May Ziadeh

May Ziadeh مي زيادة
Born	(1886-02-11)11 February 1886 Nazareth,Acre Sanjak,Ottoman Empire
Died	17 October 1941(1941-10-17)(aged 55) Cairo,Kingdom of Egypt
Pen name	Isis Copia
Occupation	Writer

May Elias Ziadeh(/ziˈɑːdə/zee-AH-də;Arabic:مي إلياس زيادة,ALA-LC:Mayy Ilyās Ziyādah;11 February 1886– 17 October 1941) was aPalestinian-LebaneseMaronitepoet,essayist,and translator,who wrote many different works both inArabicand inFrench.

Born inNazareth,Palestineto aPalestinianmother and a Lebanese father,Ziadeh attended school in her native city and in Lebanon, before emmigrating along with her family toEgyptin 1908. She started publishing her works in French (under the pen nameIsis Copia) in 1911, andKahlil Gibranentered into a correspondence with her in 1912. Being a prolific writer, she wrote for Arabic-language newspapers and periodicals, along with publishingpoemsand books. May Elias Ziadeh held one of themost famous literary salons in the modern Arab worldin the year 1921.After suffering some personal losses at the beginning of the 1930s, she came back to Lebanon where her relatives placed her in apsychiatric hospital.However, she was able to get out of it, and then left forCairo,where she later died.

Ziadeh was one of the key figures of theNahdain the early 20th-century Middle Eastern literary scene and a "pioneer of Oriental feminism."

Biography

Early and personal life

May Ziadeh was the daughter of Elias Zakhur Ziadeh, aLebaneseMaronitefromChahtoulvillage and Nuzha Khalil Mu'mar, aPalestinian Christianwhose family was originally fromHauran,Syria,settled in the early 19th centuryShe was born inNazareth,OttomanPalestine.Her father had been a teacher and the editor ofAl Mahrūsah.

May Elias Ziadeh attended primary school inNazareth.As her father came to theKeserwanregion of Mount Lebanon, she was sent at the age of 14 toAintourato pursue her secondary studies at a French convent school for girls.Her studies in Aintoura exposed her toFrenchandRomantic literature,to which she took a particular liking.She attended severalRoman Catholicschools in Lebanon before returning to Nazareth in the year 1904 to be with her parents.She is reported to have published her first articles at the age of 16. In 1908, she and her family immigrated to Egypt.

Ziadeh never married,but from 1912 onward, she maintained an extensive written correspondence with one of the literary giants of the twentieth century, the Lebanese-American poet and writerKhalil Gibran.Although the pair never met, the correspondence lasted 19 years until his death in 1931.

May's father, Elias Ziadeh

Between 1928 and 1932, Ziadeh suffered a series of personal losses, beginning with the death of her parents, a number of her friends, and above all Khalil Gibran. She fell into a deep depression and returned to Lebanon where her relatives placed her in a psychiatric hospital to gain control over her estate.Nawal El Saadawialleges that Ziadeh was sent to the hospital for expressing feminist sentiments.Ziadeh was profoundly humiliated and incensed by this decision; she eventually recovered and left after a medical report proved that she was of sound mental health. She returned toCairowhere she died on October 17, 1941.

Journalism and language studies

Ziadeh's father foundedAl Mahroussahnewspaper while the family was in Egypt. She contributed to a number of articles.She also published articles inAl Hilal,Al AhramandAl Muqtataf.

Ziadeh was particularly interested in learning languages. She studied privately at home alongside her French-Catholiceducation, and later at a local university for a Modern Languages degree while in Egypt. She graduated in 1917.As a result, Ziadeh was completely bilingual inArabicandFrench,and had working knowledge ofEnglish,Italian,German,Syriac(as an integral part of her ethnoreligiousLebanese Maroniteidentity),Spanish,Latin,as well asModern Greek.

Key Middle Eastern literary figure

Ziadeh was well known in Middle Eastern literary circles, receiving many male and female writers and intellectuals at a literary salon she established in 1912 (and which Egyptian poetGamila El Alailyattempted to emulate after Ziadeh's death). Among those that frequented the salon wereTaha Hussein,Khalil Moutrane,Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed,Anton Gemayel,Walieddine Yakan,Abbas el-AkkadandYaqub Sarruf.Ziadeh is credited with introducing the work of Khalil Gibran to the Egyptian public.

Philosophical views

Feminism and Orientalism

Unlike her peersPrincess Nazli FazilandHuda Sha'arawi,May Ziadeh was more a 'woman of letters' than a social reformer. However, she was also involved in the women's emancipation movement.Ziadeh was deeply concerned with the emancipation of the Middle Eastern 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 Middle Eastern women to aspire toward freedom, and to be open to theOccidentwithout forgetting theirOrientalidentity.Despite her death in 1941 her writings still represent the ideals of the first wave of Lebanesefeminism.Ziadeh believed in liberating women and the first wave focused on doing just that through education, receiving voting rights, and finally having representation in government.

Romanticism

Bearing a romantic streak from childhood, Ziadeh was successively influenced byLamartine,Byron,Shelley,and finallyGibran.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

Ziadeh's first published work,Fleurs de rêve(1911), was a volume ofpoetry,written inFrench,using thepen nameof Isis Copia. She wrote quite extensively inFrench,and occasionally English or Italian, but as she matured she increasingly found her literary voice inArabic.She published works of criticism and biography, volumes of free-verse poetry and essays, and novels. She translated several European authors into Arabic, includingArthur Conan DoylefromEnglish,Brada(the Italian Contessa Henriette Consuelo di Puliga) fromFrench,andMax MüllerfromGerman.She hosted the most famous literarysalonduring the twenties and thirties in Cairo.

