What do you think?
Rate this book
Night
Etel Adnan’s evocative new book places night at its center to unearth memories held in the body, the spirit and the landscape. This striking new book continues Adnan’s meditative observation and inquiry into the experiences of her remarkable life.
48 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 31, 2016
19 people are currently reading
1056 people want to read
About the author
Etel Adnan
92 books354 followersEtel Adnan was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1925. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, U.C. Berkeley, and at Harvard, and taught at Dominican College in San Rafael, California, from 1958–1972.
In solidarity with the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), Adnan began to resist the political implications of writing in French and became a painter. Then, through her participation in the movement against the Vietnam War (1959–1975), she began to write poetry and became, in her words, “an American poet.” In 1972, she returned to Beirut and worked as cultural editor for two daily newspapers—first for Al Safa, then for L’Orient le Jour. Her novel Sitt Marie-Rose, published in Paris in 1977, won the France-Pays Arabes award and has been translated into more than ten languages.
In 1977, Adnan re-established herself in California, making Sausalito her home, with frequent stays in Paris. Adnan is the author of more than a dozen books in English, including Journey to Mount Tamalpais (1986), The Arab Apocalypse (1989), In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country (2005), and Sea and Fog (2012), winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and the California Book Award for Poetry. Her most recent books are Night (2016) and Surge (2018). In 2014, she was awarded one of France’s highest cultural honors: l’Ordre de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. Numerous museums have presented solo exhibitions of Adnan’s work, including SFMoMA; Zentrum Paul Klee; Institute du Monde Arabe, Paris; Serpentine Galleries; and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Qatar.
In solidarity with the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), Adnan began to resist the political implications of writing in French and became a painter. Then, through her participation in the movement against the Vietnam War (1959–1975), she began to write poetry and became, in her words, “an American poet.” In 1972, she returned to Beirut and worked as cultural editor for two daily newspapers—first for Al Safa, then for L’Orient le Jour. Her novel Sitt Marie-Rose, published in Paris in 1977, won the France-Pays Arabes award and has been translated into more than ten languages.
In 1977, Adnan re-established herself in California, making Sausalito her home, with frequent stays in Paris. Adnan is the author of more than a dozen books in English, including Journey to Mount Tamalpais (1986), The Arab Apocalypse (1989), In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country (2005), and Sea and Fog (2012), winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and the California Book Award for Poetry. Her most recent books are Night (2016) and Surge (2018). In 2014, she was awarded one of France’s highest cultural honors: l’Ordre de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. Numerous museums have presented solo exhibitions of Adnan’s work, including SFMoMA; Zentrum Paul Klee; Institute du Monde Arabe, Paris; Serpentine Galleries; and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Qatar.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
February 1, 2024
Is memory produced by us, or is it us? Our identity is very
likely whatever our memory decides to retain. But let's
not presume that memory is a storage room. It’s not a tool
for being able to think, it’s thinking, before thinking. It
also makes an (apparently) simple thing like crossing the
room, possible. It’s impossible to separate it from what it
remembers.
[...]
And night and memory mediate each other. We move in
them disoriented, for they often refuse to secure our vision.
Avaricious, whimsical, they release things bit by bit.
[...]
Let’s think: the sea is terrifying; of course, when its whole mass
stands up and creates havoc with its waves, we run for shelter.
But she’s more treacherous than that; she calms down, and her
being then unfolds fully, and whoever looks then at her long
enough is mesmerized, is out of his own being, transmuted...
that person will rather drown in her than continue to face that
attraction which keeps the universe being.
likely whatever our memory decides to retain. But let's
not presume that memory is a storage room. It’s not a tool
for being able to think, it’s thinking, before thinking. It
also makes an (apparently) simple thing like crossing the
room, possible. It’s impossible to separate it from what it
remembers.
[...]
And night and memory mediate each other. We move in
them disoriented, for they often refuse to secure our vision.
Avaricious, whimsical, they release things bit by bit.
[...]
Let’s think: the sea is terrifying; of course, when its whole mass
stands up and creates havoc with its waves, we run for shelter.
