By A group of authors, presented by: Dr. Mary Elias
So young people write today? What topics do they cover? This book may provide a model for what young people think and how they see the world. On this occasion, we return and confirm what was said previously on other occasions: They write themselves, their lost lives in complex worlds so obscure that they are impossible to write. In these three texts, the ego is present, but it gradually turns into a comprehensive “I” that expresses an entire generation. Each of them writes his lived present, but this present is so fast-paced that it is difficult to capture it and express it in a way that fixes it in a specific form. The question that results from this observation: Can these young people actually live their present? The texts contained in the book are part of the product of a playwriting workshop, which we called “Writing for the Stage.” The name is not arbitrary, but rather carries a specific meaning linking the text and the performance, writing and directing on the stage. This workshop was organized by the Citizen Artists Foundation in 2016
It is no longer necessary to stop at the picture written by Cervantes. There is a big difference between Don Quixote, which was written to make fun of him, or for any other purpose, and Don Quixote, which became our property, and we carried it in our imagination, subjected it to our perceptions, and we became free to remake and formulate it as we wish. We can say that each of us has his own Don Quixote, whether he has read the novel or not, and whether he relies on the picture in the book or not. Whether he relied on his own interpretation of what was in the book, or projected into the book what he wanted. The many faces of a character like Don Quixote give us the freedom and courage to express our own vision of him. Therefore, each of us is able to talk about the Don Quixote that he saw in the book, or the Don Quixote that he himself is raising in his symbolic and creative imagination. Don Quixote is everywhere, and he is present in all of us. The Donquixote vision is one that does not give its owner the opportunity to retreat. There must be a pause that seems suicidal or crazy. Retreating in search of a new opportunity means overlooking the collapse that has occurred to humans and values. It means as if one overlooks deterioration. It is a kind of self-punishment to revive the consciences of others. We can say in general that there must always be a Don Quixote pause so that honor does not die in life itself. For this reason, it occurred to me one day to defend insanity.
This book collects selected texts by twenty-one male and female poets from different cultural and social backgrounds, regardless of the reasons and ways they left Syria, even though most of them left after the outbreak of the revolution in early 2011. Today they live in various countries in the Arab world and outside it, and many of them live in Germany especially. These selections are an attempt to shed light on the Syrian poetic experience emerging in exile, which carries within it the diversity of poets’ styles, experiences, opinions and ages, and presents a picture of the reality of Syrian poetry abroad, without evaluating it, but rather as a witness to the changes occurring in poetry and parallel to the changes in the earth. Although the features of this experience have not yet crystallized, it demonstrates effective attempts to take Syrian poetry to other directions that will inevitably lead to new places in Syrian writing.
I want a clear enemy who is fit to curse and curse And soldiers cheer for their return Defeated or victorious And martyrs, not victims And an anthem And a memorial... I want a place in the heart of the country to comment on A memorial photo of a family that did not survive death I leave the task of pinning medals of honor on the chest of the tyrant to war. I want a war that resembles a war And an enemy is the enemy, without a mask, from the clay of this earth And a poem I write in praise of the fighter Not in Venetian satire! I want to write grass, The grass that will grow on the iron of the cannons!
People wanted to escape the void They built big cities They became gears, hammers, bags and hats. ... City people wanted to return to nature When their bones were broken They filled their balconies with flowers and trellises They raised cats and dogs in homes. ... They made the cities fortified and walled It is surrounded by soldiers and guarded by aircraft. ... When wars break out Balcony roses will still survive Battles rage in the mountains of the villages. ... Peasants, harvesters and truck drivers will die But the crops It will still flow onto store shelves.
By Minoy dolphin. Translated by Rita Parrish
Since the revolution that overthrew the Shah in 1979, Iran has lived in a state of constant turmoil and major social and political fluctuations. From there, Delphine Menoui, a French journalist of Iranian origin, writes about her experience living in Iran for ten years, including one of the most ambiguous periods in Iranian history, the Green Movement.
I do not know if what I am going to narrate has happened before, or if it is happening today, this hour, now, this moment. Or will it happen later, tomorrow or the next day, very soon or very far away? But, I know, it always happens. where? In the world, here, there and everywhere, but what matters to me is that it is happening here in this place, my country, and in the city that I could not leave, for countless reasons. The city that, I repeat, I cannot die away from, nor can I live away from it. with whom? With me, it is the first answer, because it is known about me that I only write about myself, or something that happened with another person I know well, or perhaps with a person I know briefly, or with a person I created from a mixture of people, or a person I made up completely. However, as a technical solution to this dilemma, I see that this time, it happened to you specifically, you who are now reading what I write and suspect that it is about you, then little by little you will know that it is about you. Because literally, or almost literally, it happened to you, and it applies to you only.
