Born into a Sunni bourgeois family in Beirut in 1929, during the French Mandate for Lebanon, Salah Stétié, whose father was a poet writing in Arabic, chose to write in French. Remaining deeply attached to his native country, Lebanon is the essential source of his poetic imagination. Author of essays, translations of Arabic poets, and texts on art, he is an internationally renowned Franco-Lebanese writer, poet, and art critic who writes in French and also serves as a diplomat.
- 1972: Franco-Arab Friendship Prize
- 1982: Max Jacob Prize
- 1993: Maïse Ploquin-Caunan Prize from the French Academy
- 1995: Grand Prize of Francophonie from the French Academy
- 2006: European Prize of the City of Smederevo (Serbia)
- 2007: Grand Prize for Poetry at the Liège International Biennials (Belgium)
- 2015: Saint-Simon Prize and Franco-Swiss Charmettes Jean-Jacques Rousseau Prize for L'Extravagance.
Cold water kept and from an ash of Salah Stétié
"— Who will save this country from the hammering"
Soldiers advancing in triumph
To pull out the guarded cold water—and take it? The guarded cold water
Written in a rich, sumptuous and captivating language, the poem "L'eau froide gardée " followed by profound reflections on poetry (" D'une cendre ") provides us with two complementary examples, reflections of a high culture and an abundant body of work, where East and West respond to each other with emotion and symbiosis.