But she’s more treacherous than that; she calms down, and her
being then unfolds fully, and whoever looks then at her long
enough is mesmerized, is out of his own being, transmuted...
that person will rather drown in her than continue to face that
attraction which keeps the universe being.
April 7, 2017
[Note: My following review first appeared in Al Jadid (Vol 21, No. 72).]
“Philosophy brings us back to simplicity”: Night
By Etel Adnan
Nightboat Books, 2016
By Angele Ellis
Before Etel Adnan became a renowned poet, novelist, and painter, she was a professor of philosophy, moving from Beirut to the Sorbonne, from UC Berkeley to Harvard, and then to California’s Dominican College to teach the subject for fourteen years. In her latest book of poems, Night (named to The New York Times Best of Poetry list in 2016), Adnan employs aphorisms—pithy and expansive, personal and cosmic—as the prelude to a poem, “Conversations with my soul.”
Adnan’s aphorisms in Night have reminded some reviewers of Nietzsche and Rilke, and references to a number of philosophers and artists (including Nietzsche, Thelonius Monk, Khayyam, Hegel, Van Gogh, Anne Waldman, Charles Olson, Ezra Pound) enrich the text. This reviewer, however, immediately thought of Pascal’s Pensées. In her meditation on and celebration of the properties of night, Adnan seems to place herself in opposition to the Pascal who wrote: Le silence eternel des ces espaces infinis m'effraie (The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me) with this mind-blowing aphorism:
There are roughly 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, the same number
as for the neurons in our brain. We may have to travel 24 trillion miles
to the first star outside our star system to find an object as complex as
the one sitting on our shoulders.
And a series of linked aphorisms later in the book has the power of both prayer and a religious credo:
It was said that people mattered, which they did, and we lost their shine.
It was also said that God is light, so that nobody and nothing could see
him. But some did. Therefore he is not light.
He resides in night. There’s an affinity between the functions of our brain
and those of God. He is memory, and the brain is an agent borrowing
that memory, and it functions in total darkness. Like everything divine.
What we mean by “God” is that he is night. Reality is night too. From
the same night.
Yet Adnan’s night—as in the cover illustration of her book—is the darkness of outer space punctuated by bursts of starlight. The pulsing heart of this night resides in memory, in humans as well as in God: “To see something is to remember it. Otherwise there is no seeing.” Adnan’s memories span continents and decades of varieties of experiences and relationships—with countries, cities, nature, art, and other human beings. Philosophy, however, renders memory a porous and treacherous riddle:
My memories form a forest with unstable boundaries. This forest has
entrances in Northern California, Lebanon, Brittany…It’s a field of tall
trees and strange spirits. The dead do not scare us, that’s what’s wrong—
we have let go of the power of fear. Streams are running, yes, but who’s
going to tell me how to find a way in the territory I’m speaking of, and
if I don’t find it, what am I living for?
The short second section of Night is a free verse poem, “Conversations with my soul.” Adnan, addressing “my soul “ as tenderly as she might a child or a beloved, provides consolation, if no definitive answer to that question. In this deep, wise book—with which a reader might spend hours or years, and not count the difference—a venerable writer and thinker continues to turn over the meaning of existence, with its loves and sorrows and inevitable deaths:
…Dear soul, we
will part,
me becoming thinner
than dust
you, vanishing into a strange
openness
tonight, I
have invited
my shadow.
“Philosophy brings us back to simplicity”: Night
By Etel Adnan
Nightboat Books, 2016
By Angele Ellis
Before Etel Adnan became a renowned poet, novelist, and painter, she was a professor of philosophy, moving from Beirut to the Sorbonne, from UC Berkeley to Harvard, and then to California’s Dominican College to teach the subject for fourteen years. In her latest book of poems, Night (named to The New York Times Best of Poetry list in 2016), Adnan employs aphorisms—pithy and expansive, personal and cosmic—as the prelude to a poem, “Conversations with my soul.”
