Andrée Chedid (b. Egypt / France)
1920-2011
Born in Cairo, Egypt, Andrée Chedid grew up in a family of mixed Lebanese and Egyptian ancestry. She attended French schools, matriculating at the American University of Cairo. In 1942 she married a physician, Louis Chedid, and moved with him to Paris in 1946.
Chedid also published fiction beginning in 1952 with Le Sommeil de livre (From Sleep Unbound), and through the years has become a major novelist. Her work has been widely translated and established a notable international audience. Among her other works of fiction are Le Sixieme Jour (The Sixth Day), La Maison sans racines (The Return to Beirut), and L'Enfant multiple (The Multiple Child).
Unlike her fiction, grounded as it is in the images and emotions of the Middle East, her poetry is, as she describes it, "free of time and place," having "no geographical boundaries," and belonging "to all lands." Her poetry is often autobiographical, but in its mix of history, fiction, myth and on occasion, magic, it is distilled from larger issues.
Chedid was also a well-known dramatist. She lived in Paris, where, despite her concerns with her heritage and her knowledge of Arabic, she claimed she felt most at home.
Among Chedid’s many awards were theLouise Labe prize (1966), the Grand Prize of French Literature from the Royal Academy of Belgium (1975), the Mallarmé prize (1976), Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle (1979), The Gutenberg Prize (1990), Grand prix de littérature Paul-Morand (1994), the Albert Camus Prize (1996), Prix Louis-Guilloux (2001), and Prix Goncourt de la Poésie (2002).
In 2009 she was named Grand Officier de la Légion d'honneur.
BOOKS OF POETRY
On the Trails of My Fancy (Cairo: Horus, 1943); Textes pour une figure (Paris: Pré-aux-Clercs, 1949); Textes pour un poème (Paris: Guy Levis-Mano, 1950); Textes pour le vivant (Paris: Guy Levis-Mano, 1953); Textes pour la terre aimée (Paris: Guy Levis-Mano, 1955); Terre et Poésie (Paris: Guy Levis-Mano, 1956); Terre regardée (Paris: Guy Levis-Mano, 1957); Seul le visage (Paris: Guy Levis-Mano, 1960); Double-Pays (Paris: Guy Levis-Mano, 1965); Contre-Chant (Paris: Flammarion, 1968); Visage premier (Paris: Flammarion, 1972); Prendre corps (Paris: Guy Levis-Mano, 1973); Voix multiples (Paris: Commune Measure, 1974); Fraternité de la parole (Paris: Flammarion, 1976); Ceremonial de la violence (Paris: Flammarion, 19760; Le Coeur et le temps (Paris: L'Ecole, 1977); Le Mort devant (Paris: Marc Pessin, 1977); Cadences de l'univers (Paris: Vodaine, 1978); Sommeil contradictoire (Dijon: Brandes, 1978); Greffes (Paris: Le Verbe et L'Empreinte, n.d.); Cavernes et Soleils (Paris: Flammarion, 1979); Epreuves du vivant (Paris: Flammarion, 1983); Sept Plantes pour un herbier (Romillé: Folle Avoine, 1983); Sept Textes pour un chant (Romillé: Folle Avoine, 1986); Textes pour un poème, 1949-1970 (Paris: Flammarion, 1987); Ancienne Egypt (Paris: Nouvelles Nouvelles, 1990); Poèmes pour un texte (Paris: Flammarion, 1991); Par delà les mots (Paris: Flammarion, 1995)
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
Selected Poems of Andrée Chedid, trans. by Judy Cochran (Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1995); Fugitive Suns: Selected Poetry, trans. by Lynne Goodhart and Jon Wagner (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 1999)
Mountains
Beneath a sky crackled as a shell
I took the mountain path
To an arid vineyard
There pines bend
And fall into the ravines
Furtive winds breathe in the trace
of my steps
I run toward the taciturn bridge
Which gathers the abyss
There is no epilogue
Even if the lamb falls from the shoulder of the shepherd
Fleeing in his owls' wing cape
Even if the forked tree
Breaks in two
—Translated from the French by Lynne Goodheart and Jon Wagner
(from Textes pour un poème, 1950)
First Image of Revolt
The woman without memories
Has left for the high lands
The ancestors' withered field
In the mornings of wrath
She runs dressed in black
Among the scattered flocks
Nothing is there
But a star village
Resting heavily on a hill.
