Adonis (poet) facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Adonis أدونيس
Adonis on 12 May 2011
Born	Ali Ahmad Said Esber (1930-01-01) 1 January 1930 (age 95) Al Qassabin, Latakia, Alawite State (Part of Mandatory Syria)
Pen name	Adonis
Occupation	Poet, writer, literary critic, editor
Language	Arabic
Nationality	Syrian
Period	Contemporary
Genres	Essay, poem
Literary movement	Modernism, avant-garde, surrealism
Notable works	The Songs of Mihyar the Damascene, The Static and the Dynamic
Notable awards	Bjørnson Prize 2007 Goethe Prize 2011

Ali Ahmad Said Esber (Arabic: علي أحمد سعيد إسبر, North Levantine: Arabic pronunciation: [ˈʕali ˈʔaħmad saˈʕiːd ˈʔesbeɾ]; born 1 January 1930), also known by the pen name Adonis or Adunis (أدونيس Arabic pronunciation: [ʔadoːˈniːs]), is a Syrian poet, essayist and translator. Maya Jaggi, writing for The Guardian stated "He led a modernist revolution in the second half of the 20th century, "exerting a seismic influence" on Arabic poetry comparable to T.S. Eliot's in the anglophone world."

Adonis's publications include twenty volumes of poetry and thirteen of criticism. His dozen books of translation to Arabic include the poetry of Saint-John Perse and Yves Bonnefoy, and the first complete Arabic translation of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (2002). His multi-volume anthology of Arabic poetry ("Dīwān ash-shi'r al-'arabī"), covering almost two millennia of verse, has been in print since its publication in 1964.

A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Adonis has been described as the greatest living poet of the Arab world.

Biography

Early life and education

Born to a modest Alawite farming family in January 1930, Adonis hails from the village of al-Qassabin near the city of Latakia in western Syria. He was unable to afford formal schooling for most of his childhood, and his early education consisted of learning the Quran in the local kuttab (mosque-affiliated school) and memorizing classical Arabic poetry, to which his father had introduced him.

In 1944, despite the animosity of the village chief and his father's reluctance, the young poet managed to recite one of his poems before Shukri al-Quwatli, the president of the newly-established Republic of Syria, who was on a visit to al-Qassabin. After admiring the boy's verses, al-Quwatli asked him if there was anything he needed help with. "I want to go to school," responded the young poet, and his wish was soon fulfilled in the form of a scholarship to the French lycée at Tartus. The school, the last French Lycée school in Syria at the time, was closed in 1945, and Adonis was transferred to other national schools before graduating in 1949. He was a good student, and managed to secure a government scholarship. In 1950 Adonis published his first collection of verse, Dalila, as he joined the Syrian University (now Damascus University) to study law and philosophy, graduating in 1954 with a BA in philosophy. He later earned a doctoral degree in Arabic literature from Saint Joseph University in 1973.

While serving in the military in 1955–56, Adonis was imprisoned for his membership in the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (following the assassination of Adnan al-Malki), Led by Antoun Saadeh, the SSNP had opposed European colonization of Greater Syria and its partition into smaller nations. The party advocated a secular, national (not strictly Arab) approach toward transforming Greater Syria into a progressive society governed by consensus and providing equal rights to all, regardless of ethnicity or sect.

Name

The name "Adonis" (pronounced ah-doh-NEES) was picked up by Adonis himself at age 17, after being rejected by a number of magazines under his real name, to "alert napping editors to his precocious talent and his pre-Islamic, pan-Mediterranean muses".

Personal life

Adonis was married in 1956 to literary critic Khalida Said (née Saleh), who assisted in editing roles in both Shiʿr and Mawaqif. They have two daughters: Arwad and Ninar. As of 2012, Arwad serves as the director of the Maison des Cultures du Monde and Ninar, an artist, moves between Paris and Beirut. Adonis has lived in Paris, France, since 1975.

In his book Identité inachevée he expresses opposition to "religion as an institution imposed on the whole of society" but support of individual religious freedom. In an interview at the occasion of the release of his new book Adoniada in France he stated that, in his view, religion and poetry were contradictory because "religion is an ideology, it is an answer whereas poetry remains always a question".

