Writers, etc : a platform for the written world.

Writers, Etc.

Thursday 8 December 2011, 06:30 pm

M.L. Bhartia Auditorium, Alliance Francaise de Delhi

Salah Stétié is a Lebanese writer and poet who writes in the French language. During the time of his birth, in 1929, Lebanon was a French-protectorate. He has also served in various diplomatic positions for Lebanon in countries such as Morocco and France. Although his mother tongue is Arabic, Stetie choses to write in French due to the sentiment that the Arabic language is outdated.

Salah Stetie was born on the 28th of December, 1929 in Beirut. His father, Mahmoud Stetie, was a teacher and Arabic poet who provided his son with a solid foundation in Arabic and Muslim culture.

In his native country, he studied Letters and Law. He then studied Orientalism at the Sorbonne in 1951 under a scholarship. His time in Paris proved influential; he published the books Le Voyage D’Alep and Mercure De France, and became friends with a number of French poets including Yves Bonnefoy. Paris became one of two “mental poles” for Stetie; this is to say, he came to think of himself just as much a Francophone and Parisian as he did an Arab and Lebanese. In 1955 he returned to Lebanon where taught at the Lebanese Academy of Beaux-Arts, Graduate School of Arts of Beirut, and the University of Beirut, where he taught until 1961 when his diplomatic career began.

In the 1960s, he served as Lebanese Cultural Diplomat in Paris and Occidental Europe, and also, as UNESCO delegate for Lebanon. In 1982 he began a tenure as Lebanese diplomat in the Netherlands, a position he held until 1984 when he was appointed as diplomat in Morocco. In 1987 he was appointed Secretary General of the Department of Foreign Affairs in his home country, before returning to his diplomatic position in the Netherlands in 1991. In 1992, he retired to Tremblay-sur-Mauldres.

Giuseppe Conte, Italian poet, novelist, and translator, was born in Imperia in 1945.

He received a degree in Literature from Milan’s Statale University in 1968. His first publication was a book of literary criticism entitled La metafora barocca. His debut as a poet came six years later with the publication of La Parola Innamorata in 1978. His follow-up poetry anthology, La Stagione, was published in 1988 and was awarded the Montale Prize. Conte has translated many English works into Italian, including that of Shelley, D.H. Lawrence, Walt Whitman, and William Blake, and has worked as both an editor and essayist for several literary publications.

In 1997, his first full-length book of poetry, L’Oceano e il ragazzo, was translated into English as The Ocean and the Boy. His most recent works of poetry include New Songs (2001), Letters to the Desperate Spring (2002), andWounds and Revival (2006). His recent works of fiction include The Third Officer (2002), The House of Waves(2005), and The Adulteress (2008).

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