A Spätzeit Reading of Mohammed Khudayyir’s “A Wish of the Monkey” Based on Walter Moser’s Theory

This article undertakes a philosophical-aesthetic reading of Mohammed Khudayyir’s short story “A Wish of the Monkey” (Umaniyyat al-Qird), from his seminal collection The Black Kingdom (al-Mamlaka al-Sawdāʾ), through the lens of Walter Moser’s Spätzeit theory, which theorizes the pre-apocalyptic human condition in the context of cultural exhaustion and historical lateness. The study offers a textual analysis of the narrative using Moser’s five central components: loss of energy, fall, cultural saturation, secondary culture, and belatedness—collectively articulating the temporal, emotional, and aesthetic structures of what Moser calls Spätzeit (Late Time).



Theoretical Framework: Walter Moser’s Spätzeit Theory

Moser, a Canadian literary theorist, reimagines the end-of-time discourse not as a definitive apocalypse (Endzeit), but as a lingering historical lateness (Spätzeit) in which the subject confronts a decayed, saturated, and exhausted world. Central to this theory are the dual affects of nostalgia (an attempt to reclaim a lost past) and melancholy (the acceptance of irretrievable loss). Moser’s subject—the Spätzeit subject—lives amid cultural debris, symbolic entropy, and psychological inertia.



The five interlinked components of this condition are:



Loss of Energy – Physical and imaginative depletion, emotional fatigue, and symbolic exhaustion.



Fall – The collapse of meaning, unity, and heroic mythos; the subject inhabits ruins and fragmentation.



Cultural Saturation – A landscape cluttered with the remnants of previous cultural forms, inhibiting originality.



Secondary Culture – Creativity now exists only through recombination, parody, or palimpsest, not through origin.



Belatedness – A sense of historical and existential lateness; the modern subject as a derivative, secondary being.



A Wish of the Monkey” is structured in two narrative movements:



The first explores the drab daily lives of two working-class girls living in a cramped, deteriorating space, marked by poverty, alienation, and emotional inertia.



The second shifts focus to a symbolic encounter with a street performer and his monkey—a surrealistic climax encapsulating the core metaphor of frustrated transformation and existential paralysis.



This binary structure supports the oscillation between nostalgia and melancholy, correlating directly with Moser’s theoretical framework.



Analysis of Spätzeit Components in the Story

1. Loss of Energy

From the outset, the text immerses the reader in an atmosphere of exhaustion. The protagonist, Maryam Hadi, is physically and emotionally depleted from relentless labor as a seamstress, expressing deep fatigue and disillusionment. Her refusal to leave the house even on her day off—despite youth and opportunity—manifests symbolic inertia.



The story layers metaphors of descent: descending stairs, falling into shadowy basements, sinking into fatigue. These not only spatialize the loss of vitality but also dramatize psychological descent.





2. Fall

The motif of fall pervades the setting and character development. The apartment the girls inhabit is filled with old, useless objects—broken, outdated, and crumbling. These remnants are not linked to any meaningful past; instead, they signify ruin, detritus of a previously cohesive social and cultural order.



In the second half, the fall is dramatized by the monkey’s failed aspiration to mimic humanity. His performance—aping the gestures of a drunk, a debtor, a queen—reveals the tragic futility of transformation. Rather than ascending, he collapses—both physically and symbolically—into an absurd, failed parody of meaning.



3. Cultural Saturation

Khudayyir’s story exemplifies cultural saturation. The girls' living space, filled with antique bric-à-brac, offers no cultural renewal but an oppressive clutter. Instead of signifying richness, these objects saturate the atmosphere with meaningless noise, blocking creativity and perpetuating the sense of confinement.



Even the protagonist complains about how “there’s no room to move.” The accumulation of used goods from the flea market becomes an allegory for postmodern cultural claustrophobia, where the past lingers not as inspiration but as burden.



4. Secondary Culture

A key strength of Khudayyir’s text lies in its engagement with secondary culture, especially through the story’s symbolic and intertextual strategies.



The second girl, unlike her passive roommate, embodies a melancholic creativity. She decorates their room with flea market items—not to reclaim a glorious past, but to reassemble the remnants into a livable, even aesthetic, space. This action enacts Moser’s vision of secondary creation, a form of recombination rather than originality.



Likewise, the monkey show outside the window is a parodic theater. The street performer—perhaps a figure of the postmodern artist—mimics the grandeur of kings and queens through absurd mimicry. This performative recycling is itself a gesture of palimpsest: a performance born not of originality but of ironic memory.



5. Belatedness

The final and perhaps most philosophical component, belatedness, undergirds the entire narrative. Both girls are characters of a "post-time" world—disconnected from any heroic past or progressive future. Their condition is not apocalyptic (Endzeit), but existentially late (Spätzeit). They are heirs to a depleted cultural moment.



The monkey’s gaze at the end—locked in a fixed stare with the girl—suggests an awareness of this too-lateness. His wish, implicit in the title, is not just to be human, but to become in a world where becoming is no longer possible. That “wish” isnot aspirational, but tragic.



Authorial Insight and Achievements

the uncanny compatibility between Khudayyir’s narrative and Moser’s categories highlights the prescience of Khudayyir’s artistic intuition.



Khudayyir presents two different reactions to Spätzeit:



the nostalgic subject, is paralyzed by the loss of the past and incapable of secondary creation. Her silence, fatigue, and retreat from the world symbolize defeat.



The second girl accepts the melancholic condition, repurposing the remnants of a failed modernity to construct a livable space, even if it is fragmented and makeshift.



Conclusion

Khudayyir’s “A Wish of the Monkey” offers a striking literary manifestation of Moser’s Spätzeit condition. Through its symbolic characters, layered setting, and narrative minimalism, it captures a world where energy is depleted, cultural meaning has collapsed, and the subject must navigate saturation and delay.



More than a tale of two girls or a whimsical monkey show, the story is a meditation on the fate of art and subjectivity in a world that has lost both its origin and telos. As such, it becomes a valuable Arab contribution to the literature of lateness—a melancholy testament to the fading light of the modern project, and a haunting exploration of what can still be imagined in its ruins.