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The Pages of Day and Night
Calling poetry a "question that begets another question," Adonis sets into motion this stream of unending inquiry with difficult questions about exile, identity, language, politics, and religion. Repeatedly mentioned as a possible Nobel laureate, Adonis is a leading figure in twentieth-century Arabic poetry.
Restless and relentless, Adonis explores the pain and otherness of exile, a state so complete that absence replaces identity and becomes the exile's only presence. Exile can take many forms for the Arabic poet, who must practice his craft as an outsider, separated not only from the nation of his birth but from his own language; in the present as in the past, that exile can mean censorship, banishment, or death. Through these poems, Adonis gives an exquisite voice to the silence of absence.
Restless and relentless, Adonis explores the pain and otherness of exile, a state so complete that absence replaces identity and becomes the exile's only presence. Exile can take many forms for the Arabic poet, who must practice his craft as an outsider, separated not only from the nation of his birth but from his own language; in the present as in the past, that exile can mean censorship, banishment, or death. Through these poems, Adonis gives an exquisite voice to the silence of absence.
- GenresPoetryLiterature
108 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
About the author
Adonis
287 books213 followersAdonis was born Ali Ahmed Said in the village of Al Qassabin in Syria, in 1930, to a family of farmers, the oldest of six children. At the age of nineteen, he adopted the name Adonis (also spelled Adunis), after the Greek god of fertility, with the hopes that the new name would result in newspaper publication of his poems.
Although his family could not afford to send Adonis to school, his father taught him to read poetry and the Qu'ran, and memorize poems while he worked in the fields. When he was fourteen, Adonis read a poem to the president of Syria who was visiting a nearby town. The impressed president offered to grant a request, to which the young Adonis responded that he wanted to attend school. The president quickly made arrangements for Adonis to attend a French-run high school, after which he studied philosophy at Damascus University.
In 1956, after a year-long imprisonment for political activities, Adonis fled Syria for Beirut, Lebanon. He joined a vibrant community of artists, writers, and exiles in Beirut, and co-founded and edited Sh'ir, and later Muwaqaf, both progressive journals of poetry and politics. He studied at St. Joseph University in Beirut and obtained his Doctorat d'Etat in 1973.
Considered one of the Arab world's greatest living poets, Adonis is the author of numerous collections, including Mihyar of Damascus (BOA Editions, 2008), A Time Between Ashes and Roses (Syracuse University Press, 2004); If Only the Sea Could Sleep (2003); The Pages of Day and Night (2001); Transformations of the Lover (1982); The Book of the Five Poems (1980); The Blood of Adonis (1971), winner of the Syria-Lebanon Award of the International Poetry Forum; Songs of Mihyar the Damascene (1961), Leaves in the Wind (1958), and First Poems (1957). He is also an essayist, an editor of anthologies, a theoretician of poetics, and the translator of several works from French into Arabic.
Over the course of his career, Adonis has fearlessly experimented with form and content, pioneering the prose poem in Arabic, and taking a influential, and sometimes controversial role in Arab modernism. In a 2002 interview in the New York Times, Adonis declared: '"There is no more culture in the Arab world. It's finished. Culturally speaking, we are a part of Western culture, but only as consumers, not as creators."
Adonis's awards and honors include the first ever International Nâzim Hikmet Poetry Award, the Syria-Lebanon Best Poet Award, and the Highest Award of the International Poem Biennial in Brussels. He was elected as Stephen Mallarme Academy Member in Paris in 1983. He has taught at the Lebanese University as a professor of Arabic literature, at Damascus University, and at the Sorbonne. He has been a Lebanese citizen since 1961 and currently lives in Paris.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/...
Although his family could not afford to send Adonis to school, his father taught him to read poetry and the Qu'ran, and memorize poems while he worked in the fields. When he was fourteen, Adonis read a poem to the president of Syria who was visiting a nearby town. The impressed president offered to grant a request, to which the young Adonis responded that he wanted to attend school. The president quickly made arrangements for Adonis to attend a French-run high school, after which he studied philosophy at Damascus University.
In 1956, after a year-long imprisonment for political activities, Adonis fled Syria for Beirut, Lebanon. He joined a vibrant community of artists, writers, and exiles in Beirut, and co-founded and edited Sh'ir, and later Muwaqaf, both progressive journals of poetry and politics. He studied at St. Joseph University in Beirut and obtained his Doctorat d'Etat in 1973.
