Anton Schammas

Anton Schammas ( Hebrew אנטון שמאס; * 1950 in Fasuta , Israel ) is an Israeli poet , writer , playwright and translator .

Life

Schammas comes from a Christian-Arab family. He belongs to the first generation of Arabs who went through the Israeli educational system after the establishment of the state of Israel. His linguistic talent becomes clear early on, which is also reflected in his perfect command of Hebrew. After graduating from high school, Schammas studied English, Arabic literature and art history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . He writes for Hebrew and Arabic magazines. Numerous translations of Arabic literature into Hebrew and vice versa. He translates into Arabic and Hebrew, for example. B. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, which was performed with great success in the Haifa Municipal Theater in the 1980s . In 1974 Schammas published two volumes of poetry, one in Arabic: “ Prisoner of my waking and sleep ” and one in Hebrew : a hardcover book, or as the English title suggests: hardcover . In both, he undertakes linguistic and poetological experiments that test the limits of poetic language. Topics such as lost loves, an intrusiveness of repressed memories that border on the uncanny and the loneliness of the lyrical self run through the lyrics. In 1979 the Hebrew volume of poetry “ No man's land ” followed, in which he solidified his poetic language, abandoning the experimental in favor of a clear poetic style. Here too, topics such as loneliness and placelessness prevail and "dreaming in no man's land".

In Israel and beyond, he became known worldwide through his 1986 autobiographical novel Arabesken . The fate and wanderings of his family are told from the perspective of different people. Many legends, incidents and anecdotes from the world of the Arab inhabitants of Galilee come to light here, some of whom were robbed of their land or even expelled during the founding of the state of Israel. Others could stay and continue their lives under Israeli sovereignty as second-class citizens in their homeland. The wanderings of Anton Schammas, which leads from Israel via Paris to America, to Iowa City, are woven into these stories. There he takes part in an international writers workshop. Arabesques are at the same time a determination of the position of the author, who, by means of a multitude of literary voices that can be heard through his text, seeks to inscribe himself into a world that is free from national and ideological limitations.

Arabesque is for the time being the last major work by Shammas. For many years he has been a professor of Middle Eastern literature at the State University of Michigan. He continues to translate Arabic literature into Hebrew and is at times an essayist.

Works

Prisoner of my wakefulness and my sleep 1974 (Arabic)
Hardcover 1974 (Hebrew)
No Man's Land 1979 (Hebrew)
Arabesques 1986 (Hebrew, German translation by Magali Zibaso, Munich 1989).
"Ghosts" in fear in their own country, edited by Rafik Schami, Zurich, 2001
"Autokartographie: Der Fall Palestine, Michigan" in Angst im Eigen Land, edited by Rafik Schami, Zurich, 2001

literature

Rachel Feldhay Brenner: Inextricably Bonded. Israeli Arab and Jewish Writers Re-Visioning Culture. Madison 2003
Christian Szyska: Geographies of the Self: Text and Space in Anton Shammas's Arabesques . In: Narrated Space in Literatures of the Islamic World. Ed .: Roxane Haag-Higuchi and Christian Szyska, 2001.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Schammas, Anton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Israeli poet, writer
DATE OF BIRTH	1950
PLACE OF BIRTH	Fasuta