[News] Mahmoud Darwish - In the presence of Absence
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Mon Aug 11 12:10:25 EDT 2008
http://www.mahmouddarwish.com/english/index.htm
In the presence of Absence
Mahmoud Darwish has quietly left us on Saturday 9
August 2008 after 67 years of a life jumping from
one peak to another, rising higher every time,
transcending his own successes. He was a
beautiful human being, able to see what no one
else can see: in life, politics, and even people,
expressing his visions in a language that seems
to be made only for him to write with. When he
decided to take on this difficult surgery we
thought that he can beat death, like he did
several times before
but he, it seems, with his
prophetic insight, could clearly see his ghost coming from afar.
He wanted to surprise death rather than wait for
the time bomb that was his artery to explode
unannounced
he went prepared, as he always is,
leaving us behind to nurture hope.
Mahmoud Darwish
Darwish is considered to be the most important
contemporary Arab poet working today. He was born
in 1942 in the village of Barweh in the Galilee,
which was razed to the ground by the Israelis in
1948. As a result of his politi-cal activism he
faced house arrest and imprisonment. Darwish was
the editor of Ittihad Newspaper before leaving in
1971 to study for a year in the USSR. Then he
went to Egypt where he worked in Cairo for
Al-Ahram Newspaper and in Beirut, Lebanon as an
editor of the Journal Palestinian Issues. He
was also the director of the Palestinian Research
Center. Darwish was a member of the Executive
Committee of the PLO and lived in exile between Beirut
and Paris until his return in 1996 to Palestine.
His poems are known throughout the Arab world,
and several of them have been put to music. His
poetry has gained great sophistication over the
years, and has enjoyed international fame for a
long time. He has published around 30 poetry and
prose collections, which have been translated
into 35 languages. He is the editor in chief and
founder of the prestigious literary review Al
Karmel, which has resumed publication in January
1997 out of the Sakakini Centre offices. He
published in 1998 the poetry collection: Sareer
el Ghariba (Bed of the Stranger), his first
collection of love poems. In 2000 he published
Jidariyya (Mural) a book consisting of one poem
about his near death experience in 1997. In 1997
a documentary was produced about him by French TV
directed by noted French-Israeli director Simone
Bitton. He is a commander of the French Order of Arts and Letters.
Muhamoud Darwish is the winner of 2001 Lannan
Prize for Cultural Freedom. The prize recognizes
people whose extraordinary and courageous work
celebrates the human right to freedom of
imagination, inquiry, and expression. As defined
by the foundation, cultural freedom is the right
of individuals and communities to define and
protect valued and diverse ways of life currently threatened by globalization.
In the words of poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Mr.
Darwish is the Essential Breath of the
Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile
and belonging, exquisitely tuned singer of images
that invoke, link, and shine a brilliant light
into the worlds whole heart. What he speaks has
been embraced by readers around the world his
in an utterly necessary voice, unforgettable once discovered.
Mr. Darwish published his first book of poetry,
Leaves of Olives, in 1964, at the age of 22.
Since then, he has published more than twenty
poetry books, including The Adam of Two Edens,
Mural, Why Have you Left the Horse Alone, and
Eleven Planets. The University of California
Press has published his prose work, Memory For
Forgetfulness. In 2000, Gallimard published the
latest French anthology of his work and, in 2002,
a new English translation of Mr. Darwishs
Selected Poems will be published in the United
States.Among his accomplishments is the 1969
Lotus Prize and 30 compilations of poetry and prose.
Mahmoud Darwish: The Expropriated Poet
To a reader: Do not trust the poem
The daughter of absence
It is neither intuition nor is it
Thought
But rather, the sense of the abyss
(State of Siege)
Born on 13 March 1941 in Al Birweh, a quaint
village in the Galilee, Mahmoud Darwish went on
to live a life that is a poignant example of how
far talent and determination, combined with a
precarious life, can carry an individual from a
simple background into the international halls of
fame. At the early age of seven, Darwish and his
family were forced to flee to Lebanon to escape
the ongoing massacres by the Israeli Army as it
occupied Palestine and, in the process, destroyed
the poets village (in addition to over 400 other
Palestinian villages). Returning illegally to
their country the following year, he and his
family were subjected to military rule and
emergency regulations of the State of Israel
established over expropriated Palestinian
land. They were given the status of
present-absent alien, a status that will mark
the poet from that point onwards, preventing him
from ever finding his homeland, except in his
language and his ever-loving audience.
