7/23/2025–|Last update: 15:00 (Mecca time)
In his new book, “The Reader and Interpretation”, published by Dar “Now- Publishers and Distributors” in Amman, Moroccan critic Saduq Noureddine offers an in-depth contemplative reading in the literary and intellectual world of the writer and critic Abdel Fattah Kelito, a reading that does not stop at the apparent texts and does not drift to theoretical, but stems from a long time with the world of Kelito, and from a sincere desire to arrest what constitutes the fabric of his project Intellectual and aesthetic.
The author does not provide an academic study in the dry sense, and does not plead with traditional literary analysis, but rather writes from the location of the knowledgeable reader who re -discovery of texts from within it, and tracks the impact of meaning in language reefs, in a critical project that goes beyond the impressionist interpretation towards a narrative and philosophical approach to the privacy of Kelito’s thought and its position within the Arab cultural scene and the Maghreb.
Reading: Between two times and obsessive
Noureddine starts from a moment of intimate personality that made her open to the book, as he recovers his transit meeting in Celito at the Casablanca exhibition in 1988, in a suggestive language that mixes documentation and coding. In a story from the tales of a thousand and one nights. This beginning, to which the author chose the title “For common concerns”, not only establishes a human relationship between a critic and the subject of his reading, but also paved the essential concept that inhabits the entire book: the evidence, as the entire book revolves between two things, it is in a volatile area between the reader and the text, between the past and the present, and between interpretation and reception.
In this context, the author states that this work has been woven on the basis of comparison with two achievements: a literary and intellectual achievement achieved in the past, and another in the present, to emerge through this duality the concept of lack that pushes towards reading: as there is no interpretation without a sense of deficiency, and no return to the texts except by summoning what was not completed.
Kelito between heritage and the question of modernity
Noureddine is devoted to multiple chapters to present the fields of intellectual and critical operating Kelito, stopping at his most prominent topics and techniques. As far as Kelito is characterized by his passion by heritage texts, from the shrines to biography, and from “Thousand and One Nights” to the books of Ibn Rushd, it also opens with an eye of vigilance to modern international literature, as in his repeated presence in the texts of Borges and others.
The author sees that Kelito is the terrible reader, according to his expression, which imposes on the recipient to reconsider what he read, and to rely on what he missed from the traditions of Arabic and Maghreb writing, not by the action of his authority as an author, but rather the power of his interpretative construction, and his complex critical awareness, and he is a reader who does not interpret an external approach, but rather the reading itself as a cognitive act, It is established for new concepts about the reader’s relationship with the text.
Continuation as a method of understanding
The book stops at what the author calls “the poetic poetry”, which is an accurate topic in which it compares between Killito and Abdel Salam Bin Abd Al -Aali in the ability of each of them to convert the marginal into a center, and the retreat into a context. The extension in Kelito’s speech does not come to be filled, but rather a method of thinking, and part of a reading strategy that transmits the reader from the apparent significance to the deep indication of both heritage and modern texts.
This method restores to writing its first taste, as a mixture of narration and meditation is due to amazement and mockery, and kindness and rigor, and it appears through it that Kelito does not search for theoretical certainty and final results, but rather about an accurate balance between knowledge, pleasure, signal, hints, and what is said and what is silent about it.
Kelito and the thinkers … the controversy of the cultured and the extension
In multiple approaches within the book, Noureddine is conducting an indirect dialogue between Kelito and the names of different stripes, most notably Abdul Kabeer Al -Khatibi, in the context of talking about the need for new literary criticism, which exceeds the traditions of structural understanding or mechanical reading of heritage. It also holds a smart comparison between Ibn Rushd’s image in the literature of Kelito, and the civilizational and intellectual projections involved in this image, as a window to understand the relationship of Arab thought itself.
Overlapping and extermination continues with Jorge Luis Borges on the one hand, and with Manfaluti on the other hand. And if Borges is present in the poetry of thinking and the possibilities of infinite interpretation, then Manflouti is evoked in light of the beginnings and formation, from a more historical angle, which gives the book a depth in reviewing cultural and taste transformations in Arabic writing.
Fear writing and the question of modernity
The author dedicates a chapter for fictional writing at Kelito, not as a novelist, but rather a writer based on the borders of the narration, and establishes hybrid texts that wear a storyteller, but maintains its interpretative and intellectual essence. Hence, the question of modern literature is raised as a problematic issue in the experience of Kelito, as it is aware of the weakness of the fortune that modern literature enjoys compared to the old literature, but at the same time he sees the presence of modern literature a critical, historical and life necessity.
Nour El -Din believes that the privacy of modern Moroccan literature, with the relative delay in forming, and the affliction of the eastern influences, calls for reviewing critical concepts and rethinking conscious approaches that respect privacy without being exempt from the local.
Interpretation .. displacement of meaning and openness of reading
Saduq Nur al -Din carries a special concept of interpretation in its reading, as it does not make it a cognitive authority above the text, but rather a continuous movement within the text itself, where the connotations are generated and the paths intersect, the interpretation here is not a disclosure of the hidden meaning as much as it is the reproduction of reading, and the opening of the text on a horizon of multiple readings.
Through the various works of Kelito, the writer reveals a thoroughly organized thread, which is the reader’s transformation into a writer, and the recipient into a follower, every time a heritage, modern or western literary text is reconsidered, the question is renewed, and the text turns into a renewed living data.
One of the most prominent features of the book “The Reader and Interpretation” is the language in which he was formulated, as Saduq Nur al -Din succeeded in preserving a high level of intellectual sobriety, without being involved in excessive linguistic complexity, as the author tried to reach the world of Kelito in a language close to his contemplative narrative style, so the book came as a critical mirror of the Kelito world, but rather an extension of it in some of the citizen.
The book “The Reader and Interpretation” does not provide a traditional reading of the works of Abdel -Fattah Kelito, but rather reconsider the concepts of interpretation, reading, and extermination, in the light of the Kelito himself project, in which the reader is inseparable from the author, nor the interpretation of pleasure, and in this sense, Nur al -Din’s approach appears to be an extension of an Arab critical tradition that seeks to build knowledge of the text, does not separate the structure and style Between pleasure and thought.
And if Kelito has put forward his project from within the texts of heritage and modernity, then the Saduq Noureddine contributes through this book to re -installation of this project, and open it to new interpretative possibilities, which in turn deserve to be read and interpreted.
