His daughter, born in 1947, was married twice, and lived in London until her death in April 2009. Qabbani eulogized his son in the famous poem To the Legendary Damascene, Prince Tawfiq Qabbani. Tawfiq died due to a heart attack when he was 22 years old when he was in London. His first wife was his cousin Zahra Aqbiq together they had a daughter, Hadba, and a son, Tawfiq. Nizar Qabbani was married twice in his life. Qabbani's great uncle, Abu Khalil Qabbani, was one of the leading innovators in Arab dramatic literature. His father had a chocolate factory he also helped support fighters resisting the French mandate of Syria and was imprisoned many times for his views, greatly affecting the upbringing of Nizar into a revolutionary in his own right. Nizar Qabbani's father, Tawfiq Qabbani, was Syrian while his mother was of Turkish descent.
Book nizar qabbani tv#
The latter, Sabah Qabbani, was the most famous after Nizar, becoming director of Syrian radio and TV in 1960 and Syria's ambassador to the United States in the 1980s.
Nizar Qabbani had one sister, Wisal he also had three brothers: Mu'taz, Rashid, and Sabah. For instance, his poem Marginal Notes on the Book of Defeat, a stinging self-criticism of Arab inferiority, drew anger from both the right and left sides of the Arab political dialogue. The defeat marked a qualitative shift in Qabbani's work - from erotic love poems to poems with overt political themes of rejectionism and resistance.
The 1967 Arab defeat also influenced his poetry and his lament for the Arab cause. The city of Damascus remained a powerful muse in his poetry, most notably in the Jasmine Scent of Damascus. The relationships between men and women in our society are not healthy.” He is known as one of the most feminist and progressive intellectuals of his time.
Book nizar qabbani free#
I want to free the Arab soul, sense and body with my poetry. When asked whether he was a revolutionary, the poet answered: “Love in the Arab world is like a prisoner, and I want to set (it) free. During her funeral he decided to fight the social conditions he saw as causing her death. When Qabbani was 15, his sister, who was 25 at the time, committed suicide because she refused to marry a man she did not love. By that time, he had established a publishing house in Beirut, which carried his name. He continued to work in the diplomatic field until he tendered his resignation in 1966. He wrote extensively during these years and his poems from China were some of his finest. In 1959, when the United Arab Republic was formed, Qabbani was appointed Vice-Secretary of the UAR for its embassies in China. Ajlani liked the poems and endorsed them by writing the preface for Nizar's first book.Īfter graduating from law school, Qabbani worked for the Syrian Foreign Ministry, serving as Consul or cultural attaché in several capital cities, including Beirut, Cairo, Istanbul, Madrid, and London. To make it more acceptable, Qabbani showed it to Munir al-Ajlani, the minister of education who was also a friend of his father and a leading nationalist leader in Syria. It was a collection of romantic verses that made several startling references to a woman's body, sending shock waves throughout the conservative society in Damascus. While a student in college he wrote his first collection of poems entitled The Brunette Told Me. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in law in 1945. He later studied law at the Damascus University, which was called Syrian University until 1958. The school was owned and run by his father's friend, Ahmad Munif al-Aidi. Qabbani studied at the national Scientific College School in Damascus between 19. Qabbani was raised in Mi'thnah Al-Shahm, one of the neighborhoods of Old Damascus. Nizar Qabbani was born in the Syrian capital of Damascus to a middle class merchant family.