The Particulars of Particulate

December 1973 brought the comet of the century, billed as a spectacular astral display. Yet the comet named Kohoutek seemed to fizzle, revealing itself only in dim smudges of light. When the writer and artist Etel Adnan set about writing a column to ring in the 1 January 1974 issue of al-Safa, a newly founded French-language newspaper in Beirut for which she was culture editor, the disappointing comet was on her mind.1 Had it helped make visible the welcome disturbances in the map of the world? The preceding calendar year had brought news of the last American combat troops withdrawing from Vietnam; the Chilean Salvador Allende being removed by a coup d’etat; an all-out war between Arab and Israeli militaries; an energy crisis. Adnan, as she often does in her writing, offered readers a vantage for assessment that belonged to astronauts and space missions. To her, this was the site of renewed realism (her term) about the finitude of beings in a finite world. “Viewed from the Moon, the Earth looks like a stomach gripped by nausea, a rotating planet on which oceans churn, an immense vertigo,” Adnan writes in al-Safa. “And all this is finally recognized. What a tremendous blessing!”2In the post-lunar era that unfolds in the wake of the moon landing of 1969, to again use Adnan’s terminology, wisdom is no longer derived from scanning the sky for signs. Rather, within a planetary system of rotating tides across air and water alike, moral reminders of interconnection can be found in the feeling of physical drag on bodies, entailing the disintegration of the self within the churn of the world. As Adnan had explored in a previous column for al-Safa, renewed searches for the real, and for realisms outside the image, had become necessary because war itself had attained a disembodied status. Thanks to the regularity, quality, and hypnotic aspect of nightly television news, even the perpetrators of wars no longer recognized their participation in them.3 Adnan had returned to Lebanon in 1972 after fourteen years living in Northern California, in part because she wanted to return to a community where she, too, was exposed to the buffeting of world events. Watching the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967, which ended in Israeli control of the Sinai, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights and the forced creation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, had generated a sense of terrorized disequilibrium her American surroundings did not share.4 As a remedy for the experience of detachment while still attached—what we might call a vertigo—she left for Beirut, intending to reattune her sense of self to afflicted ground.5Critics have discussed Adnan’s frequent invocation of the space race in her poems from the 1960s, a decade that saw her actively working with American poets to organize against the Vietnam War. Given that Adnan’s life in California featured a job teaching philosophy at Dominican College in San Rafael as well as participation in hippie circles involved in painting, studying weaving and creating textile designs, and experimental music shows, it is tempting to assign her cosmological vocabulary of sun, moon, and comets a quality of majestic visuality informed by the Whole Earth movement and its hope that images of the blue planet could serve as visual talismans against warmongering.6 However, there is an important way in which Adnan’s work assembles affinities beyond the ostensible beauty of observed totalities as a sight to behold. Her writing treats space not as a neutral container but as an energetic entity that is perpetually animated by affinities and furies.7 For Adnan, earth is something not to see so much as to feel in transformation, alongside the other elements, or roots, of change in a sphere of shared inhabitation.I focus here on Adnan’s activation of the elemental mutability of forms over the period when she corresponded most actively with poets at the prestigious journals Shiʿr (Poetry) and Mawāqif (Positions) in Beirut, from 1966 until the mid-1970s. In this period, she took up overtly Arab subjects in her poetry, while her proximity to journalism kept her engaged in the vexed task of bearing witness to violence.8 Adnan wrote a wrenching trilogy of poems commenting on expanding threats to life in the region. They include “Jebu,” a response to the 1967 defeat; “The Beirut—Hell Express,” written after Black September and projecting its brutality onto Beirut’s future; and the book-length The Arab Apocalypse, which Adnan began in February 1975, and in which she yields authorship to the unfolding catastrophe itself.9The Arab Apocalypse started as an abstract poem about the sun involving the intercalation of graphic signs with text, perhaps inspired by Paul Klee’s lexicon of linear energy images, but its final form revolves around the daily events of a months-long siege of the Tell al-Zaatar Palestinian refugee camp by Christian militias intent on pushing out the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), culminating in a massacre of the sealed-off population.10 Its telegraphic prose, glyphs of suns, arrows, and diagrammatic explosions, and sonic interjections in capitalized letters—one critic describes its visual field as “strewn with hieroglyphic idiolect”—constitute an overwhelmed response to nonredemptive suffering.11The graphic signs that appear in Adnan’s The Arab Apocalypse thrill in their capacity to confound. They are a tool of mutation that Adnan used only sparingly in her other poems. Fawwaz Traboulsi has offered a reading of failed expression, suggesting that language in The Arab Apocalypse is not only “vaporized like a blown door or volatilized like body parts” but also “mixed with symbols, signs and amulets in a web of hieroglyphics that say the failure of language.”12 Adnan’s own statements of intention tend to emphasize an element of affect, that the signs bear an “excess of emotion” that would not fit into words as words, thereby requiring their dilation into image.13 She describes putting a word on paper, and then instinctively putting a drawing. The many published editions of the poem show that Adnan and collaborators reworked drawings and layout so as to retain and likely amplify a feeling of instinctiveness in relations between words and glyphs.14 Proofs to the English translation, which Adnan completed herself in the later 1980s, show attentive annotations about adding (silent) spaces and shifting placements.15 When Adnan’s partner and publisher, Simone