is he great syrian poet and like many of his compatriots, artist or not, lives in exile Paris is far from a war with a hopeless wound in his heart. Adonis is 93 years old. Your real name Ali Ahmed Said Esber. He wrote the lines he sent to Syrian newspapers when he was still a teenager, until one of the newspapers published the first of his poems he had written until then. Because it was hidden under the pseudonym Adonis, the newspaper placed an ad on its front page so that “Adonis” would appear in the newsroom. They wanted to meet him, ask him for more articles. He appeared there, surprising everyone with his poetic wit, and he remained under that pseudonym.
in print poetry collection, in adonia, presented recently Guadalajara Mexico International Book FairWhere the culture of the Arab world is invited, its interpreters (Trino Cruz and his grandson Jaafar Al Aluni) say it is this name that usually sounds like this: possible Nobel Prize It was chosen by the poet because it is a nickname “neither Arab nor Muslim” and “it is rooted in the ancient myths of the Eastern Mediterranean”. Since he was born as Adonis, it means “his third birth, the moment of breaking and opening up to the world.”
The book, which has a wide presentation at the biggest literary festival of the Spanish language, is published by Vaso Roto. His forewords and translators are the result of “intelligent and inspiring” research that Adonis has conducted since he was an anonymous teenager and later under a pseudonym that is now more than just a proper name. According to Cruz and Al Aluni, this anthological book “plays an integrative and illuminating role throughout his work. It manages to express and synthesize something important in it. a powerful writing that can change our perspective and revitalize our lives, to break down the obstacles that stand in the way of our history, memory, life and existence”.
In the anthology published by Vaso Roto, it is “a journey into the bowels of history, poet and man in this contemporary world, which, as he himself points out, has become an unscrupulous and unlimited market”. “Adonaida”its interpreters say, “it takes us deep into exile and shows us how in a perverse turn our nature imposes itself as the main source of our freedom.”
In the guise of a typical French gentleman who had not lost his Syrian demeanor, disguised as a civilian monk, Adonis walked through the Guadalajara fair with the grace of a passer-by and the angry melancholy of one who had a frenzy in his eyes. expelled from the city. Bazaar crazy Re-living in the city in another form of contemporary madness. The scar that his poem mentions is not on his warm face, but his smile accompanies him, as he works as a translator and runs the magazine, just like his grandson, Al Al Aluni, who lives in Madrid. banipal, devoted to modern Arabic literature and was founded two years ago “through the individual efforts of a couple of Iraqi writer Samuel Shimon and British publisher Margaret Obank”…
He replied in writing to his grandson what it was like to live with Adonis. an ambiguous scent that could be the scent of mythology and childhood, light, air, water, herbs, herbs, and flowers, The scent of Syria, where we both came from, the scent of the labor pains she’s been in for more than ten years”.
In Mexico, among themselves and with many of his fans who went to listen to him, this encounter with Adonis was seen as “an endless conversation about free freedom, concerns, Arab issues, travel, death, cities, identity.” and exile. Al Aluni visited the Mexican Museum of Anthropology, which he directed with his grandfather. Juan Rulfo“and there my grandfather evoked his friend Octavia SunI saw the tears in their eyes. Maybe she saw in him an image of her approaching body.”
Al Aluni continued to say about his grandfather’s current attitude following the death of his friends: “New and deep wounds are opening… Between one room and the other, Adonis reads heaven and earth in one book. From drawings, sculptures, masks and murals arose languages that questioned theirs and mine and took them all over the world”.
At one point the grandson asked the grandfather:
-Adonis, what is traveling for you after exhausting the suns, their darkness and their light?
And Adonis answered him:
–Gezi is nothing but an excuse to see the outer space, the inner space and to confirm the self, the individuality, that individuality that Islam and monotheistic religions in general have abolished. In order to see the visible better, it is essential to see the invisible.
The grandson also asked him about his limits and the limits of the other. What is a city and what are its borders? Who are you and what is your identity? And this is what his grandfather told him:
Traveling reveals the vast unknown spaces within us. The more we delve into them, the more we discover about our unknowns. Our curtains will change. Wherever we go, we better understand this moving, mysterious and vast exile in which we live and remain on the horizon.
