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Adonis or Adunis is a pen name of Ali Ahmad Said. He is poet and essayist, generally considered the Arab world’s greatest living poet. Adonis was born in 1930 in Qassabin, Syria. He began writing poetry in the 1950s . After being jailed (1955) for antigovernment activities, he relocated to Lebanon where he lived and was culturally active. In 1956 he cofounded the journal Shi’r (poetry) and founded in 1968 the avant-garde cultural magazine Mawaqif (positions).
He has lived Paris since the early 1980s and has taught at several universities. Writing in Arabic for a mainly Arab audience. Adonis is a key figure in Arab modernism. His more than 20 books include the poetry of Aghani Mihyar ad-Dimashqi (song of Mihyar the Damascene) (1961).
Arguably, one of the most intriguing minds of the Occidental world in the 21st Century. Adonis is primarily renowned as a poet and philosopher having written over thirty books and lectured Arab Literature and Culture at prestigious Universities such as Sorbonne and Priceton.
Less known about this formidable man are his original collages on paper, where Adonis combines the poetics of text with the poetics of visual languages to create a world of intimate and wonderfully whimsical narratives.
The calligraphic text used as a densely rhythmical backdrop - to the silhouetted protagonists made of ready-made objects – represents words by great masters of the Arabic language- Al-Ma’rri, Abu Tamman, Al Mutanabi and Waddah al-Yaman.
What they all have in common is a particular rebelliousness of spirit, a penchant for refusal and compulsion for changed- all revived through Adonis’ works and his own expressive visual renderings.
“Text is only one form of truth.” (Adonis)
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