{"id":16459,"date":"2019-02-24T17:27:12","date_gmt":"2019-02-24T22:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=16459"},"modified":"2019-02-24T17:27:12","modified_gmt":"2019-02-24T22:27:12","slug":"5-books-by-etel-adnan-born-on-this-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/5-books-by-etel-adnan-born-on-this-day\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Books by Etel Adnan, Born on This Day"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

via ArabLit, a welcome homage to one of my favorite writers:<\/p>\n

Multilingual Lebanese poet, painter, and prose-artist Etel Adnan was born on February 24, 1925, in Beirut. This is her ninety-fourth birthday:<\/em><\/p>\n

As philosopher, poet, and painter, Adnan\u2019s experimental and surrealist work has a wide range of influences, from Rimbaud to\u00a0Jalal Toufic. She has been most prolific as a poet, and has published more than a dozen collections of poetry. She has many different literary awards, and in\u00a02014 was named a \u201cChevalier des Arts et des Lettres.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

In honor of her 94th, five places to start:<\/p>\n

\"\"
From \u2018Arab Apocalypse\u2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

(1)<\/strong> Sitt Marie Rose<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Classic, which won the \u201cFrance-Pays Arabes\u201d award and has been translated into more than a dozen languages,\u00a0was published first in Arabic translation, in 1977, although it was written in French. The book is set before and during Lebanon\u2019s civil war and is based on the story of a woman kidnapped, later murdered, by the Christian Phalangists for her support of Palestinians. Many still consider it a defining novel of Lebanon\u2019s civil war. As Nana Asfour wrote in The Paris Review<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cBeirut is humiliated,\u201d she wrote in the novel Sitt Marie Rose<\/em>, which, though published only three years into the war, concisely captures the experience of living there throughout the many years of fighting\u2014for children and adults. \u201cShe suffered the defeat; she\u2019s the one who lost. She\u2019s like a dog with her tail between her legs. She was heedless to the point of folly. She gathered the manners and customs, the flaws and vengeance, the guilt and debauchery of the whole world into her own belly. Now she has thrown it all up, and that vomit fills all her spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n

(2)<\/strong> The Arab Apocalypse\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Also a classic, this book was translated from the French by the author. As Aditi Machado wrote in\u00a0Jacket2<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Of the several rubrics under which The Arab Apocalypse<\/em> may be read \u2014 hybrid text, visual poetry, surrealism, translation, postcolonialism \u2014 it is its nature as a work of witness that most commands my attention.<\/p>\n

\"\"(3) In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The excerpt To Be In A Time Of War<\/a>\u00a0begins:<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

To say nothing, do nothing, mark time, to bend, to straighten up, to blame oneself, to stand, to go toward the window,
\nto change one\u2019s mind in the process, to return to one\u2019s chair, to stand again, to go to the bathroom, to close the door, to then open the door, to go to the kitchen, to not eat nor drink, to return to
\nthe table, to be bored, to take a few steps on the
\nrug, to come close to the chimney, to look at it, to find it dull, to turn left until the main door, to come back to the
\nroom, to hesitate, to go on, just a bit, a trifle, to stop, to
\npull the right side of the curtain, then the other side, to stare at the wall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

(4)<\/strong> Paris, When It\u2019s Naked<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Katie Logan<\/a>, who recently taught with this book:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m especially interested in this text right now because Adnan wrote it immediately after the formation of the European Union. Throughout the work, her narrator often muses on what\u2019s in store for Paris\u2014and in particular, non-Europeans living in Paris\u2014now that European identity has been prioritized and solidified. The narrator predicts that the Union will not be able to survive major challenges to its expanded but still insular borders, which is eerily akin to what we\u2019ve seen with the Brexit vote and revisions to Schengen Zone policies over the past few years. I wanted to conclude with a text interested in envisioning futures of belonging in order to get my students thinking about where we go next.<\/p>\n

\"\"(5)<\/strong> Sea and Fog<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Winner of the Lambda Award for lesbian poetry and the California Book Award for Poetry, this book was also a runner-up for the 2013 Arab American Book Award. In assembling an issue of Lebanese writing for\u00a0Missing Slate\u00a0<\/em>in 2014, I chose \u201cFog\u201d.<\/a>\u00a0From the poem:<\/p>\n

Time and fog escape our grasp. But when I drive through a
\nvisiting cloud, though limited to a (blissful) moment, I negotiate
\ndirectly with a cosmic happening. I domesticate an impersonal
\npart of nature.<\/p>\n

Time is my country, fog is my land.<\/p>\n

From the Poetry Foundation, poems by Adnan:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n