Adnan’s aphorisms in Night have reminded some reviewers of Nietzsche and Rilke, and references to a number of philosophers and artists (including Nietzsche, Thelonius Monk, Khayyam, Hegel, Van Gogh, Anne Waldman, Charles Olson, Ezra Pound) enrich the text. This reviewer, however, immediately thought of Pascal’s Pensées. In her meditation on and celebration of the properties of night, Adnan seems to place herself in opposition to the Pascal who wrote: Le silence eternel des ces espaces infinis m'effraie (The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me) with this mind-blowing aphorism:
There are roughly 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, the same number
as for the neurons in our brain. We may have to travel 24 trillion miles
to the first star outside our star system to find an object as complex as
the one sitting on our shoulders.
And a series of linked aphorisms later in the book has the power of both prayer and a religious credo:
It was said that people mattered, which they did, and we lost their shine.
It was also said that God is light, so that nobody and nothing could see
him. But some did. Therefore he is not light.
He resides in night. There’s an affinity between the functions of our brain
and those of God. He is memory, and the brain is an agent borrowing
that memory, and it functions in total darkness. Like everything divine.
What we mean by “God” is that he is night. Reality is night too. From
the same night.
Yet Adnan’s night—as in the cover illustration of her book—is the darkness of outer space punctuated by bursts of starlight. The pulsing heart of this night resides in memory, in humans as well as in God: “To see something is to remember it. Otherwise there is no seeing.” Adnan’s memories span continents and decades of varieties of experiences and relationships—with countries, cities, nature, art, and other human beings. Philosophy, however, renders memory a porous and treacherous riddle:
My memories form a forest with unstable boundaries. This forest has
entrances in Northern California, Lebanon, Brittany…It’s a field of tall
trees and strange spirits. The dead do not scare us, that’s what’s wrong—
we have let go of the power of fear. Streams are running, yes, but who’s
going to tell me how to find a way in the territory I’m speaking of, and
if I don’t find it, what am I living for?
The short second section of Night is a free verse poem, “Conversations with my soul.” Adnan, addressing “my soul “ as tenderly as she might a child or a beloved, provides consolation, if no definitive answer to that question. In this deep, wise book—with which a reader might spend hours or years, and not count the difference—a venerable writer and thinker continues to turn over the meaning of existence, with its loves and sorrows and inevitable deaths:
…Dear soul, we
will part,
me becoming thinner
than dust
you, vanishing into a strange
openness
tonight, I
have invited
my shadow.
November 28, 2021
"There are roughly 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, the same number as for the neurons in our
brain. We may have to travel 24 trillion miles to the first star outside our star system to find an object as complex as the one that is sitting on our shoulders."
brain. We may have to travel 24 trillion miles to the first star outside our star system to find an object as complex as the one that is sitting on our shoulders."
Read
May 27, 2025I read a snippet of this in a workshop and liked it so much I wanted to read the whole thing… I could not at any point find a foothold in this or even locate the moment of beauty that had moved me previously…. Simone Weil writes: It is better to say, “I am suffering,” than to say, “This landscape is ugly.”
May 2, 2017
So many beautiful combinations of words. This short book didn't really have individual poems, but was instead separated by little moons. I loved the thought-provoking lines/stanzas that filled the pages and the existential, spiritual feelings that encompassed the piece.
August 8, 2020
Reading this at the right place (sunset lake view at Jarvis, again) + at the right time (someone at the library has been requesting this book on hold, it is overdue, and now I must return it—tomorrow) but there were lines that resonated with me tonight more than if I were reading them indoors, in bed, vs. outside, anxious, facing the restless water.
----------------------------------------
The Indian will not cut the grass because, he says, that's his mother's hair, and I assured him that I will not break a stone because that might well be his spirit's house (9).
The world came into being, and didn't ask for maintenance; (11)
Is memory produced by us, or is it us? (14)
Desiring desire: that's when a body disintegrates, and contaminates every river it has ever known (18)
A cool summer breeze is different from a winter's same temperature (19)
To look at the green leaves against the black trunks of the trees is similar to asking a question (23)
where knowledge of the void is knowledge of fullness? (24)
My breathing is a tide. Love doesn't die. (27)
Obscurity is half-memory, half-sensation (28)
The hours were raining like autumn leaves (29)
Water brings energy the way memory creates identity (34)
Night is the overflow of Being (34)
I'm asking you to see me lie on the traces that your body has left on the bed, but the heat belongs to you within our souls (35)
One day, the sun will not rise at its hour, therefore that won't be a day (36)
----------------------------------------
The Indian will not cut the grass because, he says, that's his mother's hair, and I assured him that I will not break a stone because that might well be his spirit's house (9).