Beirut and Paris

In 1956, Adonis fled Syria for Beirut, Lebanon. He joined a vibrant community of artists, writers, and exiles; Adonis settled abroad and has made his career largely in Lebanon and France, where in 1957 he cofounded the magazine Majallat Shiʿr ("Poetry Magazine"). The magazine, though arguably the most influential Arab literary journal, met with strong criticism for its publication of experimental poetry. Majallat Shiʿr temporarily ceased publication in 1964, and Adonis did not rejoin the Shiʿr editors when they resumed publication in 1967. He wrote a manifesto dated 5 June 1967 which he published in Al Adab, a Lebanese magazine, and in Souffles, a Moroccan magazine. A French translation of his manifesto appeared in the French magazine Esprit.

In Lebanon, his intense Arab nationalist convictions found their outlet in the Beirut newspaper Lisan al-Hal and eventually in his founding of another literary periodical in 1968 titled Mawāqif, in which he again published experimental poetry. He was also one of the contributors to Lotus which was launched in 1968 and financed by Egypt and the Soviet Union.

Adonis's poems continued to express his nationalistic views combined with his mystical outlook. With his use of Sufi terms (the technical meanings of which were implied rather than explicit), Adonis became a leading exponent of the Neo-Sufi trend in modern Arabic poetry, which took hold in the 1970s.

Adonis received a scholarship to study in Paris from 1960–61. From 1970–85 he was professor of Arabic literature at the Lebanese University. In 1976, he was a visiting professor at the University of Damascus. In 1980, he emigrated to Paris to escape the Lebanese Civil War. In 1980–81, he was professor of Arabic in Paris. From 1970 to 1985 he taught Arabic literature at the Lebanese University; he also has taught at the University of Damascus, Sorbonne (Paris III), and, in the United States, at Georgetown and Princeton universities. In 1985, he moved with his wife and two daughters to Paris, which has remained their primary residence.

While in Syria, Adonis helped edit the cultural supplement of the newspaper Al-Thawra, but pro-government writers clashed with his agenda and forced him to flee the country.

Editorship

Majallat Shiʿr

Adonis joined the Syro-Lebanese poet Yusuf al-Khal in editing Majallat Shiʿr (English: "Poetry Magazine"), a modernist Arabic poetry magazine, which Al-Khal established in 1957. His name appeared as editor from the magazine's fourth edition. By 1962 the magazine appeared with both Adonis and Al-Khal's names side by side as "Owners and Editors in Chief". While at Shiʿr, Adonis played an important role in the evolution of free verse in Arabic. Adonis and al-Khal asserted that modern verse needed to go beyond the experimentation of "al-shiʿr al-hadith" (modern, or free, verse), which had appeared nearly two decades earlier.

Also responding to a growing mandate that poetry and literature be committed to the immediate political needs of the Arab nation and the masses, Adonis and Shiʿr energetically opposed the recruitment of poets and writers into propagandist efforts. In rejecting "al-ʾadab al-iltizām" ('politically committed literature'), Adonis was opposing the suppression of the individual's imagination and voice for the needs of the group. Poetry, he argued, must remain a realm in which language and ideas are examined, reshaped, and refined, in which the poet refuses to descend to the level of daily expediencies.

Shiʿr was published for ten years and was arguably the most influential Arab literary journal ever; it was recognized as the main platform and prime mover for the modernism movement in Arabic literature, it featured and helped bring to light poets such as Ounsi el-Hajj, Saadi Yousef and many others.

Mawaqif

Adonis later started another poetry magazine, titled Mawaqif (English: "Positions"); the magazine was first published in 1968, considered a significant literary and cultural quarterly. Adonis wanted in Mawqaif to enlarge the focus of Shiʿr by addressing the politics and the illusions of the Arab nations after their defeat in the Six-Day War, believing that literature by itself cannot achieve the renewal of society and that it should be related to a more comprehensive revolutionary movement of renovation on all levels.

A number of literary figures later joined and contributed to Mawaqif, including Elias Khoury, Hisham Sharabi and Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish among others.

Due to its revolutionary nature and free-thinking outlook, Mawaqif had to overcome some problems, including censorship by governments less open than Lebanon's, financial difficulties that its independent nature entailed, and the problems that came in the wake of the Lebanese War. However, in spite of these difficulties, it continued to be in print until 1994.

Al-Akhar

Adonis also founded and edited Al-Akhar (English: "The Other"), a magazine dedicated to publishing original content as well as numerous literary translations of contemporary essays on philosophy and Arabism. The magazine published myriad essays on contemporary Arab thought and interrogated the relationship between political and religious thought. It expressed concern with structural impediments to the spreading of progress and freedom in the Arab world, and included writers such as Ahmed Barqawi and Mustafa Safwan. The magazine was published in Beirut from 2011 to 2013.