Considered one of the Arab world's greatest living poets, Adonis is the author of numerous collections, including Mihyar of Damascus (BOA Editions, 2008), A Time Between Ashes and Roses (Syracuse University Press, 2004); If Only the Sea Could Sleep (2003); The Pages of Day and Night (2001); Transformations of the Lover (1982); The Book of the Five Poems (1980); The Blood of Adonis (1971), winner of the Syria-Lebanon Award of the International Poetry Forum; Songs of Mihyar the Damascene (1961), Leaves in the Wind (1958), and First Poems (1957). He is also an essayist, an editor of anthologies, a theoretician of poetics, and the translator of several works from French into Arabic.
Over the course of his career, Adonis has fearlessly experimented with form and content, pioneering the prose poem in Arabic, and taking a influential, and sometimes controversial role in Arab modernism. In a 2002 interview in the New York Times, Adonis declared: '"There is no more culture in the Arab world. It's finished. Culturally speaking, we are a part of Western culture, but only as consumers, not as creators."
Adonis's awards and honors include the first ever International Nâzim Hikmet Poetry Award, the Syria-Lebanon Best Poet Award, and the Highest Award of the International Poem Biennial in Brussels. He was elected as Stephen Mallarme Academy Member in Paris in 1983. He has taught at the Lebanese University as a professor of Arabic literature, at Damascus University, and at the Sorbonne. He has been a Lebanese citizen since 1961 and currently lives in Paris.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/...
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
August 25, 2018
Adonis, the name that shows up on potential Nobel winner lists every year but never makes it. He is old and and has one foot in the grave already (perhaps he's even dead, I don't know), and with Nobel being suspended in 2018 and possibly in 2019 it doesn't look likely that Adonis would ever get it. But that is all besides the point. Who cares about Nobel anymore after what they did to themselves these last few years? Adonis's poetry will live on in the hearts and minds of Syrians, Arab readers, and those of us who read him in translation.
I live in the face of a woman
who loses me
so she can be
the lighthouse waiting
in my mad and navigating blood.
I live in the face of a woman
who loses me
so she can be
the lighthouse waiting
in my mad and navigating blood.
June 15, 2020
Adonis says that the Arab poet lives between two exiles: the internal one and the external one or between two hells: the I and the Other.
"The I is not I, nor is it the Other.
Absence and exile constitute the only presence."
He hopes for some promise of a beginning from a poetry and at the same time doubts if it is possible between two exiles when he is prevented from being himself and when he even doesn't live for the Other. He feels that poetry is as if moving to the language and image of death, where both I and the Other discover their deaths.
My eyes are tired, tired of days,
tired regardless of days.
Still, must I drill
through wall after wall
of days to seek another day
Is there? Is there another day?
*
Stricken by the cancer of silence,
I scrawl my poems in the sand
with a crow's feather.
My eyes see nothing but lashes —
no love, no sea,
no wisdom but the earth.
With springs of dust in my blood
I sit all day in this cafe
and wait for someone
to remember me.
*
Memory is a needle
that stitches a carpet of words like threads
"The I is not I, nor is it the Other.
Absence and exile constitute the only presence."
He hopes for some promise of a beginning from a poetry and at the same time doubts if it is possible between two exiles when he is prevented from being himself and when he even doesn't live for the Other. He feels that poetry is as if moving to the language and image of death, where both I and the Other discover their deaths.
My eyes are tired, tired of days,
tired regardless of days.
Still, must I drill
through wall after wall
of days to seek another day
Is there? Is there another day?
*
Stricken by the cancer of silence,
I scrawl my poems in the sand
with a crow's feather.
My eyes see nothing but lashes —
no love, no sea,
no wisdom but the earth.
With springs of dust in my blood
I sit all day in this cafe
and wait for someone
to remember me.
*
Memory is a needle
that stitches a carpet of words like threads
July 24, 2015
أدونيس أيها العبقري المجنون ..........
شاعر الحداثة العربي ..... الذي يغفله العرب ويهتم به الغرب ....
شاعر الحداثة العربي ..... الذي يغفله العرب ويهتم به الغرب ....
November 23, 2019
"When I saw death on a road,
I saw my face in his.
