Andrée Chedid

Andrée Chedid (Arabic: أندريه شديد) (born Andrée Saab Khoury, 20 March 1920 in Cairo, Egypt; died 6 February 2011 in Paris, France), was a French-language writer. Quotes Walk through Paris one August morning on your way to work. Discover Paris as it comes out of its night; watch it gradually emerge from the developer fluid. Moisten your eyes with this city. Bless the fate that makes you a part of it. Surprise it, in its captivating nudity crossed by only a few passersby. Once in a while, stay on the edge of the sidewalk, count to twenty, thirty, forty...not a car in sight on the street. Wander along its avenues, weave your way through its many alleyways; go around its squares, walk beside the Seine, which takes on a copper glint, beside the trees that fill with light. Taste this silence that beats with the breath of so many. Feel it, face-to-face, charged with so many lives. Sing within. Savor. That didn't happen to Maxime anymore. beginning of L'enfant multiple (1989). Translated from the original French into English by Judith Radke with the title The Multiple Child (1995) Ce n'était rien. Rien qu'un bruit sourd, lointain. Sans les incidents de ces dernières semaines, il serait passé inaperçu. Personne n'aurait songé à un coup de feu. It was nothing. Nothing but a muffled, distant noise. If it had not been for the events of the last few weeks, it would have gone unnoticed. Nobody would have dreamed it was a shot. beginning of La Maison sans racines (1985). Translated from the original French into English by Ros Schwartz with the title The return to Beirut (1990) Hemmed in by the limits of his own existence, caught in his own traps, man possesses nevertheless an essential freedom. A freedom he has to discover and, as much as possible, translate into actions.You are circumscribed by your skin,Spectator, my brother,Yet... you are in charge!What sort of epilogue can there be to this game of destiny? Where is the fundamental word capable of containing all words? The Show-Man will attempt to say it. Unsuccessfully! There is no denouement. Everything remains quest and question. The stage of the universe stays open. Motion never ceases. I want this "Show-Man" to be presented, at the same time, as a show. Let there be movement, song, music, color, projections. Let there be multiplicity with inconsistencies of tone, like the facets of existence. Yet, nevertheless, let there be, like a cry breaking through and streaming out, this "Why?" aimed at us and our destiny. from Author's Preface to Le Montreur (1969 play). Translated from the french by Felicia Londré with the title The show-man (1984) Le sixième jour (1960 novel) Translated from the original French into English by Isobel Strachey with the title The Sixth Day (1962) Shaking its load of rubble, the cart jolted along the country road, with old Om Hassan seated beside the driver. (beginning of Part I, Chapter I) "How many monkeys' lives are worth the life of a child?" [she] wondered. She asked herself if God used this kind of measurement. (Part III, Chapter 1) It was the moonlit evening when [he] loved her. There was the cotton-gathering, when she was six years old, stooping under the blazing sun, there were the fields, so freshly green that one could wish to climb to the top of a tree and then dive down into that green sea. There was the city with its beating pulse. There was tomorrow "and that child that I shall have made," the child who would make things in his turn. There was this river, this beautiful earth, the strange mildness of the mornings. There were the banks, the life which sprang up everywhere, those women who came down carrying their jars and their linen. There was the end of the cholera, the end of evil. The cholera condemned, buried, altogether dead in the body of this child. (Part III, Chapter 3) Life's a tight-rope, a mad balancing act. You must just swing from foot to the other. It's not worth while taking too much notice of what goes on round you, otherwise beware of a fall! (Part III, Chapter 4) One day you fall off your rope, you lose your balance. You find yourself back again among the others, amidst other people's suffering, you don't play any longer. You can't go on playing any more. "My heart is bleeding, for the first time." (Part III, Chapter 6) You should not carry nightmares along with you, nor cover a child's footsteps with shadows. (Part III, Chapter 6) It seemed as though the voices were singing. Between the earth and tomorrow, between the earth and out yonder the song was uninterrupted. (Part III, Chapter 6) Le Sommeil délivré (1952 novel) Translated from the original French into English by Sharon Spencer with the title From Sleep Unbound (1983) Sur la maison blanche, les reflets du soleil étaient moins aveuglants. Plus loin un bras du Nil retrouvait la souplesse de l'ombre. The rays of the sun were already less blinding as they fell on the walls of the white house. In the distance an arm of the Nile stretched toward the suppleness of a shadow. first lines of book if they do reach the room, she will seize the past and hold it up between them and herself, creating of the past a watertight compartment. She will summon up the past and watch it unroll behind her as one follows a vanishing landscape through the window of a moving train. The past, she must recapture it, to hide herself in it! But suddenly it seems so far away! (Chapter 1) His voice swelled until it swallowed everything else in the house (Chapter 2) searching for the memory of the dead man, I found myself as well. (Chapter 4) "The joyous tears of a fiancée are as sweet as honey!" (Chapter 4) My life was crumbling away at this table, with the game of Solitaire. Day after day it was leaving me. I was wilting. I was not at all like the immortal paper flowers! (Chapter 5) In his face was incarnated all the sadness in the world. His eyes did not seem to belong to him. (Chapter 6) I wondered if she were angry with me. But so few things are inscribed on a face, one never really knows exactly the measure of love or of hatred buried in other people's hearts. (Chapter 8) With [her] I rediscovered my life. My sadness dropped away like a dead skin. (Chapter 9) I thought I was opening [her] eyes, but I was opening my own as well. (Chapter 9) Shouts clash like sticks knocking together. (Chapter 12) When your fingers can give birth to creatures who are closer to life than the living will ever be, you are not alone. (Chapter 12) Quotes about Poet, dramatist, essayist, novelist, wife, mother, grandmother - Andrée Chedid is one of France's outstanding literary figures. Her way is profound and sensitive, her vision innovative in its archetypal delineations, her aesthetic is lyrical, dense, symbolistic-a blend of the real and the unreal, the Occident and the Middle East. The protagonists of her novels emerge from a universal mold; they are eternal in their philosophical and psychological configurations - they have stepped into life full-blown from the dream...To reveal the inner workings of From Sleep Unbound would be to divulge a secret domain, arcana as spun into the ritual of life by the cryptic hand of the writer-artist that Andrée Chedid is. From Sleep Unbound captures not one woman's world, but that of all women, whether they lived cloistered and closeted in a society bound by retrograde customs or in a modern metropolis, liberated for all intents and purposes, but imprisoned within their own psychological cells. From Sleep Unbound is a concerted probing, a poetic search for a "direct breath," an eternal voice, a single dream, participating in the cosmic flow; catalyzed by an ever-searching soul. Bettina L. Knapp, from her Forward to From Sleep Unbound beautiful, deep, and complex... written with skill and art Nawal El Saadawi, used as blurb for The Sixth Day External links Goodreads page Category:1920 births Category:2011 deaths Category:Novelists from Cairo