Feridun Andaç
Adonis is a poet, an intellectual identity, concerned with understanding the world and grasping the existential reality of the universe… His questioning, probing, illuminating gaze is not reflected in his poetry alone; his essays on thought and literature are an inseparable part of his literary endeavour. In a sense, the starting point of what he takes up as a “problem” is the reality of the land where he was born and grew up. He looks through the window of religious truth at the reality of the Middle East – the region from which three religions emerged, where the heavenly and earthly “one” prevail in every respect. What is more, in Kitap, Hitap, Hakikat (Arabic original: al-Kitab al-Khitab al-Hijab – The Book, the Discourse, the Veil, 2019),(*) which contains his literary essays, he also speaks of the contradiction and conflict between poetry and poetic truth on the one hand and religion and religious truth on the other.
“Poetry is a continuous migration within language and with language towards the unknown, that is, towards the other.”
“Poetic creativity is a continuous rupture!”
In Kitap, Hitap, Hakikat,(*) Adonis particularly underlines this: “Poetry and poetic truth, at this level, contradict religion and religious truth. In poetry, truth is not fixed, final and comprehensible. In this sense poetry lies outside the boundary of religious truth. Moreover, poetic truth is necessarily personal; it is neither general nor shared.
“In poetic truth nothing remains as it was before. Poetic creativity is a continuous rupture. In other words, poetry is uninterrupted contact with continuous rupture. For the time of poetry differs from the time of religion. The time of poetry is the time of change and transformation; the time of religion is the time of eternity and immutability.”
The revolution of cultural creativity and innovation in Arab civilisation!
Speaking here of “cultural creativity” and the “revolution of innovation” in Arab civilisation, Adonis underlines a process that began with the emergence of the Umayyad state and ended with the fall of Baghdad in 1258, characterising it as a “revolution” lasting six centuries. It is the fragmentation of political and cultural belonging in Arab-Islamic society…
“In times of loss and bewilderment, Muslims took refuge in religious belonging,” comments Adonis, adding: “This religious refuge was supported by cultural collapse, social disintegration and foreign domination.”
We might also call this the beginning of a new hegemony – so much so that the foreign domination in question begins with the Ottomans and continues to this day.
The interpretation of “text and truth”!
The ideas Adonis expresses in the essays in this book are important from several angles. The first is the interpretation of “Text and Truth”.
What is textual truth? The meaning of takfir (declaring someone an unbeliever) and tafkir (thinking) in Arab-Islamic culture. The truth of the religious and the non-religious text. The text of the community, the text of the umma, the text of order. The meaning of the “heavenly one” and the “earthly one”. The view of “a being that has no being”. The view and interpretation of the three monotheistic religions. Which sacred, which religion, which homeland. Man’s consciousness of selfhood. True dialogue among the three religions. Militarised violence. How will Islam become democratic? Who am I culturally? The language and outlook of the monotheistic religions that make human beings barren.
Arab Islam’s view of poetry!
Underlining what religious truth and poetic truth mean, he says:
“Islam does not abolish the concept of poetry, but by changing the concept of poetry and its role it subjects it to its own order. Poetry is no longer ‘the right’, nor the speaking of ‘truth’. The role of poetry is limited, one way or another, to serving religion. Thus poetry ceases to be a cognitive and aesthetic principle.”
The ideas Adonis conceptualises in his view of Arab Islam are important. His view of religious truth and poetic truth carries an inner meaning through his interpretation of the idea of “innovation”. It is this:
“Innovation in poetry means the poet bringing something new, something unknown in the past before him. Poetically, this means offering new relations between words and things, between word and word, and between human being and world.”
He defines innovation in religious truth, on the other hand, as “innovation in interpretation” – that is, “‘religionising’ life and the world…” This is the truth of the umma that has been created. “That is why innovation cannot take place without rupture and violence.”
“Religion is an answer, poetry a question. So religion cannot be a reference for poetry”
In this comparison Adonis also offers definitions and explanations of his own poetics:
“In poetic truth nothing remains as it was before. Poetic creativity is a continuous rupture. In other words, poetry is uninterrupted contact with continuous rupture. For the time of poetry differs from the time of religion. The time of poetry is the time of change and transformation; the time of religion is the time of eternity and immutability. Religion is an answer, poetry a question. So religion cannot be a reference for poetry.”
Undoubtedly, what is noteworthy in Adonis’s outlook, beyond his interpretation of Islam, is his critique of Muslims’ view, perception and interpretation of religion from within Arab history.
