Ali Ahmad Said Esber (, North Levantine ; born 1 January 1930), also known by the pen name Adonis or Adunis ( ), 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.
He is an occasional contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Biography Early life and education Born to a modest Alawite farming family in 1930, Adonis hails from the village of al-Qassabin near the city of Latakia in northwestern 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 Esber. , Arwad serves as the director of the Maison des Cultures du Monde and Ninar, an artist, lives and works in Paris. 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. He describes himself as a "pagan mystic", elaborating:
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.Moreh, Shmuel. Modern Arabic Poetry 1800–1970: The Development of its Forms and Themes under the Influence of Western Literature. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976: 278–280; 285; 288. 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.Snir, Reuven. Mysticism and Poetry in Arabic Literature. Orientalia Suecana XLIII-XLIV (1994–5) 165–175. V. Sufi Terms in the Service of Social Values, 171-3. 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.Butt, Aviva. "Adonis, Mysticism and the Neo-Sufi Trend" in Poets from a War Torn World. SBPRA, 2012: pp. 2–7.
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 Syrian-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 opposed the suppression of the individual's imagination and voice for the sake 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.Ahmad Sa'id to Adonis: A Study of Adonis's Controversial Position on Arab Cultural Heritage
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"."(Mihyar of Damascus, his Songs), a 1961 collection which famously reshaped the possibilities of Arabic lyric poetry". "guernicamag". December 2, 2007.
"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 poems, written in response to the crises in Arabic society and culture following the 1967 Six-Day War, opened 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)