My thoughts resembled locomotives
straining out of fog
and into fog.
Suddenly I felt akin
to a lighting
or a message
scratched in dust."
I saw my face in his.
My thoughts resembled locomotives
straining out of fog
and into fog.
Suddenly I felt akin
to a lighting
or a message
scratched in dust."
March 26, 2024
WOAHHHH i luv history i love turning my history degree into an english degree
April 18, 2017
Some of my favorite lines:
Listen!
I'm calling you to recognize my voice
-- The Messenger
Leave me alone.
A light has always
led me home.
-- In the forest
The pitying stars ignite
and days forget themselves
in my bed
-- The pages of day and night
We scream.
We dream of weeping,
but tears refuse our eyes.
We twist our necks
in zero hurricanes.
-- Elegy for the time at hand
Shall I say now: "I am not myself."
Shall I say: "I have created ashes."
-- Gilgamesh
Every poem in this collection is quotable. Almost all of them are tinged with a bit of melancholy and longing. There are moments of absolute silence and then there are screams of despair echoing from the empty streets. This collection is structurally beautiful.
Listen!
I'm calling you to recognize my voice
-- The Messenger
Leave me alone.
A light has always
led me home.
-- In the forest
The pitying stars ignite
and days forget themselves
in my bed
-- The pages of day and night
We scream.
We dream of weeping,
but tears refuse our eyes.
We twist our necks
in zero hurricanes.
-- Elegy for the time at hand
Shall I say now: "I am not myself."
Shall I say: "I have created ashes."
-- Gilgamesh
Every poem in this collection is quotable. Almost all of them are tinged with a bit of melancholy and longing. There are moments of absolute silence and then there are screams of despair echoing from the empty streets. This collection is structurally beautiful.
June 24, 2024
Arabic poets seem to write into the night they’ll pen a stone of stars, their paper rungs of sand- Adonis compares himself to K Gibran and for a moment you believe him
December 15, 2019
i want love like this period
January 30, 2016
لغة أدونيس في الكتابة دائماً ما تشدني وتتحدى قارئها.. قدرته على خلق من الشعرِ قصة هو إبداع بذاته.
كما قال:
"إنّ شعري لغة الأرض هناك
وأنا الريحُ هنا والمطرُ"
كما قال:
"إنّ شعري لغة الأرض هناك
وأنا الريحُ هنا والمطرُ"
December 17, 2018
“Do you see the branches? Do you hear the call of the branches?”
“...as if we had poured from the brims of our eyelids such dreams, such tears...”
“‘But how, how did you marry me?’
‘My body came to you like the wind colored by the earth itself. Like planets of wind we loved.’”
“Let’s plunge into the deep again, my love, and leave to others the height and breadth of all the other kingdoms of the air.”
“...the languages of exile are not the sun’s languages. I have thus become a wanderer...”
These are only a select few quotes from a endless assortment that I came to adore. Adonis leaves behind a beautiful imprint, a memory that is not easily shaken with his way of language that is unique to him. Or to quote him, he leaves his memory trembling between our arms. It is the kind of loveliness that one can always return to, like a friend. Before I read this book I did not see the branches, but I now hear the call of them.
“...as if we had poured from the brims of our eyelids such dreams, such tears...”
“‘But how, how did you marry me?’
‘My body came to you like the wind colored by the earth itself. Like planets of wind we loved.’”
“Let’s plunge into the deep again, my love, and leave to others the height and breadth of all the other kingdoms of the air.”
“...the languages of exile are not the sun’s languages. I have thus become a wanderer...”
These are only a select few quotes from a endless assortment that I came to adore. Adonis leaves behind a beautiful imprint, a memory that is not easily shaken with his way of language that is unique to him. Or to quote him, he leaves his memory trembling between our arms. It is the kind of loveliness that one can always return to, like a friend. Before I read this book I did not see the branches, but I now hear the call of them.
December 22, 2021
Adonis has bold ways to capture emotion so they come up raw yet fulfilling to the most. I keep on gasping! my favorite must be the way he could capture the nuance of silence shared. I have a little hard time digesting his poems about the city, aside from it is being long continual it has big imagery that I still yet cannot compete with. Would love to read more of his perspective about women.
