17 Quotes that Embody Etel Adnan: Arab American Philosopher, Writer, and Artist
BY: Marissa Ovassapian/Contributing Writer
Etel Adnan, born February 4, 1925, was raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Because her mother was from Greece and her father was a high-ranking Ottoman officer from Damascus, Adnan grew up speaking Greek and Turkish in addition to Arabic. This was the start of Etel Adnan’s cosmopolitan life.
In Lebanon, Adnan studied at French schools until leaving to study philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. By January of 1955, Adnan decided to go to America in order to pursue post-graduate studies in philosophy at U.C. Berkeley and Harvard. At Dominican College of San Rafael, Adnan taught philosophy from 1958 to 1972. After her tenure, she moved back to Beirut and was a cultural editor for two daily newspapers—first for Al Safa, then for L’Orient le Jour. At Al-Safa, she wrote many front page editorials; specifically, regarding political issues.
After years of learning and teaching, Adnan achieved a major milestone and published her first novel in 1977 entitled, “Sitt Marie-Rose”. The well-received book won the “France-Pays Arabes” award and has been translated into more than 10 languages. Its influence was so strong that it instantly became a War Literature classic.
In the same year, Adnan re-established herself in California, making Sausalito her home, with frequent stays in Paris. Adnan has made a name for herself as a prominent poet, author, and artist. In her later years, she began to openly identify as a lesbian, making the novelist a symbol for the Arab LGBT community, as well.
In 2014, a collection of the artist’s paintings and tapestries were exhibited as a part of the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is known as one of the most successful Arab American poets, and, in 2003, 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.
1. “Do what your inner soul tells you to do, regardless of any money or success it will bring you.”
2. “Colors exist for me as entities in themselves, as metaphysical beings.”
3. “I always had a few people who liked what I did, and that was enough.”
4. “I write what I see; I paint what I am.”
5. “If you aren’t here your heart won’t break in the same way.”
6. “The books I’m writing are houses that I build for myself.”
7. “Not seeing rivers is also another way of dying.”
8. “I didn’t want to read French or write it; it was like a boycott, a rejection.”
9. “Once I put down a color, I never cover it up. If you are born a musician, why become a banker?”
10. “Abstract art was the equivalent of poetic expression; I didn’t need to use words,but colors and lines. I didn’t need to belong to a language-oriented culture but to an open form of expression.”
11. “We were taught to think that Paris was the center of the universe.”
12. “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.”
13. “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.”
14. “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.”
15. “Morning. Vast. Imprecision. Fog has covered everything in gray. This has lasted. Doubt looms over the mind. Absence is harder to accept than death.”
16. “I love rains which carry desires to oceans.”
17. “There are not millions of deaths. It happens millions of times that someone dies.”