May Ziade
Encyclopedia
May Ziade (February 11, 1886. – 1941), was a prolific Christian
Lebanese
-Palestinian
poet, essayist and translator.
A writer for the Arabic
newspapers and periodicals, Ziade also wrote a number of poems and books. She was a key figure of the Nahda in the early 20th century Arab literary scene, and is known for being an "early Palestinian feminist" and a "pioneer of Oriental feminism"."
in Palestine
to a Lebanese
Maronite father (from the Chahtoul family) and a Palestinian
mother. Her father, Elias Ziade, was editor of al-Mahrūsah.
Ziade attended primary school in Nazareth. As her father came to the Kesrouan region of Lebanon, at 14 years of age she was sent to Aintoura
to pursue her secondary studies at a French
convent school for girls. Her studies in Aintoura had exposed her to French literature
, and Romantic literature, to which she took a particular liking. She attended several Roman Catholic schools in Lebanon and in 1904, returned to Nazareth
to be with her parents. She is reported to have published her first articles at age 16.
. Her father founded "Al Mahroussah" newspaper while the family was in Egypt, to which Ziade contributed a number of articles.
Ziade was particularly interested in learning languages, studying privately at home coupled with a French-Catholic education, and studying at local university for a Modern Languages degree while in Egypt. As a result, Ziade was completely bilingual in Arabic
and French
, and had working knowledge of English
, Italian
, German
, Spanish
, Latin as well as Modern Greek
. She graduated in 1917.
, Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed, Antoun Gemayel, Walieddine Yakan, Abbas el-Akkad and Yacoub Sarrouf.
Though she had never married, from 1912 onward, she maintained an extensive written correspondence with Khalil Gibran
. While they never met in person as he was living in New York City
, the correspondence lasted 19 years until his death in 1931, and Ziade is credited with introducing his work to the Egyptian public.
where she died on October 17, 1941.
She specified that female evolution towards equality need not be enacted at the expense of femininity, but rather that it was a parallel process. In 1921, she convened a conference under the heading, "Le but de la vie" ("The goal of life"), where she called upon Arab women to aspire toward freedom, and to be open to the Occident without forgetting their Oriental identity.
, and finally Gibran. These influences are evident in the majority of her works. She often reflected on her nostalgia for Lebanon and her fertile, vibrant, sensitive imagination is as evident as her mystery, melancholy and despair.
, written in French
, using the pen name
of Isis Copia. She wrote rather extensively in French, and occasionally English or Italian, but as she evolved she increasingly found her literary voice in Arabic
. She published works of criticism and biography, volumes of free-verse poetry and essays, and novels. She translated several European authors into Arabic, including Arthur Conan Doyle
from English
, 'Brada' (the Italian Contessa Henriette Consuelo di Puliga) from French
, and Max Müller
from German
. She ran the most famous literary salon of the Arab world during the twenties and thirties in Cairo.
Well noted titles of her works in Arabic (with English translation in brackets) include:
- Al Bâhithat el-Bâdiyat باحثة البادية (Beginning Female Researchers)
- Sawâneh fatât سوانح فتاة (Platters of Crumbs)
- Zulumât wa Ichâ'ât ظلمات وأشعة (Humiliation and Rumors…)
- Kalimât wa Ichârât كلمات وأشارات (Words and Signs)
- Al Saha'ef الصحعف (The Newspapers)
- Ghayat Al-Hayât غاية الحياة (The Meaning of Life)
- Al-Mûsawâtالمؤسوات (Equality)
- Bayna l-Jazri wa l-Madd بين الجزر والمد (Between the Ebb and Flow)
, cultural capital of the Arab world
" would be held.
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
Lebanese
Lebanese people
The Lebanese people are a nation and ethnic group of Levantine people originating in what is today the country of Lebanon, including those who had inhabited Mount Lebanon prior to the creation of the modern Lebanese state....
-Palestinian
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
poet, essayist and translator.
A writer for the Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
newspapers and periodicals, Ziade also wrote a number of poems and books. She was a key figure of the Nahda in the early 20th century Arab literary scene, and is known for being an "early Palestinian feminist" and a "pioneer of Oriental feminism"."
Early life
Ziade was born in NazarethNazareth
Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...
in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
to a Lebanese
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
Maronite father (from the Chahtoul family) and a Palestinian
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
mother. Her father, Elias Ziade, was editor of al-Mahrūsah.
Ziade attended primary school in Nazareth. As her father came to the Kesrouan region of Lebanon, at 14 years of age she was sent to Aintoura
Aintoura
Antoura is a town in the Mount Lebanon Governorate.-History:The towns and the University was the scene of an "ethnic cleansing" event when the Ottoman Turkish authorities under direct instructions from Jamal Pasha followed a policy of "Turkification" that affected over 1300 Armenian and Kurdish...
to pursue her secondary studies at a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
convent school for girls. Her studies in Aintoura had exposed her to French literature
French literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
, and Romantic literature, to which she took a particular liking. She attended several Roman Catholic schools in Lebanon and in 1904, returned to Nazareth
Nazareth
Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...
to be with her parents. She is reported to have published her first articles at age 16.
Journalism & Classical studies
In 1908, she and her family emigrated to EgyptEgypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. Her father founded "Al Mahroussah" newspaper while the family was in Egypt, to which Ziade contributed a number of articles.