February 18, 2020
كتاب التحولات و الهجرة في أقاليم الليل و النهار
أدونيس
استكمالا للأعمال الشعرية الكاملة لأدونيس
بعد أغاني مهيار الدمشقي
الكتاب قصير، مجموعة من القصائد في جمل قصيرة و أحيانا ابيات من كلمة واحدة
اللغة جميلة
و تطور عن الكتاب الماضي
إلى ديوات المسرح و المرايا
أدونيس
استكمالا للأعمال الشعرية الكاملة لأدونيس
بعد أغاني مهيار الدمشقي
الكتاب قصير، مجموعة من القصائد في جمل قصيرة و أحيانا ابيات من كلمة واحدة
اللغة جميلة
و تطور عن الكتاب الماضي
إلى ديوات المسرح و المرايا
June 8, 2021
“I’m grateful for time which bears me in its arms and erases every road I’ve taken.” this man is genius in every poem he writes
October 16, 2015
My eyes are tired, tired of days
Must I drill through wall after wall
Of days to seek another day?
The presence of cities
Passed between the lashes
Of our eyes
O cities of rejection, come!
Discover us!
My people have died as fires die —
Without a trace
I build an island in my mind
In every absence I am present
And when I go
I close the door of the earth
Behind me
I live in the face of a woman
Who lives in a wave
O my dreams, my dancers
Come in, come in
Salute the now and here
I hear the voice of time in poems
In the touch of hands, here, there
I dream of falling in space…
I live surrounded by colors
My gospel is denial
And my map —
A world I've yet to make
Death flutes in my throat
I crown my heart with a feather
On the dirt of oblivion my steps shall grow
My life has been one tour of terror
Tonight the dove of farewell burns in my heart
I call the earth my wife
My country is abandoned
My soul has left me
I have no home
The earth survives beneath my feet
My poems bloom naked as roses
Despair is still my star
Evil is always being born
Silence rises on the sand
I write in flames
Your words are sins of a fall
I look at you and dream of snow
I look at you and wait for autumn
I mimic nonsense
I create nothing
I break rules and create rules
Her body grew north, south, east, west
It grew upward to new depths
Suspended in my dream
I kept imagining my dream into the world
Inventing secrecies to fill the flaws of all my days
My lips and fingers were pens on her flesh
I memorized her in every alphabet
And memorized my memories until they multiplied
You are the sun that travels neither east nor west
You are my resurrection and my fall
When you desired me, you let me create you
Each day's an open book
That we write with our eyes
You are a secret beyond dreams
You are love beyond the heart itself
You are all women in one, all lovers in one
Is love the only place unvisited by death?
A space divides my from myself
Where death and love await me
I dreamed I washed the earth
Until it glistened like a mirror
I walled it with clouds and fenced it with fire
I held it in my hands and doomed it with tears
If I were a candle
I would experience the passing of time
I love what I am and hate my love for it
Is there another way I can create this world?
To be an exile is my identity
You were killed because you were the future
Memory is a needle
That stitches a carpet of words like threads
Over the face of Beirut
He wrote a poem that killed him
Chaos… Voice…
The cities shatter
The earth is nothing but dust
Only one thing can unify them — love
Must I drill through wall after wall
Of days to seek another day?
The presence of cities
Passed between the lashes
Of our eyes
O cities of rejection, come!
Discover us!
My people have died as fires die —
Without a trace
I build an island in my mind
In every absence I am present
And when I go
I close the door of the earth
Behind me
I live in the face of a woman
Who lives in a wave
O my dreams, my dancers
Come in, come in
Salute the now and here
I hear the voice of time in poems
In the touch of hands, here, there
I dream of falling in space…
I live surrounded by colors
My gospel is denial
And my map —
A world I've yet to make
Death flutes in my throat
I crown my heart with a feather
On the dirt of oblivion my steps shall grow
My life has been one tour of terror
Tonight the dove of farewell burns in my heart
I call the earth my wife
My country is abandoned
My soul has left me
I have no home
The earth survives beneath my feet
My poems bloom naked as roses
Despair is still my star
Evil is always being born
Silence rises on the sand
I write in flames
Your words are sins of a fall
I look at you and dream of snow
I look at you and wait for autumn
I mimic nonsense
I create nothing
I break rules and create rules
Her body grew north, south, east, west
It grew upward to new depths
Suspended in my dream
I kept imagining my dream into the world
Inventing secrecies to fill the flaws of all my days
My lips and fingers were pens on her flesh
I memorized her in every alphabet
And memorized my memories until they multiplied
You are the sun that travels neither east nor west
You are my resurrection and my fall
When you desired me, you let me create you
Each day's an open book
That we write with our eyes
You are a secret beyond dreams
You are love beyond the heart itself
You are all women in one, all lovers in one
Is love the only place unvisited by death?