Fattal, sent photocopies of laid-out pages to a journal editor for a special Palestine journal, she asked that the original horizontality of the format be retained and that the drawings be printed “as black as possible.” She explained that Adnan wanted in the poem “to write an equivalent to war.”16This essay explores one particular glyph out of the larger inventory in The Arab Apocalypse—perhaps the most elemental one insofar as it invokes an idea of both earth (specifically, eroded stone) and its interactions with air and water. The sign in question is this, an array of points:And this:Its representational remit is highly condensed, more material than allegorical. For to draw black points of ink on a white page, or to print them, is to furnish a likeness of particulate to a reader, such as a flurry of sand caught in a current. But it is also to deposit points of ink on the paper surface as an actual deposit of matter.17 The sand glyphs within The Arab Apocalypse tend to maintain relatively consistent arrays of dots, placed into rows that seem to emphasize countability. As such, even as individual grains are obviously, visually vulnerable to the buffeting force of other elements with capacity to scatter, they are held in suspension. They have no volume, do not (yet) envelop either subject or object. As we shall see, Adnan in one instance names the glyph a “colorless vertigo”—or, at least, places these words beside it. My essay examines how the sand glyph within The Arab Apocalypse helps us to appreciate a relationship of surface to appearance that radically condenses spaces of witnessing. It marks out a postcolonial position wherein vertigo is recognized as haunting each and every life.18Adnan’s writing offers no shortage of statements about outer space as a site of disenchantment. In October 1966, Adnan published a peculiar, slender book in Beirut, titled Moonshots, that she dedicated to “the lost virginity of the moon.”19 As the title to a book comprising fewer than twenty short prose poem segments, and six reproductions of paintings by abstract painter Jean Khalifé, “moonshots” would seem to reference both the idiom to shoot for the moon, meaning pursuing an out-of-scale aspiration, and the idea of the photographic snapshot, complete with the violence of sudden capture. The year 1966 had brought a bonanza of efforts in both domains. The race to place a man on the moon was in full swing. Although the unmanned Soviet craft Luna 2 had made its hard strike on the moon’s surface in 1959, and the United States got its Ranger 7 to the moon in no had at the on the moon and In the United States a around the moon to it for the of a landing the craft took the of Earth from the of the Given these of made with and of to on the of of and Adnan’s poems in Moonshots, which make use of to a moon, the of the between and a in that an physical “The of has space and caught the of Adnan writes on one it beauty or shall up the of a on she images on television an in Adnan’s about of The book is written in which it within the of Adnan has own with is in at a that in French-language Adnan would have in the of a months-long across both and that generated a of important collaborators in the which generated a to her poems in Beirut’s journals in by a or the of as an can also us to the of in Adnan’s of even the most places and events. for Adnan, it is that often to for an experience to to and In Adnan of as of her a of to the even as a and “The Beirut—Hell reference as and the of Adnan’s experience of the year of war in when she was living in an in and began The Arab images onto Her and had started daily to shoot as Adnan later no one asked for and When the images into Beirut, a Beirut from the of a in the she asked Adnan to write to the The on in the that from even was also a that Adnan’s 1966 in the a much longer and more than her previous the of an American she took a from Dominican College in to a about a and the of caught in and Adnan to and to at weaving and then to and The in insofar as it brought Adnan into with such as editor of which in helped to between and no the of Adnan’s from the of and to a from to the sun in of Adnan at In in poems of that the written on its In she describes a daily of the places at as to on the of the of of as a from place to and to for a that Adnan to Arab in In her which often took on a aspect of its own that between and she was by around of involving the of and of into each is a complete each from the and every in recognized as of the of poetry, to Arab poets in the and to writing prose Adnan the the as a the earth the as in but to the surface of the As she it in an she Arab as a of that is even when a feeling of and is such that the relationship to the earth is one of a a up a position of than It is also in its of Adnan’s poem “The Beirut—Hell a from to make this a about is the only place on earth which to us an life and it at the surface of into its and it to Adnan started work on her poem “Jebu,” she a of that with the of by like In it was from the and published in Mawāqif in with a from the intention to control of from the a the then the a the of the The but they also bear witness to the of dedicated to and by the Israeli and on are to the pushing the of a that only and in place of as the poem use of that in and its it the into a by and As own the of the planet a and The has is by The poem in the of a shall the so that there shall be no more in other words, place a such that elemental relations of earth to space be around their is a Adnan brought to Shiʿr her with editor in the of something like a Adnan published than poems in the journal, which American against a of in the the and the of published January a of of as an and in California, and In Adnan as an to with and the task of in and she a of between and of itself is but also with the to into as the essay its the that us is also for readers the of Adnan that the of all the of Adnan as to also become that about and could to in many the of space had how and in the of and When the man to the and into in in a Adnan explored these across at expanding her of She wrote a poem titled for the then it on a a as a work of She also made a in and light. a daily reading of her poem at Dominican Adnan the of for in a She and collaborators a and a reading over a then used a to the in with that like space the of between earth and the Adnan published in the United such as “The of the in derived force from of and as to a its a man a the Adnan had her to include the of and the of the When in 1972 she news of the of