“And the exile, Adonis?”
It is not the exile of space, not the political one, but it is the feeling that surrounds all creators, regardless of language, when they feel it exists. their creative work is a huge gap between what they really want to express and what they actually or truly express. This is the creator’s true exile, his existential exile, at the end of his life, when he feels that he has accomplished nothing after years of exhausting cities filled with adventures. From this point of view, political exile becomes superficial and easy in the face of this existential exile that goes deep into every human being.
Adonis spoke with the same philosophical simplicity in front of an audience-filled auditorium. And in front of a group of journalists, he descended into the realm of reality, where we professionals, those who ask questions about what’s going on, call him. This is a summary of the Syrian poet’s question and answers. Q. What are the desires that move your day from day to day?
r. Thank you for such an honest question. Time is the space of desires. Now, at my age, I let go of personal desires and wish for new relationships to be built on the horizon: freedom, culture and democracy for all people and all nations. In this sense, I want this time to be a time of interculturality, collaboration and creation. Sincere wishes… I’ll leave them to myself, thank you.
Q. Do you think the public is obsessed with one truth?
r. They often take my verses out of context, so it’s hard to explain them later. But, namely: I criticize the city and its citizens. Just as the city is built, it also disrupts its relationship with nature. Man was born with nature, clouds, countryside, mountains, and if man loses his relationship with nature, he loses himself. So the deep conflict of humanity today is precisely the relationship of man to nature. Personally, although I am from the city, I have always preferred the countryside.
Q. What do you think about the reaction and oppression of women in Iran?
r. This question must be understood in its own context: In the three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the status of women is secondary. We should not forget this when talking about Iran and demand that women be freed from these religious chains. We should also mention the male tyranny in Iranian society. Or all over the world. In other words, when talking about Iran, we should not forget the suffering of women in Palestine, the USA or China. Because in societies, the submission of women means the submission of men.
Poetry is the only place where I feel absolute freedom and control myself and my will.
Adonis, poet
Q. After writing poetry for over 70 years, how would you describe poetry today?
r. Poetry and writing in general are very important to me. Poetry is the only place where I feel absolute freedom and control myself and my will. I want to convey that feeling to the reader so that the reader can feel the freedom I feel. Poetry is the air of this world, it is the sun of existence. Through poetry we renew ourselves and see ourselves.
Q. How would you describe the poetic experience after writing your autobiography?
r. Poetic experience is always an opening to horizon, life and thought. Poetry teaches us that human identity is a clear path to that horizon. Poetry is opening up to everything, change, transformation.
Q. How are myths and traditions transformed through poetry?
r. Time is numbers, seconds, minutes from a mathematical point of view. But in creative moments, time is something else. When we read Homer in school, we read it as a historical document, but we feel his poetic world within us, here and now. That’s why I say poetry has no time. Poetry is not part of time. Rather: time is part of the poem. The theme was always the same: love, death, existence… But if we turn to the poems written in ancient Mesopotamia today and compare them with the poems of today, you will see that the previous ones were more important than the old ones. past. The question today is how the world and people were viewed then and how it is viewed today. Technologies invented today, such as airplanes bombing people’s homes, are not a development of intelligence. For me, a farmer working in the field is smarter. The ones in Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology are also more important to me than anything produced in modern Mexico.
It is the person who can make the change. In this sense, hope always prevails in man, and in the future the road opens to eternity.
Adonis, poet
Q. Why is there always hope in your work after experiencing so much violence?
r. After all, man is the axis of the universe. It is the person who can make the change. In this sense, hope always wins in man, and in the future the road opens to eternity. So: if man is the basis of the universe, you should always have hope.
Who speaks in Q. Adonis?
r. The poet speaks in my poems. A poet who does not set out from the void and composes verses from what exists in this universe. The poet cannot talk about the future without knowing the past. Because the past always leaves us a legacy of the best, despite all the obstacles it has. An example: Franco ruled for a long time, but who lives among us today? lorca