Supertidian [soo-pah-tid-ean] adj. An annoying excess of mostly unwanted events that occur daily, as in: It would be one thing if there were fewer of them, but supertidian right-wing talk show hosts infect my radio even when it’s not turned on.
Unscriptive [un-skrip-tiv/ly] adj., adv. A description of behaviors, attitudes, and ideas that have a unique and independent cast; generous attitudes that appear to come from nowhere; unbiased thinking; a desire for openness and intelligent communication. Unscriptive acts were first noticed in the 1950s, in experiments with LSD. In current usage, unscriptive talk and acts are not related to drug-taking, as in: Bill Clinton, at his very best, discoursed unscriptively about history, reproductive rights and race relations. But George W. Bush is, to the country’s chagrin, never unscriptive.
E is for Etel and Eggleston
A Conversation with Etel Adnan
In the late 1980s, I was phoned by poet and critic Ammiel Alcalay, who urged me to hear Etel Adnan read the next night at the Graduate Center. He told me Adnan was an Arab-American poet, playwright and painter, born and raised in Lebanon. Since he had never urged me to attend an event before, I decided to go. The lecture hall was filled. I remember Edward Said and his wife were in the audience. Adnan took her seat behind a table at the front, and, from the moment she began reading, her passion, great intelligence and sensitivity to language and form felt palpable. It was a rapturous night, during which I said to myself, I’m so glad I came. Imagine if I’d missed this.
Adnan writes about exile and place, women and men, war, nature, paying homage to the beauty, complexity, and even the horrors of our lives. She is a philosophical poet, whose range is extraordinary. She the author of, among others, the acclaimed novel Sitt Marie Rose, which was translated into ten languages, including Urdu and Bosnian, and the epic poem, The Arab Apocalypse. Her paintings have been exhibited internationally and are included in various museums and collections. Adnan’s plays have been produced in San Francisco, Paris, Caen, Argentina, Dusseldorf and Beirut, her poetry set to music by composers such as Gavin Bryars, Henry Threadgill, Tania Leon, Annea Lockwood, and Zad Multaka. Her latest books are In The Heart Of The Heart Of Another Country and The Master Of The Eclipse.
After I heard her read that night, I made contact with her. I saw her twice in NYC, when she was on her way to Paris. I phoned her there a couple of times, and we maintained an infrequent correspondence. I read her books. Her partner, Simone Fattal, who is the publisher of the Post-Apollo Press, always sent me her new books; and Etel always signed them affectionately. Having the chance to talk with Etel Adnan for Bidoun, at length and in her home in Sausalito, was a gift.
LT: You’ve written that you can never separate experience from theory.
EA: We don’t just speak out, we order our thinking. If you call that theory, you can’t escape it. If one means, rather, that one speaks with pre-decisions, that this is my way of speaking, I will conform everything to that style and approach, it is not only bad, but it also doesn’t work. It is why, sometimes, my work seems to go in many different directions. It could be harmful, but I can’t do otherwise. But to do that doesn’t mean not to have direction in one’s thinking or to be lost. I want to accept things as they come and see what to do with them.
LT: One’s own experience of the world might always fall into a category or theory one believes.
EA: I accept contradiction when it happens. Today I may say something philosophicaclass="underline" if I can talk of the idea of Being separated from objects, then I can also say there is no Being outside manifestation. One month later I might write its opposite and be aware of it. That doesn’t bother me, because I seek new connections. Of course, you must have some few points of reference in your life.
LT: War is a enduring point of reference for you.
EA: I have become politically nonviolent. I’ve reached the point that, for myself, it is right. I will not compromise that. On other matters I feel a kind of absolute, if we can use that word. I do not accept the sexual abuse of children. But I have very few of those absolutes. Everything else is in flux.
LT: I admire various kinds of writing, if I feel there is an intelligence behind it, that the language is closely handled, in whatever form the writer chooses.
EA: I don’t privilege one approach to another. I don’t privilege it within my own works. Some people are prisoners of the decisions they make.
LT: It’s fascinating in Sitt Marie Rose, your novel about the Lebanese Civil War, which started in 1975, the varieties of style and forms you chose. First, what does “sitt” mean?
EA: Sitt is an Arabic word, used in Lebanon and Syria mostly, and Egypt, to mean “madam”; it’s not formal. A girl of five years old in conversation can be “little sitt so-and-so.” Sitt can also be for married or single women. It’s a colloquial way to address a woman. It carries some respect.
LT: How did Sitt Marie Rose come about, when did you write it?
EA: I wrote it before the end of 1976. The event it’s based on occurred in early ’76. The Christian Phalangists kidnapped a woman whose real name was Marie Rose. People immediately recognized her when the book came out.
LT: You wrote it in French.
EA: I was in Paris and had read in Le Monde about Marie Rose Boulous’ being kidnapped. I knew she was already dead. I became upset, wanted to write it down; as you are a writer, you know one discovers through writing matters that wouldn’t occur to you otherwise. I wanted to find out — all cultures include violence — which forms the Lebanonese culture has taken. We don’t know any human group in history that hasn’t been violent. I don’t believe any nation is better than any other on that score. But what attracted me to this violence was my knowledge: the young men who kidnapped, tortured and killed her, I had grown up with them. I knew Phalangists, and she was Christian too. Through her they wanted to teach a lesson to the various factions. People use religion to excite people and send them to war, like Bush with the word “democracy.” It’s dogma misuse. The Phalangists were, in their minds, defending Christian values, but in fact they were defending their power against the Muslims. There are orthodox Christians in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon. The majority of Christians in Lebanon are Catholic, so they had links with Rome, and the French, a Catholic nation. The French created a place where these Christians would have their own country — after World War I when the big powers carved up the Middle East. But if everybody were Christian, the new country would have been too small. So they included territory inhabited by Muslims. This is the key to the Lebanese problem — the Christians of Lebanon say, and it’s true, the country was created by the French for them. But after two generations, the Christians found they were no longer a sizable majority. Today they are not the majority. It’s the source not of hatred but of the antagonism in Lebanon.