Syrian poet Adonis receives Kumaran Asan World Prize
The 85-year-old poet who left Syria for Beirut in 1957 and then for Paris in 1980 said in an exclusive interview to India Today that Syria's revolution has been usurped by mercenaries and Islamists.
Syrian poet Adonis, arguably the most famous living poet in Arabic, received the Kumaran Asan World Prize in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
At a ceremony on the 142 birthday of the great Malayalam poet Asan, at his village in Kayikkara, Adonis said, "I come from a world in which humans feed on the flesh of others, in a war that has returned human modernity to a form of savagery that we thought had long gone... everything seems to be a well-organised destruction of civilisations and of the meaning of human life itself."
The 85-year-old Adonis who left Syria for Beirut in 1957 and then for Paris in 1980 said in an exclusive interview to India Today that he did not think there could be an immediate solution to the crisis in Syria. "The revolution that starts from a mosque is no revolution. Because religion is against revolution. Syria's revolution has been usurped by mercenaries and Islamists," he said.
At the award ceremony, he said, "I come to you with the light of poetry; with what remains in the Arabic language that weeps in sorrows."
He earlier told India Today that he supported the PEN Prize for Charlie Hebdo which had divided the literary community. "You can't treat a word or a painting as a crime," he said.