The magazine contained essays and was published by the Syrian businessman Hares Youssef.

Poetry

"The Songs of Mihyar of Damascus"

Published in 1961, this is Adonis's third book of poetry, "The Songs of Mihyar of Damascus" (or the Damascene in different translation) marked a definitive disruption of existing poetics and a new direction in poetic language. In a sequence of 141 mostly short lyrics arranged in seven sections (the first six sections begin with 'psalms' and the final section is a series of seven short elegies) the poet transposes an icon of the early eleventh century, Mihyar of Daylam (in Iran), to contemporary Damascus in a series, or vortex, of non-narrative 'fragments' that place character deep "in the machinery of language", and he wrenches lyric free of the 'I' while leaving individual choice intact. The whole book has been translated by Adnan Haydar and Michael Beard as Mihyar of Damascus: His Songs (BOA Editions, NY 2008)

Some of the poems included in this collection:

• "Psalm"
• "Not a Star"
• "King Mihyar"
• "His Voice"
• "An Invitation to Death"
• "New Covenant"
• "The End of the Sky"
• "He Carries in His Eyes"
• "Voice"
• "The Wound"

And other poems.

The collection has been claimed to have "reshaped the possibilities of Arabic lyric poetry".

"A Time Between Ashes and Roses"

In 1970 Adonis published "A Time Between Ashes and Roses" as a volume consisting of two long poems 'An Introduction to the History of the Petty Kings' and 'This Is My Name' and in the 1972 edition augmented them with 'A Grave For New York.' These three astonishing poems, written out of the crises in Arabic society and culture following the disastrous 1967 Six-Day War and as a stunning decrepitude against intellectual aridity, opened out a new path for contemporary poetry. The whole book, in its augmented 1972 edition has a complete English translation by Shawkat M. Toorawa as A Time Between Ashes and Roses (Syracuse University Press 2004).

"This Is My Name" (book)

Written in 1969, the poem was first published in 1970 with two long poems, then reissued two years later with an additional poem ("A Grave for New York"), in A Time Between Ashes and Roses collection of poems.

In the poem, Adonis, spurred by the Arabs' shock and bewilderment after the Six-Day War, renders a claustrophobic yet seemingly infinite apocalypse. Adonis is hard at work undermining the social discourse that has turned catastrophe into a firmer bond with dogma and cynical defeatism throughout the Arab world. To mark this ubiquitous malaise, the poet attempts to find a language that matches it, and he fashions a vocal arrangement that swerves and beguiles.

The poem was the subject of wide study in the Arab literary community due to its mysterious rhythmic regime and its influence on the poetry movement in the 1960s and 70s after its publication.,

"A Grave for New York" (poem)

Also translated as "The Funeral of New York", this poem was written after a trip to New York in 1971 during which Adonis participated in the International Poetry Forum in Pittsburgh, PA. The poem was published by Actes Sud in 1986, nearly two decades before it appeared in English, and depicts the desolation of New York City as emblematic of empire, described as a violently anti-American, in the poem Walt Whitman the known American poet, as the champion of democracy, is taken to task, particularly in Section 9, which addresses Whitman directly.

Adonis wrote the poem in spring 1971 after a visit to the United States. Unlike his poem "The Desert", where Adonis presented the pain of war and siege without naming and anchoring the context, in this poem he refers explicitly to a multitude of historical figures and geographical locations. He pits poets against politicians, and the righteous against the exploitative. The English translation of this long poem from Arabic skips some short passages of the original (indicated by ellipses), but the overall effect remains intact. The poem is made up of 10 sections, each denouncing New York City in a different way. It opens by presenting the beastly nature of the city and by satirizing the Statue of Liberty.

"A Grave for New York" is an obvious example of Adonis's larger project of reversing the Orientalist paradigm to re-claim what he terms 'eastern' values as positive.

"Al-Kitab" (book)

Al-Kitab means "the book" in Arabic. Adonis worked on this book, a three-volume epic that adds up to almost two thousand pages, from 1995 to 2003. In Al-Kitab, the poet travels on land and through the history and politics of Arab societies, beginning immediately after the death of Muhammad and progressing through the ninth century, which he considers the most significant period of Arab history, an epoch to which he repeatedly alludes. Al-Kitab provides a large lyric-mural rather than an epic that attempts to render the political, cultural, and religious complexity of almost fifteen centuries of Arab civilization. The book was translated into French by Houria Abdelouahed and published in 2013.

