Ziade, May

Youth

Ziade was born in a family of Lebanese Maronites (through her father) and a Palestinian mother. Her father, Elias Ziade, was an editor at the newspaper Al-Mahrūsah .

Ziade attended elementary school in Nazareth . At the age of 14 she was sent to Aintur to study at the monastic school for girls ^[4] . While studying there, her interest in French literature and romantic literature arose, to which she showed particular sympathy ^[8] . She visited several Roman Catholic schools in Lebanon and returned to Nazareth in 1904 to her parents ^[4] . Her first articles were published at age 16.

Ziade was not married. She also maintained close relations with one of the 20th century Arab writers, a Lebanese-American poet and writer, Khalil Gibran . Although they had never met, they maintained written correspondence until the death of Gibran in 1931 ^[9] .

From 1928 to 1932, Ziade lost a lot in her personal life. Her parents, her friend Kahlil Gibran, died. Ziade fell into a deep depression and returned to Lebanon, where relatives placed her in a psychiatric hospital to gain control of her property ^[3] . Nawal El Sadawi claims that Ziade was sent to the hospital because she advocated feminism ^[7] . In the end, Ziade recovered and left the hospital. A medical report showed she was healthy. She returned to Cairo , where she died on October 17, 1941. ^{[4] [10]} .

Journalism and Linguistics

In 1908, Maya Ziade and her family emigrated to Egypt . While the family was in Egypt, her father founded the newspaper Al Mahroussah, in which Ziad later posted a number of articles ^[4] .

Ziade was very interested in learning languages. She studied privately at home in conjunction with French Catholic education and studies at a local university of modern languages. As a result, Ziade spoke two languages ​​- Arabic and French, and had knowledge of English , Italian , German , Spanish , Latin , and modern Greek ^[11] . She graduated from the University in 1917 ^[3] .

Arabic literary figure

Ziade was well known in Arab literary circles, where there were many male and female writers. Among those who visited the salon she created in 1912 were Taha Hussein , Khalil Moutrane, Ahmed Lutfi El-Sayed , Antun Gemayel, Valened Yakan, Abbas El-Akkad and Yakub Sarouf ^[4] .

Feminism

Unlike her peers, Zainab Nazly Khanum (Princess Nazli Fadil) ^[12] and Huda Shaaravi , Maya Ziad was more of a writer than a social reformer. Nevertheless, she was also involved in the movement for the emancipation of women ^[13] . Ziade was deeply concerned about the emancipation of the Arab woman; the main task of emancipation in her opinion was to first eliminate simple ignorance, and then anachronistic traditions. She considered women to be the main elements of every human society and wrote that a woman in slavery could not feed her children with her own milk, since milk smells strongly of servitude ^[4] .

In 1921, on her initiative, a conference was convened under the title “Le but de la vie” (“The Purpose of Life”), where she called on Arab women to strive for freedom and be open to the West , not forgetting their Eastern traditions ^[6] .

Romanticism

In the romantic period of her work, Ziade was influenced by Alfons de Lamartine , Byron , Shelley and finally Gibran . These authors have had a great influence on most of her works, which reflect her nostalgia for Lebanon. Her vivid, sensual imagination embodies mystery, melancholy and despair ^[4] .

The first published work of Ziad was “Fleurs de rêve” (1911) - a volume of poems written in French under the pseudonym Iris Copia (Isis Copia). She wrote quite a few works in French, also wrote in English and Italian, but with age more and more in Arabic . Her works include criticism and memoirs, poems, essays and novels. She translated several European authors into Arabic, including Arthur Conan Doyle from English , the novel “Consuelo” by George Sand from French and philologist Max Muller from German .

The writer's works in Arabic include:

• Al Bâhithat el-Bâdiya باحثة الباديةة;
• Sawâneh fatât سوانح فتاة;
• Zulumât wa Ichâ'ât ظلمات وأشعة;
• Kalimât va Ichârât كلمات وأشارات;
• Al Saha 'ef الصحائفائف;
• Ghayat Al-Hayât غاية الحياة;
• Al-Musâwât المساوا ة;
• Bajna l-Jazri va l-Madd بين الجزر والمد.

In 1999, Ziade was named by the Lebanese Minister of Culture as a person, whose name is associated with the annual celebration of the culture of the Arab world ^[4] .