Nazik al-Mala'ika

Nazik Sadiq al - Mala'ika (Arabic نازك صادق الملائكة, DMG nazik Sadiq al -Mala ʾ ika, born August 23, 1922 in Baghdad, † June 20, 2007 in Cairo ) was an Iraqi poet. It is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern Arabic poetry.

Life

Nazik al - Mala'ika was born in 1922 in Baghdad. As the only woman she studied until 1944 at the Teachers' Training College ( دار المعلمين العالية ) in Baghdad Arabic language and literature. There she also learned Latin and English, also French in 1949. Early fifties she visited, equipped with a scholarship, shortly Princeton University. From 1954 she studied comparative literature at the University of Wisconsin- Madison.

After the takeover of power in Iraq by Saddam Hussein, she lived from 1970 to 1990 in Kuwait, where she worked as a professor at the University of Kuwait. After Saddam had occupied the country in 1990, she emigrated to Egypt. In her last years she suffered from Parkinson's disease. She died on 20 June 2007 at a hospital in Cairo.

Nazik al - Mala'ika was from 1961 married to the professor Abdel Hadi Mahbooba, who died in 2005. The marriage went forth a son.

Work

Already with their first work, the collection of poems A'shiqat Al- Layl ( "Lovers of the Night" ) from 1947, she became known internationally. In her two years later published the second volume, Shazaya wa ramad ( " spark and ash " ), she distanced herself from the rigid structure of traditional Arabic poetry. She went here for the first time the gamble you to break away from the fixed metric specifications and to promote the free verse, as the pioneer in the Arab world it applies. In one of the most well-known texts in this collection Nazik al - Mala'ika reflects the cholera epidemic that broke out in the autumn of 1947 in Egypt. During the 1960s they began to distance themselves from the seal of the free rhythm again, what a heated argument with the group around the magazine Schiir triggered ( "Poetry "). Nevertheless, it has influenced modern Arab poets like Adonis and Mahmoud Darwish sustainable.

While until her death in a total of seven books of poetry published by her, her prose work is less well known. She has published ( in Lebanese magazines) a series of short stories that were Al- Nathriya Al- Kamila (Collected Prose ) republished in the two-volume anthology Al- Aamal 2002. Especially in the 1950s, she appeared as a women's rights activist forth and discussed in several essays, some of which are considered classics of Arab feminism, the role of Arab women in the patriarchal society.

Writings

Original edition (selection)

• Al- Layl A'shiqat, 1947 (poetry )
• Shazaya wa ramad, 1949 (poetry )
• Al- mar'a baina ' ltarafain, al - salbiyya wa ' l- akh - laq, 1953 ( Essay )
• Al- tajzi'iyya fi 'l- mujtama ' al- Arabi, 1954 ( Essay )
• Qarárat al - mawya, 1957 ( poems)
• Qadaya 'l- SHI'R al - mu'asir, 1962 ( collection of articles )
• Shaýarat al - qamar, 1968 ( poems)
• Ma'sát al -Hayat wa ugniya li - l - insan, 1970 ( poems)
• Yugayyir alwána -hu l - bahr, 1976 ( poems)
• Li- l - salat wa-l - tawra, 1978 ( poems)
• Al Aamal Al- Nathriya Al- Kamila, 2002 ( Prose, 2 vols )

Translated into German

• Suleman Taufiq (ed.), New Arabic poetry. Dt. Paperback -Verl., Munich 2004, ISBN 3-423-13262-0 ( includes three poems by Nazik al - Mala'ika in German translation as well as a biographical outline of the poet )