"Adonis: Selected Poems" (book)

Translated from Arabic by Khaled Mattawa and described as "a genuine overview of the span of Adonis's", this collection contains a number of poems of between five and fifteen or so pages in length.

Adonis: Selected Poems includes selected poems from the following poetry collections:

• "First Poems (1957)"
• "Songs of Mihyar of Damascus (1961)"
• "Migrations and Transformations in the Regions of Night and Day (1965)"
• "Stage and Mirrors (1968)"
• "A Time Between Ashes and Roses (1971)"
• "Singular in a Plural Form (1975)"
• "The Book of Similarities and Beginnings (1980)"
• "The Book of Siege (1985)"
• "Desire Moving Through Maps of Matter (1987)"
• "Celebrating Vague-Clear Things (1988)"
• "Another Alphabet (1994)"
• "Prophesy, O Blind One (2003)"
• "Beginnings of the Body, Ends of the Sea (2003)"
• "Printer of the Planets' Books (2008)"

In 2011, Khaled Mattawa translation of Adonis: Selected Poems was Selected as a finalist for the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize sponsored by the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry

In the same year (2011) translation of Selected Poems by Adonis won the Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation in which the Judges deemed it "destined to become a classic."

Artwork

Adonis started making images using calligraphy, colour and figurative gestures around the year 2002. In 2012, a major tribute to Adonis, including an exhibition of his drawings and a series of literary events was organized in The Mosaic Rooms in West London.

On 19 May 2014 Salwa Zeidan Gallery in Abu Dhabi, was home to another noted exhibition by Adonis: Muallaqat (in reference to the original pre-Islamic era literary works Mu'allaqat), consisted of 10 calligraphy drawings of big format (150x50cm).

Other art exhibitions

• 2000: Berlin – Institute for Advanced Studies
• 2000: Paris – L`Institut du Monde Arabe
• 2003: Paris – Area Gallery
• 2007: Amman -Shuman`s Gallery (co-exhibition With Haydar)
• 2008: Damascus – Atassy Gallery, exh. For 4 Poets-Painters (with works of Fateh Mudarress, Etel Adnan, Samir Sayegh)
• 2008: Paris – Le Louvre des Antiquaires : Calligraphies d`Orient. (Collectif)
• 2020: Berlin – Galerie Pankow: Adonis "Vom Wort zum Bild"

Nobel Prize nomination

A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Adonis has been regularly nominated for the award since 1988. After winning Germany's major award the Goethe Prize in 2011, he emerged as a front runner to be awarded the Nobel Prize, but it was instead awarded to the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, with Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, commenting that there is no political dimension to the prize, and describing such a notion as "literature for dummies".

Adonis has helped to spread Tomas Tranströmer's fame in the Arab world, accompanying him on readings.

Legacy and influence

Dayâ as wall poem in Leiden

Adonis' poetry and criticism have been credited with "far-reaching influence on the development of Arab poetry," including the creation of "a new poetic language and rhythms, deeply rooted in classical poetry but employed to convey the predicament and responses of contemporary Arab society." According to Mirene Ghossein, "one of the main contributions of Adonis to contemporary Arabic poetry is liberty-a liberty with themes, a liberty with words themselves through the uniqueness of poetic vision."

Adonis is considered to have played a role in Arab modernism comparable to T. S. Eliot's in English-language poetry. The literary and cultural critic Edward Said, professor at Columbia University, called him "today's most daring and provocative Arab poet". The poet Samuel John Hazo, who translated Adonis's collection "The Pages of Day and Night," said, "There is Arabic poetry before Adonis, and there is Arabic poetry after Adonis."

In 2007, Arabian Business named Adonis No. 26 in its 100 most powerful Arabs 2007 stating "Both as a poet and a theorist on poetry, and as a thinker with a radical vision of Arab culture, Adonis has exercised a powerful influence both on his contemporaries and on younger generations of Arab poets. His name has become synonymous with the Hadatha (modernism) which his poetry embodies. Critical works such as "Zamān al-shi'r" (1972) are landmarks in the history of literary criticism in the Arab world."

In 2017, the judges' panel for the PEN/Nabokov Award cited "Through the force of his language, boldness of his innovation, and depth of his feeling, Ali Ahmad Said Esber, known as 'Adonis,' has helped make Arabic, one of the world's oldest poetic languages, vibrant and urgent. A visionary who has profound respect for the past, Adonis has articulated his cherished themes of identity, memory and exile in achingly beautiful verse, while his work as critic and translator makes him a living bridge between cultures. His great body of work is a reminder that any meaningful definition of literature in the 21st century must include contemporary Arabic poetry."

