Philosophy:Shi'r
| Categories | Poetry literary magazine |
|---|---|
| Frequency |
|
| Founder |
|
| Year founded | 1957 |
| First issue | January 1957 |
| Final issue | Autumn 1970 |
| Country | Lebanon |
| Based in | Beirut |
| Language | Arabic |
Shi'r (Arabic: مجلة شعر) was an avant-garde and modernist monthly literary magazine with a special reference to poetry. The magazine was published in Beirut, Lebanon, between 1957 and 1970 with a three-year interruption. The founders were two leading literary figures: Yusuf al-Khal and Adunis. It was named after Harriet Monroe’s Chicago-based magazine, Poetry.[1]
History and profile
Shi'r was started in Beirut in 1957, and the first issue appeared in January.[2][3] Its founders were Yusuf al-Khal, Adunis[4] and Unsi Al Hajj.[5] The magazine was significantly affected from Ahmed Zaki Abu Shadi's the Apollo Poet Society founded in Cairo, Egypt, in 1932.[6] Salma Khadra Jayyusi argues that Shi'r is, in fact, the successor of Apollo which was the publication of this society.[7] It was started as a quarterly,[1] but later its frequency was switched to monthly.[4]
The goal of Shi'r which was an avant-garde journal was to present a non-political version of poetry.[4] This version of poetry is called Al Shi'r al Hurr (Arabic: Free Poetry)[7] which refers to prose poetry.[8] It also attempted to revive Arabic poetry and to reshape it away from formalism.[9] The magazine adopted a modernist approach towards poetry.[1] Its another aim was to encourage the Afro-Asian solidarity and nonalignment which had been stated in the Bandung Conference in 1955.[10] The magazine organized poetry meetings each Thursday at the Plaza Hotel in Hamra Street.[11] It frequently published translations of the Vietnamese literary work.[12]
Although both were avant-garde publications and supported free verse movement, Al Adab, a literary magazine established in Beirut in 1953, was the main adversary of Shi'r.[13] Because the contributors of Shi'r opposed the movement of committed literature (al-adab al-multazim in Arabic), a dominant approach in the 1950s and 1960s in the Arab world which was also supported by Al Adab.[4] The Al Adab contributors claimed that Shi'r had detrimental effects on the traditional heritage of Arabic literature.[9]
Shi'r was banned in some countries due to its alleged support for the cultural war against Arab nationalism and its being funded by the CIA and French intelligence.[4] It was temporarily shut down in 1964 and was restarted in Spring 1967.[2][3] In the second phase al-Khal also served as the editor-in-chief of the magazine of which the scope was expanded to cover other literary subjects in addition to poetry.[2] Shi'r ceased publication in Autumn 1970[2] after publishing forty-four issues.[1]
Editors and contributors
Al-Khal was the editor-in-chief of Shi'r.[2] Adunis served in different positions: at the beginning he was the editor and from 1958 he began to function as the secretary of the editorial board.[2] He became the managing editor in 1961 and co-owner and co-editor-in-chief of Shi'r in 1963.[2] However, he left the magazine soon after these roles.[2]
The contributors were part of the Shi'r school, and the magazine was an organ of this movement.[6] They were also related to the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.[14] The latter group included Adunis, Kamal Kheir Beik and Muhammad Maghut.[14]
Sargon Boulus, an Iraq-born Assyrian poet, started his career in Shi'r in 1961.[15] Fouad Refka, and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra were among the contributors of the magazine.[9] Palestinian poet Tawfiq Sayigh also published a poem in the magazine in 1961.[16]
Studies on Shi'r
Kamal Kheir Beik analyzed Shi'r in his PhD thesis which was completed at the University of Geneva in 1972.[17] Another comprehensive study on Shi'r is a book by Dounia Badini published in 2009.<ref name=rob>{{cite book
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedrob - ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 Ed de Moor (2000). "The rise and fall of the review "shi'r"". Quaderni di Studi Arabi 18: 85–96.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Basilius Bawardi (November 2019) (Book summary). The Magazine Shi'r and the Poetics of Modern Arabic Poetry. Peter Lang. https://www.peterlang.com/document/1055409.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Mark D. Luce (2017). "Shi'r". Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. doi:10.4324/9781135000356-REM1626-1. ISBN 9781135000356. https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/shir.
- ↑ Jens Hanssen; Hicham Safieddine (Spring 2016). "Lebanon's al-Akhbar and Radical Press Culture: Toward an Intellectual History of the Contemporary Arab Left". The Arab Studies Journal 24 (1): 196.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 John Haywood (1978). "Book review". Die Welt des Islams 18 (3–4): 236.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Salma Khadra Jayyusi (1977). Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry. Leiden: E. J. Brill. pp. 569,602. ISBN 978-90-04-04920-8. https://books.google.com/books?id=8pI3AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA569.
- ↑ S. Moreh (July 1968). "Poetry in Prose (al-Shi'r al-Manthūr) in Modern Arabic Literature". Middle Eastern studies 4 (4): 353. doi:10.1080/00263206808700109.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Mirene Arsanioos (1 November 2011). "Comparative Notes on the Cultural Magazine in Lebanon". Ibraaz (2). https://www.ibraaz.org/essays/23#author61.
- ↑ Monica Popescu (2020). At Penpoint. African Literatures, Postcolonial Studies, and the Cold War. Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press. p. 48. doi:10.1515/9781478012153. ISBN 978-1-4780-0940-5. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478012153.
- ↑ Fawwaz Traboulsi (2012). "From Social Crisis to Civil War (1968–1975)". A History of Modern Lebanon (2nd ed.). London: Pluto Press. p. 179. doi:10.2307/j.ctt183p4f5.16. ISBN 9780745332741. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt183p4f5.16.
- ↑ Rebecca C. Johnson (2021). "Cross-Revolutionary Reading: Visions of Vietnam in the Transnational Arab Avant-Garde". Comparative Literature 73 (3): 361. doi:10.1215/00104124-8993990.
- ↑ Yvonne Albers (26 July 2018). "Start, stop, begin again. The journal 'Mawaqif' and Arab intellectual positions since 1968". Eurozine. https://www.eurozine.com/start-stop-begin-2/.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 Carl C. Yonker (2021). The Rise and Fall of Greater Syria A Political History of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter. p. 250. doi:10.1515/9783110729092-005. ISBN 9783110729092. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110729092-005.
- ↑ Peter Clark (18 January 2008). "Obituary: Sargon Boulus: Iraqi poet who joined the Beat generation". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jan/18/iraq.books.
- ↑ Maureen O’Rourke (2009). The Experience of Exile in Modern Arab Poetry (PhD thesis). University of London. p. 169. doi:10.25501/SOAS.00028768.
- ↑ Salma Harland (3 March 2021). "Two Poems by Kamal Kheir Beik". ArabLit Quarterly. https://arablit.org/2021/03/03/two-poems-by-kamal-kheir-beik-tr-salma-harland/.
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