Khaleda Saeed

Khaleda Saeed
Born	20th century
🏳️ Nationality	Lebanese, of Syrian origin, Lebanon, Syria
Other names	Khozama Sabri (a pseudonym under which she wrote her first articles in a poetry magazine)
🏳️ Citizenship	Syria - Lebanon - France
🏫 Education	University degree, Ph.D. in literature
💼 Occupation	Literary critic, writer, researcher, and academic
Notable work	• Searching for Roots, House of Poetry Magazine, Beirut, 1960. • The Kinetics of Creativity, Dar Al-Fikr, Beirut, 1982. • The Theatrical Movement in Lebanon 1960-1975, The Arab Theater Committee, 1998.
👩 Spouse(s)	Poet Adonis

Khaleda Saeed is a Lebanese writer, critic, and academic of Syrian origin. She has been one of the active contributors to the Arab literary modernity movement since its beginnings through her active role in the Beirut "Khamis Poetry" magazine and her writing of critical articles in this magazine, starting with the second issue of its publication in 1957. The Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar called her "the icon of Arab criticism" talk in our country. The London newspaper Al-Hayat described her as a "poet" of Arab criticism.

Khaleda has many books, translations, articles, studies, and research in literary criticism and practiced higher education at the Faculty of Arts at the Lebanese University until her retirement.

Beginnings

Khaleda Saleh (Saeed) was born in Syria. She studied Arabic literature in Damascus and then at the Lebanese University in Beirut and earned a doctorate in literature from Sorbonne University in France. Khaleda taught in several secondary schools in Lebanon before moving to full-time teaching at the Lebanese University between 1958 and 1996. After retiring from her education, she moves between the Syrian village of Qasabin, Beirut, and France.

She is the wife of the Syrian poet and thinker Adonis and her daughter, the plastic painter and writer Ninar. She is the sister of actress Maha Al-Saleh and the poet Sanaa Saleh, the Syrian poet, and writer Muhammad Al-Maghut.

In her beginnings, she wrote some articles under Khozama Sabri’s name. It seems that she chose this pseudonym to escape fame and the spotlight, convinced that keeping pace with the "Shaar" revolution requires a lot of anchors and training. Since 1959, she has been signing her articles under her real name, and one of the most prominent things she wrote at that time was her unique article on the "Len" book by the poet Onsi Al-Hajj, who was in the prime of his poetic life. "This article took up the Divan's issue with gusto, sheds a bright light on its unique poetic and jerky aesthetic, which has is with passion, like so many of Khuzama's or Khalida's articles.”

Journal of poetry and critical writing

Khaleda Saeed's critical writings appeared in articles she published in Poetry Magazine in its second issue in 1957, under the name "Khuzama Sabri." She actively contributed to "Khamis Poetry Magazine" and held her literary meetings in Beirut. In these meetings, her intellectual and cultural relations with poets such as Youssef Al-Khal and Adonis, who opened the magazine's doors to her, as a critic who keeps pace with the modern poetic movement, also got acquainted with Muhammad Al-Maghout, Onsi Al-Hajj, Shawqi Abi Chakra, Fouad Rafqa, Essam Mahfouz, Nazir Al-Azma and others.

Her early writings were characterized by novelty and difference, "reading at the same time consciousness and intuition." When the third edition of Poetry magazine (Summer 57) was published, readers were surprised when she wrote about Nazik al-Malaika's Diwan "The Decision of the Wave," focusing on her concept of rhythm that did not escape from the monotony and on the emotional issues she occupied. Khozama Sabri (Khaleda Said), as the magazine introduces her, was a young Syrian critic who lived in Damascus and studied Arabic literature. This is all that was known about her readers, who also followed her new article in the fourth issue (Autumn 57), and it was about the book "I Found It" by the Palestinian poet Fadwa Toukan. A few months later, an article was published on Khalil Hawi's book "The Resurrection and the Ashes" (Winter 58) and an article on Muhammad Al-Maghout's book "Sadness in the Moonlight" (Summer 59). "This was the last article bearing this signature in the magazine "Poetry," and perhaps it is still one of the deepest articles that dealt with the poet's poetry that modernity came innately or instinctively.”

Her cultural and literary activity

Khaleda Saeed knew closely most of the contemporary Arab poets, especially the avant-garde ones, who kept meeting at her home during Thursdays of Poetry magazine in Beirut. (1960), and "The Kinetics of Creativity" (1982), passing through dozens of introductions she wrote for many studies and intellectual encyclopedias, as well as her translation of Wallace Fowley's book "The Age of Surrealism." Her translation of selections from Edgar Allen Poe's stories, and preparation, book: Complete Works Saniya Saleh, in which she presented poems, articles, and forgotten stories of Sunnism, is published for the first time, then "In the Beginning Was Muthanna" (2009), and "The Flood of Meaning.”

