Adunis

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Ali Ahmad Said Asbar (Arabic: علي أحمد سعيد إسبر; transliterated: alî ahmadi s-sacîdi l-'asbar or Ali Ahmad Sa'id) (born 1930), also known by the pseudonym Adonis or Adunis (Arabic: أدونيس), is a Syrian-born poet and essayist who has made his career largely in Lebanon and France. He has written more than twenty books in his native Arabic.

1 Early life, education, and start of career
2 Career
3 Bibliography
- 3.1 Poetry
- 3.2 Literary criticism and essays
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Early life, education, and start of career

Said was born in Al Qassabin, in Northern Syria. From an early age, he worked in the fields, but his father regularly had him memorize poetry, and he began to compose poems of his own. In 1947, he had the opportunity to recite a poem for Syrian president Shukri al-Kuwatli; that led to a series of scholarships, first to a school in Lattakia and then to the Syrian University in Damascus, where he received a degree in Philosophy in 1954.

The name Adonis was given to Said by Antun Saadeh, the leader of the radical pan-Syrian Syrian Social Nationalist Party. In 1955, Said was imprisoned for six months for being a member of the that party. Following his release from prison in 1956, he settled in Beirut, Lebanon, where in 1957 he and Syro-Lebanese poet Yusuf al-Khal founded the magazine Shi'r ("Poetry"). At this time, he abandoned Syrian nationalism in favor of pan-Arabism; he also became a less political writer.

Said received a scholarship to study in Paris from 1960-1961. From 1970 to 1985 he was professor of Arabic literature at the University of Lebanon. 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 1980-1981, he was professor of Arabic at the Sorbonne in Paris.

[edit] Career

Said uses traditional Arab poetic styles to express modern views. Said proposes that poetry has two components: song and function. A poet must be judged by the causes that he champions. The poet has two sides - the "I" and the "other". The poet must represent the group.

After a trip to New York in 1971, Said wrote the poem, "The Funeral of New York" which opens:

Picture the earth as a pear
or breast.
Between such fruits and death
survives an engineering trick:
New York,
Call it a city on four legs
heading for murder
while the drowned already moan
in the distance.
New York is a woman
holding, according to history,
a rag called liberty with one hand
and strangling the earth with the other.

Said was considered to be a candidate for both the 2005 and 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, but the awards went to British playwright Harold Pinter and Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk respectively.

[edit] Bibliography

Said has written over twenty books in his native Arabic. Several of his poetry collections have been translated into English.

[edit] Poetry

If Only the Sea Could Sleep (trans from Al-A'mul al Shi'riyya, (The Complete Works, 3 volumes) (2000) ISBN 1-931243-29-8
The Pages of Day and Night
The blood of Adonis;: Transpositions of selected poems of Adonis (Ali Ahmed Said) (Pitt poetry series) ISBN 0-8229-3213-X
Songs of Mihyar the Damamscene (1960) poems available online include:
Take me to God