Awards and honours

• 1968 Prix des Amis du Livre, Beirut
• 1971 Syria-Lebanon Award of the International Poetry Forum.
• 1974 National Prize of Poetry, Beirut.
• 1983 Member of the Académie Stéphane Mallarmé.
• 1983 Appointed "Officier des Arts et des Lettres" by the Ministry of Culture, Paris.
• 1986 Grand Prix des Biennales Internationales de la Poesie de Liège (Highest Award of the International Poem Biennial), Brussels.
• 1990 Member of Académie Universelle des Cultures, Paris.
• 1991 Prix Jean-Marlieu-Etranger, Marseille.
• 1993 Feronia-Cita di Fiamo Priwe, Rome.
• 1995 International Nazim Hikmet Poetry Award – The first winner
• 1995 Prix Méditerranée-Etranger, Paris.
• 1995 Prize of Lebanese Cultural Forum in France.
• 1997 Golden Wreath of Struga Poetry Evenings
• 1997 Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France
• 1999 Nonino Poetry Award, Italy
• 2001 Goethe Medal
• 2002–2003 Al Owais Award for Cultural & Scientific Achievements, co winner
• 2003 America Award in Literature
• 2006 Medal of the Italian Cabinet. Awarded by the International Scientific Committee of the Manzù Centre.
• 2006 Prize of "Pio Manzù – Centro Internazionale Recherche."
• 2007 Bjørnson Prize
• 2011 Goethe Prize
• 2013 Golden Tibetan Antelope International Prize. co winner
• 2013 Petrarca-Preis
• 2014 Janus Pannonius International Poetry Prize (co-winner)
• 2015 Asan Viswa Puraskaram- Kumaranasan World Prize for Poetry
• 2015 Erich-Maria-Remarque-Friedenspreis [de]
• 2016 Stig Dagerman Prize
• 2017 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature
• 2022 Izmir International Homer Award

Studies and essays about Adonis

• The Perplexity of the All-Knowing in Mundus Artium by Kamal Abu-Deeb (1977)
• Modern Arabic Poetry: An Anthology (1988) Salma Jayyusi
• Modern Arab Poets 1950–1975 (1976) Issa Boullata (editor)
• Adonis, the Syrian Crisis, and the Question of Pluralism in the Levant by Franck Salameh, Boston College
• Studies in Modern Arabic Prose and Poetry Publisher: Brill Academic Pub (August 1, 1997) ISBN: 9004083596
• The poetry of Adonis in translation : an analysis- Moutassem Salha: A dissertation submitted for the degree of Master of Arts at the University of Central Lancashire 2011
• Asselineau, Roger; and Folsom, Ed. "Whitman and Lebanon's Adonis." Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 15 (Spring 1998), 180–184.
• lecture: Ronald Perlwitz: The Nation of Poets: Novalis – Hölderlin – Adonis
• "Language, Culture, Reality." The View From Within: Writers and Critics on Contemporary Arabic Literature: A Selection from Alif Journal of Contemporary Poetics ed. Ferial J. Ghazoul and Barbara Harlow. The American University in Cairo Press, 1994.
• "The Poet of Secrets and Roots, The Ḥallājian Adūnis" [Arabic]. Al-Ḍaw' al-Mashriqī: Adūnis ka-mā Yarāhu Mufakkirūn wa-Shu'arā' 'Ālamiyyūn [The Eastern Light: Adūnīs in the Eye of International Intellectuals and Poets] Damascus: Dār al-Ṭalī'a, 2004: 177–179.
• "'Poète des secrets et des racines': L'Adonis hallajien". Adonis: un poète dans le monde d'aujourd'hui 1950–2000. Paris: Institut du monde arabe, 2000: 171–172.
• Religion, Mysticism and Modern Arabic Literature. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006.
• "A Study of 'Elegy for al-Ḥallāj' by Adūnīs". Journal of Arabic Literature 25.2, 1994: 245–256.
• Adunis, Mistranslated, Translation Review
• Robyn Creswell, City of Beginnings (Princeton University Press, 2019); "Hearing Voices: How the doyen of Arabic poetry draws on—and explodes—its traditions", "The New Yorker", 18 & 25 December 2017, pp. 106–9.
• Andrea Galgano, "Adonis e il cuore del corpo amante", in "Lo splendore inquieto", Aracne Editrice, Roma 2018, pp. 403–18.

See also

In Spanish: Adonis (poeta) para niños