Nizar Kabbani , or Qabbani , (in Arabic نزارقبّاني , transliterated Nizār Qabbānī ) (born the March 21st 1923 with Damas, Syria of a notable father - died the April 30th 1998, with London, Great Britain) was a Syrian poet, whose poetry breaks the traditional image of the Arab woman and invents a new language, near to the spoken language and rich person to many images borrowed from the world to childhood.

Biography

As of the 16 years age, Nizar Kabbani starts to write poems, largely devoted to topics in love.

In 1945, it obtains the diploma of the Faculty of Law of the Syrian Université in Damas.

It enters as attache to the Syrien ministry of the foreign affairs and, having chosen for the diplomatic career, occupies various stations of person in charge and advising cultural in the Syrian embassies with the Cairo, with Ankara, Madrid, Beijing and Beirut until its resignation in 1966. After the Arab defeat vis-a-vis Israel in 1967, it creates in London the publisher “Nizar Khabbani” and becomes powerful and eloquent spokesperson of the Arab cause.

Installed to Beirut in the middle of the Sixties, he said to feel “an immense sadness by seeing all the evil which one makes” at this city. In an interview with the Lebanese daily newspaper “ the East the Day ” in 1977, at the time of the publication of “ has Beirut the woman, with my love ”, it indicated: “I have lived in Beirut for ten years. She is for me the mother, the friend and loved”.

Since its beginnings in literature in 1944 with its first collection of poems, heading: the brown one told me , Nizar Kabbani published more than thirty collections of poems, of which the childhood of a center (1948), Samba (1949), you are with me (1950), the newspaper of an indifferent woman (1968), wild poems (1970), the book of the love (1970), 100 love letters (1970), poems out the law (1972), I love you, I love you and the continuation will come (1978), has Beirut, with my love (1978), which each year you my would be loved (1978), I swear that there are women only you (1979) and several of other works. It will create around him a very great controversy due to the fact that it reported there without false modesty its love for the woman.

Its work, rented by generations of Arabs for its sensual and romantic worms, was not limited to the collections of poetry. It contributed regular shares to the Arab newspaper of language Al Hayat , and its texts were put in music and sung by Mohamed Abdelwahab, Najib Serraj or Abdel Halim Hafez (Qariat el fingan, Rissala min tahtilmaa), they were also sung by singers Egyptian Libanaises, Syriennes or like Feyrouz, Oum Kalsoum and others, which contributed to popularize its work. He is the contemporary Arab poet most popular and more read.

He was called the poet of the woman and Oumma following the turning which its poetry will know after the successive Arab defeats vis-a-vis the Israelis. He will be practically the only poet not to sing the praises of the Arab leaders and to hold them due to these defeats.

Texts of Nizar Kabbani were translated into Spanish by Pedro Monteret (Institute hispano-Arabic, 1964) and into English by Abdallah Al-Uzari (in Idiot temporar.y, 4 rab Poetry, Penguin, 1986) and by Selma Khadra Jayyusi (in Modem Arabia Poetry, Columbia University Press, 1987).

The Syrian poet Youssef Karkoutly could say of Nizar Khabbani which it was “as necessary to our lives as the air”.

Nizar Kabbani was married twice. It had had two children of its first bed: Tawfiq deceased, and Hadba. His second wife, Balqis Al-Rawi, teaching Iraqi that it had met at the time of a recital of poetry with Baghdad, and which also gave him two children, Omar and Zeïnab, found death in an attack perpetrated by activists pro-Iranian against the embassy of Iraq in 1981 in Beirut, where she worked for the cultural section of the Iraqi government. This disappearance has much affected the poet, who took again hope thanks to his children.

End of its life

After the death of Balkis, Kabbani leaves Beirouth. He lived between Geneva and Paris and is established in London for its 15 last years. . It continued to write poems who raised some controversies and in particular " When will they announce it dead of the Arabs? " and " Coureurs" ( Al mouharwilon المهرولون ). In 1997, Nizar Kabbani suffered from health issues. And in spite of an improvement towards the end of 1997, he dies in London on April 30th, 1998 of one heart attack at the age of 75. He formulated the wishes to be buried with Damas, which he described as being the belly which learned to him poetry, creativity and the gratifia of the alphabet of the Jasmine. He was transported to Damas four day later in Bab Al-Saghir

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