Met die bekendmaking van vanjaar se wenner van die Nobelprys vir Letterkunde vroeg volgende maand nader ons sekerlik nou weer die seisoen van raai-raai-riepa oor wie vanjaar bekroon gaan word. En net soos dit die geval is met groot sportgelenthede soos Wimbledon, byvoorbeeld, word daar ook na ander voorafgaande byeenkomste (of in hierdie geval pryse) gekyk ten einde ‘n aanduiding te kry van die wind se geneigdheid.
Daarom dat die Goethe-prys, Duitsland se vernaamste literêre prys wat al om die derde jaar toegeken word, ‘n besonderse gefladder onder die beroepswedders veroorsaak het. Volgens ‘n berig op Reuters se webblad word dié gesogte prys ten bedrae van 50,000 euro vanjaar aan die Siriese digter Adonis (foto) toegeken: “The selection committee considered Adonis the most important Arab poet of his generation and granted him the prize for his cosmopolitan (work) and contribution to international literature,” het die regering se woordvoerder glo tydens die aankondiging gesê.
Alhoewel Adonis vir etlike jare al as ‘n sterk kandidaat vir die Nobel-prys gereken word, het dié toekening volgens Reuters sommige kenners wel onkant gevang; veral teen die agtergrond van die onrustigheid in die Midde-Ooste en die onlangse geweldpleging in Adonis se geboorteland, Sirië. Alhoewel hy hom van direkte kritiek op sy geboorteland se regeerders weerhou het, het Adonis hom tog onlangs heftig uitgespreek teen die Arabiese owerhede: “(Adonis) launched a scathing attack three weeks ago on all Arab rulers as ‘leaving behind nothing except breakdown, backwardness, retreat, bitterness and torture. They gathered power. They did not build a society. They turned their countries into a space of slogans without any cultural or human content,'” het hy glo gesê.
Adonis het sy geboorteland reeds in 1982 verlaat ten tye van die Israeliese besetting van Libanon. Hy woon sedertdien voltyds in Parys.
Maar terug na die raai-raai-riepa van die Nobelprys vir Letterkunde.
Volgens die beroepswedders is Cormac McCarthy met ‘n prysgeld van 8 teen 1 vanjaar die gunsteling, gevolg deur Haruki Murakami (9-1), die Algerynse skrywer Assia Djebar (10-1) en Don Delillo (13-1). Adonis beklee tans die agtste plek met ‘n loting van 17 teen 1. (Verlede jaar was sy loting 8-1 wat hom etlike posisies bokant die uiteindelike wenner, Mario Vargas Llosa wat teen 25 – 1 geloot was, geplaas het.
Die volledige lys is soos volg:
- 1. Cormac McCarthy – 8 teen 1
- 2. Haruki Murakami – 9 teen 1
- 3. Assia Djebar – 10 teen 1
- 4. Don Delillo – 13 teen 1
- 5. Ko Un – 15 teen 1
- 6. Amos Oz – 15 teen 1
- 7. Philip Roth – 15 teen 1
- 8. Adonis – 17 teen 1
- 9. Joyce Carol Oates – 17 teen 1
- 10. Thomas Pynchon – 17 teen 1
Ten slotte, ‘n uitspraak wat Adonis gemaak het tydens ‘n onderhoud verlede jaar wat in die New York Times verskyn het: “Poetry cannot change society. Poetry can only change the notion of relationships between things. Culture cannot change without a change in institutions […] Poetry that reaches all the people is essentially superficial. Real poetry requires effort because it requires the reader to become, like the poet, a creator.”
Mmm, laat ‘n mens dink, of hoe?
The Face Of A Woman
By Adonis
I dwell in the face of a woman
who dwells in a wave
flung by the tide
to a shore that has lost its harbor
in its shells.
I live in the face of a woman
who murders me,
who desires to be
a dead beacon
in my blood sailing
to the very end of madness.
Dankie, Marlise. Lyk my jy is ‘n beter snuffelaar as ek, want ek kon niks vind nie …
Nietemin, daar is natuurlik ook nog die Nuuswekker wat ek einde Oktober verlede jaar geskryf het.
Diegene wat belangstel kan gaan kyk by: https://versindaba.co.za/2010/10/29/adonis-lieflingdigter-van-die-arabiese-wereld/
Dis nogal ‘n gesoek op die internet om enige gedigte van Adonis op te spoor…. maar hier is 3 vertalings wat ek kon kry.
Three Poems
by Adonis translated from the Arabic by Adnan Haydar and Michael Beard December 2007
Mask of Songs
In the name of his own history,
in a country mired in mud,
when hunger overtakes him
he eats his own forehead.
He dies.
The seasons never find out how.
He dies behind the interminable mask of songs.
The only loyal seed,
he dwells alone buried deep in life itself.
In the City of the Partisans
I.
Open your arms
O city of Partisans.
Welcome him with thorns
or with stones.
Bind his arms above his head,
stretch them into an archway to the grave,
tattoo upon his head
graven images, brand him with glowing coals
and let the flames consume Mihyar.
II.
More than an olive tree, more
than a river, more than
a breeze
bounding and rebounding,
more than an island,
more than a forest,
a cloud
that skims across his leisurely path:
all and more
in their solitude
are reading his book.
New Testament
He doesn’t speak this language.
He doesn’t know the voices of the wastes—
a soothsayer in stony sleep,
he is burdened with distant languages.
Here he comes from under the ruins
in the climate of new words,
offering his poems to grieving winds
unpolished but bewitching like brass.
He is a language glistening between the masts,
the knight of strange words.
Adonis (pen-name of Ali Ahmad Said, b. 1930) is perhaps the most widely respected and influential modern Arab poet. Founder and editor of two important journals in Lebanon, Shi’r (Poetry) and Muwâqif (Positions), and author of numerous major works of criticism, he has been a shaping force on Arab modernism for decades. The poems translated in this issue are from Aghânî Mihyâr al-Dimashqî (Mihyar of Damascus, his Songs), a 1961 collection which famously reshaped the possibilities of Arabic lyric poetry.