Adnan, Etel 1925–

views updated

Adnan, Etel 1925-

PERSONAL:

Born February 24, 1925, in Beirut, Republic of Lebanon; naturalized U.S. citizen, 1986; daughter of a military commander of the Ottoman Empire. Ethnicity: "Arab-American." Education: Attended French convent schools in Beirut; attended L'Ecole Superieure des Lettres de Beyrouth; Sorbonne, Diplome d'Etudes Superieures de Philosophie, 1950; postgraduate studies at University of California, Berkeley, 1955-57, and Harvard University, 1957-58.

ADDRESSES:

Home—35 Marie St., Sausalito, CA 94965; 29 Rue Madame, Paris, 75006 France.

CAREER:

Writer and artist. Worked for the Bureau de la Presse, Beirut, Lebanon, 1941-45; Al-Ahliya School for Girls, Beirut, teacher of French literature, 1947-49; Dominican College, San Rafael, CA, professor of philosophy, 1958-72; literary editor, al-SAFA and L'Orient-Le Jour (French-language newspapers), Beirut, 1972-75. Paintings exhibited in museums, including Tunis Modern Art Museum, Royal Jordanian Museum, British Museum, Musée de L'Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris), and National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, DC).

WRITINGS:

Moonshots, [Beirut], 1966.

Five Senses for One Death, The Smith (New York, NY), 1971.

"Jebu" [and] "L'Express Beyrouth—Enfer," P.J. Oswald (Paris, France), 1973.

Sitt Marie Rose (novel), Editions des Femmes (Paris, France), 1978, translation by Georgina Kleege, Post-Apollo Press (Sausalito, CA), 1982.

(And illustrator) L'apocalypse arabe, Editions Papyrus (Paris, France), 1980, translation by Adnan published as The Arab Apocalypse, Post-Apollo Press (Sausalito, CA), 1989.

From A to Z, Post-Apollo Press (Sausalito, CA), 1982.

Pablo Neruda Is a Banana Tree, Da Almeida (Lisbon, Portugal), 1982.

The Indian Never Had a Horse, and Other Poems, Post-Apollo Press (Sausalito, CA), 1985.

(And illustrator) Journey to Mt. Tamalpais (essay), Post-Apollo Press (Sausalito, CA), 1986.

The Spring Flowers Own & The Manifestations of the Voyage, Post-Apollo Press (Sausalito, CA), 1990.

Paris, When It's Naked (essay collection), Post-Apollo Press (Sausalito, CA), 1993.

Of Cities and Women (Letters to Fawwaz), Post-Apollo Press (Sausalito, CA), 1993.

Kitab al bahr (title means "The Book of the Sea"), [Beirut], 1994.

Al confini della luna (short stories translated into Italian), [Rome], 1995.

There: In the Light and the Darkness of the Self and of the Other, Post-Apollo Press (Sausalito, CA), 1997.

In/somnia, Post-Apollo Press (Sausalito, CA), 2002.

(With Gabriel Bounoure) Vergers d'exil: Gabriel Bounoure, Geuthner (Paris, France), 2004.

In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country (memoir), City Lights Books (San Francisco, CA), 2005.

The Arab Apocalypse, Post-Apollo Press (Sausalito, CA), 2006.

Contributor of poetry, short fiction, and essays to anthologies, including Women of the Fertile Crescent, edited by Kamal Boullata, Three Continents Press (Washington, DC), 1978; Opening the Gates, edited by Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke, Indiana University Press (Indianapolis, IN), 1990; and 2000 and What?, edited by Karl Roeseler and David Gilbert, Trip Street (San Francisco, CA), 1996.

Author of two plays, The Actress and Like a Christmas Tree. The Actress was produced, in the author's translation into French, in Paris is 1999. Author of television documentaries on the war in Lebanon, 1976; coauthor, with Robert Wilson, of Civil Wars (multilanguage opera), 1984; coauthor, with Delphine Seyrig, of screenplay based on the life of Calamity Jane, 1985-90.

ADAPTATIONS:

A poem by Adnan was set to music by Tania Leon and produced in New York City, 1990; The Adnan Songbook (eight poems set to music by Gavin Bryars), broadcast on BBC-Radio, 1995.

