About
The Artists
ADONIS
Adonis
(arab. ’Adunis) was born on 01.01.1930 as ‘Ali
Ahmad Sa’id Isbir in Qassabin, a village in the Syrian
Alavite mountains near the port Lattakia. At first he did
not go to school, but his father, a farmer and an imam (cantor)
of the village, gave him a traditional Arab Islamic education.
Thanks to fortunate circumstances he was able to go to the
École de la Mission Laïque Française
in Tartus in 1944, then from 1947 to 1949 to a grammar school
in Lattakia.
His
first poems appeared in magazines in 1947 under the pen-name
Adonis. In 1950 he began studying philosophy in Damascus
and to support the Partie Populaire Syrien (PPS). The first
thing published by him personally was the poem Dalila. In
1954 he completed his course of study with the Licence ès-lettre.
From 1954 to 1956 he served in the army, including 11 months
in jail for political activity. In 1956 he wed Halida Salih,
who, as a literary academic, has since kept a critical eye
on his production.
After
his army service, Adonis went to Beirut in 1956 and worked
as a teacher and a journalist. At the end of this year he
joined the circle of writers associated with the avant-garde
literary magazine Si‘r (Poetry), founded by Yusuf
al-Hal and first published in the spring of 1957. From 1960
to 61 he spent a year in Paris with a grant from the French
government. His literary breakthrough came in 1961 with
the poetry collection ’Agani Mihyar ad-dimasqi (The
Songs of Mihyâr, the Damascan).
In
1962 Adonis acquired the Lebanese nationality. After the
last publication of Si’r in 1964, Adonis, who was
not involved in its republication in 1968, founded the magazine
Mavaqif (Standpoint). In 1971 he spent several weeks in
the USA. In 1973 he took his doctorate at Beirut University
with a study of the history of ideas: ,at-Tabit wal-mutahawwal
(The Static and the Dynamic). He was then engaged as a lecturer
at Beirut State University and at the Université
de Saint-Joseph.
Despite
the Lebanese civil war, which broke out in 1975, Adonis
stayed mostly in Beirut till 1986. In 1980-81 he taught
as a visiting lecturer at the university Censier Paris III,
and in 1984 held four lectures on Arab poetry at the Collège
de France. In 1986 he moved to Paris, where he is still
living, and worked as a cultural advisor for the Arab delegation
at UNESCO. From 1990 to 1993 he taught as visiting professor
at the University in Geneva.
biography
courtesy of culturebase.net
BRUNI
HEYM
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here
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JAFAR
T. KAKI
was
born in in Khanaquín on April 7, 1951.
His father was a photographer and his eldest brother taught
him to colour photography.
By the age of 15 he was already technically skilled in colour
black and white photography.
He went on developing these skills working on his father’s
studio. After he finished his paint studies in the University
of Baghdad, he began to work as official illustrator of
journalism in the Ministry of Culture in Baghdad. He left
that job to move to Spain in 1979 when he settled in Madrid.
A few years ago he acquired Spanish nationality.
