May Ziadeh

May Elias Ziadeh (/ziˈɑːdə/ zee-AH-də; Arabic: مي إلياس زيادة, ALA-LC: Mayy Ilyās Ziyādah; 11 February 1886 – 17 October 1941) was a Lebanese-Palestinian poet, essayist, and translator, who wrote many works both in Arabic and in French.

Quotes

Letter (February 1916)

to Amin al-Rihani, from Bouquets de Jardin du Mai, ed. Farouk Saad (Beirut: Dar Al-Hidal, 1973), 112-13. English translation included in Lines of Fire: Women Writers of World War 1 edited by Margaret R. Higonnet (1999)

• You ask how we are these days. What do you think is the condition of small nations? What could be the seal set upon them in present circumstances, but humiliation and more humiliation? I know very little about politics and I admit that I would be imposing if I were to tackle the history of nations and their fate. But the little I know from what I have studied tells me that sincerity between nations is scarce and that honesty in people's souls is a poetic illusion with which leaders seek to influence the minds and affections of others, in order to make them pay with their blood and their lives. Why? For economic gain. That is all! Particularly during a war, to someone with a critical eye, "freedom" seems a rhetorical wine to intoxicate the people's hearts. Freedom has beautiful and precious meaning, but everything sweet and dear is impossible. Had the people tasted real freedom even for a second, they would have been gods. Indeed divinity is absolute freedom.

• It cannot be hard for you to understand how the war has destroyed in our glowing souls beliefs we thought eternal and how it has injured whatever hopes we had, the greatest and most splendid hopes. Tell me: if we despair of progress, we who have dedicated to it all our thoughts and spiritual energy, what can we hope for? And where can we search for a base on which to build the palaces of hope?

• I love France and England not with a political love, because I don't know anything about politics, but an esthetic one: I love their literatures, poetry, and some individuals.

• I really like subtle ideas and communication with refined people who take you beyond daily chores and small sad events.

Quotes about May Ziadeh

• "We should free the woman, so that her children won't grow up to become slaves. And we should remove the veil of illusions from her eyes, so that by looking into them, her husband, brother and son will discover that there is a great meaning to life." These spellbinding words are the saying of a renowned feminist, who was among the first Arab literary figures to embellish feminine intellectuality.
  • Lubna Khader, "A torch in the darkest of ages"

• A true romantic, Zeyadah's literary style is characterized by fusing emotion with fantasy and romanticism with objectivity...More than anything else, she left behind a legacy of women liberators who believed that with knowledge and art, women can finally inhale the ions of emancipation.
  • Lubna Khader, "A torch in the darkest of ages"

• In an opening speech of one of her lectures, May Ziyadeh described poverty as 'illness, indolence and enslavement' and she continued as follows: "No society can enjoy good health when its members are ill... and no nation can enjoy independence if its citizens are enslaved. An attribute of the rich is a virtue but for the poor it is a flaw. ... Women can be a cause for poverty but can also be a cause for prosperity"...In her speech at one of her conferences, May Ziyadeh emphasized the role of women in a civilized society to stand in opposition to the traditional culture in the following statement: "We should free the woman, so that her children won't grow up to become slaves. And we should remove the veil of illusions from her eyes, so that by looking into them, her husband, brother and son will discover that there is a great meaning to life"...May Ziyadeh criticizes male-dominated society and addresses men that "if you are the material, the women are the soul, if you are the fiction, the women are the prose"
  • Dr. Emine Sonal in "Poetry by Women in U.S.A., Turkey and Egypt" conference paper

• To sum up, it can be said that not only May Ziyadeh's poetry but also her stories, plays and articles reflect the wrong attitudes of people in her society by revealing the actual history of her time. Her fictional works allow the reader to conceptualize the "woman question" in Arabic history and culture, and the poet's sufferings as a well-educated, westernized person who is trying to change the cultural norms and establish an egalitarian society without gender discrimination. Like, Þüküfe Nihal, the Turkish poetess, May Zeyadeh, the renowned poetess of Lebanese origin, because of her progressive ideas in women's rights and education and freedom, has been misunderstood by her contemporaries and nearest circle.
  • Dr. Emine Sonal in conference paper

• Women’s education was rare, if non-existent...When she joined this literary circle, she was highly cultured, not just from what she learned at school but also from the books she read. That’s why educating women was an obsession for her, as she herself was very cultured. That was a first sign of her rebellion against ignorance and her demands to educate girls at an early age.
  • Henry Zugheib quoted in article (2018)