Moreover, she has been immortal for more than half a century, practicing writing and criticism. She has also critically accompanied the works of poets: Mahmoud Darwish, Abbas Beydoun, Abdel Moneim Ramadan, Wadih Saadeh, Amjad Nasser, and many others.

What have been told about her:

The exceptional reader of the poem

Journalist Abed Ismail wrote about Khaleda Saeed in Al-Hayat newspaper:

"Khaleda Saeed is the prudent, educated, and ablest to analyze the psychology of the ambiguous relationship between the creator and his text also between the creator and his time. She is a literary historian with a passion for theater. Khaleda is the exceptional reader of her husband's poetry, the great poet Adonis which did not obscure her presence; her husband is the avant-garde educator. He witnessed The most important transformations of Arab culture during the second half of the twentieth century. He participated very effectively in all discussions of the magazine "Poetry," along with Youssef Al-Khal, Onsi Al-Hajj, Khalil Hawi, Shawqi Abi Chakra, Issam Mahfouz, Khalil Hawi, and others."

“Integrated cash project.”

Journalist Khalil Sweileh wrote about her two new books: "Jarh Al-Maan" and "Fuq Al-Maan" (Dar Al-Saqi 2017):

"Khaleda Saeed continues her readings in the Arabic blog in poetry and prose, stopping first at the experience of her companion Adonis in his book "Singular in the Plural." According to what is in the introduction, she says: "In this text, the sanctified descends into experience, history brings the daily, the daily rises to the transcendent… as if this text is a journey through the wound and then emanates from the deep, Like someone who penetrated a magical storm and came out of it with an untranslatable experience and lesson, only loss of certainty with stillness and steadfastness ." in her second book, she captures several numbers of things << the intellectual and textual artistic transformations stimulated by the awareness of change as well as paradoxes that confront the modern vision and the modern position in contemporary Arabic literature, whether poetic or prose, from Gibran Khalil Gibran, Badr Shaker Al-Sayyab, and Youssef Al-Khal, to Nazik Al-Malaika and Muhammad Al-Maghout, Abu al-Qasim al-Shabi and Mahmoud Darwish…"

We should, therefore, look at Khaleda Saeed's work as an integrated critical project, with maps and thresholds revolving in the orbit of the implicit meaning of the creative text, in parallel, theoretically, and in practice.

Works

Khaleda Said has written several books on literary criticism, theater, translation, and women's issues, including:

• (1960), "Albahthu An Aljuthoor" (Searching for Roots): House of Poetry Magazine, Beirut.
• (1982), "Harkat Alibda" (The Kinetics of Creativity): Dar Al-Fikr, and Dar Al-Awda, Beirut.
• (1998), "Alharaka Almasrahiya Fi Lunbnan 1960-1975" (The theatrical movement in Lebanon 1960-1975): Arab Theater Committee.
• (1991), "Almaraa Altaharur Alibda" (Women Liberation Creativity), United Nations University
• (2007), "Alistiara Alkubra Fi Sheriyat Almasrah" (The Great Metaphor in the Poetry of the Theater), Dar Al-Adab.
• "Fi Albada Kan Almuthana" (In the beginning, was Al-Muthanna), Dar Al-Saqi.
• (2011), "Munir Abu Dibs Wa Alharaka Almasrahiya Fi Lubnan" (Mounir Abu Debs and the theatrical movement in Lebanon), Nelson House.
• (2012), "Yotobiya Almadina Almuthakafa" (Utopia of the Cultured City), Dar Al-Saqi
• (2017), "Jurh Almaana: Kiraa Fi Kitab "Mufrad Bisighat Aljama""(Jarh Al-Meaning: reading the book "Singular in the Plural"): Adonis, Dar Al-Saqi.

Published books

Together with the poet Adonis, she has written six books on the Renaissance:

1. Diwan Al-Nahda.

2. Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, House of Science for Millions (1982).

3. Sheikh Imam Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab, House of Science for Millions (1983).

4. Imam Muhammad Abdo, House of Science for Millions (1983).

5. Sheikh Muhammad Rashid Rida, House of Science for Millions (1983).

6. Poet Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi, House of Science for Millions (1983).

7. The poet Ahmed Shawky, House of Science for Millions (1983).

Translated books

The Adventures and Secrets of Edgar Allen Poe, Liberation Library (1980)

References

This article "Khalidah Said" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Khalidah Said. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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