It was as early as 1950 that the poet first
realized how the poem can be a threat to the
sword as he was harassed by the Israeli military
governor for writing and reciting poetry that
expressed his strong sense of Arab and
Palestinian identity. These harassments were to
continue until 1970 when he left to Moscow and
then to Egypt, to finally settle for a while in
Beirut until the Israeli invasion in 1982. After
Beirut he became a wondering exile in Arab
capitals, settling in Paris for a while, then
Amman, and finally Ramallah, moving a step closer
to the home which he still cannot reach. The circle is not yet complete
.
There is no age sufficient for me
to pull my end to my beginning.
(Mural)
His life in the exodus somehow helped to ignite
the poetic flame within him and exile became one
of the sources of his literary creation. However,
despite his geographic separation from his
homeland, Darwish continued over the years to
disrupt the status quo in Israel through the
medium of poetry. In 1988, his widely circulated
militant poem Passers by in Passing Words, a
poem that he does not think highly of in literary
terms but that nevertheless was met with great
acclaim amongst the Arab public, was cause for a
great uproar in Israeli circles, both the right
and left wing alike. A book in French entitled
Palestine Mon Pays: Laffaire du Poeme,
published by Les Editions de Minuit in 1988,
documents some of the articles that were written
in defence of Darwish and his poem. In a similar
manner, but this time in March 2000, Yossi Sarid,
then the minister of education in Israel,
suggested the inclusion of Darwishs poetry in
the Israeli high school curriculum. This
suggestion resulted in a very close no-confidence
vote for the Barak government.
The year 2000 witnessed the publication of
Darwishs twentieth book of poetry, Mural, a
masterpiece epic poem which synthesizes his
experience and poetry spanning 36 years as he
contemplated impending eternity in a hospital
bed after having undergone life-threatening
surgery in 1998. In addition, he has five books
of prose, and his work has been translated into more than 22 languages.
His most recent translations in English, Mahmoud
Darwish: Adam of Two Edens (Jusoor and Syracuse
University Press, 2000) and The Ravens Ink: A
Chapbook (Lannan Foundation, 2001) include a
host of Darwishs most acclaimed poems written
between 1984 and 1999. Even though he is known
the world over as the poet of Palestine, as
Margaret Obank says in her review of The Adam of
Two Edens, Darwishs poetry has been published
only sparingly in English. These two volumes are
an excellent introduction, in English, to this
poet who is considered to be indisputably among
the greatest of our centurys poets. (Carolyne Forche)
It is perhaps Darwishs very special relationship
to the Arabic language that has set him apart
from other Arab poets of his time. Putting the
political cause aside, a double-edged sword in
the case of the poets literary career, Darwish
has created a new zone in the Arabic language
that he can call his own: he constructs his
kingdom homeland in language. Considered by one
prominent Arab literary critics as the saviour
of the Arabic language, Darwish manages to
describe mundane events and uncover his (and his
peoples) innermost feelings through words
juxtaposed in the most idiosyncratic of contexts,
creating fascinating new images. The symbols,
metaphors, and style in his poetry are carefully
chosen; yet at the same time they reflect an
integrity and clairvoyance that are a unique
characteristic of this writer. A number of his
poems have even been called prophetic. With his
artistic intuition and acute political common
sense, he manages to see and read what very few
people can. When that understanding finds its way
into a poem, it gains a totally new significance
to the readers, because it usually is an
expression of what they fear most but are unable to utter.
This is true of his character even in politics.
In 1993, when Darwish resigned from the PLO
executive committee to protest the Oslo Accords,
he could see at the time, as very few people
within the PLO could, that there was a structural
problem with the accord itself that would only
pave the way for escalation. I hoped I was
wrong. Im very sad that I was right. (New York Times interview)
His relationship to language remains unsurpassed
by any relationship he has with anyone or
anything. Having a special talent for uncovering
and creating the music in language, his poetry
has been a fertile ground for musicians all over
the Arab world to compose the most beautiful and
popular of songs. The fact that his words
translate so easily and splendidly into musical
lyrics resulted in a wide array of beautiful
songs that are as much a credit to the poet as they are to the musicians.