The country that only asks for its children to die is a dead country. The children who knew nothing but it, and would not think of leaving it, are hunting them down individually, so that devastation will be a clear future, and so that the thought of surviving the people’s experience of major battles for the sake of freedom, justice and change, is thinking. Very simple. * * * Time involves a new time emerging from its womb, and lessons are shed on its path The ancient stories and the stories that were an example for an entire generation, and we who witnessed the violent moment of crossing were the bulwark of the old time and the living scepter in the hand of the new time, and for this reason we had to be divided and filled with deep cracks. Before we triumph over a part of us, and what died within us settles at the bottom of the painful times whose madness we witnessed.
What I chose was based on a combination of personal taste and conviction - which sought to be objective as much as possible - that these examples are worthy of introducing the wide reader to Adwan’s poetic personality. What also requires clarification is that the selection of poems over others was subject to a specific technical factor: that is, the replacement of long poems in favor of medium or short ones, in order to make room for the largest possible number of texts expressing the experience, and in a way that is proportionate to the proposed size of the selections. Hopefully, these selections will succeed in recalling a lofty poetic stature, represented by “the free son of life,” “the one who exalts himself upon condescension,” bending “with the discipline of a soldier before a spike,” looking “sad and angry, at the perforated shoes of the poor,” biased “to her path filled with the dust of honor.” "; As Mahmoud Darwish expressed in his eulogy for Adwan.
The village has always been a symbol of simplicity in its system of life and in the psychological makeup of the villagers, who rarely suffer from what is called “phobia” or “mania,” and accept everything that happens to them as normal, no matter how harsh. This was in those eras when crops fed those who worked the land and provided them with a surplus for sale that provided them with an important part of their living expenses. However, after agriculture became a loss-making business, and sometimes a heavy burden on the farmer that did not provide its owner with the minimum necessities of life, the village mixed with the city due to the migration caused by various crises, which generated sharp paradoxes that were nullified by that person who was imposed on him in the city a new way of life. At the same time, his customs, traditions, and connections to the village remained strong, which created a duality in him that made him a rich and diverse personality. This friction that occurred through migrations, as well as due to the great technological development that occurred, also transferred part of the city with its relationships and way of life to the village, which constituted a shock to a part of the villagers whose thinking remained based on the old pattern of rural relations. All of this constituted, and continues to constitute, an important source of literature and drama. In this book there are a number of stories whose events take place in the village of Umm al-Tanafas, a name taken to be a symbol of the village in all works that touch upon the village. This will be the first village notebook and will be followed in the future by other notebooks, because the village’s stories are inexhaustible.
By Noam Chomsky Translated by: Dr. Uday Al-Zoubi, Moayad Al-Nashar
Noam Chomsky enjoys great fame in the Arab world, as a writer who works to expose the foreign policies of the United States of America and its allies, and as a linguist who founded the theory of generative grammar. However, Chomsky is also a first-class philosopher; He wrote on political philosophy, epistemology, the philosophy of mathematics, logic, the mind-body problem, and other traditional philosophical topics. We would like to present to the Arab reader a part of Chomsky’s philosophical work, due to its philosophical importance, on the one hand, and its direct connection to our current and pressing questions about the issues of freedom and liberation, cultural specificities, the role of intellectuals in the struggle for liberation, and other topics, on the other hand. The articles translated here include topics in epistemology, the foundations of science, rationality, the role of intellectuals, and the relationship between philosophical work and political activity, and are united by one main topic: freedom.
Much has been written about the heroism and exploits of war, and about the extent to which it is needed as a means of achieving goals that may be considered noble. But the constant question remains: Is there a justification for peace, our happiness, and even eternal harmony, if one small tear of an innocent child is shed for it? In World War II, more than one hundred million people were killed, wounded, and displaced in the bloodiest war - so far - in our human history. Much has been written about the tragedies and consequences of this dark phase of our history. But how did the last living witnesses see her? Children of this war? More than thirty years after the end of that war, Svetlana, in her book The Last Witnesses, brings the remaining heroes of that stage back to their childhood that lived through the war, to tell in their words the last words... about a time that would end with them...
Are you filming a play that you can see with the camera? By the Syrian playwright Muhammad Al-Attar, the story of a director filming a film in which she records the testimonies and experiences of young people detained in prisons months after the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, and she suffers a conflict between her convictions and her belonging to a family close to the regime.
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