European-educated Egyptian artists felt torn between idealizing abroad and home

Evidence

Muhammad Taymür, a young aristocrat who spent three years studying law in Paris, summarized this sense of doubled vision and feeling in the words of the narrator of his short story “Haflat al-tarab” (Music Concert):

I was obsessed with musical concerts during my days in Paris, never missing a night in which moving melodies and entertaining verses blended together with the clear faces, swaying bodies, and sharply vulnerable eyes. There my eyes feasted on the beauty that the Creator had shaped in those handsome faces, and my heart was filled with a pleasure combined with innocence; my ears filled with beautiful lyrics that expanded the bosom.

Those days passed the way sweet dreams do. Now I am in Cairo, deprived of those rosy cheeks and smooth faces, sparkling dangers and spirited, moving lyrics. How badly I stand in need of seeing something like those delights, unequaled in beauty. At the very least, something that would spark the memory and stir up in my heart what forgetfulness has almost stamped out.

— Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 939

Categorization

• XREF: Taymür’s ‘doubled vision’ parallels Lahiri’s The Namesake themes of divided cultural loyalty across two homes. — connects to: European-educated Egyptian artists wrestled with nostalgia for French culture; Post-1919 Egyptian writers measured themselves anxiously against European cultural standards. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 949; Paris-educated Egyptian writers sought to Egyptianize literature while retaining French cultural reference points — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 942 (+3 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: European-educated Egyptian artists wrestled with nostalgia for French culture; Post-1919 Egyptian writers measured themselves anxiously against European cultural standards. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 949; Paris-educated Egyptian writers sought to Egyptianize literature while retaining French cultural reference points — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 942 (+3 more)