The world came into being, and didn't ask for maintenance; (11)
Is memory produced by us, or is it us? (14)
Desiring desire: that's when a body disintegrates, and contaminates every river it has ever known (18)
A cool summer breeze is different from a winter's same temperature (19)
To look at the green leaves against the black trunks of the trees is similar to asking a question (23)
where knowledge of the void is knowledge of fullness? (24)
My breathing is a tide. Love doesn't die. (27)
Obscurity is half-memory, half-sensation (28)
The hours were raining like autumn leaves (29)
Water brings energy the way memory creates identity (34)
Night is the overflow of Being (34)
I'm asking you to see me lie on the traces that your body has left on the bed, but the heat belongs to you within our souls (35)
One day, the sun will not rise at its hour, therefore that won't be a day (36)
January 5, 2025
I found this difficult to understand. But still moving and it had an interesting take on a topic you don’t think about much, I guess the connection between thoughts and reality. I’m new to poetry okay …
Type stuff you don’t think would be in a poetry book. Also type stuff makes you feel on drugs to think about. I’m moved that she wrote this when she was like 90? 5 years before she died? :0
Type stuff you don’t think would be in a poetry book. Also type stuff makes you feel on drugs to think about. I’m moved that she wrote this when she was like 90? 5 years before she died? :0
April 22, 2021
brief yet wide acceptance of releasing of the soul into the dark. "in its will to protect the living from the maddening effect of a constant person, nature created memory. an escape. a rest. everything i do is memory. even everything i am."
September 24, 2023
Finished in one sitting.
Adnan’s poems/aphorism are laden with philosophy and deep-thought. I liked Night better than Sea & Fog. A must read for poets who wants to do some contemplation or reflection.
8/10 would recommend
Adnan’s poems/aphorism are laden with philosophy and deep-thought. I liked Night better than Sea & Fog. A must read for poets who wants to do some contemplation or reflection.
8/10 would recommend
November 21, 2021
close by
is an uncommon
piece of land,
your territory
in which I encounter
crumbs
from my being
is an uncommon
piece of land,
your territory
in which I encounter
crumbs
from my being
December 21, 2017
i loved the thread of night running throughout the book. i found the work very contemplative and wise.
February 29, 2020
I’m a bit too much of a poetry dope to articulate why I liked this, but I liked it!
August 25, 2023
"In its will to protect the living from the maddening effect of a / constant present, nature created memory. An escape. A rest / Everything I do is memory. Even everything I am."
Etel Adnan meditates on the core of true night—who we are in the dark, what the dark brings to the table, and what dark we come back to. Adnan gently sews in themes of philosophy about memory, nature, the self, fullness, and emptiness. The river of thought that Adnan carves is beautiful and caressing; her language creates so much motion. I felt guided through this collection and began to consider night. How we begin in night and end in it. How night can be warmer than how I have thought about it. Night is the object we all crawl back to and Adnan's poetry makes a home inside of it. Night by Etel Adnan made me see the swirling eternity of night and wish for more.
"My breathing is a tide. Love doesn't die."
Etel Adnan meditates on the core of true night—who we are in the dark, what the dark brings to the table, and what dark we come back to. Adnan gently sews in themes of philosophy about memory, nature, the self, fullness, and emptiness. The river of thought that Adnan carves is beautiful and caressing; her language creates so much motion. I felt guided through this collection and began to consider night. How we begin in night and end in it. How night can be warmer than how I have thought about it. Night is the object we all crawl back to and Adnan's poetry makes a home inside of it. Night by Etel Adnan made me see the swirling eternity of night and wish for more.
"My breathing is a tide. Love doesn't die."
Read
February 16, 2020Poetry is a fickle thing.
Sometimes it strikes the right cord, aligning at just the right space and time to resonate with the thoughts corralled in your head. It doesn't matter how beautiful it is, how much thought was put into it, what it was founded on. All that matters is how it skims the surface of your thoughts like a river stone skipping across its reflection.