Ziade was particularly interested in learning languages, studying privately at home coupled with a French-Catholic education, and studying at local university for a Modern Languages degree while in Egypt. As a result, Ziade was completely bilingual in Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, and had working knowledge of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, Latin as well as Modern Greek
Modern Greek
Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
. She graduated in 1917.
Key Arab literary figure
Ziade was well known in Arab literary circles, receiving many male and female writers and intellectuals at a literary salon she established in 1912. Among those that frequented the salon were Taha Hussein, Khalil MoutraneKhalil Mutran
Khalil Mutran , also known by the sobriquet Sha’ir al Qutrayn was a noted Arabic poet and journalist.-Life:...
, Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed, Antoun Gemayel, Walieddine Yakan, Abbas el-Akkad and Yacoub Sarrouf.
Though she had never married, from 1912 onward, she maintained an extensive written correspondence with Khalil Gibran
Khalil Gibran
Khalil Gibran Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān,Jibrān Khalīl Jibrān, or Jibrān Xalīl Jibrān; Arabic , January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) also known as Kahlil Gibran, was a Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer...
. While they never met in person as he was living in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, the correspondence lasted 19 years until his death in 1931, and Ziade is credited with introducing his work to the Egyptian public.
Personal loss & depression
Between 1928 and 1931, Ziade suffered a series of personal losses, beginning with the death of her parents, her friends, and above all Khalil Gibran. She fell into a deep depression and returned to Lebanon where her relatives tried to place her in psychiatric hospital to gain control over her estate. Nawal El Saadawi submits that Ziade was sent to the hospital for expressing feminist sentiments. Ziade eventually recovered her lucidity and returned to CairoCairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
where she died on October 17, 1941.
Feminism
Ziade was deeply concerned with the emancipation of the Arab woman; a task to be effected first by tackling ignorance, and then anachronistic traditions. She considered women to be the basic elements of every human society and wrote that a woman enslaved could not breastfeed her children with her own milk when that milk smelled strongly of servitude.She specified that female evolution towards equality need not be enacted at the expense of femininity, but rather that it was a parallel process. In 1921, she convened a conference under the heading, "Le but de la vie" ("The goal of life"), where she called upon Arab women to aspire toward freedom, and to be open to the Occident without forgetting their Oriental identity.
Romanticism and Orientalism
Bearing a romantic streak from childhood, Ziade was successively influenced by Lamartine, Byron, ShelleyPercy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
, and finally Gibran. These influences are evident in the majority of her works. She often reflected on her nostalgia for Lebanon and her fertile, vibrant, sensitive imagination is as evident as her mystery, melancholy and despair.
Works
Ziade's first published work, Fleurs de rêve (1911), was a volume of poetryPoetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, written in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, using the pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
of Isis Copia. She wrote rather extensively in French, and occasionally English or Italian, but as she evolved she increasingly found her literary voice in Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
. She published works of criticism and biography, volumes of free-verse poetry and essays, and novels. She translated several European authors into Arabic, including Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
from English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, 'Brada' (the Italian Contessa Henriette Consuelo di Puliga) from French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, and Max Müller
Max Müller
Friedrich Max Müller , more regularly known as Max Müller, was a German philologist and Orientalist, one of the founders of the western academic field of Indian studies and the discipline of comparative religion...
from German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
. She ran the most famous literary salon of the Arab world during the twenties and thirties in Cairo.
Well noted titles of her works in Arabic (with English translation in brackets) include:
- Al Bâhithat el-Bâdiyat باحثة البادية (Beginning Female Researchers)
- Sawâneh fatât سوانح فتاة (Platters of Crumbs)
- Zulumât wa Ichâ'ât ظلمات وأشعة (Humiliation and Rumors…)
- Kalimât wa Ichârât كلمات وأشارات (Words and Signs)
- Al Saha'ef الصحعف (The Newspapers)
- Ghayat Al-Hayât غاية الحياة (The Meaning of Life)
- Al-Mûsawâtالمؤسوات (Equality)
- Bayna l-Jazri wa l-Madd بين الجزر والمد (Between the Ebb and Flow)
Awards
In 1999, May Ziade was named by the Lebanese Minister of Culture as the personage of the year around which the annual celebration of "BeirutBeirut
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...
, cultural capital of the Arab world
Arab world
The Arab world refers to Arabic-speaking states, territories and populations in North Africa, Western Asia and elsewhere.The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 states and territories of the Arab League stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the...
" would be held.
External links
French, English and Arabic profile of May Ziade http://www.onefineart.com/en/artists/mayziedeh/index.shtmlFurther reading
- Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature
- Marilyn BoothMarilyn Booth-Biography:Booth graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1978, and was the first female winner of the Wendell Scholarship. She obtained a D.Phil. in Arabic literature and Middle Eastern history from St Antony's College, Oxford in 1985. She received a Marshall Fellowship for her...
, 'Biography and Feminist Rhetoric in Early Twentieth Century Egypt: Mayy Ziyada's Studies of Three Women's Lives', Journal of Women's History 3:1 (1991), pp. 38-64 - Tahir Khemiri & G. Kampffmeyer, Leaders in Contemporary Arabic Literature: A Book of Reference (1930), pp. 24-27
- Joseph T. Zeidan, Arabic Women Novelists: The Formative Years and Beyond. 1995.
- Antje Ziegler, 'Al-Haraka Baraka! The Late Rediscovery of Mayy Ziyāda's Works', Die Welt des Islams 39:1 (1999), pp. 103-115