No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Textual Intentions: A Reading Of Adonis' Poem “Unintended Workship Ritual”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2009
Extract
In his long poem entitled “Quddās bi-lā qasd” (Unintended Worship Ritual), the well-known Syrian–Lebanese poet Adonis (Dr. 'Ali Ahmad Sa'īd) celebrates a love relationship with a young woman he came to know while he was a professor at the Syrian University in Damascus. He mentions two dates and two cities at the end of the poem, suggesting perhaps that he began writing the poem in Damascus in January of 1976 and that he finished it in Beirut in August of 1978. He had moved to Damascus from Beirut during the early years of the Lebanese Civil War and accepted a teaching position at the Syrian University, but he later returned to Beirut, where his home had been since he had left his native Syria to become a Lebanese citizen in 1956. The same young woman also inspired him to write a much shorter undated poem entitled “Awwal al-ijtiya” (The Beginning of Sweeping Annihilation) in which his passionate love is expressed in terms of a deep desire to be natural, to give vent to the powers within the self, and to remove what he considers to be the constraints of hypocritical, repressive sociocultural conventions in Arab society.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989
References
1 Adonis, ('Alī Ahmad Sa'īd), Kitāb al-qasxsā'id al-khams talī-hā al-muābaqāt wa-l-awā'il (Beirut, 1980), pp. 85–114. See my English translation below.Google Scholar
2 Adonis, Kitāb al-qasā'id al-khams, pp. 226–31.
3 Naqqāshāt, al-Qassā', al-Muamīdiyya, al-Muhājirīn, and Jaramānā are localities in Damascus, Syria. Qāsiyūn is the mountain overlooking Damascus and Baradā is the river flowing through it. Imru' al-Qays is an Arab poet noted for his love escapades in Arabia before Islam. He died in about AD. 550. Al-Niffarī is an Arab mystic who believed God could be known and seen in this world in stances (mawāqif) of love. He died in about AD. 965. Source: Adonis, Kitāb al-qasā'id al-khams, pp. 85–114. The poem is entitled “Quddās bi-lā qasd, khalīt ihtimālāt….”
4 Adonis, , Muqaddima li-l-shi'r al-'arabī (Beirut, 1971), p. 43;Google Scholarciting al-ūlī, Akhbār Abī Tammām (Cairo, 1937), p.76.
5 See Boullata, Issa J., “Adonis: Revolt in Modern Arabic Poetics,” Edebiyāt, 2, 1 (1977), 1–13.Google Scholar
6 Adonis, , Zamān al-shi'r (Beirut, 1972), p. 200.Google Scholar
7 Deeb, Kamal Abu, “The Perplexity of the All-Knowing: A Study of Adonis,” Mundus Artium, Special Arabic Issue, 10, 1 (1977), 165–66;Google Scholar reprinted in Boullata, Issa J., ed., Critical Perspectives on Modern Arabic Ligeralure (Washington, D.C.. 1980), pp. 307–8.Google Scholar
8 Adonis, Zaman al-shi'r, pp. 20–21.
9 Ibid., p. 200.
10 Ibid., p. 9.
11 For a comprehensive study of Adonis' views on Arabic literature and culture, see Khouri, Mounah A., “A Critique of Adonis's Perspectives on Arabic Literature and Culture,” inGoogle Scholaridem, Studies in Contemporary Arabic Poetry and Criticism (Piedmont, Calif., 1987), pp. 13–41.