São Paulo – Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani will be honoured with a symposium and a recital next Thursday (21) at the Arab Syrian Cultural Centre, in São Paulo. Qabbani, who was born in Damascus, Syria, in 1923, and died in England, in 1998, at 75 years of age, was one of the Arab world’s most renowned contemporary poets. Love was among the main themes of his verses. The poet was graduated in law and was also a diplomat and editor.
The Syrian Arab Cultural Centre usually organizes cultural events turned to Arab culture and chose Qabbani to celebrate in March. At the symposium, Kháled Fayez Mahassen journalist and poet, and Fuad Achcar Junior, a doctor and poet, will speak about the Qabbani’s work. The two will also recite poems by the Syrian. The meeting is open to the public, free, and should start at 8:30 pm.
Coming from the middle class, the poet worked for the Syrian Foreign Ministry. Apart from love, the theme of his first verses, also dominant in the poetry of Qabbani is the feeling of Pan-Arabism, a nationalist movement that preached the union of the Arab countries. The Six Day War, several Arab countries against Israel, which ended favourably for the Israeli, was one of the reasons for the nationalist discourse in his poems.
The poet got married several times and his family life was marked by tragedies, including the death of his son, of a heart attack, at 22 years of age, and of his second wife, an Iraqi teacher, in a bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, during the Lebanese Civil War. Qabbani published 34 poetry books from 1948 to 1998.
*Translated by Mark Ament