Well noted titles of her works inArabic(with English translation in brackets) include:

-Bâhithat el-Bâdiyaباحثة البادية ( "Seeker in the Desert", pen name ofMalak Hifni Nasif)
-Sawâneh fatâtسوانح فتاة (Platters of Crumbs)
-Zulumât wa Ichâ'âtظلمات وإشاعات (Humiliation and Rumors...)
-Kalimât wa Ichârâtكلمات وإشارات (Words and Signs)
-Al Saha'efالصحائف (The Newspapers)
-Ghayat Al-Hayâtغاية الحياة (The Meaning of Life)
-Al-Musâwâtالمساواة (Equality)
-Bayna l-Jazri wa l-Maddبين الجزر والمد (Between the Ebb and Flow)

Feminist works

Ziadeh is considered by many as integral to the feminist movement having published many autobiographies of women between 1919-1925, this was part of her advocacy for the empowerment of women, examples of women featured in her work include Egyptian feministMalak Hifni Nassefin her bookBahithat-ul-Badia.She was credited as being the first woman to use the term "women's cause" in theMiddle Eastaccording to critic Hossam Aql, "She was the first professional writer to take a critical approach to women's stories or novels".Herfictionoften included strong female characters and discussed the condition of Middle Eastern women, for example in one of her short stories, she illustrates the evil of frequent divorce and remarriage which she blames on men andpatriarchal society.

Awards

In 1999, May Ziadeh was named by the Lebanese Minister of Culture as the personage of the year around which the annual celebration of "Beirut,cultural capital of theArab world"would be held.

Legacy

AGoogle Doodleon 11 February 2012 commemorated Ziadeh's 126th birth anniversary.

See also

• Women's literary salons and societies in the Arab world

References

Sources

• Ashour, Radwa;Ghazoul, Ferial J.;Reda-Mekdashi, Hasna; McClure, Mandy (2008).Arab Women Writers A Critical Reference Guide, 1873-1999.Cairo; New York: The American University in Cairo Press.ISBN978-977-416-146-9.JSTORj.ctt15m7j94.OCLC10018815770.
• Boustani, Carmen (2003).Effets du féminin: variations narratives francophones.Collection Lettres du Sud.Paris:Editions Karthala.ISBN978-2-84586-433-7.OCLC53297358.
• Gibran, Khalil(2006) [1987].Jesus, el hijo del hombre.Deva's.ISBN978-987-1102-57-0.
• Gibran, Kahlil (1983).Blue Flame: The Love Letters of Kahlil Gibran to May Ziadah.Translated byBushrui, Suheil B.;Kuzbarī, Salmá al-Ḥaffār.New York: Longman.ISBN978-0-582-78078-1.OCLC713801519.
• Khaldi, Boutheina (2008).Arab Women Going Public: Mayy Ziyadah and her Literary Salon in a Comparative Context(Thesis). Bloomington, IN, US: Indiana University.ISBN978-0-549-84746-5.OCLC320954792.
• Ouyang, Wen-chin(2008). "Mapping Arab Womanhood: Subject, Subjectivity and Identity Politics in the Biographies of Malak Hifni Nasif". In Ostle, Robin (ed.).Sensibilities of the Islamic Mediterranean: self-expression in a Muslim culture from post-classical times to the present day.London, New York, Strasbourg, France: I.B. Tauris; European Science Foundation; In the United States and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan.ISBN978-1-84511-650-7.OCLC156831780.
• Peterson, Janice; Lewis, Margaret (2001) [1999].The Elgar Companion to Feminist Economics.Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing.ISBN978-1-84064-783-9.OCLC827907131.
• Zaydān, Jūzīf (1995).Arabic Women Novelists: The Formative Years and Beyond.Albany: State University of New York Press. pp. 53–57, 59–62, 74–77.ISBN978-0-585-04558-0.OCLC42854941– via Inernet Archive.
• Ziegler, Antje (1999). "Al-Haraka Baraka! The Late Rediscovery of Mayy Ziyāda's Works".Die Welt des Islams.39(1): 103–115.doi:10.1163/1570060991648905.ISSN0043-2539.OCLC5672404871.

Further reading

• Booth, Marilyn(1991). "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): 38–64.doi:10.1353/jowh.2010.0118.ISSN1527-2036.S2CID143719304.
• Buck, Claire, ed. (1992).The Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature.New York: Prentice Hall General Reference.ISBN978-0-13-689621-0.OCLC25628283.
• Khoury, Raif Georges (2003).Mayy Ziyāda (1886-1941), entre la tradition et la modernité, ou, Le renouvellement des perspectives culturelles et sociales dans son œuvre, à l'image de l'Europe[Mayy Ziyāda (1886-1941), between tradition and modernity, or, The renewal of cultural and social perspectives in his work, like Europe] (in French). Edingen-Neckarhause: Deux Mondes.ISBN978-3-932662-06-5.OCLC52554410.
• Khumayrī, al-Ṭāhir; Kampffmeyer, Georg (1930).Leaders in Contemporary Arabic Literature: A Book of Reference.Leipzig: Harrassowitz. pp. 24–27.OCLC21107015.

External links

• May Ziade: The Life of an Arab Feminist Writer | Al Jazeera WorldonYouTube
• Sonal, Emine."May Ziadeh".One Fine Art.Suggested Curriculum Developments to Communicate Women's Rights Through Literature: Poetry by Women in U.S.A., Turkey and Egypt. Archived fromthe originalon 10 December 2005.