FAH online seminar discusses pandemic-language and literature relations

Ciputat, UIN News Online – The Adab and Humanities Faculty (FAH) held an online seminar entitled ‘Pandemic, Literature and Language: Creativity and Sorrow’, Thursday (05/14/2020) through Zoom platform. The seminar examines the relationship between a pandemic and its influence on the literature and language development throughout the history of human civilization.

Online seminar that was opened directly by the Dean of FAH Saiful Umam and moderated by M. Husni Thamrin presented three speakers, Raed Abdul Raheem, Hasnul Insani Johar, and Darsita Suparno. Raed came from the Department of Arabic Language and Literature, An-Najah National University, Nablus, Palestine, while the last two speakers came from FAH UIN Jakarta.

In his opening remarks, Saiful mentioned the pandemic as a phenomenon that has repeatedly been present in human history such as the current Covid 19 pandemic. Various outbreaks occur and experienced by humans throughout the history.

The existence of a pandemic itself is responded to in many ways, one of which is by language and literature. "Today we are scheduled a discussion that wants to look back at how the pandemic influences the literature and language," he said.

Meanwhile the speakers in their presentation explained in their research that various events that threatened their lives such as epidemics, natural disasters, war and others encouraged them to write them in a number of works. Works that narrate how humans respond to them are written in a variety of works.

Raed for example, he mentioned that various Muslim intellectuals wrote a number of works that depicted pandemics, natural disasters, and others. Among them, Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya Razi (865 AD-925 AD) who wrote al-Judari wa al-Hasbah about smallpox and measles outbreaks besides the Book of al-Hawi fii al-Thibb.

Then, Ahmad bin Ali bin Kha tin from Almeria, Spain, who wrote Tahsil al-Gharad al-Qasid fii Tafil al-Marad al-Wafid, Muhammad bin Ali asy-Syaquri wrote Tahqiq an-Naba 'an Amr al-Waba', and Lisanuddin bin al-Khatib (1313-1374) wrote the book Muqni'at al-Sail 'an al-Marad al-Hail. These intellectuals narrate pandemics, medical care, and even the characteristics of society when a plague strikes.

“Disaster also encourages writers to write poetic works that narrate the absolute power of God, through mortal power which cannot mean anything when the plague stopped in human history,” he said.

Not only in the eastern world and Islam, Hasnul added, the same reaction was also done by writers in the West. Albert Camus, for example, wrote the novel La Peste, The Plague, Sampar in 1947.

Hasnul said, the novel written by Camus wanted to narrate how humans in Algeria responded to the plague that endanger their lives. Through the plot and characters of his novel, Camus portrays the powerlessness of human individuals in dealing with a pandemic.

Meanwhile, Dr. Darsita explained how a pandemic can also encourage people's creativity in language. They produce various expressions or terms to describe the plague and their response to the plague itself. (usa/zm)