When he says, “There can be no renewal unless religion ceases to be a cultural, social and political regime,” he points to the dominance of the umma-centred understanding that takes precedence in the relationship between religion and politics, and to the vital contradictions that arise when religion is turned into a political and ideological instrument of power… a line that gradually extends to violence and terror…
Looking at Arab-Islamic history, Adonis also asks why there has been no pluralist thought, no democracy… He looks at faith, at Islam, through the clarity of the age of reason and of Enlightenment thought…
Explaining what religion and religious truth mean, he also criticises the alien gaze whose reason is held captive. Through questions, he sets before us an inquiry into why the mentality of “erasing truth and knowledge” does not accept innovation and creativity.
“Religion is something, but it is not everything!”
Religion is something, but it is not everything. When you make it everything, you make human beings captive to an interventionist, rejectionist, umma-centred approach and to the Salafi outlook. In this sense Adonis’s approach to Rumi also contains a certain consistency. That is, it is important that he addresses how the pluralist outlook in Rumi’s Sufi thought – his understanding of God – is expressed through poetry.
First he makes this observation: “In Rumi, the understanding of God rests not on institutional confirmation but on living experience – that is, not on reason but on the heart, not on transmitted authority but on delight. For divine oneness is not something outside the world or matter. On the contrary, divine oneness spreads through everything.”
He explains why and how the concept of God becomes immanent in Rumi. For him it is an existential truth: “It manifests itself in everything, and its manifestation has no limit.”
Reflections of his gaze on both East and West…
Adonis speaks of poetry and of the time of poetry. On one side is his own poetic path and journey; on the other, his view of Arab and Western poetry. When he says that poetry no longer has a mass audience but readers, he underlines this: “Poetry gains on the vertical plane what it loses on the horizontal.”
Elsewhere, Adonis questions the causes of “occupation, humiliation, poverty” and “collapse” in the Arab countries. His thoughts contain the reflections of an Eastern intellectual’s gaze on both East and West.
Discussing the reasons for the Arabs’ failure both to modernise and to win their independence, Adonis says:
“What I am saying is this: bringing Islam and progress together – above all on questions of thought, art, literature, women, sexuality, the economy and society – is not possible with the prevailing dominant interpretation. A certain kind of ‘Islam’ and progress are two opposite poles.”
“Islam is a divine revelation; culture is a human production!”
In the interviews and essays in this book, Adonis’s view of the Arab-Islamic world contains a criticality open to new interpretations. The way he grounds what he says in the cultural context is, I think, important for every reader:
“Islam is a divine revelation; culture is a human production. Therefore, in this sense, we cannot count Islam as part of Arab culture. Moreover, even though it was revealed among the Arabs and in Arabic, we must accept Islam as a divine revelation, a universal religion and part of global culture. For Islam belongs not only to the Arabs but to all peoples. Besides, there are great peoples who are Muslim but not Arab…”
Beyond a view that has become topical, that has been brought onto the agenda, Adonis opens a new door for us to see and discuss the existential reality of faith.
In an interview he would also say: “In the sense of a creative culture contributing to the change of the world, yes, I say there is no Arab culture. Can we speak of an Arab vision that contributes to our understanding of today’s world? Muslims see the world through an old Islamic outlook closed in on itself. Islam needs neither the world, nor the other, nor culture, for it is itself absolute culture. It remains unchanged until eternity.”(**)
Encountering these thoughts of Adonis, the narrator of a gaze that sees, thinks, asks and questions, will surely also open new horizons for readers in their approach to his poetry.
Adonis is the narrator of a gaze that grasps the world. In this sense, the counterpart of every word we find in his poetry is the human being, the realities in which human life is reflected… He is a voice in the ocean of poetry that can say:
Nerede saklayacağım
henüz ölmemiş bayramlarımı?
Nasıl özgürleştireyim dilin kafeslerinde
feryat eden kanatlarımı?
Nasıl mesken edineyim belleğimi?
İşte belleğim su üzerinde
yüzen enkazdan bir körfez.
(Adonis, Maddenin Haritalarında İlerleyen Şehvet, trans. Mehmet Hakkı Suçin)
(*) Kitap, Hitap, Hakikat, Adonis, trans. Mehmet Hakkı Suçin, Everest Yayınları, 157 pp., 2022 (Arabic original: al-Kitab al-Khitab al-Hijab, Dar al-Takwin, Damascus, 2019).
(**) “Adonis’le Devr-i Âlem: ‘İnsan Sonsuza Açılan Bir Tasarıdır’” (Around the World with Adonis: “Man Is a Project Open to Infinity”), interview by Siren İdemen, 25 January 2019.
Source: Cumhuriyet Kitap, 25 December 2022. Translated from the Turkish for this site.