A space divides my from myself
Where death and love await me
I dreamed I washed the earth
Until it glistened like a mirror
I walled it with clouds and fenced it with fire
I held it in my hands and doomed it with tears
If I were a candle
I would experience the passing of time
I love what I am and hate my love for it
Is there another way I can create this world?
To be an exile is my identity
You were killed because you were the future
Memory is a needle
That stitches a carpet of words like threads
Over the face of Beirut
He wrote a poem that killed him
Chaos… Voice…
The cities shatter
The earth is nothing but dust
Only one thing can unify them — love
March 13, 2026
I write in a language that exiles me.
The Other is neither past nor future, nor is it a mirror that is capable of returning the I to childhood.
Rather it helps to set the poet in motion towards the unknown, towards everything strange. The Other seems to be the salvation of the I.
from the sea's floor
my heart sets sail
my eyes remember oceans
we learned defeat beneath
the flags of dust. graveyards
bloomed from our faces. we wrote
our testaments in famine. not
a star glimmered above us
we scouted the sand for ghosts
we searched the caves of wind
and tears. O god we seek
some shelter in the earth
let rivers hide us
from the final enemy
sprawled in the ashes of our days
we glimpse our souls passing
you are a branch in leaf
a voyage that drowns each day
they wore as crowns the consecrations of our lives, the stars rained spittle on us in God's name, in the name of God we sailed those years on broken wings
O light that guides the clouds
O Lord whose goodness never sleeps
The Other is neither past nor future, nor is it a mirror that is capable of returning the I to childhood.
Rather it helps to set the poet in motion towards the unknown, towards everything strange. The Other seems to be the salvation of the I.
from the sea's floor
my heart sets sail
my eyes remember oceans
we learned defeat beneath
the flags of dust. graveyards
bloomed from our faces. we wrote
our testaments in famine. not
a star glimmered above us
we scouted the sand for ghosts
we searched the caves of wind
and tears. O god we seek
some shelter in the earth
let rivers hide us
from the final enemy
sprawled in the ashes of our days
we glimpse our souls passing
you are a branch in leaf
a voyage that drowns each day
they wore as crowns the consecrations of our lives, the stars rained spittle on us in God's name, in the name of God we sailed those years on broken wings
O light that guides the clouds
O Lord whose goodness never sleeps
May 12, 2015
You are a lake.
I am a willowtrunk spearing your earth.
I cast anchor at your shore.
Your waist is my anchorage.
You are all women in one, all lovers in one.
I live in the face of a woman
who lives in a wavea
surging wave
that finds a shore
lost like a harbor under shells.
I live in the face of a woman
who loses me
so she can be
the lighthouse waiting
in my mad and navigating blood.
The solitude of winter
and the passing of summer
are linked by the bridge of spring.
I am a willowtrunk spearing your earth.
I cast anchor at your shore.
Your waist is my anchorage.
You are all women in one, all lovers in one.
I live in the face of a woman
who lives in a wavea
surging wave
that finds a shore
lost like a harbor under shells.
I live in the face of a woman
who loses me
so she can be
the lighthouse waiting
in my mad and navigating blood.
The solitude of winter
and the passing of summer
are linked by the bridge of spring.
April 5, 2010
Adonis is the poet of the human body and all her sensations, senses and junctures, mixteries and recombinations. Anyone can love anyone, Adonis's poems prove this and provide the fertile soil for soul partners and lovers to merge and emerge in ecstasy and sober. Read Adonis to complete yourself as a human
January 21, 2013
Some beautiful stuff in here .... powerful imagery. He likes to use woman as metaphor which is interesting, not sure how I feel about it. But he's a master of poetry, for sure. My first Adonis book but will read others.
Read
June 10, 2008it's hard for me to review a book that i know i should be reading in its original language.
July 22, 2011
Adonis never fails me.
February 9, 2015
This book took me everywhere. Whew. I must read it again.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews