{FREE} an Introduction to Arab Poetics

AN INTRODUCTION TO ARAB POETICS PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Adonis,Catherine Cobham | 108 pages | 01 Sep 2003 | SAQI BOOKS | 9780863563317 | English | London, United Kingdom Read Download An Introduction To Arab Poetics PDF – PDF Download In , Adonis fled Syria for Beirut , Lebanon. 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. This trend took hold in the s. Adonis received a scholarship to study in Paris from — From he was professor of Arabic literature at the Lebanese University. In , he was a visiting professor at the University of Damascus. In , he emigrated to Paris to escape the Lebanese Civil War. In —81, he was professor of Arabic in Paris. In he moved with his wife and two daughters to Paris, which has remained their primary residence. While temporally in Syria, Adonis helped in editing the cultural supplement of the newspaper Al-Thawra but pro government writers clashed with his agenda and forced him to flee the country. His name appeared as editor from the magazine's fourth edition. 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. Adonis later started another poetry magazine, titled Mawaqif English: "Positions" ; the magazine was first published in , considered a significant literary and cultural quarterly. 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 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. 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 to The magazine contained essays and was published by the Syrian businessman Hares Youssef. More than an olive tree, more than a river, more than a breeze bounding and rebounding, more than an island, more than a forest, a cloud that skims across his leisurely path all and more in their solitude are reading his book. Published in , 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 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. A child stammers, the face of Jaffa is a child How can withered trees blossom? A time between ashes and roses is coming When everything shall be extinguished When everything shall begin. The whole book, in its augmented edition has a complete English translation by Shawkat M. Written in , the poem was first published in with only two long poems, then reissued two years later with an additional poem "A Grave for New York" , in "A Time Between Ashes and Roses" collection of poems. In the poem, Adonis, spurred by the Arabs' shock and bewilderment after the Six-Day War , renders a claustrophobic yet seemingly infinite apocalypse. Adonis is hard at work undermining the social discourse that has turned catastrophe into a firmer bond with dogma and cynical defeatism throughout the Arab world. To mark this ubiquitous malaise, the poet attempts to find a language that matches it, and he fashions a vocal arrangement that swerves and beguiles. The poem was the subject of wide study in the Arab literary community due to its mysterious rhythmic regime and its influence on the poetry movement in the s and 70s after its publication. The poem was published by Actes Sud in , nearly two decades before it appeared in English, and depicts the desolation of New York City as emblematic of empire, described as a violently anti-American, [25] in the poem Walt Whitman the known American poet, as the champion of democracy, is taken to task, particularly in Section 9, which addresses Whitman directly. 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. Adonis wrote the poem in spring after a visit to the United States. Unlike his poem "The Desert", where Adonis presented the pain of war and siege without naming and anchoring the context, in this poem he refers explicitly to a multitude of historical figures and geographical locations. He pits poets against politicians, the righteous against the exploitative. The English translation of this long poem from Arabic skips some short passages of the original indicated by ellipses , but the overall effect remains intact. The poem is made up of 10 sections, each denouncing New York City in a different way. It opens by presenting the beastly nature of the city and by satirizing the Statue of Liberty. Arabic for "The Book", Adonis worked on this book, a three-volume epic that adds up to almost two thousand pages, from to In "Al-Kitab", the poet travels on land and through the history and politics of Arab societies, beginning immediately after the death of the prophet Muhammad and progressing through the ninth century, which he considers the most significant period of Arab history, an epoch to which he repeatedly alludes. Al-Kitab provides a large lyric-mural rather than an epic that attempts to render the political, cultural, and religious complexity of almost fifteen centuries of Arab civilization. The book was translated to French by Houria Abdelouahed and published in Translated from Arabic by Khaled Mattawa and described as "a genuine overview of the span of Adonis's", [30] the book is the inclusion of a number of poems of between five and fifteen or so pages in length. Adonis is often portrayed as entirely dismissive of the intellectual heritage of Arabic culture. He views culture as dynamic rather than immutable and transcendent, challenging the traditionalist homogenizing tendency within heritage. In studying the Arabic cultural system, Adonis emphasizes that the concept of heritage construed as a unified repertoire based on a consistent cultural essence preconditions the rupture between this heritage and modernity. Adonis's critique of Arab culture did not merely call for the adoption of Western values, paradigms, and lifestyles per Science, which has evolved greatly in Western societies, with its "intuitions and practical results," should be acknowledged as the "most revolutionary development in the history of mankind" argues Adonis. The truths that science offers "are not like those of philosophy or of the arts. They are truths which everyone must of necessity accept, because they are proven in theory and practice. As such, the idea of progress in science is "quite separate from artistic achievement. What we must criticize firstly is how we define heritage itself. In addition to the vagueness of the concept, prevalent conformist thought defines heritage as an essence or an origin to all subsequent cultural productions. In my opinion, we must view heritage from the prism of cultural and social struggles that formed the Arabs' history and, when we do, it becomes erroneous to state that there is one Arabic heritage. Rather, there is a specific cultural product related to a specific order in a specific period of history. What we call heritage is nothing but a myriad of cultural and historical products that are at times even antithetical. In Arabic "Al-Thabit wa al-mutahawwil", the book full title is "The Static and the Dynamic: A Research into the Creative and the Imitative of Arabs", it was first published in till still in print in Arabic, now in 8th edition by Dar al-Saqi, the book is a four-volume study described in the under title as "a study of creativity and adheration in Arabs , Adonis started original writings on the project as a PhD dissertation while in Saint Joseph University , in this study, still the subject of intellectual and literature controversy, [36] Adonis offers his analysis of Arabic literature, he theorizes that two main streams have operated within Arabic poetry, a conservative one and an innovative one. The history of Arabic poetry, he argues, has been that of the conservative vision of literature and society al-thabit , quelling poetic experimentation and philosophical and religious ideas al-mutahawil. Al-thabit, or static current, manifests itself in the triumph of naql conveyance over 'aql original, independent thought ; in the attempt to make literature a servant of religion; and in the reverence accorded to the past whereby language and poetics were essentially Quranic in their source and therefore not subject to change. Adonis devoted much attention to the question of "the modern" in Arabic literature and society, [37] he surveyed the entire Arabic literary tradition and concludes that, like the literary works themselves, attitudes to and analyses of them must be subject to a continuing process of reevaluation.

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