Mahmoud Darwish: The Voice of the Palestinians
A look into the work and influence of the iconic Palestinian poet
Edited By: Hend Tarek
Photo Credited To Wikipedia Commons
“This siege will persist until we teach our enemies models of our finest poetry. The sky is leaden during the day and a fiery orange at night..but our hearts are as neutral as the flowery emblems on a shield,” wrote Mahmoud Darwish in his poem A State of Siege.
Darwish is a contemporary Palestinian legend and a writer whose work and literature moved many, brought hope to them, and enlightened the world about what is happening in Palestine. Having fled the country at a very young age, Darwish’s works revolved around his home country and the Palestinian cause that took up most of his literary space,
“Darwish is a giant not only of Arabic literature but of world literature, as well. He is studied well beyond this region,” says Steven Salatia, a professor in the Literature Department at AUC.
Mahmoud Darwish was born on March 13, 1941, in Al Birweh, Palestine, into a Sunni Muslim family. His village was destroyed during the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, which resulted in his family fleeing to Lebanon.
By the age of 19, Darwish published his first collection of poetry, titled Wingless Birds. By 22, he published his first volume, Leaves of Olives, in Beirut. Since then, he published almost 30 poetry and prose collections, which have been translated into 35 languages.
Even though his poetry was translated into different languages, he was more well-known in the Arab world.
“I wasn’t really familiar with him when I was young because I grew up in the U.S., and when I was a kid, there weren’t many, if any, translations of Darwish. Now he’s easy to find,” says Salatia
In an interview with Bomb Magazine in 2002, Darwish explained how his journey with poetry began.
As a kid, Darwish was physically weak and had no interest in sports, so he started exploring and looking for other things he was good at. He often attended family gatherings where his grandfather and neighbors recited old Arabic legends, and that is when he started getting drawn to the poetry.
“I would listen to them and feel stirred by the poetry. I did not understand why. All I knew was that the sound of the poetry appealed to me. I did not understand the high-flown language of much of the poetry, but it gave me a sense that my dilemma could be resolved through language,” said Darwish in the interview.
Most of Darwish’s poems were about Palestine. His poetry talked about the Palestinian experience from 1948 onward. It included specific events such as Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the Tal Zaatar and Sabra and Shatila massacres, the first intifada, and many more.
“After 1948, we Palestinians who stayed in what became the state of Israel found ourselves in a state of defeat. It was a most perplexing time. There was nothing in the old forms of poetry that could help us express the state in which we found ourselves. Hence, the need arose for a revolutionary form of expression for revolutionary poetry. This was a spontaneous response to events far beyond our control. It was not a deliberate, studied response,” said Darwish in the interview.
Some of Darwish’s prominent Poems are: I Come From There, A Lover From Palestine, Under Siege, Identity Card, In the Presence of Absence and Memory for Forgetfulness, and A Soldier Dreams of White Lilies.
“I resonate with his work greatly. I find it comforting, beautiful, and sad in all the right ways. I love one of his early poems, The Passport, which speaks to the resilience of identity in the face of bureaucracy and repression,” says Salatia.
Tia Mokhtar, an AUC student minoring in Literature, said that she studied two of Darwish’s poems in one of her literature classes and that they stood out to her. The poems were The Passport and Identity Card.
“What I learned the most from his poetry is to not shy away from how I feel and that words are so much more powerful than what we think they are. His words were used in the liberation movement, and they were a source of motivation and awareness to those within and those abroad. His poetry taught me to utilize words and to know the power of words,” says Mokhtar.
When he was young, Darwish was imprisoned for being politically active and for publicly reading his poetry. This resulted in him living in exile for 26 years, between Beirut and Paris until 1996. He then settled in Ramallah in the West Bank.
“Despite everything, exile has contributed greatly to the development of my writing. It allowed me to manage a journey between cultures, between peoples, between cities, between colors,” said Darwish in an interview with Helit Yeshurun, founder of the Israeli cultural review Hadarim, in 1996.
Darwish also played a big role in politics. His journey with politics started when he joined the Rakah political party, in the 1960s. Rakah, which stands for Reshima Komunistit Hadasha, was established as an additional communist party in 1965 after a group of members left Maki (the Israeli Communist Party). Rakah consisted primarily of the Arab members who left Maki.
Darwish was also an editor for a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) monthly journal and the director of the group’s research center. In 1987, he served on the organization’s executive committee. In 1993, he resigned from the organization in opposition to the Oslo Agreement. He then became the editor-in-chief and founder of Al-Karmel magazine.
Because of his outstanding work and poems, Darwish won several awards, including the Ibn Sina Prize, the Lenin Peace Prize, the 1969 Lotus Prize, the 2001 Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation, and the USSR’s Stalin Peace Prize.
On August 9, 2008, Darwish left the world at the age of 67 following a heart surgery. However, despite his absence from the world for 15 years, his work remains cherished.
“If I could leave him a message, I would thank him and tell him how his words have stretched through many generations and that no matter how much time has passed, we are still able to relate and learn from his poetry,” says Mokhtar.
