Bøger af Etel Adnan

Den arabiske apokalypse blev skrevet i 1976 som en reaktion på borgerkrigen i Libanon og regnes som Etel Adnans litterære hovedværk. Den udkom på fransk i 1980 og ni år senere på engelsk i Adnans egen gendigtning, som ligger til grund for nærværende oversættelse. Apokalypsen findes ikke kun i krigen, men også i solen, som indtager en bærende rolle i bogen. Solen er hård, voldelig og skifter farve, position og karakter, alt efter hvem, der observerer og fra hvilken position. I Den arabiske apokalypse møder vi ikke bare ord, men også symboler, tal og kalligrafiske tegn. Det er en fragmenteret bog, og en malerisk bog, hvor Adnan på en måde maler på det arabisk, som hun var vokset op med, men aldrig selv talte – en erfaring hun skriver om i det centrale essay “At skrive på et fremmed sprog”, som er inkluderet i denne udgivelse. Etel Adnan (1925–2021) var forfatter og billedkunstner, født og opvokset i Beirut, Libanon. Hun levede store dele af sit liv i Californien og endte sine dage i Paris. Hun skrev over tyve bøger, både på fransk og engelsk, hovedsageligt poesi, men også dramatik og essayistik og ikke mindst romanen Sitt Marie-Rose, der ligeledes er skrevet under den libanesiske borgerkrig, og som nu også foreligger på dansk (OVO press, 2024). Som kunstner arbejdede Adnan bl.a. med maleri, skulptur og film.

Beirut er lemlæstet af borgerkrigen, og på en skole for døvstumme udsættes Sitt Marie-Rose for et brutalt forhør, anklaget for landsforræderi af den kristne milits. Foruden at være en vellidt lærer er Marie-Rose feminist, aktivist og blandt andet engageret i palæstinensernes vanskelige situation i libanesisk eksil. Den mand, som har Marie-Roses skæbne i sine hænder, er den gamle barndomsven, Mounir. Tiden er ved at rinde ud, henrettelsen er nær, og syv stemmer – heriblandt de døvstumme børn, en præst, Marie-Rose selv og Mounir – beretter om hendes liv og krigen. Sitt Marie-Rose udkom på fransk i 1978 og regnes som en klassiker inden for litterære krigsskildringer. Med sjældent set skarphed og smertefuld skønhed skildrer Etel Adnan borgerkrigen, mødet mellem øst og vest i Beirut, fremmedhad og ønsket om at bryde ud af landets og religionernes patriarkalske og koloniale lænker.

Nonfiction. "Written against the background of war at the turn of this century, this millennium--the Gulf War, the Lebanese civil war and the military occupations of that country, the author's country of origin--these letters, OF CITIES AND WOMEN, are in their turn now letters to cities and women--that we, that is, women and men alike, might eventually, before it is too late, 'find the right geography for our revelations.'"--Barbara Harlow

Poetry. Middle Eastern studies. Translated from the French by the author. Reprinted with a new foreward by Jalal Toufic. "This book, a masterwork of the dislocations and radiant outcries of the Arab world, reaffirms Etel Adnan, who authored the great poem, Jebu, as among the foremost poets of the French Language. THE ARAB APOCALYPSE is an immersion into a rapture of chaos clawing towards destiny, and nullified hope refusing its zero. Is is also the journey of soul through the cartography of a global immediacy rarely registered by maps, replete with signposts like hieroglyphs in a storm of shrapnel and broken glass. And above all it is a book that, though capable of being read in its orderly sequence, has so surrendered to 'being there,' it can rivet the sensibility to the Middle Eastern condition at any point in the text--so rapid are its mutations, so becoming its becomingness--like a wisdom book or a book of Changes"--Jack Hirschman."It has a power and intensity that few poets today can muster--only Allen Ginsberg's Howl comes to mind."--Alice Molloy"The power of Adnan's language and imagery reminds us that she is indeed one of the most significant post-modern poets in contemporary Arab culture."--Kamal Boullatta"THE ARAB APOCALYPSE is, to date, Adnan's most triumphant battle with the exactness of words."--Douglas Powell"The poem invokes a mythic past of Gilgamesh, Tammouz, and Ishtar to presage a present that resists narration, THE ARAB APOCALYPSE contests an uncritical reflection on the immediate historical past."--Barbara Harlow

Fiction. Translated from the French by Georgina Kleege. SITT MARIE ROSE, an SPD bestseller, is the story of a woman abducted by militiamen during the civil war in Lebanon. Already a classic of war literature, it won the France-Pays Arabes award in Paris and has been translated into six languages.

A lively and spontaneous interview with Etel Adnan about her absolute belief in the beauty of the world and the beauty of art. In these interviews with journalist and editor Laure Adler, conducted in the months before her death in November 2021, Etel Adnan traces with depth and emotion the founding experiences of her artistic approach, between poetry and painting. From her youth in Lebanon, her American years in New York and California, to her late recognition at Documenta in 2012 and her life in France, the conversation covers philosophy, painting, poetry and aesthetics, as well Adnan's views on history and politics in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. These transcripts usher the experiences and observations of Adnan's long and rich life into an intimate and spontaneous conversation with a dear friend-a window on the "universe" of her imagination.

Poetry. "A series of meditations following the sun, SEASONS arrives in mesmerizing waves of observation and reflection. The blue depths of Adnan's inquiry--into the nature of Being, Time, knowledge itself--crest moment upon moment of quiet revelation, as the passions of history, myth, today, and yesterday rage and subside beneath her watchful eye. 'To think is not to contemplate, it's to witness.' So stanzas wash upon the page's horizon, ever moving toward the mind's encounters with the world. Intimate with ephemera, alert to what's hidden, SEASONS seeks the universe within and beyond the spirit's changeable weather, finding everywhere its center."--Megan Pruiett

A luminescent new book by one of our leading innovative writers

Fiction. Etel Adnan's novel "PARIS, WHEN IT'S NAKED amazes our retinas, ears, lips, fingertips, and noses with sensing, talking, and envisioning the city of Baudelaire and Delacroix, Mallarme and Picasso, Sartre and Djuna Barnes, Miller and Nin, Vietnamese and African refugees, revolutions and Bohemia. This tale of the Creative Now is told through the fine-tuned sensibility of Etel Adnan, the expatriate poet-painter who knows the French Capital as wholly as she does Beirut and San Francisco, her other homes. She is also the author of SITT MARIE-ROSE, an underground novel of the Lebanese Civil War, and many books of poetry. Her new work is a philosophically charged lyric in prose. The elan vital of every word evokes the eternal present of this wise woman. A highly personal, life-enhancing masterpiece in a deathly age of impersonality. An indespensable book by an indispensable writer" -Morgan Gibson.

An arresting new translation of poems, originally written in French, by one of our greatest philosopher poets

The 4th volume in the Performance Ideas series. A collection of literary texts, poems, plays, paintings, and drawings, accompanied by an interview on poetry and painting with the author.

A new volume of aphoristic prose and philosophical poetry from Etel Adnan, whose work The New York Times recently described as the "meditative heir to Nietzsche's aphorisms, Rilke's Book of Hours and the verses of Sufi mysticism." She writes: "Reality is messianic/ apocalyptic/ my soul is my terror."

Two striking lyric essays from master poet and philosopher Etel Adnan

A haunting exploration of identity, history, displacement, and war from an Arab American perspective