Etel Adnan
Etel Adnan
Etel Adnanis a Lebanese-American poet, essayist, and visual artist. In 2003, Adnan was named "arguably the most celebrated and accomplished Arab American author writing today" by the academic journal MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States. She currently lives in Paris, France and Sausalito, California...
NationalityLebanese
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 February 1925
CountryLebanon
close compulsive expressed poetry rapid
Usually, I am a compulsive person, and I need - sometimes urgently - to paint... Painting is close to poetry, is a kind of poetry expressed visually. It has to be spontaneous, rapid - at least in my case.
bigger change nature places
Places are part of nature, of the bigger picture. We are interrelated. When we contemplate them in their own right, they can sometimes change our lives; they can become spiritual experiences.
connection direct includes linked paintings
My writing and my paintings do not have a direct connection in my mind. But I am sure they influence each other in the measure that everything we do is linked to whatever we are, which includes whatever we have done or are doing.
taught
We were taught to think that Paris was the center of the universe.
cover
Once I put down a color, I never cover it up. If you are born a musician, why become a banker?
became longer
Mount Tamalpais became my house. For Cezanne, Sainte-Victoire was no longer a mountain. It was an absolute. It was painting.
I write what I see; I paint what I am.
looked love people similar work works
I love Nicolas de Stael particularly, and my work can remind people of him. But looked at attentively, our works are not similar at all.
I didn't want to read French or write it; it was like a boycott, a rejection.
entities
Colours exist for me as entities in themselves, as metaphysical beings.
pain war lying
To read a lot of trash mixing the blood of war with business’s stench. To root out any happiness. To go out, and down, and on the road. To hesitate; to go on, and ahead, and back, and up the stairs, and in one’s room. On the way, to notice that the mountain is still there. To lie and sleep, deeply, heavily. To reproduce night’s sleep. To wake up, look through the window at green water, from the Bay to the mountain, and return to one’s self. To remember that war is devastating Irak. To feel pain.
rivers dying way
Not seeing rivers is also another way of dying.