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