ADONIS

Adonis is internationally renowned as a poet, essayist, philosopher and theoretician of Arab poetics. Referred to as “the greatest living poet of the Arab world” and “the grand old man of poetry, secularism and free speech in the Arab world”, or as « The man who remade Arabic poetry » (Robyn Creswell in The New Yorker, December 2017) he is one of the most influential figures in poetry. He has been writing for more than 75 years and has more than fifty published works in Arabic of poetry, criticism, essays, and translations. Rebelling against the tropes of traditional Arabic poetry to experiment with free verse, variable meter and prose poetry (drawing on Sufism and mysticism), he is responsible for a poetic revolution in the Arab world the scale of which has been compared to that of what T.S. Eliot did for the English poetic canon.

Adonis was born Ali Ahmad Saïd Esber in 1930, in the small village of Qassabin in the coastal mountains of Northern Syria. As a child, he attended the local Kuttab for instruction, reading mainly the Quran, while his father initiated him to classical Arabic poetry. After an encounter with the Syrian president Shukri Al-Quwatli during a visit to his village in 1944, Adonis was granted a place at the French Lycée in Tartus, and, by 17 was submitting poetry under the pen name of Adonis and in so doing unintentionally symbolizing what would become his world view, away from all that’s religious and nationalistic, embracing of all that’s human and universal. He studied philosophy at the University of Damascus in 1951, before serving in the Syrian military. During this time, he was imprisoned for alleged affiliations with the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and upon his release, fleeing persecution he moved to Beirut in 1956 where his wife, Khalida Saleh joined him a few months later.

In Beirut, he joined the circle of the poet Yusuf al-Khal (1917–87), who has returned to Lebanon in 1953 after an extended stay in the United States and founded the literary journal Shi’r (Poetry), trying to gather the local literary avant-garde around him. When Adonis arrives in Beirut in 1956, he co-directs the journal with al-Khal. This publication, which is dedicated exclusively to the avant-garde, offers a platform not only to recent poetry from the region but also to translations from Western languages, above all from English and French. In addition to editing this journal, Adonis produces his own publications and volumes of poetry, initiating a revolution in the structures and themes of Arabic poetry. In 1960, he spends a year studying in Paris with a scholarship from the French government. In 1961, he publishes Songs of Mihyar the Damascene which is considered to be a turning point not only in Adonis’ writing but in the modernist poetry movement in the Arab world as well. In 1968, he founds his own magazine, Mawâkif (Positions) a unique experience of freedom of speech featuring, alongside with poetry and verses, essays on politics, religion, philosophy, and literary theory, gathering writers from all Arab speaking countries.

In 1971, he receives the Syria-Lebanon Award from the International Poetry Forum in Pittsburgh. This same year, he writes his long poem Tombeau for New York which he considers as an important stage in his life as a poet. He is appointed as professor at the Lebanese University in Beirut and in 1973, he publishes his PhD dissertation, The Fixed and the Dynamic, a synoptic study of Arabo Islamic history, including social movements, literature and theology from the pre-Islamic period through the early twentieth century. In 1980, he teaches as a visiting professor at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III, and in 1984, Adonis gives a series of four lectures at the Collège de France titled “An Introduction to Arab Poetics.” In 1986, he moves with his family to the French capital for the long term. That same year, he receives the Grand Prize of the Biennale Internationale de la Poésie in Liège.

Between 1995 and 1997, he is a visiting lecturer at the Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, Princeton University. From 1998 to 2000, he spends two years in Berlin as fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies. From 1995 to 2002 he publishes the 3 volumes of Al Kitab (The Book), his poetry masterpiece.

Adonis’ poetry is translated to many languages, including French, English, Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, and German, to mention a few. His works in English translation include The Blood of Adonis (selected poems translated by Samuel Hazo), An Introduction to Arab Poetics (essay, Saqi books), The Pages of Day and Night (selected poems translated by Samuel Hazo), If Only the Sea Could Sleep, (selected poems translated by Kamal Bullata, Susan Einbinder and Mirène Ghossein), A Time Between Ashes and Roses (translated by Shawkat M. Toorawa, Syracuse University Press), Sufism and Surrealism (essay, Saqi books), Adonis, selected poems, (translated by Khaled Mattawa, Yale University Press), Violence and Islam I and II, Conversations with Houria Abdelouahed (Polity Books), Concerto al-Quds, (translated by Khaled Mattawa, Yale University Press), Songs of Mihyar the Damascene, (translated by James Kareem Abu-Zeid and Ivan Eubanks, New Directions).

Adonis has won numerous awards, including the highest French honour of Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur (2012), Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1997), Turkey’s Nazim Hikmet Prize (1994), the Premio Nonino Internazionale, (Italy, 1999), The Bjornson Prize for Freedom of Expression (Norway, 2007), Goethe Prize (Frankfurt, Germany 2011), the Petrarca-Preis (Munich, 2013), the Erich-Maria Remarque Freedom Award (Osnabruck, 2015), Prix Littéraire Prince Pierre-de-Monaco (2016), the US PEN/Nabokov International Literature Lifetime Achievement Award (2017), The 13th Poetry and People Award (Guangzhou, China) 2018.

Adonis has collaborated with several artists, including Mona Saudi, Kamal Boullata, Dia Azzawi and Ziad Dalloul. In the 80’s he started his own experiences with visual art exploring a new artistic and poetic expression, by writing and drawing simultaneously, mixing collages, calligraphy and encres de Chine.

Since then, this visual work has been presented in numerous solo exhibitions in Paris, London, Berlin and in China.

It is important to stress out that Adonis does not consider himself as a painter. For him, this visual work is an extension to his poetry and writings.