Description

Each individual picture is accompanied by complementary, commenting or reflective verses. The artistic dialogue between Adonis and Fadi Masri Zada ​​makes the human, material and creative sides of Syria visible.
The country is represented by still landscapes and deserts as well as by faces, portraits or people in wide shots, to which Adonis responds in his words. The poet puts himself at the service of the photographer, whom he addresses to show his admiration at the same time. Their joint work is an ode to Syria.

Reviews:

We must welcome the publication of these unpublished poems by Adonis - born in Kassabine in northern Syria in 1930 and based in France for almost forty years. The author of an important poetic and theoretical work, Adonis, here embarks on a new exercise: he accompanies the photographs of his compatriot Fadi Masri Zada ​​​​of Syria. We find there the accents of her great poetry, especially when she evokes the tragedy of the Syrian people and the Arab world today. Opposite is a picture of Palmyra: “Story of Heaven, / Won't you finally soften / And have pity on the descendants of the earth, / Especially children? / The moon they love / That begins itself / Under the sky of the Arabs.” Or as a creed: “Hear what the birds have said / On their throat / They said: We have decided, in spite of everything, / Don't stop singing." (...)more 

- AND AND., The world

The book is a remarkable creative experience that combines two styles of expression that differ in terms of tools but meet in purpose, namely to present images that combine metaphors, poetic allusions, references and realistic and direct references. (...) more

– Al Jazeera (translated from Arabic)

[…] Syria is “a pillow for heaven and earth” and the book is the same bed,
upon which the poet's metaphysics and the photographer's materiality rest -
unless it's the opposite - and Adonis asked the pictures the questions that
his poems cross decades:

" I ask you, Fadi:
Did you ask the sun how to read?
Ships, travel and absence?

Or was he immersed
Alone in reading the sea?
The same question
I put it in the waves” (…) more

– Pauline Donizeau, Waiting for Nadeau