Citation

Contents

Author

Context

Thesis
http://www.alquds.co.uk/?p=34215
 

Methodology

Key Terms

Mathaf- the cataloguing of the potsherds of culture and then their arrangement for display

Criticisms and Questions

Notes

From Robyn Cresswell’s article:

-Arabic poetic modernism offers neither a flight from the past, nor a flight into the past; neither a mimickry of Western models, nor a mimickry of classical techniques. Arabic modernism offers a series of imaginary, or formal solutions to the crisis of modernity

-Adonis’ Diwan is a complex situated response to a historical crisis whose contradictions are crystallized in the work’s various levels of argument and allegory.

-The establishment of a heritage museum is not an act of “clinging to heritage” but rather an attempt to set heritage free from itself.

-The use of anthology in Modernism (in comparison with the manifesto), it is well-suited to the task of rewriting literary history.

-Adonis Diwan follows the well-established lit history of 1) jahaliya 2) Abbasiya 3) inhitat

1. The ethos of pre-islamic poetry “لو ان الفتى حجر”، meloncholic heroism

2. Alienation and disconnection in the cities led to irony, the poet’s penchant for obscurity and hermeticism (Abbasid poetry is the result of this dialectic of interiorization and alienation) the move from the desert to the city

Geniously recreates literary-historical narrative of Arabic poetry that mirrors the romantic and modernist in Europe. (Baghdad/Paris)

-Adonis’ Diwan is a crypt that when opened offers something shiny and new that was already always there

-Adonis attemps to theorize a doctrine of aesthetic autonomy and poetry’s relationship, or lack, to al-dawla.

-The Egyptian state completely monopolized artistic production and so aesthetic autonomy was not their recognized modernity.

-Beirut represnted an unmediated playground for hadatha, free from al-dawla

-Critiques the Nahda for not breaking free from the strictures of al-dawla.

-The truly modernist poet free from any links to power or social structure

-Tries to tie his own Diwan to abu Tamam’s Hamasa  (not compiled for the court, but far away from its institutional luxuries)

-The anthologist: a rewriter and resurrector of spirits, an elegiac tribunal of history.

-In Adonis’ Diwan, the turath survives in the form of a citation, an ambiguous whisper.