The Pages of Day and Night.

Boullata, Issa J.

Now living in Paris, the Arab poet 'Ali Ahmad Sa'id (better known by his pseudonym, Adonis) is "certainly one of the greatest poets in the history of the language," according to the Syrian critic Kamal Abu Deeb, Professor of Arabic at the University of London. Although many other critics may disagree with this opinion, Adonis remains one of the most innovative Arab poets and indeed one of the most disruptive of Arab poetic tradition in modern times. His poetry has been translated into French, English, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, German, Russian, Greek, Italian, Persian, Turkish, and Japanese; and on two occasions he was purportedly a Nobel Prize finalist.

In The Pages of Day and Night the American poet of Lebanese origin Samuel Hazo, who was named in 1993 the first state poet of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, presents in English translation a selection of Adonis's poems. Having known Adonis and his poetry since the early 1970s, Hazo offered earlier translations of Adonis in The Blood of Adonis (1971) and Transformations of the Lover (1982), both of which are contained in the present volume in addition to nine newer poems and two prose statements by Adonis on his poetics. Possessing only a rudimentary knowledge of Arabic, Hazo was provided with literal translations of Adonis's poems by Mirene Ghossein, Kamal Boullata, and Antoinette Tuma, which he used as a basis for what he calls his "final transversions." As for his earlier published renderings of Adonis's poems, he called them "transpositions." Whatever the translations are called, Adonis's poems are re-created by Hazo in an American idiom that is as genuine an approximation to the spirit of the originals as can be achieved, knowing that every translation is inevitably a betrayal and that Adonis in particular makes the Arabic language say what it has never said. Hazo's task was not an easy one, but he succeeded, I believe, in sensitively conveying Adonis's thought, feeling, and creativity.

In this brief review one example will suffice. Let it be the short poem entitled "Mount Suneen." In point of fact, the piece should be entitled "Sinnin," for this is the title in the Arabic original and, indeed, the correct name of this Lebanese mountain. By adding the word Mount to the title, Hazo informs and predisposes the reader. The poem goes thus:

From his room in the sky my mountain reads to the night to the trees, to all who cannot sleep-- his high sorrows.

In Arabic, the poems consists of four lines only. Here is my literal translation of them: "Sinnin / reads in his bare room / to the night, to the trees, to the wakeful / his high sorrows." Note how in Hazo's "transversion" Sinnin is not mentioned other than in the title. In the text of the poem it becomes "my mountain," which is more personal. Instead of reading "in his bare room," the mountain now reads "from his room in the sky," and "the wakeful" become "all who cannot sleep," thus adding a little anguish to the scene. Transversions/Transpositions = New Poems.

Issa J. Boullata McGill University, Montreal