—Translated from the French by Judy Cochran
(from Textes pour le vivant, 1953)
Land of Omens
Delphi
All we have disappears
What we are remains
Seeding itself even in winter
Light leaning on monsters
The acrid speech of the dead rising
in the dawn
Here again we want to know
But the sky lowers against these hills
Lost the oracle's cries
The steps of the stranger lost
Soon as well the image
memory betrays
And we, unable to name our destiny
Lost for words among the shadows
What do we carry to our death?
Perhaps the surf
The cry the ever-cresting fire
This sweetness of another place
Sometimes golden on our lips
Life the lure that leads us on
—Translated from the French by Lynne Goodheart and Jon Wagner
(from Terre regardée, 1957)
Land of Dreams
I ran off with the child-king, who believed in the journey.
Over the bleak roofs, I cast our cloak of oblivion.
Then we fled,
Leaving the old oak's torn shadow
The creeds of terror,
The sharp angles of our walls.
On my right shoulder, I carried the child-king.
Our footsteps across the parched land
Were as yielding as the throats of birds.
The child's eyes widened in the sun;
His garden, where silences reside,
Flourishes beneath the tree of life.
Because nothing is simple, I ran off with the child-king
Now we are together:
His springtime
My autumn
Our magic
And my step.
—Translated from the French by Judy Cochran
(from Terre regardée, 1957)
Proofs in Black and Gold
From a distance
Beneath the din of war
The earth moans endlessly
Howls
Savage the seasons
The body stops
Blood hardens
Faces, hands knot
In folds of death
Here
Glistening with green shadows
Enlaced in holiday
Pleasure
Streams down
The shoulders of summer
—Translated from the French by Lynne Goodheart and Jon Wagner
(from Poèmes pour un texte, 1991)
Truth
The Truth is nothing but a lie
Tenacious mirage of the living
It mocks our vigilance
And petrifies time
Truth is armed
Its spur the forbidden
Its bronze laws segregate us
Its words have walls and ceilings
Its single target a delusion
Sowings abound
Harvests are legion
Rather let us salute our fugitive suns
Words freed from symbols
Our paths on the move
Our multiple horizons
—Translated from the French by Lynne Goodheart and Jon Wagner
(from Poèmes pour un texte, 1991)
Resurrection or Resurrections
I
Before this Resurrection
This wind from other skies
This home in other worlds
This garden of afterward
whose compost and confines
escape the eye of the living
their hearts lined with memory
their bodies warped by time
Unable to name anything
I feel no call
Imagining these proud spirits
Their space without shores
Trees without season
Mirrors without dust
On the edge of the ultimate country
Where the flowing river
carries off all silt
Where the bottomless mouth
swallows up all reflections
Words darken
Vision stops
Ephemeral voyager
I penetrate nothing in this land without flesh
Touch nothing in this place without walls
II
But these daily and prodigious
resurrections
borne by the dove
by the surge of blood
Of these resurrections
drawn from the soul's waves
and the sowings of the heart
I know the vigor and the taste
I know the ardent return
Secular dawns
pull us from the swamps
Hands and voices
dislodge our tombstones
offer us breath and light
Offer openings from one day to the next
born from a loving look
sprung from a word
Light in folds of mist
Rain in our deserts
From little deaths
to brief resurrections
Hours sweep away hours
to the last recital
of the elusive secret
—Translated from the French by Lynne Goodheart and Jon Wagner
(from Poèmes pour un texte, 1991)
___________
PERMISSIONS
"Mountains,""Land of Omens,""Proofs in Black and Gold,""Truth," and "Resurrection or Resurrections"
Reprinted from Fugitive Suns: Selected Poetry, trans. by Lynne Goodhart and Jon Wagner (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 1999). Copyright ©1999 by Lynne Goodhart and Jon Wagner. Reprinted by permission of Green Integer.
"First Image of Revolt" and "Land of Dreams"
Reprinted from Selected Poems of Andrée Chedid, trans. by Judy Cochran (Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1995). Copyright ©1995 by The Edwin Mellen Press. Reprinted by permission of The Edwin Mellen Press.