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- Born in 1937.
- Son of journalist and
translator Louis El Hage, and of Marie Akl, from Kaitouli, Jezzine (South of
Lebanon).
- Did his school studies
in the “Lycée français”, then in “La Sagesse” High School.
- Began to publish short
stories, essays and poems in literary magazines since 1954, while he was
still a high school student.
- Started
exercising daily journalism professionally in Al Hayat in 1956, as director
of the cultural page. Then he moved to An Nahar newspaper, where he edited
for years the non political pages, and transformed the daily cultural column
into a daily cultural page.
- In 1964, he founded and
published “Al Mulhaq", the weekly cultural supplement of An Nahar newspaper,
until 1974, with the cooperation of Chawki Abi Chakra during the first half
of the above-mentioned period.
- In 1957, he contributed
with Youssef Khal and Adonis to the foundation of the poetry magazine
"Shi’r", and in 1960 he published in the latter’s editions his first poetry
book, "Lan", the first compilation of poems in prose in Arabic language.
- Published six compilations
of poetry: Lan (1960), The chopped head (1963), The past of
forthcoming days (1965), What have you made with the gold what have you done
with the rose (1970), The Messenger with her hair long until the sources
(1975), The banquet (1994).
- Also published a book of
essays in 3 volumes under the title of "Words, words, words", and a book of
philosophical contemplations and aphorisms in two volumes: "Khawatem".
The third volume of Khawatem is to appear soon, as well as a set of
unpublished works.
- Was editor-in-chief of
several magazines, simultaneously with his permanent work in An Nahar, among
which "Al Hasna" magazine in 1966 and "Arab and international Nahar” between
1977 and 1989.
- Starting 1963, he
translated more than ten plays of Shakespeare, Ionesco, Camus and Brecht
into Arabic, plays that have been staged by the school of modern acting
(Baalbek festival) as well as by directors Nidal Al Ashkar, Roger Assaf and
Berge Vaslian.
- Married to Layla Daou
(since 1957), father of Nada and Louis.
- Editor-in-chief of An
Nahar newspaper from 1992 till September 30, 2003.
- A choice of his poems
has been translated into French, English, German, Italian,
Spanish, Portuguese, Armenian and Finnish.
- An anthology of his poetry,
"Flying eternity", was published in French by the publishing house "Actes
Sud" in Paris in 1997, and another anthology entitled "Love and the fox,
Love and the others", appeared in a bilingual German /Arabic edition in
Berlin in 1998. The first was supervised and introduced by Abdel Kader
Janabi, and the second translated by Khaled Al Maali and Herbert Becker.
-Summarizing his
biography to answer a question by Professors Nabil Ayoub, Hind Adib
d’Orléans and George Kallas in the setting of an interview edited by poet
Elias Lahoud in the "contemporary writings" magazine (issue 38 - August /
September 1999), Ounsi El Hage declared:
"I often told the same history. I don't
believe that it is of any interest to anyone. I have more remorse than
achievements, and all that I have done I did without my knowledge. When
nobody used to ask me for my opinion on things, such as love and death, I
willingly said the truth, but then I stopped saying it as soon as there was
someone to ask".
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