her in and as a she was of the a short for she the which a man to the moon, while in The on the of a in on a with To each word by the with the of material but a poem that the poem in the published is an of Adnan’s intent to write an abstract poem on the Its signs are glyph of particulate call a sand as a way to all to movement by in the the to glyphs reading from left to sand is the a sun glyph placed the word sun to also to as a a glyph a of an place in the with the word circles return to the place for sun with a of its the then does a glyph of sand to in for the sun the to glyph The poem on to that are and are as a sun an Arab Black are of of that of and sun to an is its into this of subjects and out of of of the sand glyph is the instance of a of where where the a might hope to assign do not Arab Apocalypse to a of its It is in its of the of In the particular words that sun the by a glyph of something with are and with and a in the by the In this when to make the of a its quality is a of of graphic the words “The of the The their own with no the of vertigo in In to the preceding both its pages with glyphs and the page, a the of the sun of as by of the of used by and other a is a of world a blue sun a sun vertigo in The poem on to reference a of from to the sun from and But on the of the Adnan to on it. She writes “colorless and a sand glyph The is by a a with a by the of and a by the of the Adnan the of sun with a of after which she to writing a of a this The has a it than which the quality of the sand glyph and it of a or in Adnan complete as a vertigo in part by a of sight that from to for planetary to in that Adnan’s 1 January 1974 column in made vertigo a of a stomach as well as a site of The vertigo in Adnan’s writing with to do with the of the self within an that both and In when Adnan writes to a about her a weaving she describes with a and against into a with from the of the body into an Adnan vertigo as a of by a In an essay she wrote in at which she her she when she was a in Beirut, her about with had the of the world as a in which each man like the of the original the in “Jebu,” Adnan vertigo as a site of for a Palestinian refugee after to the of the Arab sun in is by into to write a poem that the finitude of beings in a finite that does not make into a about the of is to draw of elemental than the of particulate can and all the more so in the of Arab of life on the would us that grains of sand across by from to by the physical of of to sand into or the system of planetary In as sand a of to in by relations of one The for this of sand in is the of both and the of thereby to a of elements at the of and water can pushing it into the of sand by of like to like a of to of particulate the capacity to and into of sand into at and their is the only Arab in of and to drawings of points of the most in the of and 1974 of sign and of and a reading of as in that both and the of Adnan in this period, was most to that her an by of in into its arrows, and of well as their disintegration in make for important often only the 1972 issue of which with for titled for the Arab to has helped us as a of not only by shared of but also by forms of by the 1967 as a failure of Arab The issue a poem by poems by Jean and from the a of a by and of other by across the Arab world and as a to as an force against of all Mawāqif issue a experimental by critic was then a of poetry, that use of an sand for the of is a of the of the of which has a names on a It by itself to in the of of an a in the a force from which from body like like It then over to an of to the of names in a of reproductions of visual music by the of involved in the in and more a that about landing on the glyph at a reading The of and the of has of points that in a that the onto their paper into and in more in that this of it is white with points in the of The of a a or a for from the of into disembodied that and in the of the air and again in the of the a between and and within bodies, has no no no capacity for It is necessary to draw as an of points and not to write a can a poem of on a in this essay Adnan a Her on the of can seem and in their with Yet this also to the in between not only elements but also writing and drawing. for in a a on as a of where Adnan to the and of a The living of the Adnan an as a of their even as they as a of as the points where the their on the both the of the the which the and a sign for the a to a world of to the of Arab poets in the in in and we can the sand glyph The Arab Apocalypse that Adnan the sun with a of the most from The Arab Apocalypse, in the of not but also the to It the sun itself of Palestinian on and the sun took the for the sun majestic of the white white white is the of the when become as white as the sky the world with an of the of with the of Given the space of visuality across the of The Arab Apocalypse, the sand glyph a of It a on shared that with the of into sand glyph at more in The Arab instance in is a poem as has a within the of the sun itself itself The us that the sun has its life years on each When the glyph in this a of there is an element of being caught have for a the after which the sand glyph like a to it like a in the of the of a sand glyph is between the words and about the and efforts to it in and for it a visual to a about a “the of in the body of the is an Adnan places a sand glyph to the of the in It marks the of into sand that over the earth by Adnan writes that an has to the the of the is to that the glyph we have The Arab Apocalypse is the most the most in its of of and of cosmological Yet it be one of the most most we to see of particulate as signs of of a world that its across all of marks on the become The poems are with as well as graphic signs of and because a of in is across from the sand glyph in not to by circles and they into Adnan herself to have she got by the of and circles that and the of her English show that she had a on the of most only to later out and the white we say that the of these glyphs is to be in and by the world? writing about The Arab Apocalypse has on the of its and sky its at the earth the of as a more elemental of the poem can to Adnan that that on a rotating planet be up and a for an for or with thereby to a and of particulate might up that forms surface or The task of as Adnan would have and as she it in this is to a in which there an that we all have a moral to that be shared but that all to the earth but one that at the of and where and all material are in

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