Most don't immediately break through. I think some of these never even made it to the surface. Maybe there wasn't enough weight. Or maybe my river was made of glass.
Sometimes it strikes the right cord, aligning at just the right space and time to resonate with the thoughts corralled in your head. It doesn't matter how beautiful it is, how much thought was put into it, what it was founded on. All that matters is how it skims the surface of your thoughts like a river stone skipping across its reflection.
Most don't immediately break through. I think some of these never even made it to the surface. Maybe there wasn't enough weight. Or maybe my river was made of glass.
November 4, 2023
In the other-world, where will I find lodging for the Indians,
the Hiroshima people, the many, many, never buried, and
where Omar Khayyam, he the dust, covered with his own words?
The deer, at this moment, is capering all over the fields.
With each bird flying, time is passing.
We create reality by just being. This is also true for the owl
who's right now dozing on a branch.
Lines of trees lining a dry land form a line of pilgrimage.
There's a beyond-ness to words.
the Hiroshima people, the many, many, never buried, and
where Omar Khayyam, he the dust, covered with his own words?
The deer, at this moment, is capering all over the fields.
With each bird flying, time is passing.
We create reality by just being. This is also true for the owl
who's right now dozing on a branch.
Lines of trees lining a dry land form a line of pilgrimage.
There's a beyond-ness to words.
April 9, 2018
I didn't have any expectations going into this other than I had a suspicion I would like it. The first part is a philosophical prose poem contemplating memory and death. The last part is a conversation with her soul told in verse. Overall, I love the way that Adnan arranges her words; she does it so beautifully.
May 10, 2020
I had to re-read some parts multiple times, which is not uncommon for me when reading poetry.
However the elusiveness was a little much for me to enjoy even though at times I really liked it.
"Night is the overflow of Being"
I enjoyed her way of bringing philosophy to poetry but again at times of really getting in it deep.
I would like to read one of her novels.
However the elusiveness was a little much for me to enjoy even though at times I really liked it.
"Night is the overflow of Being"
I enjoyed her way of bringing philosophy to poetry but again at times of really getting in it deep.
I would like to read one of her novels.
September 18, 2022
A slim volume like most of Adnan’s poetry books but rich and deep and best read slowly. Musings on memory and life and the night. I read this on a solo camping trip a little bit each night, under the stars and in the mists and rain. A perfect atmosphere to ponder any of Adnan’s poetry. One of my favorites of her poetry books along with Sea and Fog.
August 14, 2020
"Why are we lonelier when together, wherever that be?"
The first part is about memory and death and I don't quite understand why I like it? It might be the way it was written or..well I can't think of another reason.. I like it.
The second part—
The first part is about memory and death and I don't quite understand why I like it? It might be the way it was written or..well I can't think of another reason.. I like it.
The second part—
April 18, 2021
‘i peeled every trace of light off the walls. withdrew into blurred definitions.
———
between the “i” and the “me” a rain of poisonous lilacs, and your body next to mine as a distant and forbidden sunken sun.
———
there’s so much life around me, and i will have to leave.’
———
between the “i” and the “me” a rain of poisonous lilacs, and your body next to mine as a distant and forbidden sunken sun.
———
there’s so much life around me, and i will have to leave.’
August 22, 2017
I wanted to like this collection but I dont.
December 16, 2017
There are snippets of brilliance that are left unexplored. At moments, I found myself really enjoying it; however, most of the time it felt a little melodramatic.
August 3, 2019
I agree with all the words here, will read again and again
May 9, 2020
I want to say this is my favorite Etel Adnan book but I think that whenever I finish any Etel Adnan book. A book on memory & souls & personhood & what it means to be in and of nature.
July 31, 2021
A bit more abstract than the poetry I usually like.
November 24, 2021
Pretentious journal entries being passed off as poetry.
March 26, 2022
One of the most beautiful things I have ever read
Everything within this really hit home for me
Everything within this really hit home for me
April 4, 2022
Night contains beautiful and resonant meditations on nature, light, darkness, and existence.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews