Arhive etichete: english

Adonis, poezia araba de azi (engleza)

adoniss_1_innerbigAmong the 17 best poetry books of the Fall 2010, Hunffington post lists a collection of Selected poems by Adonis translated in English for Yale University Press.

Adonis (Adunis)  is the contemporay Syrian poet that „grew international fame in the 1970s and 1980s as one of the Arab world’s leading poets, as well as one of its best-known intellectuals and critics. Finally, there is the Adonis of the 1990s and of the new century, grand old man of Arabic letters, university professor, author of some of the most controversial writings on Arabic culture of the last half century.”

(foto Time Out Dubai)

„what links these decades together, as well as the poetic and critical work they produced, is Adonis’s permanent commitment to an open future, which should take the legacy of the past forwards and outwards, resisting the temptation to be content with inherited attitudes. ”

According to Adonis, „Arab poetic modernity consists of a radical questioning that explores the poetic language and that opens up new experimental areas for writing. Writing here continually puts Arab civilisation in question, while at the same time putting itself in question.”

from Al Ahram Weekly

Desire Moving Through Maps of Matter
No, I have no country
except for these clouds rising as mist from lakes of poetry.
Shelter me, Dhawd, guard me, Dhawd! --
my language, my home--
I hang you like a charm around the throat of this era
and explode my passions in your name
not because you are a temple
not because you are my father or mother
but because I dream of laughter, and I weep through you
so that I translate my insides
and cling to you as I tremble as my sides shudder like windows
shaken by a wind let loose from God's fingers.

from HP

And also a poem Adonis read in Arab followed by an English translation of his poem at Prague Writers Festival in 2009 Continuă lectura Adonis, poezia araba de azi (engleza)

citam: caligrafia araba

Noble Calligraphers

The lines of calligraphers have neither beginning nor end as they constantly link and unlink. The calligrapher’s work lies in search of the absolute; his aim is to penetrate the sense of truth in an infinite movement so as to go beyond the existing world and thus achieve union with God.

– Salah al-Ali (quotes in Musee d’art et d’histoire. „Islamic Calligraphy: Sacred and Secular Writings”. Catalog of an exhibition held at the Musee d’art et d’histoire, Geneva and other locations 1988-1989, p. 30)

Calligraphers were dedicated to their work. David James writes in Sacred and Secular Writings (1988, p.22) that calligraphers often wrote, not at a small table but seated on the floor, holding the paper on their knees and supporting it with a piece of cardboard. Calligraphers had to be trained from a young age, sometimes from childhood; they studied examples called mufradat which had the letters of the alphabet written out singly and in combination with other letters.

The great calligraphers could write perfectly even without the proper tools and materials. Although a calligraphic master might be deprived of the use of his preferred hand either as a punishment or in the battle field, he would learn to write equally well with his other hand. When the other hand failed him, he would astound his admirers by using his mouth or feet to hold the pen.

An aspiring scribe would observe his predecessors’ art very carefully. To perfect his touch, sharpen his skills, and find a style of his preference, the scribe would imitate the masters of calligraphy with a diligent hand. Welch (1979, p. 34) cites the following quote from the Sultan Ali’s treatise on calligraphy:

Collect the writing of the masters,
Throw a glance at this and at that,
For whomsoever you feel a natural attraction,
Besides his writing, you must not look at others,
So that your eye should become saturated with his writing,
And because of his writing each of your letters should
become like a pearl.
de AICI
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