Choosing to spend most of his time during the
recent Palestinian Intifada in Ramallah, under
siege, Darwish wrote three extraordinary poems of
resistance slightly reminiscent of his early
poetry. Mohammad, The Sacrifice and A State
of Siege were published in newspapers in
Palestine and the Arab world during 2001 2002.
The last one, A State of Siege, is currently
being published in a book in Arabic, to become
Darwishs 21st book of poetry. In this last poem,
he describes the siege of Ramallah and the
Palestinian land in profound images that invoke
daily life in a vivid and multi-layered way:
A woman asked the cloud: please enfold my loved one
My clothes are soaked with his blood
If you shall not be rain, my love
Be trees
Saturated with fertility, be trees
And if you shall not be trees, my love
Be a stone
Saturated with humidity, be a stone
And if you shall not be a stone, my love
Be a moon
In the loved ones dream, be a moon
So said a woman to her son
In his funeral
He goes on to add:
During the siege, time becomes a space
That has hardened in its eternity
During the siege, space becomes a time
That is late for its yesterday and tomorrow
(A State of Siege)
Often called the poet of the resistance, and
sometimes accused of writing in defence of
Palestinian mainstream politics, Darwish still
manages to constantly defy any strict definition
of who and what he is or wants to be. He wrote
the Palestinian declaration of independence
in1988 and many poems of resistance that are an
integral part of every Arabs consciousness. But
he also wrote a lot about love and death; he
wrote poems that can be easily understood, and
others that are so mystifying that many critics
could not begin to decipher. In all this, he
remains confident in his open and honest
relationship to his readers. When I move closer
to pure poetry, Palestinians say go back to what
you were. But I have learned from experience that
I can take my reader with me if he trusts me. I
can make my modernity, and I can play my games if
I am sincere. (New York Times interview) This
intricate relationship with his ever-increasing
audience is best described in this excerpt:
Whenever I search for myself I find the others
And when I search for them
I only find my alien self
So am I the individual- crowd?
(Mural)
Darwish is the recipient of many international
literary awards including the Lotus prize in
1969, the Lenin prize in 1983, Frances highest
medal as Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres in
1997, and the Moroccan Wissam of intellectual
merit handed to him by King Mohammad VI of
Morocco. In 2001, he won the Lannan prize for
cultural freedom. This prize recognizes people
whose extraordinary and courageous work
celebrates the human right to freedom of
imagination, inquiry, and expression. As defined
by the foundation, cultural freedom is the right
of individuals and communities to define and
protect valued and diverse ways of life currently threatened by globalisation.
His reputation all over the world as a highly
esteemed poet and individual is partly due to the
fact that Mahmoud Darwish affirms an open
conception of what being an Arab is. Arab, to
him, is not an identity closed unto itself, but a
pluralism totally open unto others. In his
oeuvres, he dialogues with a group of cultures
(Canaanite, Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Persian,
Egyptian, Arab, French, English, Ottoman, Native
American) as well as with myths of the three
monotheistic religions. These dialogues create
multiple layers within the poem that may be
difficult to appreciate unless the reader can
develop a full understanding of the Is and the others of the text.
When Darwish gives a poetry reading anywhere in
the Arab world, a rare event, he easily draws
thousands of people from all walks of life and
social classes. It is as if he has become a
personal possession, a national treasure, for
every Arab, regardless of age, education,
background, nationality, or religion. Now in
translation perhaps he will also be embraced
elsewhere in the world. No poet has been
expropriated as Mahmoud Darwish has been over the
past thirty years. No one realizes this more than him:
And history makes fun of its victims
And its heroes
Takes a look at them and passes by
This sea is mine
This moist air is mine
And my name-
Even if I spell it wrong on the coffin
Is mine
As for me,
Now that I am filled with all the possible
Reasons for departure
I am not mine.
I am not mine
I am not mine
(Mural)
Serene Huleileh.
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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