulous publication has changed this sad fact.
Marc Kober
Etait-elle la fille incestueuse de son anti-père André Breton, irrespectueuse de tout, impertinente, comme seule pouvait l’être Alice au pays des merveilles, fascinée par la clé de verre ? Elle l’a saisie entre ses mains délicates aux ongles pointus. Et de cette clé donnée par André Breton en personne, forte de son génie personnel, elle a su ouvrir les serrures de l’après-guerre. Sous les portes closes passent des « paroles douces et des mots de mage », et un rayon de lumière aveuglante. Etait-elle la sœur incestueuse de Pharaon ? Entre ses doigts roulaient les temps et la poésie « comme un œuf en cage ». « Sister Joyce », disait Ted Joans qui l’aimait comme sa sœur pharaonique noire. De qui ne fut-elle pas aimée ? Et qui ne saurait l’aimer ? A cause de ses outrances rarement gratuites, toujours parfaitement adressées, comme une chaussure bien pointue dans le cul des sicaires. Il faut l’aimer pour son courage et pour son désespoir surmonté et capable de rire aux étoiles.
SULFUR 