'The greatest living poet of the Arab world' Guardian
Cloud, mirror, stone, thunder, eyelid, desert, sea. Through a dead or dying land, Mihyar walks: a figure of heroic individualism and dissent, part-Orpheus, part-Zarathustra. Where he goes, the austere building-blocks of his world become the expressions of passionate emotion, of visionary exaltation and despairing melancholy. The traditions of the Ancient Greeks, the Bible and the Quran flow about and through him.
Written in the cosmopolitan Beirut of the early 1960s, Adonis's Songs of Mihyar the Damascene did for Arabic poetry what The Waste Land did for English. These are poems against authoritarianism and dogma, in which a new Noah would abandon his ark to dive with the condemned, and in which surrealism and Sufi mysticism meet and intertwine. The result is a masterpiece of world literature.
Translated by Kareem James Abu Zeid and Ivan Eubanks
'The most eloquent spokesman and explorer of Arabic modernity' Edward Said
| ISBN: | 9780241483558 |
| Publication date: | 25th February 2021 |
| Author: | Adunis |
| Publisher: | Penguin Classics an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 256 pages |
| Series: | Penguin Modern Classics |
| Genres: |
Poetry by individual poets Mysticism Modern and contemporary poetry (c 1900 onwards) |
'The greatest living poet of the Arab world' Guardian
Cloud, mirror, stone, thunder, eyelid, desert, sea. Through a dead or dying land, Mihyar walks: a figure of heroic individualism and dissent, part-Orpheus, part-Zarathustra. Where he goes, the austere building-blocks of his world become the expressions of passionate emotion, of visionary exaltation and despairing melancholy. The traditions of the Ancient Greeks, the Bible and the Quran flow about and through him.
Written in the cosmopolitan Beirut of the early 1960s, Adonis's Songs of Mihyar the Damascene did for Arabic poetry what The Waste Land did for English. These are poems against authoritarianism and dogma, in which a new Noah would abandon his ark to dive with the condemned, and in which surrealism and Sufi mysticism meet and intertwine. The result is a masterpiece of world literature.
Translated by Kareem James Abu Zeid and Ivan Eubanks
'The most eloquent spokesman and explorer of Arabic modernity' Edward Said
Songs of Mihyar the Damascene features in the following genres: Poetry by individual poets, Mysticism, Modern and contemporary poetry (c 1900 onwards)
Songs of Mihyar the Damascene is available in Paperback
Songs of Mihyar the Damascene was written by Adunis and published by Penguin Classics an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd
Songs of Mihyar the Damascene has 256 pages
Yes it is part of Penguin Modern Classics series
£8.99