Adonis

Atef Alshaer (University of Westminster)

Ed. by Anna Bernard, King's College London
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 6.1.3: Middle-Eastern Arabic Writing and Culture: Modern and Contemporary.
Vol. editors: Ziad Elmarsafy (King's College London), Joseph Farag (University of Minnesota), Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Nora Parr (SOAS, University of London), Rita Sakr (Maynooth University), Anastasia Valassopoulos (University of Manchester)

Dates

Born 30 Jan 1930
Activity 1960-ongoing

Places

Born in Syria
Active in Lebanon; Syria

Activities

Primary

Poet

Other

Essayist

Resources

There are few writers whose names happen to signify their worldview and character as much as the Syrian poet and intellectual ‘Ali Ahmad Said Esber. He adopted the name Adonis at the age of seventeen and has ever since been widely known by it. Adonis was born in 1930 in the village of Qassabin in the district of Latakia in Northern Syria to an Alawite family. He struggled to get his poems published under his original name, and therefore opted for Adonis, which allowed him to publish in magazines. Another early milestone in his life was when he recited his poetry to the then Syrian President Shukri al-Kuwatli (1955-1958), who subsequently helped him to secure scholarships. Adonis’s life and vision are reflected in his copious …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2490 words

Citation: Alshaer, Atef. "Adonis". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 January 2014 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13116, accessed 21 November 2024.]

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here