Adonis on Surrealism and Sufiism

I was at Seminary Co-op yesterday with Mark Tardi and I picked up a wonderful thin volume called Sufism and Surrealism by the Syrian poet Adonis. It is published by the British publisher Saqi. I bought it as a throw in to some other books I wanted very much and I have found that the throw in is more interesting.

In the work he addresses the following topics-Knowledge-Imagination-Love-Writing-The Aesthetic Dimension-Harmonious Difference in the first part and then he compared Sufi writers to Surrealist writers in the second part. The work is so interesting because of the joining tissue
of the book. It brings in so much and fills the book.

Sufism is interesting for allot of reasons. As with all mystical systems in the Abrahamic religions Sufism is the most in touch with religion as experience rather than religion as rules. The Sufis have been profoundly influenced by Christian Desert mysticism and Buddhism and they in turn have influence Hinduism, and Spanish Mysticism this mixing gives me hope in the current violent world we live in. The most interesting part of this book is that Adonis reads Rimbaud as an oriental (his word) Sufi poet. To put Rimbaud in that category makes this book particularly delicious.

The most provacative quote Adonis uses in from the poet Al-Niffari

" The more you see, the narrower the means of expressing it"