Ali Ahmad Said

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Adonis (2015)

Ali Ahmad Said Esber (born January 1, 1930 in Qassabin near Latakia in northern Syria as Ali Ahmad Esber ; Arabic علي أحمد سعيد, DMG ʿAlī Aḥmad Saʿīd ), who went by his stage name Adonis (أدونيس) is a Syrian-Lebanese poet and intellectual.

Life

Said was born in Qassabin to an Alawite family in northern Syria. After attending a French-speaking Lycée in Tartus in 1954, he completed his studies at the Syrian University of Damascus .

In 1955 he was imprisoned for six months because of his membership in the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). He then settled with his wife in Lebanon , where he published the avant-garde literary magazine Schi'r ("Poetry") in 1957 together with Yusuf al-Khal and other renowned writers . In 1960 he became a Lebanese citizen. In 1973 he graduated from the Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut . In the following years, despite the beginning of the Lebanese civil war, he taught at both the Université Saint-Joseph and the state Université Libanaise in Beirut. Since 1985 he has lived in exile in Paris . In the academic years 1998/1999 and 2001/2002 Adonis was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin ; during this time he worked on the cycle of poems Al Kitab (the book).

By resorting to classical Arab poets, who often knew no taboos and were critical of religion, he tries to revive this openness. In addition to his poems, he repeatedly caused a sensation in the Arab world with his critical essays .

Adonis lives in the La Défense district of Paris .

In an interview with the weekly newspaper Die Zeit in December 2014, the 84-year-old summed up the current state of the Arab world. He is desperate that his lifelong dream, the separation of religion and state on the one hand and the equality of women in the Arab world on the other, have not come true. Both are prerequisites for the development of a modern society. A really modern Arab society never existed, the Arab states are basically tribal societies to this day. The so-called Arab modernization was a superficial imitation of western lifestyles. Arabs have not yet been born, they do not yet exist. In addition, by supporting reactionary regimes such as in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the West was preventing modernization and, in essence, had also created the so-called “ Islamic State ” by supplying weapons to mujahideen and other groups. Even Israel is a religious state. The West is not really interested in eliminating militant Islamism.

The award of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize to Said in 2015 met with heavy criticism because of his comments on the Syrian civil war . Navid Kermani declined to give an eulogy for him. Also Stefan Weidner , the translator of his works, found that the decision is wrong. The Syrian philosopher Sadiq al-Azm wrote a detailed criticism of Said's “obscurantist prose” for the FAZ , of his political stance on the Assad regime and of the silence on the fatwa against Salman Rushdie . Sigrid Löffler commented: "Adonis, as the recipient of the Remarque Peace Prize, is and remains an embarrassing mistake".

Works in German translation

  • The songs of Mihâyr the Damascus, poems 1958–1965. Translated from Arabic and edited by Stefan Weidner. Ammann Verlag, 1998.
  • A Grave for New York, Poems 1965–1971. Translated from Arabic and edited by Stefan Weidner. Ammann Verlag, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-250-10477-9 .
  • Culture and democracy. Essays. Oberbaumverlag, 2001.
  • Revolt in Arabic Poetry. Essays. Oberbaumverlag, 1997.
  • Prayer and sword. Essays. Oberbaumverlag, 1994.
  • Poetry and desert. Essays. Oberbaumverlag, 1994.
  • Under the light of time. Correspondence with Dimitri T. Analis. translated from French by Peter Handke . Jung und Jung Verlag, 2001.
  • The tree of the orient. From the Arabic by Suleman Taufiq , foreword by As'ad Khairallah. Edition Orient , 1989, ISBN 3-922825-36-2 .
  • Metamorphoses of a lover . S. Fischer Verlag. Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-10-000631-8 .
  • "Word Song". From poetry to revolution. from the Arabic by Rafael Sanchez, ed. and with a foreword by Stefan Weidner . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-10-000630-1 .
  • The forest of love within us. Love poems. from the French by Ingeborg Waldinger. Verlag Jung und Jung, Salzburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-99027-036-3 .

Awards

Exhibitions

  • 2015: “A”, Une exposition présentant l'œvre visuelle du poète Adonis . Azzedine Alaïa Gallery , Paris.
  • 2020: Adonis “From Word to Image” . Gallery Pankow, Berlin

Web links

Commons : Adonis  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual references, sources

  1. ↑ Adonis In: lexicorient.com , accessed on 9 October 2017th
  2. ↑ see list of Wiko-Berlin ( memento from September 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed December 7, 2012) further under Details
  3. ↑ It's all just theater. Interview with Adonis, in: Die Zeit , December 11, 2014.
  4. ↑ Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger: Sharp criticism after the Remarque Peace Prize was awarded to Syrian poet Adonis, presseportal.de, September 1, 2015
  5. ↑ This is orientalism of the worst kind , translation from English by Matthias Fienbork, in: FAZ, September 19, 2015, p. 9
  6. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from February 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Stefan Weidner : From the metaphysics of the body. Review in: FAZ . June 21, 2013, p. 32.
  8. ↑ The world is on fire. In: FAZ . September 29, 2011, p. 27.
  9. ↑ boersenblatt.net Literary Life from April 22, 2013: Petrarca Prize 2013. Honor for Adonis and Robert Robertson. Retrieved April 23, 2013.
  10. ^ City of Osnabrück | Peace Prize: Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize. In: friedenspreis.osnabrueck.de. Retrieved August 28, 2015 .
  11. ↑ Let your hands run free , in FAZ of April 25, 2015, page 15
personal data
SURNAME Said, Ali Ahmad
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Adonis; علي أحمد سعيد; أدونيس
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Syrian poet and intellectual
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Qassabin , Syria