Books and publications

Index / Activities / Books and publications / Homage to Abderrahman el Abnoudy

Homage to Abderrahman el Abnoudy

December 09, 20157:00 p.m.
MADRID
Casa Árabe Auditorium (at Calle Alcalá, 62). 7:00 p.m. Free entry until the event’s capacity is reached.
In Spanish and Arabic, with simultaneous translation.

Casa Árabe is holding this poetry recital with the cooperation of the Egyptian Institute of Islamic Studies.

The event will be presented by Basem Saleh, a cultural advisor of the Republic of Egypt in Madrid and the director of the Egyptian Institute of Islamic Studies. Nehal Kamal, a journalist on Egyptian television and el-Abnoudy’s widow, along with Rosa Martínez Lillo, a professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), will also be taking part in this homage to the Egyptian poet who passed away in 2015.

The recital will also include the presence of four UAM students, who will be reading a selection of el-Abnoudy’s poems in Spanish and Arabic.

Abdel Rahman el-Abnoudy
El-Abnoudy was one of the finest Egyptian poets of the twentieth century. He was born in a small village located in southern Egypt, Abnoud, in the province of Qena, in the spring of 1938, and he passed away in April 2015 at the age of 76. From a very early age, he was fascinated with the ancient poetry in the epics of the Banu Hilal (a confederation of Arab Bedouins who emigrated from Upper Egypt to North Africa and the Maghreb in the eleventh century), and he dedicated many of his efforts throughout life to the methodical compilation of them, taking the poems directly from the poets of his native region. This work was published in the newspaper Al Ahram in separate in serialized installments and later compiled together in a sizeable work containing several volumes, in which a large number of events and anecdotes are told about life in the Said region (Upper Egypt), as well.

Like other poets of his generation, part of his work is written in the Egyptian dialect and is characterized by a perpetual balance between philosophy and art, as well as by a constant desire to describe everyday existence in a way that can be extrapolated to all of mankind. His work in collaboration with the worlds of television and cinema should also be highlighted, as well as his facet as a songwriter. Much of his music was performed by the finest voices in Egypt, including that of Abdel Halim Hafez.
Homage to Abderrahman el Abnoudy