Ali Ahmad Said Esber (, North Levantine: ; born 1 January 1930), also known by the pen name Adonis or Adunis ( ), is a Syrian poet, essayist and translator. He led a modernist revolution in the second half of the 20th century, "exerting a seismic influence" on Arabic poetry comparable to T.S. Eliot's in the anglophone world.
Adonis's publications include twenty volumes of poetry and thirteen of criticism. His dozen books of translation to Arabic include the poetry of Saint-John Perse and Yves Bonnefoy, and the first complete Arabic translation of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (2002). His multi-volume anthology of Arabic poetry ("Dīwān ash-shi'r al-'arabī"), covering almost two millennia of verse, has been in print since its publication in 1964.
A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Adonis has been described as the greatest living poet of the Arab world.
Biography
Early life and education
Born to a modest Alawite farming family in January 1930, Adonis hails from the village of al-Qassabin near the city of Latakia in western Syria. He was unable to afford formal schooling for most of his childhood, and his early education consisted of learning the Quran in the local kuttab (mosque-affiliated school) and memorizing classical Arabic poetry, to which his father had introduced him.
In 1944, despite the animosity of the village chief and his father's reluctance, the young poet managed to recite one of his poems before Shukri al-Quwatli, the president of the newly-established Republic of Syria, who was on a visit to al-Qassabin. After admiring the boy's verses, al-Quwatli asked him if there were anything he needed help with. "I want to go to school," responded the young poet, and his wish was soon fulfilled in the form of a scholarship to the French lycée at Tartus. The school, the last French Lycée school in Syria at the time, was closed in 1945, and Adonis was transferred to other national schools before graduating in 1949. He was a good student, and managed to secure a government scholarship. In 1950 Adonis published his first collection of verse, Dalila, as he joined the Syrian University (now Damascus University) to study law and philosophy, graduating in 1954 with a BA in philosophy. He later earned a doctoral degree in Arabic literature in 1973 from Saint Joseph University.
While serving in the military in 1955–56, Adonis was imprisoned for his membership in the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (following the assassination of Adnan al-Malki), Led by Antoun Saadeh, the SSNP had opposed European colonization of Greater Syria and its partition into smaller nations. The party advocated a secular, national (not strictly Arab) approach toward transforming Greater Syria into a progressive society governed by consensus and providing equal rights to all, regardless of ethnicity or sect.
Name
The name "Adonis" (pronounced ah-doh-NEES) was picked up by Adonis himself at age 17, after being rejected by a number of magazines under his real name, to "alert napping editors to his precocious talent and his pre-Islamic, pan-Mediterranean muses".
Personal life
Adonis was married in 1956 to literary critic Khalida Said (née Saleh), who assisted in editing roles in both Shiʿr and Mawaqif. They have two daughters: Arwad, who is director of the House of World Cultures in Paris; and Ninar, an artist who moves between Paris and Beirut. Adonis has lived in Paris, France, since 1975.
In his book Identité Inachevée he expresses opposition to "religion as an institution imposed on the whole of society" but support of individual religious freedom. He describes himself as a "pagan mystic", elaborating:
In an interview at the occasion of the release of his new book Adoniada in France he stated that, in his view, religion and poetry were contradictory because "religion is an ideology, it is an answer whereas poetry remains always a question".
Beirut and Paris
In 1956, Adonis fled Syria for Beirut, Lebanon. He joined a vibrant community of artists, writers, and exiles; Adonis settled abroad and has made his career largely in Lebanon and France, where in 1957 he cofounded the magazine Majallat Shiʿr ("Poetry Magazine"). The magazine, though arguably the most influential Arab literary journal, met with strong criticism for its publication of experimental poetry. Majallat Shiʿr temporarily ceased publication in 1964, and Adonis did not rejoin the Shiʿr editors when they resumed publication in 1967. He wrote a manifesto dated 5 June 1967 which he published in Al Adab, a Lebanese magazine, and in Souffles, a Moroccan magazine. A French translation of his manifesto appeared in the French magazine Ésprit.