SIDELIGHTS:

Acclaimed for both her poetry and her painting, Etel Adnan is an Arab who writes in both French and English. Espousing a feminist viewpoint, her works contain strong political and philosophic undercurrents. Sometimes marrying her prose works with her own visual creations, Adnan has published in a variety of genres, including the novel Sitt Marie Rose, several volumes of poetry, screenplays and television scripts, and Of Cities and Women (Letters to Fawwaz), a collection of letters written to a friend while their author was traveling through the cities of Europe and the Middle East between 1990 and 1992.

Born in 1925 in Beirut, Republic of Lebanon, Adnan was the daughter of a Syrian staff officer and commander of the Ottoman Empire who had served in World War I before marrying his second wife, a Greek. Adnan would grow up in a multilingual household where both Greek and Turkish were spoken; French would later be added to her store of languages when she attended a French-run Catholic school. In addition to her experience with many languages, Adnan was exposed to a diversity of religious thought as well: Her mother was a Christian and her father was Muslim. After the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, Adnan moved to France for two years before establishing a permanent home in Sausalito, California. She now maintains dual residences in both the United States and France, reflective, perhaps, of the dualities experienced early in her life.

Adnan's first written work was in the French language of the classroom; her first major poem, "The Book of the Sea," was completed when she was twenty-two. While many of her works would be translated into other languages by others, Adnan began to write in English after she became involved in the U.S. anti-war movement during the 1970s. The violence of war is a common thread in much of Adnan's work; a witness to much of the violence between Palestinians, Syrians, Shiite Muslims, and Israelis that occurred within the city of Beirut in the twentieth century, she perceived that attempts to solve cultural and religious conflicts through violence could only end in the total destruction of the planet. Poems such as "Jebu" and "L'Express Beyrouth—Enfer," as well as the longer L'apocalypse arabe, published in 1980, explore the dilemma of Palestinians living in Lebanon during that period. In 1978's Sitt Marie Rose, an antiwar novel set in war-torn Beirut during the mid-1970s, Adnan compares such conflict with primitive tribal warfare.

While Sitt Marie Rose features the dramatic plight of women against the backdrop of war, Adnan's poetry contains imagery that is far less harsh. The lyrical verses collected in 1985's The Indian Never Had a Horse, and Other Poems focus on subjects of universal concern, such as the search for peace and the preservation of the planet. Exemplifying Adnan's broad-ranging experience of cultures and people, "Spreading Clouds …" compares the plight of the Native American people with the cultural and religious conflicts in Lebanon.

The examination of the position of women within diverse politics and cultures is characteristic of almost all of Adnan's writing. Her overtly feminist Of Cities and Women (Letters to Fawwaz) describes her travels through eight cities—Amsterdam, Aix-en-Provence, Beirut, Barcelona, Berlin, and Paris among them—and her perceptions of the lives of women living within the political culture of each. "In Barcelona," she writes, "the women, when in the street, don't seem to consciously play a role, or live an exception: they are part of humanity, of a place, of a climate, of a country." Similarly, Adnan's essay collection Paris, When It's Naked is imbued with a unique sense of place, time, and culture. "These books add up to more than the sum of their parts," Diana Abu-Jaber commented of both Of Cities and Women (Letters to Fawwaz) and Paris, When It's Naked in Middle East Journal. "The joy of reading both volumes derives from the great perceptions of Etel Adnan's eyes and the generosity of her heart. It is the joy of reading the work of a great soul."

In There: In the Light and the Darkness of the Self and of the Other, Adnan continues her look at the meaning of self, attempting to answer the universal questions regarding identity and purpose. Her poems acknowledge that self is most often rooted in geography and culture, which tend also to link strongly to politics and national strife. She writes about people for whom personal boundaries are often dictated by geographical ones, and for whom borders carry great significance. Marilyn Booth, in a review for World Literature Today, commented that "these questions are not abstract, for Adnan envisions ‘theory’ as a commentary that must arise from experience." Adnan herself considers her works as individual dwellings, each of which marks a step toward reconciling the various worlds in which she grew up and continues to live. Booth noted of Adnan's poetry: "Building her houses, she offers us shelter, but not a comfortable or permanent berth."

Adnan writes a more formalized memoir with In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country, comprised of a series of works of prose that recount various experiences in her life. Common to all these experiences is the emotional turmoil she has suffered from her alienation from both her homeland and her adopted home. Liz Countryman, in a review for Tikkun, remarked that Adnan "communicates a feeling of rootlessness and spiritual fragmentation, moving rapidly between the physical and the abstract, facts and hallucinations."