Mihyar of Damascus: His Songs
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This breakthrough collection by a major world poet established a new direction in Arabic poetry.Publishers WeeklyThe availability in English of this seminal, startling, volatile, founding work of Arabic-language modernism is a welcome literary event. Adonis, born in Syria in 1930, is likely the most original Arabic poet of his generation; "Mihar" is Adonis's sometimes ecstatic, often despairing alter ego, named for an 11th-century Persian poet, but reminiscent (to Western ears) of Arthur Rimbaud or Cesar Vallejo. Adonis excels both in stately free verse and in the prose poems he calls "Psalms": "I find refuge in night's childhood," he writes, "leaving my head on the morning's knees." Exile and displacement (Adonis fled Syria for political reasons), and awareness of death and disappointment pervade the book's seven groups of lyric works: "Dear Grave: you mark where I end/ and spring begins"; "Falling is my natural condition, paradise my contrary... I announce the attraction of death." Adonis also commemorates individuals, attacks evil ("It is for my land that I bleed") and begs heavenly help ("I call on you, green thunderbolt"). Despite occasional snags, translators Haydar and Beard have brought into English Adonis's paradox-laden, confidently defiant voice, which has already taken its place in the strong currents of world verse. (July)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
I The Knight of Strange WordsPsalm 23Neither a Star 23Mihyar Becomes King 24His Voice 24Another Voice 25Birth of Eyes 25The Days 26Death Call (Voices 1) 26Voice 26Mask of Songs 27In the City of the Partisans 27New Testament 28Between Echo and Call 28Bell 29Where the Sky Ends 29Mihyar's Face 29Indecision (Voices 2) 30He Sleeps in His Own Arms 30He Carries in His Eyes 31Day's Twin 31The Others 32Barbarian Saint 32II The Sorcerer of DustPsalm 37The Wound 38A God Has Died 40Loss 41Stone 42The Fall 42Dialogue 42The Language of Sin 43King over the Winds 43The Rock 44Precipice 44With My Own Secrets 45Your Eyes Never Saw Me 45Dialogue 46Presence 46The Seven Days 47Orpheus 47Land of Magic 47A Vision 48Voyage 48Leave for Us What's Behind You 49I Surrendered My Days 49Bridge of Tears 50I Have No Limits 50Dams 50The Solitary Land 51Wish 51I Said to You 52Defeat 52Enough for You to See 53Chair (A Dream) 53The Lamp 54I Search for Odysseus 54Old Country 55Land with No Return 55Today I Have My Own Language 55The Earth 56A Language for the Distances 57Lightning 57My Shadow and the Earth's 58Odysseus 58III The Dead GodPsalm 63Stone's Mirror 64Song 64One Time Only 65The Second Land 65Confession 65Prayer 66Traveler 66Thunderbolt 67After the Silence 67The Godly Wolf 68Children's Footsteps 68The Thunderbolt's Stone 68Lost Face 69I Create a Land 69Betrayal 69Seashell 70The Dead God 70Sacrifice 70To Sisyphus 71A God Who Loves to Suffer 71The Spectacle (ADream) 72Winds of Madness 72You Have No Choice 73IV Iram of the PillarsPsalm 77Vision 78City (Voices) 79Innocence 79Prostitute 80Spell 80Two Corpses 80The Golden Age 81Things 81Dress Up in Sand 82The City 82It May Become My Country 83For My Land 83The Rapture of Madness 83Homeland 84Distant Face 84Voice 85Vision 85Shaddad 87V These Petty TimesPsalm 91Day 92Road 92No Words Between Us 92Farewell 93Death 93Luminous Winds 93Shell 94Land of Absence 94Letter 95The Lost Ones 95Loss 95The Sun Returns 96The Stone in Love 96Flags 97Flood 97These Petty Times 98City 98VI Edge of the WorldPsalm 103Journey 103Edge of the World 103Adam 104Island of Stone 104Crow's Feather 104Dawn Cuts Its Own Thread 106The Door 106Who Are You? 107The New Noah 107VII Persistent DeathElegy Without Death 111Elegy for Omar ibn al-Khattab 111Elegy for Abu Nuwas 111Elegy for al-Hallaj 112Elegy for Bashshar 113Elegy 113Elegy 114Notes on the Poems 115
