Abou el Kacem Chebbi

Abou el Kacem Chebbi (rear RTL أبوالقاسمالشابي), also spelled Aboul Kacem Chabbi or Aboul-Qacem Echebbi , born in February 1909 with Tozeur and deceased the October 9th 1934 with Tunis, is a Poète Tunisia N which is regarded unanimously as the national poet of Tunisia.

Biography

Chebbi is born in February 1909 (undoubtedly the 24) within a well-read woman family and noble. His/her father, zitounien of the University Al-Azhar of the Cairo, is a Cadi. This function will lead the Chebbi family to traverse Tunisia: Siliana, Gafsa, Gabès, Thala, Medjez el-Bab, Close-cropped Jebel, Zaghouan, etc Its poetry will keep the trace of the variety of these landscapes, more especially as the young boy carries out a life more contemplative than his comrades because he suffers very early from a fragile heart.

In October 1920, it must follow the way traced by his/her father: it enters to the Université Zitouna to Tunis and will live in Médersa S during 10 years (until its Mariage). Whereas his/her 3 younger brothers are registered in schools free-Arabic, Chebbi follows a formation in pure and traditional Arabic. He learns how to know the authors Western (Alphonse of Lamartine, John Keats, etc) through the Arab translations which he finds in the assiduous frequentation of the libraries of the Khaldounia (institute rested by the Tunisian nationalists) or of the literary Club of old of the Collège Sadiki. He also reads the Arab poets (in particular Lebanon board) like Khalil Gibran. He also takes part in the effervescence of intellectual youth in a climate of dispute of the teaching zitounien which agitates the capital then. As of the 14 years age, Chebbi writes its first Poème S.

The meeting of Chebbi at 18 years, with the editor Have-Snusi, who holds a kind of literary coterie in his printing works, Dar El Arab, will be important. This one publishes, the following year (in 1928), a Anthologie of the Tunisian Littérature Arabic contemporary where it does not devote less than 30 pages to his young friend: a sum of 27 poems. Chebbi, Dandy and poet in which the intellectual and artistic mediums are interested, settle then with the Hôtel and are registered in the course of right.

The 1929, in Khaldounia, Chebbi holds 2 hours a resounding conference on the topic of poetic imagination among Arabs in whom the 20 year old young man, who does not know any foreign language and forever left his country, surprises by the originality of his ideas and the audacity of his judgments:

The Arab poets never expressed major feelings because they did not consider nature with an alive and méditatif feeling, like something of sublime, but rather as one looks of an eye satisfies a clothing well woven and coloured or a beautiful carpet, nothing plus.

If Chebbi is proud success of the publication of this conference, he suffers from the failure of that which he holds the January 13rd 1930 on the topic of the Maghrebian literature which is Boycott ée by the zitouniens. Its health is degraded, the poet is in prey with crises of smothering: It carries in him a sick heart, a large heart and essoufflé.

Chebbi Marie in 1928 but celebrates its marriage in 1930, one year after the death of his/her father, with one of his cousins, Shahla Chebbi, of which it will have two children: Mohamed Sadok, born the November 29th 1931, which will become Colonel, and Jalal, born the January 4th 1934 which will become Engineer. This marriage more answers the paternal wish to have a descent that with a personal desire.

The August 26th 1934, Chebbi leaves to be looked after with the Ariana where one cannot identify his disease. The October 3rd, it is allowed at the Italian hospital of Tunis (current Hôpital Habib Thameur), for a Myocardite, where it dies at the dawn of the old October 9th of hardly 25 years.

Heritage

He writes a total of 132 poems and publishes articles in various reviews. But he will not arrive, in spite of two attempts, to make publish his diwan , collection of poems which he selected, and which will be published only in 1955 (more than 20 years after its death), after a literary critic come from Egypt, Omar Faroukh, clarified its poetic genius and its talent. The recognition of the genius of Chebbi is however outstanding although late. Its image is reproduced on three stamps of La Poste Tunisian (drawings of Hatem El Mekki) and on a ticket issued in 1997 by the Central bank of Tunisia. Streets, places, the college of Kasserine and a literary prize bear its name. One finds in Tozeur, his birthplace, of many traces of Chebbi: its tomb, transformed then into Mausoleum, is inaugurated the May 17th 1946. A medallion of Bronze is sealed with the wall of Bab El Hawa in 1995. A Statue of him is set up in the tourist area in 2000. Its Buste is high around Tozeur, in 2002, vis-a-vis a eagle. Lastly, 2 worms of Chebbi, resulting from sound more famous poem the will to live , are integrated at the end of the National anthem Tunisian, Humat Al-Hima , of which this one: When people want the life, force is with the destiny of répondre.

Among his poems of love and freedom, of resistance to died and the occupation, one can quote that entitled Prières in the temple of the love which opens as follows: Exquisite you are like childhood, the dreams, the music, the new morning, the merry sky, the night of full moon, the flowers, the smile of a child…

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